January 19, 2004: The Dean Scream

January 19, 2004: The Iowa Caucuses are held. On the Republican side, the incumbent, George W. Bush is unopposed.

On the Democratic side, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts wins 37 percent of the vote, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina 33, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont 17, and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri 11.

Gephardt, who had surprisingly won Iowa in 1988, despite being nearly unknown outside the St. Louis area, was now the Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives, and was much-better known, and was certainly more qualified than in 1988. So he was counting on winning Iowa again. He didn't come close. He is finished as far as ever achieving the Presidency is concerned, and he knows it.

Dean had been doing very well in Iowa polls, and had big crowds at his rallies. But he had peaked too soon, and was finished -- at least, for this election cycle. Unlike Gephardt, however, he hadn't figured that out. So he gave his supporters a rousing speech, and... Well, like I said, he was already finished, but if he had done well on this night, this speech would have finished him.

The 55-year-old physician had served as Governor for 12 years -- and, since Vermont is the last State that still elects its Governors to 2-year terms, that's 6 elections. But Vermont has only about 650,000 people, fewer than several American cities, so it's not like his leadership was leadership of much. His populism made for a good message, but he was not the best of messengers. Never was that more evident than during this speech, at the Val-Air Ballroom in West Des Moines.

He had been endorsed by Iowa's most popular politician of the era, Senator Tom Harkin, but it didn't help. Harkin introduced Dean. Dean took off his jacket, handed it to Harkin, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and started his speech with "I'm sure there are some disappointed people here." But he motivated his supporters to keep fighting. That was understandable. But then he encouraged them in tones that were described as those that a professional wrestler would have given before a match, rattling off upcoming Primary States, counting them on his fingers:

Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico! And we're going to California, and Texas, and New York! And we're going to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! 

And then he pumped his fist, and yelled what he probably thought was a "Yeah!" but sounded more like a karate sound: "Hyah!"

The next day, news networks CNN and MSNBC played it over and over again. January 19 had also been the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, whose "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the nation over 40 years earlier. Dean's speech became known as "I Have a Scream."

Dean was expected to do well in the New Hampshire Primary, given that Vermont is right next-door, so he was already fairly well-known there. He finished 2nd to Kerry, but a 3rd-place finish in Wisconsin forced him to wrap it up.

After clinching the nomination, Kerry saw to it that Dean was appointed Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 2006, he led an election victory that took back both houses of Congress. And he's been an occasional political panelist on MSNBC. But he's never run for President again.

*

January 19, 2004 was a Monday. As I said, it was Martin Luther King Day, the 1st Monday after King's actual birthday, January 15.

Baseball was out of season. The NFL was between its Conference Championship Games and Super Bowl XXXVIII, which the New England Patriots would win over the Carolina Panthers.

There were 11 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Toronto Raptors, 90-79 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 90-81 at the Wachovia Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Wizards beat the Chicago Bulls, 93-83 at the MCI Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 100-97 at the Philips Arena (now the State Farm Arena) in Atlanta.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 106-99 at the TD Waterhouse Center (formerly the Orlando Arena). Tracy McGrady led all scorers on the night with 34 points.

* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the Houston Rockets, 88-83 at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the San Antonio Spurs, 85-77 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan.

* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the New Orleans Hornets, 97-90 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

* There was a doubleheader at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los A

ngeles. In a game that tipped off at 12:30 PM Pacific Time (3:30 Eastern), the Sacramento Kings beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 125-100. In a game that tipped off at 7:30 Pacific (10:30 Eastern), the Phoenix Suns beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 88-85.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Utah Jazz, 101-85 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (then named The Arena in Oakland).

And there were 8 games in the NHL:

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the New York Rangers lost to the Boston Bruins, 5-2 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.

* The New York Islanders beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-2 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Colorado Avalanche beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5-4 at the St. Pete Times Forum (now the Benchmark International Arena) in Tampa. Milan Hejduk tied the game with 6:19 left in regulation, then won it 59 seconds into overtime.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Florida Panthers, 2-1 at the Office Depot Center (now the Amerant Bank Arena) in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida. Pavol Demitra scored the winning goal, 48 seconds into overtime.

* The Nashville Predators beat the Minnesota Wild, 2-0 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center (now the Bridgestone Arena) in Hasnville.

* The Calgary Flames beat the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, 5-1 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim (now the Honda Center).

* The San Jose Sharks beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1 at the HP Pavilion (now the SAP Center) in San Jose.

* And the Dallas Stars beat the Vancouver Canucks, 3-2 at General Motors Place (now the Rogers Arena) in Vancouver.

January 19, 1976: The Iowa Caucuses Matter for the 1st Time

January 19, 1976: The Iowa Caucuses are held. They had been held for the 1st time in 1972, but had little bearing on the Presidential election. This time, they had a rather large bearing on the election.

