‘It Would Have Been Nicer if Bernie Was Here’

OTTUMWA, Iowa — As excellent as the Bernie Sanders event was — as excellent as it was to hear from the filmmaker Michael Moore and to eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream scooped by the actual Ben and the actual Jerry, longtime Sanders supporters — it would have been even more excellent, was the general feeling, if Mr. Sanders himself had been able to come to Ottumwa.

But Mr. Sanders was stranded in Washington, languishing at President Trump’s impeachment trial along with two other top contenders in the Iowa Democratic caucus, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. And we — the voters, and the people who had traveled to Iowa to write about this very odd week at a very odd time in American politics — had to take what we could get.

“The caucuses are always weird,” said Philip Elliott, a Washington correspondent at Time magazine, “but the absence of the top three candidates really messes with the schedule.”

At the time of this remark, Mr. Elliott was at an L.G.B.T. event for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Des Moines, listening to Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, declare that “this is my first time in a gay bar.”

He said the absence of the three senators had led to some creative schedule adjustments, as the news media that has converged on Iowa scrambles to find events attended by people other than Mr. Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. Those two candidates have had the good fortune not to be tethered to their desks in Washington, drinking milk and watching the impeachment trial unfold, but there are only so many Biden and Buttigieg events you can attend.

For instance. “People went to see Bailey Warren today,” Mr. Elliott said, referring to Ms. Warren’s golden retriever, who has been headlining events around Iowa with the senator’s husband, Bruce Mann, in her absence. (Yes, he is referred to as “Bailey Warren” on the official schedule.)

As BuzzFeed said in a headline: “Elizabeth Warren’s Dog Is Campaigning for Her While She’s Stuck in Washington.”

The veteran political journalist Karen Tumulty, a Washington Post columnist who has seen her share of Iowa caucuses over the years, said that things have felt oddly suspended, almost muted, this week. She was preparing to trail along to some events with Ms. Klobuchar’s daughter, 24-year-old Abigail Bessler, who has been acting as her mother’s main surrogate in Iowa, with an attendant surge of news coverage about “hot dish” events at supporters’ houses.

On the calendar, among other things, was an event at an ice rink in Cedar Rapids (guest star: Phill Drobnick, a.k.a. Coach Phill, a local celebrity who led the United States curling team to victory in the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.

Places in Des Moines where reporters normally hang out — the lobby bar in the downtown Marriott, the Centro restaurant a few blocks away — have been unusually quiet, Ms. Tumulty said. “It feels as if there’s this kind of silence,” she said.

Iowa is all-caucus, all the time. Signs welcome caucus tourists to Des Moines. Tom Steyer’s advertisements scroll by on electronic billboards. But with the impeachment hearings droning on ominously in Washington, the week has occasionally had the feel of a scene in a movie in which the characters talk to each other while ignoring the disaster — alien invasion, zombie attack, meteorite hurtling toward New York City — the audience can see unfolding on a television screen behind them.

Pat Rynard, founder and editor of Iowa Starting Line, an online political publication in Des Moines, said that the strange state of affairs had led to some journalistic rearranging, more features and less coverage of events.

“The entire election cycle has been so weird and different,” he said.

“But we’re making do with different types of stories. There are only so many candidate events you can go to and find a new story.”

Still, the candidate events are where the candidates are. Even if what you are hearing is what you have heard time and time again, they are good places to observe pre-caucus politician-regular person interaction, such as it is.

An unusually large scrum of journalists — editors, anchors, columnists, members of the international press corps hunting for some election action — converged on a standard Biden campaign stop on Thursday morning in Waukee. The event had several things going for it: it was close to Des Moines, where many reporters are based, and Mr. Biden himself was there.

There was also heavy interest in a reporters’ forum in Des Moines the other morning featuring Andrew Yang, the former technology executive and current presidential candidate (he is still running, yes).

Sponsored by Bloomberg — Bloomberg the media company, not the former mayor and current presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg, who looms over the race like some sort of invisible Goodyear Blimp that you know is always there, even when you can’t see it — the forum drew more than a dozen reporters.

The candidate was 45 minutes late, but no one was particularly bothered, in part because such events feature generous breakfast buffets and Bloomberg-themed paraphernalia.

Also, nobody had anywhere else to be, really.

Once he arrived, Mr. Yang was asked if his non-senatorial status had redounded to his benefit in Iowa by allowing him to show up in person for campaign events.

“I think that should be the decisive criterion,” he said, jokingly. “I think that if you haven’t been in the state every weekday in the two weeks before the caucus, then you’re not truly committed to the people of Iowa or this race.”

Later in the week, a Bloomberg event featuring two top officials from the Klobuchar campaign was even better attended. Justin Buoen, the campaign manager, told the assembled reporters how they were compensating for the senator’s absence by, for instance, tele-town- hall-style events in which the candidate speaks to thousands of voters at a time over speaker phone, or at least while talking into the void of a laptop while sitting in a small office.

“Sorry this is a little later than we planned, but I think you all understand I have my job — to fulfill my constitutional duty,” Ms. Klobuchar said at one such event earlier in the week. “I’m going to be there tomorrow and the next day and the next day.” A small note of frustration crept into her voice. She wished she could be in Iowa in person, she said.

“We’ve been making lemonade out of lemons,” Mr. Buoen said, back in Des Moines.

At the Sanders event in Ottumwa, there was not much else to do once the caucusgoers had heard from Mr. Moore and from Ben and Jerry (O.K., Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield), and once they had eaten their ice cream, with its dense and occasionally challenging mélange of flavors.

“I understand why, but it would have been nicer if Bernie was here,” said Toni Couch, 56, who had recently moved to Iowa from California. “It’s a shame.”

With Mr. Sanders absent, Edward Nydle, 65, a retired postal carrier, pondered his ice cream, which to him felt suspiciously like the ice cream of the 1 percent.

“To be honest, I’ve never bought it before,” he said. “I can’t afford it.”

Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting from Des Moines.