Bernie Sanders
Sen. Bernie Sanders in First Christian Church, Des Moines, Iowa. Photo by Jasper Craven/VTDigger

[H]oward Dean knows something about the importance of the Iowa caucus.

Twelve years ago, the former Vermont governor’s presidential campaign died in the corn fields of the Hawkeye State, where White House dreams have been inspired or dashed. When people think of Dean and Iowa, they remember “The Scream,” but that was just the screechy encore at a rock concert where the music had already gone bad.

On Monday, the outcome was much different for the Green Mountain State’s current presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The underdog slugged his way to a draw with Hillary Clinton, standing toe-to-toe with the party’s presumptive pick, who had once seemed on a Majestic March to be coronated as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

Instead of limping out of Iowa, like Dean did, Sanders roared on to New Hampshire, where he holds a healthy lead over the former secretary of state, senator and first lady. One report had Clinton “unnerved” by the Iowa result. Another faulted her, not her organization.

Who would have guessed back in May, when Sanders announced his longshot bid on the shores of Lake Champlain, that the one-time documentary filmmaker, whose political career began with laughable single-digit results in statewide contests, would have a credible chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination?

That the once unkempt, unapologetic upstart, who won his first elected office by 10 measly votes and for years refused to wear a tie, might possibly be — ahem — the next president of the United States?

Early on The New York Times dismissed the campaign as “maybe one of the most quixotic adventures in American politics.”

Eric Davis, a longtime political analyst and retired Middlebury professor, said the odds were pretty high.

“If you had asked me back when he announced could he basically finish in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and be leading in New Hampshire, I would say very unlikely,” said Davis.

Meanwhile, Dean, a Clinton supporter, said the Sanders’ campaign results in Iowa were “pretty amazing.”

“I think Hillary and Bernie both did what they had to do,” Dean said. “Hillary won but Bernie did really well so they’ll both be happy with themselves.”

Dean pointed to Sanders’ organization as a key to his success. The former governor said his 2004 operation in Iowa was, by comparison, in disarray, as he sought to win the nomination and unseat President George W. Bush. He said organizational skills were particularly key maneuvering through the complex Iowa caucus system, which he said required more discipline than a primary contest.

In 2004, Dean came into the Iowa caucus on a high. He had secured the endorsement of longtime Sen. Tom Harkin, and the polls had him in a tight race with Rep. Richard Gephardt from neighboring Missouri. Dean’s support started to erode in the final weeks, and he wound up finishing a distant third, way behind the eventual nominee, Sen. John Kerry, and his vice presidential pick, Sen. John Edwards, who finished second.

“My experience was totally different. I was leading and I came in third. That doesn’t work so well,” Dean said with a laugh.

Howard Dean
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean regularly offers commentary on MSNBC about fellow Vermonter Bernie Sanders.

“I think the significance of Iowa is that you can’t do well unless you have a good organization, and that’s when I became convinced that Barack Obama could be president, when I saw what he did in Iowa,” Dean said. “Not just because I thought he could win the nomination, but I saw he had what it took to be president.”

Iowa is “very skewed and it doesn’t represent the rest of the country,” he continued. Winning the Hawkeye State requires “such an incredibly disciplined effort.”

In 2004, Dean said his campaign had “an organizational problem.”

“It was also a candidate problem,” Dean said. “I was not ready for prime time, I think.” He was “run ragged” from traveling all over the state, he made “too many” campaign appearances, and he was running on four hours of sleep.

His failure was “a matter of not paying attention to detail and not being disciplined. At the end of the day, detail is much more important than a lot of other things,” the former doctor said.

Political analyst Davis said he was not surprised by Sanders’ success in Iowa because of the Vermont senator’s evolution from dismissed outlier to credible opponent, starting with the debates in October.

It was the message and the candidate, Davis said.

“Once he started to do better in the late fall and once the Iowa campaign began in earnest, and then all the reports coming out of there in the last month or so that indicated he had a lot of support, enthusiastic crowds, had a big ground organization, certainly able to raise enough money to support the campaign, then I wasn’t surprised” by the close finish with Clinton, Davis said.

(Speaking of money, consider this: Sanders raised $73 million in 2015. Then in January, he raised $20 million, about $700,000 a day. As Davis noted, that daily haul would fuel a pretty good run for governor in Vermont. And the $20 million? That’s about three times what Sanders ever spent in his most contentious and expensive U.S. Senate race. The average donation to his presidential campaign, according to Sanders, is an Aikenesque $27.)

Davis noted how differently Sanders and Dean approached Iowa: The senator focused on income inequality, while the governor opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“In many respects, they had a lot of the same supporters,” Davis said. Sanders’ message, he said, affected more people and was delivered “more explicitly.”

Are the early states important? Davis said they more effectively eliminate candidates than elevate them. The last candidate to win an open nomination from the early states was Jimmy Carter in 1976, he said.

