His placement behind his leading rivals in the caucuses on Monday dealt a damaging blow to his campaign. Some party officials say it was a long time in the works.
DES MOINES — Maybe it was the threat of bad weather. Maybe it was a seating assignment debacle. Maybe it was a struggling campaign organization that still hadn’t found its footing.
But as Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke at a major Iowa Democratic Party dinner in November, one thing was clear: His support appeared tepid compared with the vocal cheering sections of top rivals. The reception angered Mr. Biden and his top aides — and it left little doubt about his standing, three months before the nominating process in the Democratic presidential race would begin: The former vice president was in deep trouble in Iowa.
Two days after the dinner, Mr. Biden ripped into his campaign chairman, Steve Ricchetti, according to a person familiar with the conversation. And at the Biden headquarters in Philadelphia, senior officials sternly told staff members they needed to step up their performance.
The dinner’s damaging optics marked the beginning of a flurry of changes: Trusted aides were deployed to Iowa sooner than anticipated. Mr. Biden rescheduled time with donors to make space for a bus tour in Iowa. Former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and his wife, Christie Vilsack, major players in Iowa Democratic politics, announced their Biden endorsements.
It was too late.
Mr. Biden’s performance in the Iowa caucuses on Monday dealt a damaging blow to the former vice president; with well over 90 percent of the results counted by Wednesday night, he trailed Pete Buttigieg and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with Senator Amy Klobuchar not far behind.
“I am not going to sugarcoat it,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday as he campaigned in New Hampshire. “We took a gut punch in Iowa.”
Certainly over the past year, Mr. Biden has proved far more resilient than many expected. He has led national polls for months despite verbal gaffes, scrutiny of his long and sometimes controversial record in Washington, and a relentless assault from Republicans over his son’s dealings in Ukraine. The slow drip of vote totals in Iowa — and a swirl of other major news events — may blunt the attention on Mr. Biden’s challenges. And Iowa is an overwhelmingly white state, while Mr. Biden’s biggest political strength is with black voters, whom he is counting on for support in later-voting, more diverse states.
But he now faces jittery donors, an uncertain landscape in upcoming Democratic contests and a sharp challenge to the central argument of his campaign message: that he is the party’s strongest candidate to win a general election.
Interviews with more than a dozen advisers, allies and Iowa strategists show that Mr. Biden was late in focusing on Iowa, put together an organization there that fell well short of his top rivals’ and that his core pitch about electability and experience wasn’t enough to persuade voters who wanted a fresh face or more boldly progressive ideas.
Mr. Biden was also a less-than-inspiring presence on the trail, according to some voters, struggling at times in the homestretch to deliver crisp, energetic, on-message performances.
A campaign event for Mr. Biden in Fort Madison, Iowa, last month.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York Times
A late start proves costly
When Mr. Biden announced his candidacy on April 25, some of his chief rivals had already been running for months.
His late start had long-lasting consequences, according to some of his supporters.
“He could have been here sooner and more aggressively,” said Mr. Vilsack, who became Mr. Biden’s top surrogate in the state. “Because this is all about relationships.”
“It was frustrating that they weren’t seeming to reach more people,” added Susan Judkins, a member of the Clive City Council. “Some of the other campaigns had been getting momentum. They had hired staffers who are known to Iowans, who had an ability to influence.”
When he did get to the state over the summer and into the fall, Mr. Biden’s team produced carefully managed events. He traveled with a phalanx of staff, sometimes used teleprompters and typically spoke from behind rope lines. None of that prevented a spree of verbal stumbles in Iowa in August — but according to some of his allies, it did keep Mr. Biden from showing off his biggest strength: his retail politicking skills.
“I’ve had that conversation at least since the end of May, beginning part of the summer, that Joe would do better and has always done better meeting with people,” said State Representative Bruce Hunter, a staunch Biden ally who said he made that case to Mr. Biden’s state campaign leadership. “He needed to get out more, talk to smaller groups of people, listen to them, give his vision one-on-one to people.”
Yet no amount of glad-handing could remedy an organization that even his supporters here found frustrating.
“His campaign is not a good campaign,” Roxanna Moritz, the Scott County auditor and a Biden supporter, said late last month. “They’re not embedding loyalty to the organization, he doesn’t do groundwork.”
She said that the campaign was “not returning phone calls, no follow through.”
“It’s kind of sad because I really do think he is the right person,” she added.
By the fall, Mr. Biden’s advisers felt that their campaign organization in Iowa had steadied — but events in Washington took him down a detour that no one could have foreseen, or prevented.
On Sept. 21, more than 1,000 Biden supporters assembled at the Polk County Steak Fry, featuring the kind of chummy interaction in which Mr. Biden is at his best.
But their efforts were overshadowed by news that President Trump had asked Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, a story that would consume the campaign for months. That night, a Des Moines Register poll revealed that Mr. Biden had slipped from first place in Iowa, overtaken by Ms. Warren of Massachusetts.
