Sen. Bernie Sanders greets supporters as he arrives at a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa.Alex Wong/Getty Images
On Monday, Iowa will kick off the 2016 race for the White House, a contest in which two fiery, fringe candidates from the left and right have hijacked the national imagination and undercut the political establishment.
Traditionally, this sleepy agrarian state is not exactly a bellwether of who eventually will take the world's most important job. Remember past victors Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum? But this contest already has major consequence. Polls leading up to the caucus indicate Nativist strongman and real-estate mogul Donald Trump as the Republican front-runner, with a 5-percentage-point lead against experienced politicians such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and even Ted Cruz, a favourite among evangelicals here. That margin is amplified to double-digits in national polls.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who rails against corporate greed and calls for revolution, is within the margin of error of defeating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the Hawkeye State. While lagging behind Ms. Clinton in the national polls, the curmudgeonly 74-year-old's democratic-socialist message has already made him the convincing front-runner in New Hampshire, Vermont's neighbour, which hosts the second race next week. Analysts say that back-to-back wins would make him a viable threat to upset the woman who was once touted as a shoo-in.
Voters feel that neither party is properly addressing their insecurities about the economy, terror and immigration and are looking for simple – or perhaps, simplistic – remedies to fix the issues.
Hundreds of rallies, thousands of attack ads and countless minutes of bombardment by phone later, Iowa has become the contest that mirrors, if not exaggerates, anger on both sides of the U.S. political divide.
"Many Americans don't feel the American dream is available to them any more," the former senator from neighbouring Minnesota, Norm Coleman, told The Globe and Mail over the phone. "The Democrats are looking to a socialist, and the Republicans to Donald Trump. … It is not a pretty picture."
Mr. Coleman, a Republican who recently endorsed Mr. Bush, pointed out that parties who field outsiders as their presidential nominees will court election-night disaster. Richard Nixon trounced the very liberal George McGovern in 1972; far-right Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964's landslide.
A political figure who some say reminds them of Mr. Goldwater, Mr. Trump has made political hay out of garden-variety boorishness, calling for a ban on Muslim immigration and a wall to fence off Mexicans. Last week, the developer picked a fight with Fox News, perceived by many to be the GOP's unofficial megaphone, opting out of a debate because the channel refused to replace the moderator. Despite his absence, the seemingly invincible Mr. Trump stole the spotlight.
The theme of anger in Mr. Trump's campaign has continuously come up, which the billionaire mocked at a rally in Sioux City Sunday night.
"They ask me, 'Is it true that you're angry?'" he said in a sarcastic tone. "I say, 'What's good?' I am angry. I'm really angry."
Mr. Trump said if he is voted in, Americans won't be unhappy anymore. "You'll be happy," he vowed during his subdued sit-down discussion with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. "There'll be a lot of victories."
Part of Mr. Trump's appeal is his authoritarian image as a strongman who is going to shake things up, said Alan Abramowitz, author of The Polarized Public: Why American Government is so Dysfunctional. "In the GOP campaigns, the rhetoric is almost apocalyptic – the country's going to hell."
From the left, Mr. Sanders's call to rise up against corporate greed has resonated with millennials, a key constituency for Barack Obama when he was a relatively unseasoned politician running again Ms. Clinton in the 2008 election.
On Saturday in the liberal university town of Iowa City, Mr. Sanders drew an estimated 5,000 supporters. They came to hear the senator and millennial music acts of note such as Vampire Weekend, who joined Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane, on stage for a version of Woody Guthrie's anthemic This Land Is Your Land.
"The pundits say young people don't vote," he called out to the massive crowd. "How would you like to make the pundits look dumb on election night?"
Reflecting much of the country's political frustrations, Amanda Yoder, who caucused for Ms. Clinton's 2008 campaign, said that Mr. Obama has been a disappointment. "He went around promising a lot here last time around, especially about education, and I have to fundraise for my kids' school," she said Saturday in West Des Moines.
Ms. Yoder, who lives near Iowa City, holds down two jobs in the biotech industry and as an event photographer. Her husband, a conservative, is a deputy sheriff and also works as a mason. She doesn't feel their economic situation has improved in the past eight years and she has not been impressed with Ms. Clinton's track record in office, either. When asked if she will vote for Mr. Sanders, she said he has offered very little in the way of foreign policy.
Part of the wider frustration also stems from two-term-president fatigue. President Obama's former senior strategist, David Axelrod, wrote a mea culpa in the New York Times last week explaining why he didn't see the rise of Mr. Trump. "Many Republicans view dimly the very qualities that played so well for Mr. Obama in 2008," he wrote. "Deliberation is [now] seen as hesitancy; patience as weakness."
It could also be argued that U.S voters choose presidents who are polar opposites of their predecessors: Pious Jimmy Carter ended the crooked Nixon era bookended by Gerald Ford; impulsive George W. Bush was succeeded by the methodical Mr. Obama.
The U.S. isn't the only democracy going to extremes. The United Kingdom's Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn has been described as an unreconstructed socialist. On the right, nationalist, anti-immigration parties are ascendant in Great Britain, France and elsewhere in Europe, all buoyed by the same kind of xenophobia, anxiety over borders and insecurity about terrorism that the U.S. is confronting.
Fortunately or not, the Iowa caucus's small number of delegates represents a little more than 1 per cent of the total for both parties. But the momentum of Iowa and New Hampshire is critical.
On Thursday, for example, Mr. Cruz's allies told the Wall Street Journal that for the senator, who has faced some opposition here as result of his opposition to the federal subsidization of ethanol, Iowa was a must-win. Or else, Mr. Trump would be unstoppable.
As remote as his chances are, even Mr. Cruz could surprise himself. This Midwestern state was also the launchpad for a junior senator from Illinois who won the White House. Twice.