NEWTON, Iowa — Supporters of 2020 Democrats Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren will have a common scapegoat if their candidates fall short in the Iowa caucuses: President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.
It remains unclear just how much time the trio, plus Sen. Michael Bennet from Colorado, will be forced off the trail due to impeachment. The trial opened Thursday with ceremonial swearings-in of Chief Justice John Roberts in a presiding role and senators as jurors. Its substantive portion opens on Tuesday.
Until then, Warren, 70, and her fellow Democratic lawmakers running for president squeezed in visits to Iowa and other early voting states. But if Warren falls short in Iowa, being away for the impeachment trial is an obvious culprit, said supporter Jessica Chapman, 24. However, being forced back to Washington could also be a potential political asset.
“A strategy could definitely be to tell supporters they weren’t in the state,” Chapman told the Washington Examiner. “No one really has talked about how they’re not here. As long as her campaign makes clear she’s filling her constitutional duty, that sends a more important message than if she was just campaigning all day.”
The bulk of Iowa caucusgoers say in polls that they could still change their minds on which candidate to support, putting pressure on those in the historically large field of candidates to spend as much time as they can in Iowa ahead of the Feb. 3 caucuses in order to cement their support.
“We have seen that campaign rallies can give a small turnout boost,” said Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.
“The impeachment hearings themselves disadvantage the candidates that need to persuade voters the most,” said Basil Smikle, former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party.
But instead of schmoozing voters, Sanders of Vermont, Warren of Massachusetts, and Klobuchar of Minnesota will instead be stuck in Washington six days a week to hear arguments in Trump’s trial. Democrats also aren’t expecting any sort of cooperation from GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on how long the exact process is expected to take.
“I think the impeachment hearings could hurt these Senators a lot,” said Jackie Tharp, 58, an undecided voter who lives outside of Des Moines, Iowa. “The Democratic Party is so spread out, and we don’t have a clear candidate yet. There needs to be a game plan for these candidates on what they’re going to do while these impeachment hearings are going on.”
[Also read: GOP senator urges Democratic colleagues running for president to recuse themselves from impeachment trial]
Sanders is in second place in the RealClearPolitics average of national primary polls at 20.3%, just behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s 20.7% and ahead of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s 18.7%. Warren is in fourth place at 16%, and Klobuchar is at 7%.
“If you’re a candidate that’s got high name recognition and/or has existed early on in a very substantial ground game, which would be a good amount of money or [having] a tremendous amount of volunteers,” Smikle said, “then I think you’ll be fine.”
That means Sanders and Warren, who each have high name recognition, could be less negatively affected by impeachment than Klobuchar.
“If you’re someone like an Amy Klobuchar, where voters have not seen you over the last four years, for example, where showing up … really is that much more critical than, say, some of the other candidates, [then] yes, I think the loss of time away from the campaign trail is hurtful,” Smikle said.
Impeachment is not the only factor candidates can point to when brushing off Iowa results. For the first time, the party will report the raw vote counts each candidate receives during the first and final rounds of candidate preferences in Iowa. The new data point gives fuel to candidates to argue that they still have support, and it could make the ultimate Iowa “winner” up for debate.
Downplaying Iowa results adds to a larger growing pressure against Iowa’s outsized influence on the Democratic presidential nominating process given the state’s overwhelmingly white voter base.
“There are more questions raised about whether Iowa, New Hampshire, because of [how] their demographics are, really —how long they will continue to be as important in the process because of the changing demographics of the country and the importance of diversity,” Smikle said.
Presidential-drop-out-turned-Warren-supporter Julian Castro and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is skipping competing in Iowa, both support ending Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.
