As more than two dozen Democratic candidates descend on the state that kicks off the race, voters find the political landscape a maze

'This is going to be a personality war': what do Iowans think of 2020?

'This is going to be a personality war': what do Iowans think of 2020?

Jan Franck’s question drew laughter but she was dead serious. Nor did her mood lighten as she listened to the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren give her answer.

“Electability is everything for me,” Franck told the presidential contender, who was giving a town hall at a former post office in Perry, Iowa. “So if you are the Democratic nominee and you’re in a national televised debate with Donald Trump, what is your strategy for pulling your own?”

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Warren, who was derided as “Pocahontas” by the president because of her claim of Native American ancestry, offered a throwaway comment about having been a state champion debater in her younger days. Then she grew earnest, said she knows how to fight and win, and told an anecdote about taking on banks after the financial crisis.

But Franck wasn’t impressed.

“I don’t think she answered my question, but that’s standard,” she said. “I think she’s a very smart woman. A very personable woman. I think nine out of 10 times she would do very well. But this isn’t going to be a battle for policies because Trump doesn’t have any. This is going to be a personality war. When Trump comes out swinging, it’ll be ‘Pocahontas’.”

Franck, a 71-year-old retired marketing consultant, said for that reason she’s probably looking for a different candidate to back.

“I’m wondering if it can be a woman or if she comes out in his face if that’s going to be perceived as snarky and bitchy and all that stuff that a man can get away with and a woman can’t,” she said. “We need not only Democrats to elect our next president. We need a fair number of independents.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jan Franck: ‘We need not only Democrats to elect our next president. We need a fair number of independents.’ Photograph: Chris McGreal

It’s a consideration being weighed in differing ways by Iowa’s voters as they enjoy a privileged first say in choosing the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate at the caucuses in February. Gone are the certainties of 2016, when Hillary Clinton was expected to trounce Trump until the exit polls came in. As more than two dozen Democratic candidates crisscross the Iowa landscape – running a gamut of choices from centrist senators to socialist firebrands, and from tech moguls to gay veterans – Iowa voters are finding the electoral landscape to be a maze.

On the one hand, the politics and culture of 2020 have shifted in four years. The backlash against Trump helped deliver younger, more radical and less compliant Democrats into Congress at the 2018 midterms. The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and their willingness to openly challenge the Democratic establishment, has offered a sense of reinvigoration and change.

On the other hand, there is fear. Democratic voters are seared by 2016. Many do not doubt that Trump could win again, and it is pulling some of them toward candidates who may not change the world but who will not alienate those swing voters who went from Barack Obama to Trump.

‘Iowa will wean this field down’

Randy Belcher, a creative director in advertising, is newly arrived in Iowa from Detroit and taking his new voting responsibilities seriously. He has been to a bunch of rallies and had come to see former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, who is speaking about bringing people together while sidestepping policy details in front of crates of IPA at a brewpub in Des Moines.

“The best types of these rallies is when you have them in a bar,” said Belcher. “This is such a rare opportunity to see the candidates up close. I love the fact that Iowa will wean this field down. We will decide the four or five people who will have a chance of becoming president.”

Belcher worried it may be easier for Trump to slip back into the White House in 2020 than some Democrats realize.

“The economy is pretty good. A lot of people who Trump isn’t affecting in their daily lives, they can block out the craziness and the drama,” he said.

I worry a lot that the Democrats are going to nominate someone that’s just not electable Randy Belcher

“I worry a lot that the Democrats are going to nominate someone that’s just not electable. The last place I would want to be would be is at a Bernie Sanders rally. I admire him tremendously. I don’t think he could ever get elected in this country. His ideas are too adventurous for Americans at the moment. Trump is so toxic I want the Democrats to nominate a pragmatic person. I don’t want to say play it safe. That sounds so vanilla. But at this stage, job one is we’ve got to get rid of Trump.”

