Ben,
As I recall, Mr. and Mrs. Vilsack made different endorsements in the Iowa caucus. The Governor endorsed Dean, originally, and she endorsed Kerry. Senator Harkin endorsed Kerry too. Turns out Mrs. Vilsack's endorsement won. Of course old Tom came off that endorsement pretty quickly after Howard Dean's post-caucus 'speech'
I can't decide what hurt dean more, the scream or the Al Gore endorsement. Both seemed pretty damning. 
Stick with John Edwards. He has such beautiful hair.
Governor Vilsack did not endorse until after the caucus, just before Missouri’s primary if memory serves (ah… memories when John Edwards winning was a real possibility
) but he endorsed Kerry and never endorsed Dean, Vilsack never even touched Dean…
While Mrs Vilscak publicly endorsed Kerry not long before the primary and campaigned hard up and down the state for the Senator.
Tom Harkin (who I confess to having a soft spot for, though he can be a little too liberal on some issues and dame irresponsible at times, not meaning to equate the two in anyway), he publicly endorsed Dean (after a very long deliberation and having had a lot of pressure put upon him to back Gephardt) and together with Martin Sheen (remember that) campaigned hard for the former Governor. However ultimately having been the warm up speaker before the “Dean Screech” he didn’t come out of the caucus looking all that good, however I doubt he suffered any lasting damage except perhaps to his ego…
An interesting thing I have heard is that Harkin was tempted to go with a Kerry endorsement and was also rumoured to have considered Edwards, however at the time Edwards was considered by him to be too far back in the polls and he could not believe that Kerry would manage the Lazarus like exercise he in the end accomplished so he picked Dean who ideologically he was fairly close to and who he believed would in the end win the primary…
Don’t mean to contradict you Angus…. If it was a typo or (god forbid
) sarcasm, I must apologise…
