Subject: MUST READ: BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton And Iowa: No Problem Here”
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Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 15:59:49 -0400
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*BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton And Iowa: No Problem Here”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/hillary-clinton-and-iowa-no-problem-here>*

By Ruby Cramer

October 30, 2014, 2:24 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] The knock was Hillary wouldn’t visit Iowa, the state she never
clicked in. She’s been twice this fall, she looks at ease in the state —
and despite the theories, Iowa Democrats are onboard.

DAVENPORT, Iowa — She recalled campaign visits to the Teamsters hall, and
remembered “barbeque and blues festivities” at the River Music Experience.
She stressed what a “great personal pleasure” it was to be back in Cedar
Rapids, and how impressed she’s always been “by the history and beauty” of
Davenport. And she told a crowd at the first of two rallies in Iowa on
Wednesday afternoon just how hard it’d been to watch severe flooding here
scourge the cities and towns she’d spent months getting to know during her
presidential campaign six years ago.

Hillary Clinton paused on the solemn note at a Cedar Rapids labor hall.

“I watched with such distress,” she said. “When you’ve been somewhere and
you envision the places you’ve visited, it’s heartbreaking to watch the
destruction.”

It didn’t look like Clinton had an “Iowa problem” here on Wednesday. And
state Democrats don’t seem think there is one, either.

The former presidential candidate knows the place pretty well for someone
who, as local Democrats have said in the past, could never quite gel the
way she needed to with the state that historically gets to go first in the
nominating process. Since that crippling third-place finish in the caucuses
behind Barack Obama and John Edwards, then both senators, Clinton’s
missteps in Iowa have been retraced again and again.

There was a perception that Clinton couldn’t connect in 2008. She worked
rope lines more than she talked one-on-one with voters. Her events were
tightly controlled. She didn’t take questions. And hanging over her
campaign was an unhelpful internal memo, leaked to the press months before
caucus night, advising she forgo Iowa altogether.

In the past year, the theory has persisted: State Democrats are wary or
disinterested about the prospect of another go-round with Clinton; they
want to weigh their options, find a challenger, or at least see her work
harder for it than in 2008.

But Clinton has returned twice to the state in as many months this fall —
first for Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual Steak Fry fundraiser, and again on
Wednesday to headline twin rallies for Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat in a
toss-up race for U.S. Senate.

State leaders said in interviews this week that Clinton has easily
reestablished a connection here and fostered fresh goodwill, particularly
in her efforts to help Braley. And at her events on Wednesday, Clinton
showed she could play to the crowds, making references to local political
establishments in her speeches, calling out individual Braley volunteers by
name to thank them, making time for an unannounced stop at a restaurant in
Iowa City, and joking about that special kind of devotion to presidential
politics for which the early-voting state is known.

Her problems here were always overstated, said Teresa Vilmain, the 2008
campaign’s state director. “Anyone who focuses on that story line is having
a slow news day,” Vilmain said. “Iowans are still excited to see her and
hear from her.”

A poll this month found 76% of likely Democratic caucus goers view Clinton
favorably.

Janet Petersen, an Iowa state senator who supported Obama in the primary,
said Clinton has “built up a lot of goodwill” by campaigning for Braley.
She discounted the idea that Clinton has any outsize hurdles to overcome in
the state.

“It’s always interesting to see what the national media is covering with
the caucuses. It’s generally not what we’re seeing on the ground,” Peterson
said.

Clinton’s first event of the day was a Cedar Rapids rally with Braley — who
is close to tied in polls with his Republican opponent, state Sen. Joni
Ernst — at the local 405 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers. The brown and beige-colored union hall where Clinton spoke to a
crowd of about 400, as estimated by the Braley campaign, is also
headquarters to the Hawkeye Labor Council, a coalition of 45 unions in
seven counties. Clinton made a point to mention that. (Ahead of 2008, the
president of that council, Justin Shields, co-chaired her state campaign.)

“I know we’ve got some teamsters here today,” Clinton said looking out at
the audience.