Some of the voters at a Sanders rally a day earlier in Council Bluffs think voters like Belcher have it all wrong. Patrick Hickey, a 48-year-old graphic designer, thinks the lesson of 2016 is that the Democrats need more radical policies and a candidate with credibility in order to motivate people to vote.

“If nothing else, the 2016 election showed we can’t let it be close. A lot of people thought it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t affect me, there’s nothing I can do. We need people to stop thinking that way and to realize there is something they can do. To get out and be vocal, be active and stop sitting down,” said Hickey as Everybody Wants to Rule the World spilled out of the speakers before Sanders spoke.

The way to get them to do that, he said, is to have policies that motivate voters.

Still, Hickey’s own position is complicated by the fact that he was so angry at what he saw as the Democratic establishment’s stitch-up of the 2016 primaries in favor of Clinton that he voted for the Green candidate, Jill Stein.

“I don’t regret my vote. I would vote that way again,” he said. “People have to vote for the person who you think can do the best job, not the candidate who can win.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrick Hickey and his son. ‘If nothing else, the 2016 election showed we can’t let it be close.’ Photograph: Chris McGreal

Kelsie Nieto, a 29 year-old nurse, was also irritated at the Democratic National Committee. She said she did not trust Clinton and so didn’t vote for her. Speaking at the Sanders rally, she said she now regrets that.

“I will vote for whoever the candidate is this time. We’ve got to get some Democrat blood in that system,” she said.

The Sanders crowd is a mix of the ageing and millennials who generally do not seem deterred by the fact he is the oldest candidate in the race at 77. Nieto said she is focused on policies, not age. So is her husband, Dan, who said he is leaning toward Warren, 69.

Sanders relates his experience to the crowd by declaring that Iowa was where “the political revolution began” four years ago.

“Nobody took our campaign very seriously. It began at 3% in the polls,” he said.

The ideas that seemed so radical to much of America back then have gone mainstream with Medicare for All to the fore in the political debate. For that reason, Sanders stands out to Nieto as the most authentic.

On the other side of the hall, Samantha Anzures has brought her friend, Kyrsten Correll, to see Sanders. They are both 19 and students. Anzures is a big Sanders fan.

“I don’t agree with anything Donald Trump has to say. He’s evil to me. I want to see what we can do to fight against evil. I want the good to win,” she said.

But Correll is “along for the ride”.

“I’m not very into politics. I’m here to educate myself,” she said. “My family talks about Trump a lot just ’cause my dad was in the military. I’m forced to listen to that so I do want to hear what the opposite end of the spectrum has to say about things because all I hear are Republican opinions.”

Kelly Osborne is a Sanders fan to be found at a rally by the California senator Kamala Harris, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

“I actually don’t know much about her,” she said.

Osborne works at McDonald’s while raising her grandson, whose parents are in prison. She earns $8.25 an hour, just a dollar above minimum wage.

“I try to make that work but some days I don’t,” she said. “I want a candidate that’s truly for the people, not for their pocket. Healthcare. Raising minimum wage so we can actually make it in the world. I think Bernie Sanders does fit that bill. I think he will fight for the people and not for his pocketbook.”

A few minutes later Harris appeared centre stage, pulsating energy. She told the crowd she was going to spell out some truths.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kamala Harris speaks in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 9 June. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Her first target was Trump, who she accused of “fueling hate” with racism, sexism and transphobia. Then Harris got to what Osborne wanted to hear. How the American economy isn’t working for working people. The lack of affordable housing and healthcare.

“Climate change is real” and an existential threat, she declared. It’s a performance that suggests Harris could more than hold her own in a debate with Trump. But one of Harris’ solutions – a big middle-class tax cut – sounded Trumpian to some people at the rally.

Afterwards, in a testament to the power of personal appearances to sway votes, Osborne said she liked what she saw.

“I was impressed with her. She seems like she’s telling the truth. She doesn’t seem like she’s bullshitting,” she said. “I’m a Kamala supporter now.”

