Iowa: no longer in love with Obama?

In February 2010 Sarah Palin posed the question, “so how is all that hopey, changey stuff working out for y’all?” when she addressed the Tea party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, writes Sarah Smith.

She meant it as a sarcastic jibe at Barack Obama’s famous campaign slogans of “hope” and “change”. But it is still a legitimate question.

How do all those people who were swept along on a tidal wave of enthusiasm for the Obama campaign now feel about all the hope and change he promised them?

Have they seen any of it yet? So to find out I went back to Iowa – where it all began. Only after Obama’s surprise win in the Iowa caucus in January 2008 did he look like serious presidential contender.

How do all those people who were swept along on a tidal wave of enthusiasm for the Obama campaign now feel about all the hope and change he promised them?

Many other parts of America thought that if corn-fed mid-western Iowa is prepared to vote for a young African-American then maybe he really is electable.

His campaign took off from there. Iowa was the first step on his road to the White House. They take their politics very seriously in Iowa. They make or break many presidential candidates here.

How Iowa made history
On 3 January 2008, the Democratic race in the Iowa caucuses went to Barack Obama, the man described as a force for change.

"On this January night, in this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do," Obama told supporters.

"We are choosing hope over fear, we're choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America."

Iowa was the first state to vote on the candidates for the race for the White House, meaning the result was keenly watched from around the world.

Obama polled 37.6 per cent of the vote, with John Edwards narrowly beating Hillary Clinton, who polled 29.5 per cent of the support of Democrat party members into third place.

Most politically interested voters in Iowa wouldn’t dream of supporting any candidate they hadn’t met personally at least once, so candidates have to work hard here to gather support.

Barack Obama did that like anyone else. Knocking on doors and ringing bells – listening to people’s complaints and concerns.

This week I went back to some of the same doorsteps to see what they would say to the president now if he were to drop by again.

Brenda Turner told him in 2007 that she wanted him to make healthcare reform his top priority.

And she told me yesterday that she is bitterly disappointed he hasn’t been able to do anything to fix healthcare.

She voted for him in 2008 but now thinks she may have made a mistake because she says she doesn’t think anything is getting done.

Most people we spoke to said they really hadn’t seen much of the famous “change” he promised them.

Some blame the president himself for that, others blame the Republicans in Congress who keep voting against his plans.

And a few that we have to realise expectations were set so ridiculously high when Obama won the election that disappointment was inevitable.

That may explain a recent poll in Iowa – in the Des Moines Register – that showed his support in the state has now fallen below 50 per cent and below the national average.

Most people we spoke to said they really hadn’t seen much of the famous “change” he promised them.

Support is draining fastest from independent voters – ones who don’t identify themselves as either Democrats or Republicans but who overwhelming voted for Obama.

Only 38 per cent in Iowa would vote for him again, they say.

But its not just swing voters who are deserting. In Iowa City I met Mark Vander Haar. He was an active volunteer on the Obama campaign in 2008.

But now he is so worried about America’s soaring deficit and so disillusioned that the president hasn’t been able to do more to help the economy he told me that he is considering posting a letter on Facebook apologising to all those people he persuaded to vote for Obama.

On the Iowa campaign trail
Washington Correspondent Sarah Smith met Obama in October 2007, shortly after his wife Michelle had said he had to win Iowa to have a chance of success. Just two months before Democrats in Iowa voted on their preferred presidential nominee, Obama was behind in the national polls and trailing rival Hillary Clinton in the fundraising stakes.

"I love doing this," the White House hopeful said as canvassed from doorstep to doorstep in Iowa. "This is what politics is all about."

Obama told Channel 4 News there were a "range of issues" on which he differed from Clinton.

"On foreign policy I think she tends to think more conventionally at a time when we're facing a series of unconventional threats," he said of the woman he has since put in charge of foreign affairs. 

"And so how aggressive we are in direct diplomacy, what kind of messages we're sending to the world with respect to how we deal with an issue like Iran, the degree to which she may be willing to go along with Bush policies that give a rationale for keeping troops in Iraq longer or to engaging in aggression to Iran," he continued. "Those are all areas where we've got some specific differences."