They were first held on January 24, 1972. Incumbent President Richard Nixon was unopposed on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine won 36 percent of the vote. Senator George McGovern won 23 percent, but since Iowa is right next-door to his home State of South Dakota, this was not seen as all that odd, or as a bad sign for Muskie, the 1968 Vice Presidential nominee and the front-runner in the polls coming into this vote.

In 1975, having served 1 term, 4 years, as Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter had announced his candidacy for President. Before he did, he told his mother, "Mama, I'm running for President." Known to the family as "Miss Lillian," she said, "President of what?"

He had released a campaign biography, titled Why Not the Best? And yet, his career to that point did not suggest that he was the best possible candidate:

* 1962: He made his 1st run for office, at age 37, for the State Senate in Georgia. He lost. He asked for a recount. He got it. As it turned out, the election had been stolen. With the recount, he won.

* 1966: He did not run for a 2nd term. Instead, ran for the Democratic nomination for Governor, as a pro-civil rights candidate against a member of the segregationist establishment, Lester Maddox. He lost.

* 1970: He ran for Governor again. He won. He was generally considered to be a good Governor. At the time, the Constitution of the State of Georgia did not allow a Governor to serve a 2nd consecutive term.

That was it. But he thought that, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, he could appeal to Americans as a decent and honest man with a record that, however brief, backed that up, despite having almost no name recognition. He was being called, "Jimmy Who?"

He entered the Iowa Caucuses, the earliest contest in the nominating schedule. Most of the candidates ignored them, preferring to concentrate on the New Hampshire Primary, to be held on February 24. New Hampshire had mattered in the nominating process since 1952.

Carter thought that "retail politics," which had helped him in his run for Governor of a mostly-farm State, would help him in Iowa. He met people in small towns throughout Iowa's 99 Counties, used his experience as a farmer (peanuts), but also as a "small businessman," to show the locals that he knew what he was talking about. He even went on a cooking show on a Des Moines TV station.

And, with the experiences of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam, and Nixon in Watergate, he had a message which proved to be more powerful than anyone had imagined: "I will never lie to you."

Not running for President, although they would have had some support if they had: Senators Muskie, McGovern, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota (former Vice President, 1968 Presidential nominee, and runner-up in 1972) and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

In the race, but not even entering the Caucuses, were Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Terry Sanford of North Carolina, Milton Shapp of Pennsylvania and Jerry Brown of California; and Senators Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, and Frank Church of Idaho.

Those who did enter: Carter; Senators Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington, Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Birch Bayh of Indiana; Representative Morris "Mo" Udall of Arizona; and former Ambassador Sargent Shriver (brother-in-law of the Kennedys, and the 1972 Democratic nominee for Vice President). Going in, the favorites -- for these caucuses, if not for the nomination overall -- were Bayh and Harris, due to being from Midwestern farm States.

Who won the 1976 Iowa Democratic Caucuses? Officially, no one: "Unpledged" led all comers with 39 percent of the vote. That surprised very few people. But the actual candidate with the most votes, 27.5 percent, turned out to be Carter. He was followed by Bayh, 13.2; Harris, 9.9; Udall, 6.0; Shriver, 3.3; and Jackson, 1.1.

The result stunned people, who thought that Carter was banking on something virtually meaningless. He gave it meaning. This momentum carried him through New Hampshire, where he edged Udall, 27 percent to 22. Carter winning Florida, a Southern State, on March 9 didn't surprise many people; but winning Illinois, a big Midwestern State with a big city, a week later, did.

Jackson ended up winning New York, riding the fact that he was the most vocal Democrat in the Senate in support of Israel, giving him a hammerlock on New York City's Jewish vote. But it didn't help him much outside New York State, and Carter won pretty much every other State of consequence. He ended up getting 74 percent of the Delegates on the 1st ballot at the Democratic Convention in New York.

On January 20, 1977, 1 year and 1 day after showing people what the Iowa Caucuses could do for a Presidential candidate, James Earle Carter Jr. was inaugurated as the 39th President of the United States.

Most people outside Iowa don't pay attention to the State for most of 4 years -- unless they're big fans of college football or wrestling -- and then do so only because of the Caucuses. A candidate entering them has to hear an inordinate amount of information about farming, especially corn, and how it can be converted into ethanol to fuel cars. The politics-themed TV show The West Wing made a point of this in its 2005 episode "King Corn."

Democrats tend to win in Iowa by pointing out that they're better for farmers than the Republicans. Republicans tend to win in Iowa by appealing to the State's hardcore right-wing evangelicals.

As this chart shows, the Iowa Caucuses have a better record in predicting Democratic nominees than they do in predicting Republican nominees. But, as it also shows, for both parties come the general election, it's better to have won the nomination without winning in Iowa.

Note that, in 1992, Senator Tom Harkin won on the Democratic side, because he was from Iowa, and every other Democrat had accepted his overwhelming popularity there and given up on the State, and concentrated on the New Hampshire Primary.

