The ground war in Iowa

The thinking among Dean organizers is that their number of identified supporters has remained steady throughout the fluctuations in the polls, and that their superior money and their out-of-state volunteers allow them to engage in luxuries like knocking on the doors of random Iowa Democrats in hopes of convincing the odd newcomer to the political process to join their ranks.

"The other campaigns are saying they hope to have hundreds of out-of-state volunteers, so obviously this is a lot different," said Christy Setzer, who left a job writing for the National Journal to begin work less that two weeks ago as a spokesperson for the Dean campaign. Pointing to the hectic scene around the headquarters, she said that a stream of new arrivals was sufficient to raise logistical challenges for the campaign, such as having to go to Nebraska to find cars and minivans to rent for them to go canvassing. Their estimate is that, by Monday, Dean volunteers will have knocked on doors in every "walkable" precinct in Iowa.

That orange-capped army, combined with some key endorsements Dean has picked up in recent weeks, has in effect allowed the campaign to be in several places at once. For example, celebrity supporters Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen -- introduced at rallies as "the acting president of the United States" -- attracted large crowds and coverage from the media as they toured Iowa this week, even without Dean. And this weekend, while the former Vermont governor plans to be in Georgia to meet with Jimmy Carter, Iowa's popular Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin will be holding a get-out-the-caucus rally that will likely be crowded with the now-customary mix of local supporters, out-of-state volunteers and T-shirt-wearing union members who are a constant presence at Dean events.

The organization will have to be strong enough to overcome a number of factors that have eroded Dean's position somewhat in recent days. Kerry and Gephardt have both attacked him in recent weeks. But a Gephardt ad now running on Iowa television is darker and more blunt than anything to date. "How much do you really know about Howard Dean?" the ad asks. "Did you know Howard Dean called Medicare 'one of the worst federal programs ever'? Did you know he supported the Republican plan to cut Medicare by 270 billion dollars? And, did you know Howard Dean supported cutting Social Security retirement benefits to balance the budget?"

The Dean campaign has been running a critical ad of its own about his opponents' votes in Congress to authorize the war in Iraq. That may hurt Dean's targets, but it also runs the risk of offending the nice, good-natured people of Iowa who have a lower-than-average tolerance for what they see as negative campaigning.

Dean has also suffered through some bad news cycles. One that generated a lot of chatter resulted from the resurfacing of comments from a Canadian talk-show interview in 2000 in which he criticized the Iowa caucus process as unduly influenced by special interests.

And although it is impossible to know who is taking potential supporters from whom, the most important factor in lessening the seemingly dominant positions of Dean and Gephardt has been the resurgence of Kerry and Edwards.

At a packed town hall meeting with undecided Democrats on Wednesday, Kerry gave a brief stump speech and then answered questions from the audience for well more than an hour. In contrast with press questions, which tend to focus on poll position and process, those from the audience dealt almost exclusively with what the candidate intended to do to solve local and national problems.

At one point, Kerry vowed to stay until the sun came up if that's what it took to convince the audience to commit to him. (And for a while, it seemed as if the crowd intended to hold him to it.) The reviews were positive, typified by Jim Cornick, a longtime Republican turned Kerry supporter. Kerry "never stumbled over a word," Cornick said. "He's the best man to beat George Bush."

Edwards has also improved his lot, in his case by presenting himself as the candidate with a purely positive message, in contrast to the increasingly heated rhetoric coming from his opponents. His crowds, like Kerry's, have swelled, as has the amount of attention he's been getting from the media.

The question most frequently asked about him these days is whether his organization will be sufficiently strong to capitalize on his newfound popularity by actually bringing his supporters to the caucuses. After all, unlike Dean and Kerry, who have opted out of state-by-state spending limits in the primaries, the Edwards campaign is at something of a financial disadvantage. And while Dean and Gephardt have locked up Iowa's most politically influential unions, Edwards will have little institutional help from organized labor.

"I think when you've got two campaigns that don't have to abide by the spending limits, that allows them to put all kinds of resources into getting people out to caucus," said Rob Berntsen, the caucus director for the Edwards campaign in Iowa. "And unions have won caucuses in the past, and anyone in any campaign telling you it wasn't an advantage would be lying to you."

But Berntsen also said that the Edwards campaign has organizational strengths of its own, ones which he believes will ultimately be more significant than any of the other ups and downs of the contest's closing days. "The polls are bouncing all over the place, and we're happy that we see this tremendous momentum and buzz and surge," he said. "But caucuses are all about organization. You've got to turn people out and have people argue for you. The polls show one thing now, but once the caucus-goers are inside, anything can happen."

• View blog reactions