Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers a speech at Canyon Springs High School in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)
Posted on 06/01/2007 7:55:27 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
EMMETSBURG, Iowa - Memo to Hillary Rodham Clinton: Your deputy campaign manager was right. An internal campaign memo late last month urged the Democratic front-runner to bypass first-up and momentum-generating Iowa because of Clinton's lackluster showing despite drawing large crowds — a memo she immediately disavowed.
Yet, the reality from Des Moines to Dubuque lends credence to deputy campaign manager Mike Henry's assessment that for Clinton, Iowa is "our consistently weakest state."
Presidential rival John Edwards has capitalized on the remnants of his 2004 presidential operation in the state, the freedom to visit in the absence of a day job and a fresh populist appeal to grab the lead in recent polls.
Clinton's other top rival, Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), has drawn large crowds and hired a team of experienced organizers with a deep knowledge of Iowa's arcane caucus system. Even lesser-known candidates Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd have gained some traction with ads on Iowa television.
"If the caucuses were held today, it's fair to say she would probably not win," former state Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fischer said. "It's going to take a tremendous amount of work to catch up — it's doable, but it's going to be difficult."
The notion of the Democratic front-runner losing Iowa would jolt the presidential race. The state's last three winners captured the Democratic nomination as Al Gore beat back Bill Bradley's strong challenge in 2000 and John Kerry saw his moribund candidacy revived after his victory in 2004.
Clinton's husband, Bill, then the sitting president, cruised in 1996.
Hillary Clinton isn't as familiar to Iowa voters, and within days of the memo, she was back in the state, completing the last leg of her "Four Corners of Iowa" tour. She and six of the Democratic presidential candidates will be in the state Saturday night for a state party dinner.
Obama is skipping the event for a series of fundraisers on the West Coast, a decision that upset several Iowa Democrats.
Iowa has presented a particularly vexing challenge to the New York senator and has complicated her effort to project herself as the inevitable Democratic nominee. She trails Edwards and sometimes Obama in polls here despite her strong showing nationally and in other states, and strategists question whether she can invest the amount of time needed to overtake Edwards, who has virtually lived in Iowa since the 2004 election.
"I need your help. I need your help to sign up and caucus for me. I need your help to come out in January and be part of the team I'm building across Iowa and America," Clinton recently told a crowd of some 400 at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Emmetsburg, in the northwest region of the state.
Her advisers acknowledge she would not win Iowa if the vote happened anytime soon. And anything less than victory in Iowa would undermine her greatest asset: the hard-fought perception that she is the inevitable nominee
"There is no notion of inevitability — that's not what's being projected here," said Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and national co-chair of Clinton's campaign. "We understand it's a tough fight, and that it's a very competitive situation."
The campaign memo argues that winning Iowa would require a huge investment — as much as $15 million that could cripple the campaign later as it moved ahead to later states.
"I believe we need a new approach to winning the Democratic nomination," Henry wrote in the memo which revealed a split over Iowa strategy within the campaign.
To be sure, Iowa presents risks for other candidates too.
Edwards, who placed a close second to Kerry in Iowa last time, has staked his entire candidacy on winning Iowa. The former North Carolina senator boasts strong ties to organized labor, and his aggressive condemnation of the Iraq war has won praise from many activists.
But Edwards has his own problems, notably a spate of embarrassing stories about his 28,000-square foot North Carolina mansion, his lucrative consulting contract with a hedge fund, and his $400 haircuts. Together, the stories have threatened to undermine his focus on poverty, which he has tried to make a signature issue on the campaign trail.
The haircuts in particular received considerable coverage in Iowa, where one newspaper, the Quad City Times, even interviewed local barbers about what they charged. The consensus: about $12.
Then there's Obama, who has worked hard in Iowa to avoid the fate of yet another 2004 contender, Howard Dean.
Dean, like Obama, was a skilled orator who thrilled huge audiences with his fiery denunciation of the war in Iraq. But the crowds he drew never transformed into caucus-goers, and the former Vermont governor placed a distant third behind Kerry and Edwards.
Obama has taken the lessons of the Dean campaign to heart. Although he's mostly played to large crowds, including a 10,000-person rally in Iowa City, he's also started doing more traditional meet-and-greets in coffee shops and living rooms.
"We're not the front-runner, and don't expect to be for some time. We're still in the phase of introducing Barack to voters," said Steve Hildebrand, Obama's senior adviser for early states. "Every candidate is in this to come in first, but today we are certainly not in first place."
Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers a speech at Canyon Springs High School in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)
How many bottles of peroxide had to die so Hillary could have white blonde hair?
This is good news.
I just heard on the news today that Hillary isn’t doing too well in liberal Washington state either. They said that Obama and Edwards were the frontrunners with caucus goers.
What a slam against Iowa voters!
Mebbe they haven't bought their first teevee or wireless (radio) yet? or learned how to read (and absorb as Gospel truth) the New York Times?
Guess she needs to make her way around the state delivering speeches from tree-stumps....
There it is! She's cutting corners!
Does she always deliver her speeches with her mouth closed, gazing off into the sky?
and with the Left, she just might win the nomination anyway.
As a sop to Iowa farmers, she’ll soon propose that Americans strat drinking more ethanol..
“Guess she needs to make her way around the state delivering speeches from tree-stumps....”
She always does, hae you seen those cankles....
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