*

January 19, 1976 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football season ended the day before, when the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl X, beating the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17 at the Orange Bowl in Miami. There were no games in either the American Basketball Association, the National Hockey League or the World Hockey Association.

There was one in the NBA: The Houston Rockets beat the Washington Bullets, 115-96 at The Summit in Houston. After the Rockets moved into the Toyota Center in 2003, The Summit was bought by televangelist Joel Osteen, and converted into the "Central Campus" of his Lakewood Church. If you're a minister, and can afford to buy a sports arena, you're not giving enough money to the poor.

January 3, 2008: Iowa Votes for Barack Obama

January 3, 2008: The Iowa Caucuses are held, earlier in the Presidential election campaign than ever before. The results are shocking on both sides.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas rides the evangelical vote to win for the Republicans. This is a serious setback for the front-runner, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and all but eliminates everybody else, including former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. The exception to this was former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York, who had bypassed Iowa, and was also bypassing the New Hampshire and South Carolina, and was betting on Florida, with its many retired ex-New Yorkers. He lost that bet, very badly.

Mike Huckabee

McCain would bounce back, and Huckabee would end up finishing 3rd behind McCain and Romney in Delegates. He ran again in 2016, but didn't even do that way.

On the Democratic side, the front-runner, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, finishes 3rd. Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the Party's nominee for Vice President in 2004, finds his populist message didn't quite catch on, and finishes 2nd. And finishing 1st, with 37 percent of the vote, in a State that is 95 percent white, is... Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

Obama was 46 years old, a little young by the standards of Presidential candidacies. He had only been in the U.S. Senate for 3 years, after 8 years as a State Senator. He had electrified the country with his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, but it looked like it was too soon for him.

The problem, on both sides, was the Iraq War. Americans were tired of it. As Senators in late 2002, McCain, Clinton and Edwards had both supported President George W. Bush's request to approve it. McCain still supported it, Clinton's support had become lukewarm at best, and Edwards had repudiated his support for it, which explains why, of those 3, he did the best in this vote. At the time of the Iraq War vote, Huckabee was Governor, Romney was running for Governor, and Obama was in the State Senate. So none of those 3 faced the proposed war as an issue, and were able to run against it without hypocrisy.

But only Obama chose to do so, and he did criticize Clinton over it. Iowa Democrats, who tend to be, as the old saying goes, "prairie populists," took to this, and gave him a narrow victory. He later called the upset win "my favorite night of my entire political career."

Nobody expected him to win this mostly-white State, or the upcoming mostly-white New Hampshire. Suddenly, millions of Democrats go from, "He's a breath of fresh air, and he'll be a force in the future, but he can't possibly win the nomination this time" to, "Holy cow, he can actually win this thing!"

This win led to him gaining support from the person he was attempting to surpass as America's most famous black person, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. She began promoting him. And the Kennedy family supported him as well, which helped him in New Hampshire: Clinton won it, but it was close. That meant that the race was basically down to 2, and it remained close all the way until the California Primary in June, when Obama got enough votes to clinch the nomination.

In the general election, Obama won 53.9 percent of the vote in Iowa, to McCain's 44.4 percent. In 2012, he won 52.0 percent, to Romney's 46.1 percent. Iowa had long been a Republican stronghold, a "Red State" -- Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton was the only Democratic nominee to win it between 1964 and 2008 -- but was now looking reliably "Blue."

That didn't last: Donald Trump won it with 51.1 percent in 2016, and 53.1 percent in 2020. (UPDATE: He won 55.7 percent in 2024, giving him a 13-point margin, the Republicans' biggest margin since 1972.)

*

January 3, 2008 was a Thursday. One college football bowl game was played: Number 8 Kansas beat Number 5 Virginia Tech, 24-21 in the Orange Bowl, at Dolphin Stadium (now named Hard Rock Stadium) in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Chicago Bulls, 115-109 in double overtime at the United Center in Chicago.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 80-77 at the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver.

* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 104-96 at the US Airways Center (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.

And there were 10 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 3-0 at General Motors Place (now the Rogers Arena) in Vancouver.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Florida Panthers, 4-3 at the Nassau Coliseum. Jassen Cullimore scored the winning goal with 3:27 left in overtime.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 6-3 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Washington Capitals, 2-0 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.

* The Nashville Predators beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-2 at the Sommet Center (now the Bridgestone Arena) in Nashville.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 6-2 at the Mellon Arena (formerly the Civic Arena) in Pittsburgh.

* The Minnesota Wild beat the Dallas Stars, 6-3 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.

* The Phoenix Coyotes beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 4-2 at the Jobing.com Arena (now the Desert Diamond Arena) in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona.

* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.

* And the Calgary Flames beat the San Jose Sharks, 3-2 at the HP Pavilion (now the SAP Center) in San Jose. Jarome Iginla scored the winning goal with 1:34 left in overtime.