Iowa voters get to see their candidate’s only like New Hampshire…
The state are small….
Almost exclusively white….
And candidates there are not accompanied by the Secret Service and media bubbles that will there in the spring of next year…
So?
Voters there ask hard questions directly to those who come begging for their votes…
For Bernie Sanders and Beto Rourke?
Style takes a back seat to substance….
Joe Biden is polling ahead of Sanders by a few points….O’Rourke in 5 spots behind Biden there….
Both men spent the weekend campaigning heavily in Iowa and tweaking messages to address some criticisms they’ve received on the campaign trail as they fight for groups of energized and increasingly young voters, who they hope will help them win the Democratic presidential nomination.
For Sanders (I-Vt.), who has been criticized for having little interaction with voters, that meant answering dozens of questions from people in Malcom about whatever they wanted to discuss: student aid for undocumented immigrants, a universal basic income or criminal justice legislation.
At one point during his town hall, an aide warned Sanders they were running short on time and “this will have to be the last question.”
“No,” Sanders replied. “We have time to take one or two more.”Then he took a question about his plan to raise the minimum wage.
For O’Rourke, who has been accused of being heavy on rhetoric and skimpy on policy specifics, it meant talking to voters in all the detail and length he could muster.
“Let me try again,” he said at Grinnell College after being asked a second time for more specifics of his platforms to address climate change and police violence.
“When it comes to police violence against those who they are sworn to serve and protect I talked about transparency, accountability, tying federal funds to full reporting on use of force and against whom forced is used,” he said. “I talked about invoking the civil rights laws of the United States to transcend local and state jurisdictions to make sure the full weight and power and accountability of the federal government comes into play to make sure we protect the lives of those in our community.”
This weekend in Iowa, he met many who gushed over him, saying he reminded them of John F. Kennedy. But he also encountered skeptics who told him they want the details behind his lofty rhetoric…
image….Sanders and O’Rourke …Scott Olsen/Getty….