Mr. Biden spent the next weeks grappling with the best way to respond to the Ukraine controversy. And party officials continued to describe his Iowa organization as scattershot, an issue thrown into sharp relief at the party dinner in November, the Liberty and Justice Celebration.
Mr. Biden’s team said that it had around 1,200 people in the arena, many of whom went on to become precinct captains and dedicated volunteers. But the empty seats and the smaller and less boisterous Biden sections spread throughout the arena cut a sharp contrast with the loud, unified crowds of Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., in a major test of organizational strength.
More damaging than the evident differences in crowd strength was what many Iowa Democrats were seeing for the first time in person: a once-fiery candidate who was looking his age compared with a number of his younger rivals.
Mr. Biden’s visit to the Polk County Steak Fry was mired by news that President Trump had asked Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
A key endorsement, and some advice
Mr. Biden’s campaign could do little to alter the presentation of a candidate who was given to meandering into verbal cul-de-sacs even in his prime.
But they concluded that they needed to better display Mr. Biden’s strong interpersonal skills, and to connect with more moderate voters who live in rural areas.
Mr. Vilsack, the former governor, had long advocated that approach, joining with his wife to advise their old friend to spend time in small towns during a private conversation last spring.
After spending months meeting with candidates, the Vilsacks — who supported Mr. Biden in his first presidential campaign, in 1987 — informed Mr. Biden in a phone call that they would endorse him, impressed with his rural policy proposal, his empathy and his “capacity to take a punch.”
Behind the scenes, they offered the campaign leadership two major pieces of advice.
“One, you need to be out there in all parts of the state,” Mr. Vilsack said. “And two,
you need to spend time with voters in a way that they will get to know you.”
After Thanksgiving, the Vilsacks joined Mr. Biden on a bus trip, called the “No Malarkey” tour, across rural parts of the state where the Biden campaign saw chances to accrue delegates.
The trip revealed strategic openings for the campaign, officials said. They spotted an opportunity with Latino voters in Storm Lake and were reminded to accentuate Mr. Biden’s advantage with Catholics in Dubuque.
The problem: Those lessons were arriving with just weeks to capitalize on them. Other candidates had already spent many months trying to win over the state’s Democratic caucusgoers.
“Had he done the ‘No Malarkey’ tour in the summertime, you may never have seen that Elizabeth Warren bounce,” said Representative Ami Bera, Democrat of California, who supports Mr. Biden.
Jesse Harris, a senior Biden Iowa adviser, said the timing was designed to coincide with when caucusgoers intensified their focus on the race. “The vice president did spend quite a bit of time in the state,” he said. “Obviously, he got into the race a bit later than the other candidates, so two or three months behind when he first visited the state compared to others. But we were actively here in Iowa.”
“The bus tour,” he added, “was a very visible extension of what we were already doing.”
Mr. Biden launched his “No Malarkey” bus tour across Iowa in the final months of 2019.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Disappointing some supporters
As 2020 arrived, there were some encouraging developments, building on what the campaign saw as post-bus tour momentum.
On Jan. 2, Representative Abby Finkenauer, a Democrat who in 2018 had flipped an eastern Iowa district, endorsed Mr. Biden, signaling that candidates in the toughest races believed Mr. Biden was their safest bet at the top of the ticket. Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat from another competitive Iowa district, later followed suit.
Yet even as he continued to land high-profile endorsements, Mr. Sanders of Vermont was on the rise, expanding his progressive support and seeking to cut into Mr. Biden’s base of blue-collar workers by attacking his record on Social Security, pointing out that he had occasionally entertained freezes to the program. The specter of a possible conflict with Iran allowed Mr. Sanders to continually remind voters that Mr. Biden had approved the use of force in Iraq.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released late last month found that even in eastern Iowa — home to many white working-class voters with whom Mr. Biden expected to be strong — he was struggling.
Ahead of the 2016 campaign, David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, had warned Mr. Biden, according to an article in The Atlantic, “Do you really want it to end in a hotel room in Des Moines, coming in third to Bernie Sanders?”
In the final weeks before the 2020 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Plouffe’s warning was starting to sound prescient.
Recognizing the need to win new supporters, Mr. Biden’s Iowa director, Jake Braun, floated a deal over dinner in Des Moines with an adviser to Ms. Klobuchar of Minnesota. The two moderate Democrats should form an alliance, Mr. Braun suggested a week before the vote, and urge their supporters to back the other if one of them did not advance to the final round in a precinct.
Ms. Klobuchar’s camp quickly shot down the prospect when the story leaked, and Mr. Braun, who had already been marginalized by Mr. Biden’s national campaign, found himself isolated by his enraged superiors, who had warned him not to freelance, according to a person familiar with internal discussions.
Mr. Biden often spoke behind rope lines at his campaign events across Iowa.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York Times
Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic chair, had backed Senator Kamala Harris of California. After Ms. Harris dropped out, Ms. Dvorsky said she was inclined to support Mr. Biden, whom she and her husband had met when he ran for president in 1987.
