"I have not been here in about 30 years—make that 32 years," he says. "Back then, I was organizing for a little known senator from Colorado running for president with 1 percent name recognition. His name was Gary Hart." The politically savvy audience smiles, recalling their state's role in turning Hart from a national nonentity into a top contender for the 1984 Democratic nomination. O'Malley beams even brighter: "I know, delusional idea, right?"

But an enduring rule of Iowa politics, the candidate reminds listeners, is that "the inevitable front-runner is always inevitable right up until caucus night." (That would be Hillary.) Rule No. 2: "The challenger who is surging in July is never the candidate who is surging in January." (That would be Bernie.) Here, the governor erupts in laughter. "So, by golly, you'll be glad to know that we are preventing ourselves from surging too early!" (snip)

O'Malley's camp expresses confidence that the Left ultimately will calm down and find its way to their man. "Bernie is going to be useful to us," says Appleby. "He is a stalking horse. I think he is carrying the ideas that Elizabeth Warren has and Martin has, too—a kind of economic populism." But as appealing as Sanders is with his purity and independence and feistiness, says Appleby, "it doesn't seem to me very likely that the Democratic Party is going to nominate a 74-year-old socialist." And when Sanders "collapses," he predicts, "Martin will take up that mantle."

Hyers makes a similar argument. "The first thing we needed was a contest," he tells me. "When I was having this same conversation six months ago, people were like: 'It's no competition. Hillary has got 85 percent of the vote. It's going to be her. Why are you even bothering?' " Now, says Hyers, the media and public are paying attention to this as a real race, which means his guy can get on with step two: "We've got to make our case." Even this second step is facilitated by all the Bernie hubbub, argues Hyers: He notes that, without it, the Hall of Fame Dinner would never have turned into a big cattle call with saturation coverage. As it was, the national media turned out in droves, "and our guy got to shine a little."