Democrats Give Iowans Their Distinctive A-Game

All that was missing was Richard Wagner on the soundtrack when the caravan of 18-wheelers came rumbling through the parking lot at the Best Western just off the highway here one brisk night late last week.

Through the narrow driveway they rolled -- one, then two, then another and another -- all emblazoned with the logos from local councils of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Finally, with air horns blaring and rock music pounding and dozens of beefy men in satin union jackets chanting, Rep. Dick Gephardt and Teamsters President James P. Hoffa emerged from the cab of the seventh semi, stepping down from a door so high it seemed as if they were descending from the clouds.

It was a fusion of muscle and metal and testosterone that had less in common with the average political event than with the great scene in “Apocalypse Now,” when the attack helicopters roar into battle to the strains of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” It was literally breathtaking.

Few other moments in this year’s Iowa caucuses have been quite so exhilarating. But this has proven an extremely engaging struggle that has transcended the inherent flaws of the caucus process itself.

The Democratic contenders have picked up their game. On display last week in Iowa have been candidates at the top of their form, with the intermittent exception of Howard Dean, who at times has seemed to buckle under the pressure of his disappearing lead. Yet even Dean continues to demonstrate the ability to inspire a passionate following -- as have Gephardt and, increasingly, Sens. John F. Kerry and John Edwards.

Each of the major contenders has found a distinctive message and appeal that separates them from the others; it is as if they are running down lanes that only rarely intersect.

Though Dean in the final days has sometimes sought to strike a more positive tone, he is still mostly offering his combustible mixture of empowerment and revenge. He tells voters that they are joining not just a campaign but a cause, an argument so resonant with so many Democrats that Kerry and Edwards have copied it almost verbatim.

But Dean still draws most of his energy from his attacks on President Bush and the “Washington Democrats” he accuses of bowing to him. Listening to Dean rouse a crowd against the Democratic leadership, it’s easy to imagine what the Visigoths sounded like when they exhorted their hordes to sack Rome: He promises the satisfaction of retribution.

Yet Dean’s heat and passion -- the very things that ignited his campaign -- have singed his fingers in Iowa. In large part, that’s because his instinct for inflammatory rhetoric -- on everything from the possible trial of Osama bin Laden to the worth of the Iowa caucuses -- has raised doubts among more voters about whether he’s steady enough to serve as president.

Dean has also been hurt because voters outside his core of dedicated supporters appear to have wearied of his attacks on other Democrats, a line Dean may have crossed early last week when he aired a television ad denouncing his three rivals for supporting the war in Iraq. “That’s the kind of thing that turns me off,” said Tom Bergantino of West Des Moines last week at a crowded rally for Edwards.

Edwards has probably been the most immediate beneficiary of the backlash against Dean. During 2003, Edwards developed arguably the most detailed and well-integrated policy agenda of any of the Democratic contenders, as well as the sharpest single line of attack against Bush’s domestic priorities -- the charge that the president favors “wealth over work.”

But what’s lifting Edwards in Iowa is less his ideas than his views about the race itself. Against the backdrop of the battles between Dean and the others, Edwards has clearly struck a chord with his promise to run a positive campaign.

Edwards is still breathing fire at Washington lobbyists and “special interests.” But in his born-again refusal to say a bad word about his rivals, Edwards has become an unusual political beast: a polite populist. Judging from his rise, that’s a hybrid popular with Iowa Democrats -- and perhaps down the road as well.

Kerry is benefiting from a different contrast with Dean. Ask Kerry’s Iowa supporters why they back him, and the first answer is almost always “experience.” For many voters, Dean’s volatility has increased the value of Kerry’s stability. “I like Dr. Dean, but I think sometimes he speaks before he thinks ... and that can get us in trouble,” said Judy Cunconan, a Des Moines teacher who has settled on Kerry.

Gephardt offers a strikingly different appeal: an elemental, even tribal sense of solidarity with blue-collar and senior families who feel the world they have known slipping away in a global economy of outsourcing and free-trade deals. “I am of you; I’m one of you,” Gephardt shouted at the rally here. And to their bones, the Teamsters and autoworkers and ironworkers listening to him believed it.

If Gephardt doesn’t win the nomination, the eventual Democratic candidate might want to remember the fervor he inspired that night: Is there a potential vice-presidential choice with more appeal in the metal-bending Midwestern states that Democrats increasingly see as their best chance to beat Bush?

The tragedy is that so few Iowa Democrats are tuning in to this rollicking show. Though the candidates will have spent nearly a combined 400 days in the state by today, at best the campaigns are expecting about 125,000 people to show up at the caucuses -- no more than 10% of the 1.2 million registered Democrats and independents in the state.

If after so much attention, so few Iowans can be bothered to participate in a race this compelling, it’s difficult to see why the state should retain the privilege of taking the first cut at the candidates. Maybe the caravan should roll on elsewhere.

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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times’ website at latimes.com/brownstein.