But Ms. Dvorsky was appalled at the state of Mr. Biden’s organization, which was lacking precinct captains even in her own heavily Democratic community. Last week she endorsed Ms. Warren.
“This has been a sloppy effort that was always aimed at a general election,” she said of Mr. Biden’s organization, deeming it worse than his first two Iowa campaigns. “Right now, they’re bringing in hundreds of people from out of state — not to be canvassers but to be precinct captains.”
Even some of Mr. Biden’s high-profile supporters were perplexed by the campaign’s choices, which included dispatching a number of his former Senate colleagues, all of them white men over 70, to stump for him in the Iowa campaign’s final days.
On the Saturday before the caucuses, Ms. Judkins had an uneasy feeling about the decision her state was about to make. She had spent the day knocking on doors with a host of prominent Biden supporters from across the country. She came away impressed by what her colleagues had told her — that Mr. Biden had more support and organizational strength in later-voting states. She wished they had come to Iowa sooner.
“I said to my husband, ‘I feel like all of these people from around the country are coming in to try to save us from ourselves,’” she said when they went out that evening. “Here we are, going out dancing. Kind of like the Titanic, the ship going down.”
It was yet another epic failure of political punditry. Go back to the early months of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and read what the consultants and commentators were saying about him: His support is just name recognition; he’ll fade! He’s too old! He’s running a zombie campaign! The party has moved left and he’s out of touch! He voted for the crime bill!
Almost everybody was bearish on Joe. But now look where we are, weeks from actual voting. If the polls are to be believed, Biden will win Iowa, he’ll come in second in New Hampshire, he will easily win Nevada, he will dominate in South Carolina. He’s now tied for the lead in California and he’s way ahead in Texas.
I don’t know if he’ll win the nomination (both he and Bernie Sanders look strong), but this is not where a lot of people six months ago thought we’d be.
It’s the 947th consecutive sign that we in the coastal chattering classes have not cured our insularity problem. It’s the 947th case in which we see that every second you spend on Twitter detracts from your knowledge of American politics, and that the only cure to this insularity disease is constant travel and interviewing, close attention to state and local data and raw abject humility about the fact that the attitudes and academic degrees that you think make you clever are actually the attitudes and academic degrees that separate you from the real texture of American life.
Biden didn’t just luck into this. He and his team grasped six truths:
Understand the year you are running in. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are running the same basic campaign they would have run in 2012 or 2016. Biden’s campaign is completely focused on the central problem of 2020: that Donald Trump is a steaming hot mess in the middle of national life.
Biden has fixated his campaign on the Trump problem and fighting for the soul of America. Nearly twice as many Democrats say it’s more important to beat Trump than to have a candidate with whom they agree on all issues.
Understand your party’s core challenge. All around the world parties on the left are losing because they have lost touch with the working class. These parties think they can reconnect with that class by swinging even further left. But Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders here are a doctoral student’s idea of a working-class candidate, not an actual working person’s idea of one.
Biden has criticized his own party for losing touch with this class. He emerged from it, is focusing his attention on it and is winning support from it.
Moderates are still powerful. The Democratic Party is moving left, but about half of Democrats still say they are moderate or conservative. No candidate has ever won a nomination without strong support from these voters, while college-town candidates — Howard Dean, Gary Hart — tend to falter. In every presidential general election that Democrats have won since 1988, they carried moderates by more than 12 percentage points. In every race they have lost, they failed to do that. Biden kept his moderate credentials when many other candidates saw A.O.C. on Twitter and decided to move left.
Many Democrats resent their own elites. There is a quiet tension between Democrats who wield cultural power and those who don’t. The former are active on social media, and clobber the latter — people who say or write the “wrong” thing.
The non-elites tend to feel judged and looked down on by the self-appointed savior class. “Politically correct” has become the phrase people use to define those who use cultural power to enforce ideological conformity. Seventy percent of Democrats who are not on social media say political correctness is a big problem. These are people silently but vehemently reacting against this social reign of terror. Biden communicates affection, not judgment, acceptance, not expulsion.
Have a better theory of social change. Sanders and Warren imagine they can rally movements of progressive supermajorities to transform American politics. The reality is that if they are elected we’ll be stuck with the same 42 percent-to-42 percent stagnant political war we have now.
Biden starts with the understanding that we are a closely divided nation. He understands the elemental fact that if you want to pass laws you have to go through Congress. As Damon Linker pointed out recently in The Week, Biden’s argument is that a center-left congressional coalition is the best we can do under present circumstances. That’s a more realistic theory of change. A beloved legislator like Biden is more likely to transform the political landscape than a down-the-line progressive.
Connection. Connection. Connection. Many candidates pound the podium and lecture at their rallies. It’s the big leader onstage and the passionate mass of followers down below. Nobody makes an individual connection as well as Biden. In a time when people feel exhausted, isolated and alienated, a candidate who seems normal and emotionally relatable is going to have a lot of appeal.
The ironic fact is that the candidate who can be vulnerable has a surprising power.
