For eager Democrats, campaign already underway in Iowa

DES MOINES - With 1,131 days until the 2020 presidential election, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, showed up last month in a parking lot in Iowa.

He was early, but to the people waiting, he seemed late.

'Get in here!” a balding man shouted to him from a restaurant door. 'There's beer in here.”

Inside, Ryan, who has the build of a linebacker and enthusiasm of a Labrador, backslapped with beefy Midwesterners who could one day help pave a road to the White House. Earl Agan, president of the Central Iowa Building and Construction Trades Council, had invited Ryan here because he said he saw the congressman from Youngstown as a champion for working people - someone who appreciates the 'dignity of work” and the need to move Democrats beyond being a 'coastal party.”

Agan did not speak for everyone when he called Hillary Clinton 'the anti-Christ,” but most of his fellow tradesmen seemed to buy his assessment of the career politician now in their midst: 'Tim Ryan is our only hope.”

If it's anything like the last one, the next presidential election will be a mix of resentment, pandering and half truths; an ordeal that will take an existential toll on Americans. And politicians are itching to start.

'It's like when you play a pickup basketball game and you lose. Right away you're going to say, ‘One more game.'” Ryan said in his Capitol Hill office last month.

Ryan, 44, might not even be running for president. He has teased various bids for higher office in the past only to back out at the last minute. But the anti-Donald Trump clamoring on the left has given Democratic prospects the chance to get some buzz.

Ryan won't say whether he'll make a long-shot run for president (he has been in Congress for 15 years) and maintains that the perpetual campaign is 'a terrible way to run a democracy.”

'It's turned into it's own cottage industry,” he said in that Capitol Hill interview.

Two weeks later, he was off to Iowa.

‘LEADERSHIP VACUUM'

The Sept. 30 Polk County Steak Fry had all the trappings of a political event from yesteryear: gubernatorial candidates parading through the gates accompanied by marching bands; speakers taking the stage in front of an American flag; photo-ops with politicians flipping meat on a grill.

When Tom Harkin, the state's former senator, used to host a similar event, serious candidates for president would show up for what could be considered an unofficial campaign launch.

This, by comparison, felt like a farm team exhibition, and Ryan wasn't the only Democratic prospect invited. He'd come with fellow congressional rising stars, second-term Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and third-term Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, whose district slipped to Trump while handily re-electing her.

They came to Iowa, like hundreds of politicians before them, to talk about the future of their party and to feign shock when asked if they wanted to be president.

'I don't close the door to anything,” Bustos said. 'But I'm focusing on 2018 right now.”

'There's a leadership vacuum in the party,” Moulton said. 'People are looking for a new generation to step up.”

Might that new generation of leadership include a young newlywed from Massachusetts who served four tours in Iraq? On countless occasions now, Seth Moulton has declared, 'I'm not running for president,” which only raises the question: Is Seth Moulton running for president?

If you come to Iowa this early, clearly you're thirsty for the job. And if you appear to be avoiding it, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or former Vice President Joe Biden, then you're obviously just slow-walking the process.

'It does seem to be on a lot of people's minds,” said Channing Dutton, a climate activist at the steak fry. 'I got this message at my office asking if I would meet with Sen. Jeff Merkley the other day, and I had to Google him. I thought he might be a state senator.”

(The man from Oregon is indeed a member of the U.S. Senate.)

While the three keynote speakers said they'd come to talk about winning smaller and more imminent elections, it was easy to imagine this as an opportunity to workshop a speech for something bigger.

'Believe it or not, I can see Iowa from my house,” Bustos said to the crowd.

'We've got to get back to our party roots,” Moulton said.

'Lunch pail,” Ryan said in a speech that included the words 'dirt on hands” and 'grandpa.”

Ryan recently told a New Hampshire radio interviewer that 'maybe the country needs someone from a place like Youngstown, Ohio.” He's made two recent trips to Iowa, met with activists, and had breakfast with at least one of Clinton's former Des Moines-based advisers. And he showed up a day early for the steak fry to tour a farm.

Not everyone runs for president to win. Some do it to bring attention to causes, or to spike book sales, or just satiate a yearning for attention.

Where the party goes from here - lean left and rally the base, try to move to the center and win back Trump voters, or try for both -- is up for debate.

But as long as the field is open, Ryan intends to plant a seed. 'If you have an opportunity to do something you should take it,” he said.