The former veep failed to crack 1 percent in the 2008 caucuses. But that result didn’t accurately capture the depth of his support.
As Iowa caucus night neared in 2008, Joe Biden was outspent, outstaffed and up against tough competition: the historic candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.
By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Supporters like McCarthy concede that, given the timing and the field Biden was up against, he never stood a chance of winning. Obama, vying to be the first African-American president, suddenly caught fire, animating a younger electorate as he packed larger and larger venues. Clinton, the former first lady and New York senator, was running to be first woman president. Edwards, John Kerry’s 2004 running mate, attracted wide audiences with a message about economic disparity.
“There were these mega-three campaigns that blotted out the sun in terms of polling, messaging and organization,” McCarthy said.“I had a projection of how many people would be at my caucus location, and I thought it would be 120. In the end, 400 people showed up. I just thought: ‘forget it. Throw everything out the window,’” said Jim Mowrer, who headed veterans outreach in Iowa for Biden’s 2008 campaign and helped in field organizing.
According to caucus rules, if a candidate doesn’t have 15 percent support of caucusgoers in an individual precinct, that candidate is deemed non-viable — and the candidate’s supporters then move to a different candidate who meets the viability threshold. It was that phenomenon, repeated across the state, that ultimately led to his 0.9 percent delegate count, they said.
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