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Photo by Adam Rose, Courtesy of CNN

In Davis’ view, the larger problem for Clinton was that voters have questions “about her ethics, her integrity, very personal qualities.” He also said some of the ongoing controversies that she’s been involved in could rear up during the campaign, a problem Sanders doesn’t have to worry about.

Linda Fowler, a political analyst from Dartmouth College, said Sanders’ showing in Iowa was “an impressive feat” considering how far ahead Clinton had consistently been.

Despite the poor track record of Iowa and New Hampshire in selecting the eventual nominee, Fowler, Davis and Dean all said momentum from wins in early states is crucial: It signals to voters in Super Tuesday states that you are viable and well organized.

“I think his campaign has good reason to be pleased, that there really is a momentum effect coming into New Hampshire,” Fowler said. She said Sanders’ showing in Iowa was impressive since it depended on strong turnout from younger voters, who she said can be difficult to count on. Some polls showed his support from those under 30 years old at 70 percent.

Dean agreed: “I think momentum matters, and Iowa is part of the momentum.”

Sanders is leading in New Hampshire polls. But Fowler said activists may feel the need to resuscitate Clinton’s campaign instead of sticking with Sanders. She said many activists question Sanders’ electability in the general election. Fowler also said the New Hampshire ballot is confusing, listing all the candidates names, even minor ones, randomly. Finding the more familiar Clinton name might be easier for some voters than Sanders.

The New Hampshire primary is next Tuesday.

Richard Sugarman, a religion professor at the University of Vermont, is one of Sanders’ longest friends and was the primary person who encouraged Sanders to run for mayor in 1981, when he snuck by an entrenched incumbent by 10 votes and launched his political career.

Sugarman says the Iowa success shows that Sanders’ message, which hasn’t changed in 40 years, has finally found a home. (Ironically, in a race about “the 1 percent,” suddenly that number, or a fraction of it, was dismissed as irrelevant. The final numbers out of Iowa gave Clinton 49.9, Sanders 49.6. They’ll almost evenly split the 44 delegates, 23 for Clinton, 21 for Sanders. Some of the caucuses were decided by coin flip.)

“The times have caught up with Bernie,” Sugarman said. “He’s absolutely correct that the dangers he sees of America lurching into an oligarchy are not very remote, and we’re pretty close to being there right now. And he’s offering an alternative of a similar kind — on a much different level — than what he offered in Burlington … to create a better society.”

“He’s reaching a new generation and trying to enfranchise people like he did in Burlington, people who had stopped voting, people who’d given up,” Sugarman said.

“It’s a hoot to watch, Burlington kicking shins,” said Sanders ally John Franco, a former city attorney. “Watching him debate Hillary Clinton, it’s like the old City Council meetings, except back then there were eight of them (Democrats). Every meeting was a battle. This is like a day at the office.”

Keeping up with Clinton and the Democratic Party machine, he said, was remarkable.

“They threw the kitchen sink at him, all the best Democratic operatives. For Bernie, it was a beach head and for Clinton, they were trying to push him back into the sea,” Franco said. “And it was a draw.”

After Iowa and New Hampshire, Davis, Dean and Fowler say Sanders will face a tough test appealing to voters in southern states where he has not spent as much time. The South is more ethnically diverse and the Clinton brand is familiar. Dean said because of her strength in the South and elsewhere, Clinton could survive losing both Iowa and New Hampshire. But, he said, she is better off with a win, even a thin one, in Iowa. The latest results had her leading 49.9 percent to 49.6 for Sanders.

“Going into the South down two is a whole lot different proposition than going into the South with a split. And if she wins in New Hampshire, then that’s really a big deal,” said Dean. (He finished a distant second to Kerry in New Hampshire in 2004.)

One troubling note to Dean was seeing Sanders’ supporters boo Clinton when she was on TV election night. Democrats will need to stick together, he said.

“There’s no way Bernie gets to be president without Hillary’s people and Hillary probably doesn’t get to be president without Bernie’s people, so that was a discordant note,” Dean said.

Having done the drill, Dean is impressed with 74-year-old Sanders’ stamina.

Sugarman describes his friend as “tenacious,” and he says: “It’s exhausting to watch him.”

A few months back, Sugarman and Sanders were walking near the University of Vermont on one of the candidate’s visits back home. They saw a young woman working out near the running track. Sanders, who told Sugarman he once ran a 4:36 mile in high school but also did long-distance running, speculated the young woman was a distance runner because of the exercises she was doing.

“He can do both,” Sugarman said of Sanders. “The sprint. And he can be in it for the long haul, too.”

Twitter: @MarkJohnsonVTD. Mark Johnson is a senior editor and reporter for VTDigger. He covered crime and politics for the Burlington Free Press before a 25-year run as the host of the Mark Johnson Show...

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