After the rally, Clinton rolled out of the union hall parking lot in a
black van amid a string of seven other cars, and headed for Iowa City.
There, she made a off-schedule stop with Braley at the Hamburg Inn
restaurant. Clinton ordered a chocolate bourbon pecan pie milkshake, or pie
shake, and sat down at a table just below a framed photo of Harkin. (Her
husband’s picture was hanging not too far away.) A group of young women one
spot over struck up conversation. Clinton talked about her new
granddaughter, and whether she’d watch the seventh game of the World Series.

The ordeal didn’t last long. (Clinton has made similar drop-ins during
trips to rallies in Colorado and Illinois this month.) But the brief stop
amounted to rare time with voters, not spent from the lectern or a hurried,
hectic ropeline. And to longtime political observers in Iowa, it signaled a
change in Clinton’s approach.

John Deeth, an Iowa political blogger, used to feature a count on his
homepage of the number of days Clinton had spent away from Iowa. The final
tally: 2,446.

When he saw news of the Hamburg Inn stop, he tweeted a picture of a beret
on a plate, set with silverware as if for a meal. “Tonight I’ll be dining
on this,” he said.

Deeth was not able to cover Clinton’s visit, though he has long argued that
her campaign was far too scripted. “Of course, after six years of loudly
demanding that Hillary do exactly this, I’m stuck at the office when it
happens,” he wrote on his blog.

At her rally in Davenport, Clinton kept up the personal touch, calling out
two volunteers from the Braley campaign to thank them by name. “Is Bobby
Dodd here? Where is Bobby Dodd? Oh, Bobby. Bobby is 91 years old and
volunteering,” Clinton said. “What about Judy? Judy Moss? Is she here?
Judy? Thank you, Judy!”

Clinton seemed to suggest she’d be ready for the Iowa test next time
around. “I don’t know any place in America that takes politics more
seriously. You take politics seriously because you take public service
seriously.”

“And you like to test your candidates, don’t ya?” she said. The crowd
laughed. “You wanna force them to be the best they can be. I have
experienced that myself.”

“And you wanna know if somebody is here asking you for your votes — they
have to answer some tough questions. About what they would do if you gave
them your vote. Not in Iowa do people get away with not answering
questions.”

“Except… questions that are far in the future,” Clinton said with a grin
and a quick glance at Braley. It was the only reference that day to her
possible campaign.

This month, in trips to about a dozen states to campaign for Democratic
candidates running in the midterm races, Clinton has kept the focus off
herself. She has tamped down the coy references to her potential
presidential run, which came up frequently in interviews during a publicity
tour to promote her memoir this summer.

“She’s made it very clear that she’s stumping for other people right now,”
said Liz Mathis, a state senator who was a caucus leader for Clinton.
“She’s been very careful to step back and let other people shine. She uses
her clout in the right way.” Once Clinton “reestablishes herself as ‘the
candidate,’” Mathis said, “you’ll see full commitment, and you’ll see that
relationship come together with Iowans.”

People in Iowa politics haven’t forgotten the difficulties Clinton had in
the state. This summer, a state newspaper wrote a pointed second-person
editorial, warning Clinton to show Iowans she wanted it, “sooner rather
than later this time.”

And officials with the pro-Clinton group, Ready for Hillary, first landed
in Iowa in January to commit early to the state and gather a list local
supporters who would back a campaign. (They have not made the length of
that list public.)

Jerry Crawford, a mainstay in Iowa politics who supported Clinton in 2008
and has advised Ready for Hillary, said that voters in the state do enjoy a
contested race.

“On the one hand, no candidate in the Iowa caucuses has ever approached
them with as much organized support as Ready for Hillary has created for
Clinton,” he said. “On the other hand, caucuses are by nature contentious
and contrarian events that appeal most to the philosophical edges in each
party. That is how Rick Santorum won Iowa.”

Clinton won’t have a coronation in Iowa. But any challenger will “have
trouble beating her,” Crawford said. “She is beloved by mainstream party
regulars.”

Petersen, the state senator, said that eventually Iowans will want more
direct contact with Clinton. “They’re used to getting that chance,”
Peterson said. “With Ready for Hillary, they don’t speak on behalf of the
candidate. That’s not who Iowans want to engage with. They want to get to
know the candidate and hear her vision.”

“But she’s showing us that she’s going to be back,” Petersen said.