Some themes are constant, none more so than healthcare. Even where the candidates are not focused on it, many Iowa voters are.

Michael Voss was at a Pete Buttigieg rally in Fort Dodge. He attended because as a gay man he wanted to support Buttigieg as an LGBTQ candidate. But Voss is grappling with medical issues which take a good chunk of his income and so he also wanted to hear what the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, had to say about affordable healthcare.

In his speech, Buttigieg pushed Medicare for All. But in the Q&A afterwards he rejected European-style publicly run healthcare and said there should be an incremental approach to enticing people away from private insurance. Voss would like to see a public health system but accepted it’s unlikely to happen soon.

“Private companies are pulling in billions a year. It’s going to be hard to say, you’re not going to get your money any more private companies,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pete Buttigieg in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on 9 June. ‘I think that at a certain point people can look past a person’s sexuality. But this part of the state, I’m not so sure,’ said Michael Voss. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Voss wondered whether Buttigieg’s sexuality would count against him with enough American voters to make a difference at the general election.

“Where he’s from, people are very similar to here in Iowa. They’re very conservative. That’s where Mike Pence came from. But he got re-elected after he came out of the closet. So that’s a good sign. I think that at a certain point people can look past a person’s sexuality. But this part of the state, I’m not so sure. This part of Iowa’s very conservative,” he said.

As it is, Buttigieg is riding a wave of popularity in the state. His surge supplanted Beto O’Rourke, who arrived in Iowa with the wind of media interest behind him following his impressive run against the Texas senator Ted Cruz. But O’Rourke lost momentum in Iowa, as some voters wondered what he stood for.

“I enjoy his energy but I’m hoping Biden runs,” said Jim Johnson after listening to O’Rourke speak in a cafe in Muscatine. “We really need someone who’s thought this through.”

A couple of weeks later, Joe Biden waded into the race and changed the dynamic by moving to the front, albeit many months before anyone gets to vote.

Trump’s policies are bringing out the darker angels in a lot of Americans who would otherwise keep quiet Marc Daniels

Marc Daniels, a sales rep to retail stores in US military bases in Europe, is Jewish and holding a “Make America Kosher Again” sign while waiting for the former vice-president at a packed bar in Iowa City. He has also brought kippah head coverings embroidered with Biden 2020. He did something similar for Sanders and Warren.

“Nothing gets a candidate’s attention like a personalized kippah,” he said.

Daniels blamed Trump for a rise in antisemitic violence in the US.

“Trump’s policies are bringing out the darker angels in a lot of Americans who would otherwise keep quiet,” he said before Biden came on stage.

Of the candidates he has seen, Daniels described Warren as “book smart but cannot connect nearly as well as Bernie or Joe”.

He thinks Biden’s probably the best candidate to beat Trump because he appeals to the middle-class voters who switched from Obama in 2016.

“I observed the way Joe connected with people along the rope line. He gave them the feeling that he genuinely cares about listening to them,” he said. “Joe was genuinely touched that I had produced the kippahs for him and he really liked the ‘Make America Kosher Again’ sign. He even signed one for me.”

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Kaelee Keesee and Zoe Hueser, both 20-year-old pre-law students, are also checking out Biden. They agree they can support “anything that’s not Trump”. But on the question of whether Trump’s opponent should be picked on policies or as the best candidate to beat him, Huesser is undecided.

“I’ve actually struggled with that one. I think in a lot of ways I find myself questioning who could go against Trump especially when you see how the last election evolved. But I would still like it to be about the policies,” she said.

Neither has Biden as their favorite. Kessee is leaning toward Buttigieg.

“He’s my top candidate. He has a great balance because he was a war vet and that appeals to a lot of people. And also he has the great liberal policy plans. I think he would have a great chance of winning,” she said.

Huesser is not sure who she would support. Like many Iowans, she is still figuring it out.

“We should have younger people in office right now. That’s the way we’re going to get change to happen. But if Biden were the one who got nominated, I’d vote for him,” she said.