In a caucus site, campaigns try to fill three real roles. They can also combine these up, or maybe if it’s small enough they don’t have one. They are:

COUNT — Campaigns will encourage those who intend to caucus to get to the site at least 30 minutes before hand to check in. They must be registered Democrats, and if they are not, they can change their registration at the door. But they cannot enter without being registered as a Democrat. The Count is generally handled by one person who is well known and can be easily identified with your candidate. Because they also are responsible with contacting people who aren’t there and making sure they get to the site they are also a task manager. They will often have a sheet of known voters in favor of your candidate, but they can also ask… it’s easy, you hand out a sticker tag or whatever to people who back you. You also keep track of the number of people in each of the other camps and keep track of how many attendees they have in the room. IF you have known supporters who have not arrived, your COUNT generally has a sheet with phone numbers so they can call them to make sure they get to the site on time.

WHIP — Whip & Count are often added together; but if you’re site is big, you’ll have a count & a whip. A whip’s whole job is to make sure your voters stay where they are (that they do not go caucus with someone else or split after a round), they also use some of your group to help influence caucus goers in each of the other groups. So, they monitor their candidate A, Candidates B,C,E whatever and also the Undecided. Their job in most ways is to take the count and find out what influences people to be undecided or with candidate B,C,E, etc. It is also to determine who may be best at influencing members in B,C,E. The undecided can caucus together and after each pass you can try to persuade them, which comes into:

LEADER — good caucus sites have a chosen leader. This is someone you know before hand who will speak on behalf your candidate after a pass to make the case for the candidate. Note: after a pass ANYONE can change who they caucus for… someone “pledged” to candidate C is can be persuaded by an argument from candidate B’s leader and move, even if their candidate has viability or not; and vice-versa.

Welcome to a caucus!

So, let’s talk how strategy works… with some pretty common strategy.

Remember, a big slice of the people there are your die hard democrats. This is not their first rodeo; they know how a caucus works, and they understand the rules and the game far better than you do… doing things that are considered “bad form” can hurt; and doing things well may be talked about for a long time with some level of awe.

FEEL OUT THE ROOM.

Look, the most common strategy in a caucus site is to “align” or feel out the room. This is a practice that happens before the first vote ever takes place. With the help of your count & whip you identify those who plan to caucus independent BEFORE the first vote and you just go talk to them. People who do this well do so with a light touch. Remember, for the most part, these are your neighbors. You know them beyond politics. In more rural communities you may REALLY know them. So, don’t be pushy. Simply, find out the issues that have kept them undecided, and make sure that your leader knows what the issues are… that way when a pitch is made they can address the issues of the undecided, the people you are trying to pitch. This is also true of candidates who you know will not reach viability. What is their issue?

EMBED A CAUCUSER

As long as caucuses have existed, to my knowledge, this strategy has went on pretty well. Let’s say you know a few people in your caucus. You know Candidate C will not reach viability. A member of your caucus had candidate C as his second choice. Your whip may say: go caucus with Candidate C. Show your support for Candidate C and why you thought he should be a second choice. People in that group, again, likely know you and they know that Candidate C was your second choice. But it gives you a chance to voice what it was about Candidate C that you really liked. It also allows you to talk to your neighbors — people you know — for a longer period of time about why Candidate A or B are closer to Candidate C after viability is lost. 1988 is a good example of effectively using this strategy, when Gephardt won; hell, in some cases your person may end up being the leader/advocate for Candidate C, and give the “I’m with Candidate C because, while I strong feelings about A/B, there is one issue on which I came tonight to really praise Candidate C, because no one/etc. talked about it and we should praise Candidate C’s effort”… old school Democrats tend to love this. They like the idea of every candidate getting some love.

PRAISE AND BARTER

This is the item people think about most because it is used more often. Let’s say you have multiple candidates who are eliminated in Round 1. When leaders get up to address to get to “woo” them over; a common strategy is to simply say, “First, I’d really like to praise the people who came out to support Candidate E tonight. Candidate E has been a strong Democrat for many years, and the fact that his supporters came out tonight and made the effort shows how much they care about his issues...” “In light of that, we’d like to offer those who are here to caucus with Candidate E an opportunity to help select the delegate chosen from this caucus site in our group to go onto the state..” Remember: these people are neighbors. So, outside of candidate favorites they have delegate favorites; who they may want to see go to the state and potentially national conventions to pick the presidential candidate.. (note, there are other factors here, like inspirational delegate, which can happen but that gets really hard to explain here)

RAISE THE VIABILITY or INCREASE THE UNDECIDED

Let’s say Candidate C or Undecided is really close to viability. Your candidate is sailing out ahead at a site, but your site is close to dividing and the non-viable caucusers may all leap to candidate B, resulting in Candidate B splitting the delegates a site. It’s pretty fair game to increase Candidate C, or often, Undecided, in order to either jockey for another pass or to change the delegate count.

