Obama campaign manager to talk in Iowa City about book

It all started in Iowa.

But you don't have to read Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's “The Audacity to Win” to know that.

In fact, much of what Plouffe writes about is old news to folks who followed or participated in the 2008 Iowa precinct caucuses and Obama's successful campaign for the presidency. However, Plouffe, who will discuss his book at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City, refreshes memories of the run-up to the caucuses. His book also offers numerous behind-the-scenes peeks at the deliberations and strategy discussions of the campaign.

“Iowa was our lab,” Plouffe said. It was in Iowa where the campaign learned how to expand the “caucus electorate” from the finite universe of party regulars who attended every caucus.

“Hopefully, one of the things that comes through in the book is how improbable all this was,” Plouffe said. “We started out as a huge underdog. We had a narrow electoral path that required us to do something that was quite audacious, that no one had done before, and that is change the caucus electorate.

“The reason we won was because the caucus electorate had gotten younger and there were a lot more independents and Republicans participating. That was audacious,” Plouffe said.

Iowa, he said, taught the campaign that it could bring younger voters into the process, it taught the importance of precinct captains and confirmed Obama would get the support of independents and Republicans.

For those, like Plouffe who had previous experience in Iowa, the campaign meant they had to unlearn some of the conventional wisdom of caucus campaigns. In one case, that meant skipping an Iowa Democratic Party fundraiser in Cedar Rapids.

“We needed to do events to attract people who wouldn't come to a Democratic fundraising dinner,” he said. So rather than show up alongside the other Democratic hopefuls, the Obama campaign relied on events like bringing Oprah Winfrey to Cedar Rapids.

“The whole point behind it was to get the people who would never show up at a political event, to try to convince them to support Barack Obama,” Plouffe said.

In the end, he said, the Obama campaign was never sure it could win the Iowa caucuses “even up to the moment the caucuses started.” Although polling showed Obama with the numbers to win, a huge percentage of his supporters had no caucus experience.

“So we went in there with confidence that if our people turned out to the degree we thought possible we would be in good shape,” he said “But it's nerve-racking to go into something like that depending on people without caucus history.”

They showed up and made history.

Tickets for Plouffe's discussion are available at Prairie Lights Books. Two tickets are included in the purchase of each book. Any remaining tickets will be available with the purchase of a book at the door. For more information, call Prairie Lights Books, (319) 337-2681.