After Iowa, Mondale is slugging, Glenn is sagging, and Hart is hanging in First Des Moines and Cedar Rapids in Iowa, then Manchester and Concord in New Hampshire: plain-folks places nearly as thick with TV equipment and visiting reporters as Sarajevo had been the week before. But unlike the Olympics, which had enough surprises to keep things interesting, the quadrennial race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to look like a predictable rout. "We got the gold and silver medals," declared Walter Mondale's polltaker, Peter Hart, after the Iowa caucuses. "Everybody else fought over the bronze." The candidate to beat put it less colorfully. "I have won overwhelmingly," he said, even before lowans in 2,495 precincts had left their caucuses.
Mondale partisans could hardly help gloating as voters at last began the process of choosing delegates to next summer's Democratic National Convention. The former Vice President was happy before he arrived in Iowa, humming along with a Linda Ronstadt tune on his Walkman and smoking a big Partagas cigar; he left for New Hampshire still happier, with 49% of Iowa's Democratic caucus vote, more than his seven competitors combined (an eighth rival, Uncommitted, captured 9%). Among the other Democrats who would be President, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was the most cheered; he took 16% of the Iowa vote, finishing second. That mildly surprised everyone but Hart himself. His supporters were buoyed to the point of giddiness, but most disinterested political analysts figured his success would be short-lived. "Somebody had to finish second," said a Mondale strategist. "Hart," said a Republican analyst, "has simply managed to be the last man shot."
Nevertheless, Hart was counting on a strong second-place showing in New Hampshire. With a swollen pack of journalists trailing him to a shopping mall in West Lebanon and a toxic-waste dump in Londonderry (the crowd at the dump: half a dozen area residents, two police officers and 70 journalists), Hart encouraged the impression that he is in a two-man race for the nomination. Ohio Senator John Glenn, of course, believed and said the same thing for almost a year then, in Iowa, where he counted on finishing second, he staggered in fifth with less than 4% of the vote, well behind former Senator George McGovern (10%) and California Senator Alan Cranston (7%). He did little better than former Florida Governor Reubin Askew (2.5%) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (1.5%). "We took a licking," Glenn conceded, but added, "It's not the end of the world." There was no ignoring the implications of his Iowa debacle. "Glenn is gone," suggested Iowa's Democratic Committee chairman, David Nagle. If Mondale wins decisively in New Hampshire, reckoned South Carolina Senator Fritz Rollings, who finished last in Iowa, "the rest of us are gone."