Sure, my name is Rachel Paine Caufield. I'm a professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm the Director of the Iowa Caucus Project at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and I lead the political visitor team on campus. So the Iowa Caucus Project started out as just a group of students who were really interested in figuring out how we could bring the caucuses onto our campus. And how we could bring our campus out to the caucuses. And we started with basically just developing some policies for how we could bring candidates to campus. And make sure that those events treated everyone fairly, and that the university itself would have a good experience. And so from that, students started to help out during these events, and we built a classroom experience around that. So it's an experiential learning class. It's an opportunity to tell the story of the Iowa caucuses from the ground, and kind of share what we see that maybe the rest of the world doesn't get to see. So I came to Iowa in 2001, and it never dawned on me that there was a real, live thing that happened in Iowa that mattered in a way that I didn't understand. And then I got here, and I realized there's a real, live thing that happens in Iowa that I didn't understand until I was here. And so I became tremendously excited about the Iowa caucuses, about how regular, everyday citizens get involved, how they get to meet candidates, how candidates get to respond to real voters. There's a humanity to the process in Iowa that I don't think most Americans fully appreciate. And so the Iowa Caucus Project, in my mind, is a way to, first of all, bring that experience to my students. And make sure that students, from their very first election cycle, they get to be a part of this, and they get to see it. So first of all, the Iowa Caucus Project is exciting to me because it lets students have those experiences. But it also allows students to really tell the world about what they see, what they experience, what it's like to be in Iowa, what is unique and special about this political environment. And in an age of so much cynicism and negativity about politics, to see the next generation of voters asking questions of their presidential candidates, getting involved. And then being able to share that experience, and just seeing their excitement with that engagement I think is tremendously important. So [LAUGH] the Iowa Caucus Project meets regularly throughout the months leading up to the caucus. We have a podcast, we have a blog. The students engage in citizen engagement efforts on campus. So they build out experiences for students, like caucus trivia and a mock caucus. We did a caucus Kahoot, we did caucus bingo. So ways to make caucusing and really getting their peers out into the community and meeting presidential candidates, ways to make that fun and exciting to a generation of new voters. But then also, as a group, they are kind of constructing the campus experience around events as well. So it's not just events and initiatives of their own making. They're also helping to get involved planning candidate events when candidates come to campus, being there, interviewing candidates behind the scenes. Going out into the community to meet candidates, to go to house parties, to meet the campaign staff, party leaders. So when we say that the Iowa Caucus Project is an experiential learning class, it really is. These students are learning about the caucus by doing it, by being the most engaged, activated citizen you can possibly be, in the most activating and engaging political environment you can possibly experience. So they play a lot of different roles, they support each other beautifully. And I tell them, from day one, their number one priority at the end of all of this is to live up to a sign that we have emblazoned across one of our central academic buildings. And it just says the road to 2020 starts here. And so their primary responsibility over the months leading up to a caucus is to make that a reality, that the road to 2020 starts here. They're doing it, they're seeing it, and they're bringing it to their fellow students. [LAUGH] I have a ton of moments that stand out to me. Everybody who has spent any time in Iowa has a series of only in Iowa moments. That just when you take a minute to take stock and realize what you've been a part of, they floor you all over again, every time. So little things. I have to confess that I almost hit Joe Biden with my car [LAUGH]. He ran across the street, I was driving down the street, he ran right in front of me, and I almost hit him. And that's one of those things. Very few people in the world can say that they almost ran down Joe Biden, [LAUGH] but I did, that's true. It was not on purpose, but it happened. I turned a corner and literally ran into, physically ran into Ron Paul, just collided directly with Ron Paul. So you have these moments on the campaign trail when you realize that these are real people, and that you're just living among them, and they're just living among you. And it's liberating and it's refreshing to think of an election as real people who are connecting with each other. The Iowa Caucus Project has taught me that we should never be too experienced or jaded to take a minute and find those moments anew every time we do it. So I think oftentimes, people who have been a part of politics for a while, they forget what it's like to be a new voter and to see these things for the first time. And one of the great fortunes of my job is that every time I go through a caucus cycle, I go through it with a group of students who are doing it for the first time. And so I get to see that experience of finding these little nuggets on the campaign trail and having these experiences. I get to do it every single cycle for the first time again. So just as one example, as a class, we attended a house party with Amy Klobuchar, and house parties are a staple of the Iowa campaign trail. You literally just show up at somebody's home and sit in their living room, and a candidate walks in and talks to you in the living room. And the dogs are wandering around, and the family photos are up, and there might be a camera, there might not be. And everybody's just sitting on the floor or the couch, or they bring some chairs in from the dining room, whatever they have. These aren't fancy houses, these are just normal people. And to see a group of students go into their first house party and experience that intimate environment, that connection with a candidate. A candidate that they've seen on TV or they've seen in a big venue, but it's a totally different role when you're in a living room with somebody. So there are a lot of interesting pieces to the 2020 race. The first has been how crowded it is, and I think that's something a lot of people have been paying attention to. 2016 was an incredibly crowded Republican field. 2020, we've had an incredibly crowded Democratic field, and the parties have kind of dealt with that a little bit differently. So I'm interested to see how that ultimately winds up. We've also had this incredible situation in these final weeks of the Iowa caucus campaign, where we have an impeachment. And so now, in the final two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, you will have senators taken off of the campaign trail in Iowa in order to attend the Senate trial. And whether or not that matters is going to be really interesting. On a more macro level, one of the trends that we've seen over time is we've seen that parties have given up a lot of control over the nominating process. And candidates have had to become much more entrepreneurial. As a result, that has nationalized our politics. And there's been a lot of chatter in 2020, in this cycle, about the fact that this is the most nationalized nomination process that we've ever seen so far. And I'm curious to see if that continues, or if it changes the role of Iowa in some particular way, if it changes the kinds of candidates who do well. Typically, we think that as the process gets more small d democratic or democratized, as more people are brought into the process, candidates typically need more money and name recognition in order to do well. And so that indicates that the nationalization of our nominating process could potentially lead to a very different kind of presidential candidate in the future. And I would just note that exhibit A is in the White House right now. Donald Trump was a political neophyte, had no real connections to the Republican Party, but had a lot of money and a lot of name recognition. So is it possible that in 2020, the Democrats end up with a very similar kind of figure as their nominee? If it is, what does that tell us about our politics going forward? So I think there are a lot of kind of big and small trends that we need to keep an eye on. Every cycle is different. Every cycle builds upon the last cycle. There's a constant evolution that's happening in these processes, so we can learn something every cycle.
