Why Hillary and Iowa Don’t Mix
AMES, Iowa—Bob Summerfelt dutifully sat through Hillary Clinton’s one-hour policy dissertation at a campus auditorium here, dutifully stuck the Hillary sticker (upside down) to his fleece, dutifully declared how phenomenally well-prepared she was, truly, for the presidency.
So would he caucus for her on February 1? The 80-year-old former Iowa State fish and wildlife professor, sheepishly dropped his gaze to his shoe tops. His wife, Deanne, who is all in for Hillary, rolled her eyes. “Actually, uh, I’m for Bernie,” he said.
“It’s a funny story,” he continued. “My 19-year-old grandson has come to live with us while he goes to school here. ... And we began talking about it, about economic inequality and all of that. ... I think Hillary is inevitable, and I’ll vote for her later, but my grandson really convinced me to vote for Sanders. So I’m going to carpool him and all his friends to the caucuses. Several carloads of them, I think.”
Over the past nine months, the Clinton team has recited their collective talking-point mantra that she was always expecting a tough fight here, no matter who her primary opponent was, and that she would earn every vote. But privately, they didn’t expect it to be nearly this close—and Clinton herself has scoffed at the idea that Democratic voters would ever really pick “a socialist” over someone so manifestly prepared to be president, according to people in her orbit.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/hillary-vs-iowa-213544#ixzz3xnPvmOpZ
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