So, let’s talk about how this can happen effectively. In many ways, this works better if you have a LOT of candidates. See: 2004 as a more recent example. If you can keep multiple candidates viable, you can have more passes to divide out delegates, and then “collapse” your supporters when your in-room whip tells you that you have enough to reach a majority in the room if you call them back.

Again, remember: these are often friends & neighbors, they can change at any moment, pressing this too hard is a really dick thing to do, because while some caucus sites can go on a while, most try to get out of their quickly; and if you force a bunch of passes (unlikely in a race like this year) people may really not like you.

Muskie ‘72. “Anyone But”

Now, let’s talk about “Anyone But”. Let’s say you know your candidate is screwed in a site. But you really do not like Candidate C. Undecideds are not required to suddenly choose a side, they can send Undecided delegates on to the state who can change their mind later. In 1972, the use of “Anyone But” led candidates to say: “If it’s McGovern and it looks like he may win the site, run over to Undecided and make sure they stand firm in the majority to deny him plurality or any delegates from the site..” this strategy worked so well that Undecided ended up winning the 1972 Iowa Caucus, with Muskie second.

The THIS IS A BAD IDEA list

Here are your general “This is a bad idea” items.

Do not bad-mouth or talk trash on another candidate. That may work on the internet and elsewhere, but in person it really, really doesn’t work. Many who are really familiar with the caucus system are DIE HARD Democrats. They go to every democratic event near them, they are lifetime fundraisers and supporters, and they do NOT like hearing people talk badly about other candidates. They want to hear your leader talk positively about YOUR candidate and why they should be preferred. Get negative and it will hurt you bad.

Democrats. They go to every democratic event near them, they are lifetime fundraisers and supporters, and they do NOT like hearing people talk badly about other candidates. They want to hear your leader talk positively about YOUR candidate and why they should be preferred. Get negative and it will hurt you bad. Do not gum up the system. Everyone knows this is a bit of a game and most enjoy it. But some practices are just perceived of as “really bad” form… One of those items is something that everyone does but not on purpose. Remember, lots of longtime Democrats there; they are seeing old friends and people they’ve known forever. They love registering new Democrats at the door; but some do get bothered if the majority of your people are new registered or flip-Rs. They can look kind of negatively on that; which is why all campaigns (even in a year like this one) worked to change registration before hand. Caucus sites start on time and the doors will shut. Do not bring in a gigantic number of people who need to switch parties or are unregistered; try hard to get that done before hand… a little late now in Iowa (though they can help by having the form filled out and just present when they arrive if they still are). DO NOT have your Count, Whip or Leader switch parties at the caucus site! It is really bad form if the person who will advocate for your candidate was a Republican 20 minutes ago or an Independent until an hour ago.

have your Count, Whip or Leader switch parties at the caucus site! It is really bad form if the person who will advocate for your candidate was a Republican 20 minutes ago or an Independent until an hour ago. Do not badger people inside. Be friendly, polite, work the room and talk to people. These are your friends and neighbors. Start treating people badly and that hurts. People can vote for any number of reasons, and their reason does not need to make sense to you. If you walk up to someone and they say “Yeah, I’m really thinking about caucusing for X, because damn I love their hair.” If it’s your candidate you say: “Hah! Yes” and smile big and mention something else too to help push them, if it is for another candidate you don’t say things like “Damn that’s dumb, you’re going to caucus on that?” People can caucus for whatever the hell reason they want to; and at the point you are there, you just have to be as friendly as possible to make sure the people in your group are the good people in the room.

Do not take forever to find the person who will speak for your group or have tons of people do it. It slows the whole thing up, people have given up a night, and showing that you have some cohesion tells people that you are organized, care about their time, and you took time to think about how this works. A dogpile that sits around and takes forever or ends up with weird advocacy SUCKS.. ask Howard Dean, 2004.

Remember: these people are not odd strangers on the internet you are trying to convice, they aren’t people you will never see again, in many cases these are people you will interact with over and over and over in a year.

So, the biggest rule that applies is simple DO NOT BE A DICK.