Iowa Behind Her, Clinton Campaign in a State of Urgency
by FOXNews.com
Friday, January 4, 2008
It’s not time for Hillary Clinton to start panicking yet, but the candidate soared into New Hampshire in the wee hours of Friday morning following a third-place finish in Iowa with a fresh sense of urgency swirling about the campaign.
Though even her husband had played down expections prior to Iowa, her finish 8 points behind rival Barack Obama Thursday night was a wake-up call for Clinton, who from day one has been pegged the inevitable Democratic nominee. She’s still the well-funded candidate with the rock-star husband and a deep, national network of supporters – but the results from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, where once-dark horse candidate Mike Huckabee sailed to victory over millionaire businessman Mitt Romney, were a sign that deep pockets and deep political roots aren’t the only asset in 2008.
As Obama rode to victory on the message of hope and change, Clinton seemed to adopt that rhetoric. On Friday she seemed to even adopt strains of rival John Edwards’ economic populism, bemoaning the reported .3 percent jump in the unemployment rate.
“I want to know from all of you … what do you want to know about us?” she said Friday. “Who will be the best president based not on a leap of faith but on the kind of changes we’ve already produced?”
The New York senator spoke at a freezing airplane hangar in Nashua, N.H., to a throng of enthusiastic supporters who held signs that said simply, “Ready.”
[Click here to see the videos of candidates’ post-caucus speeches.]
In an e-mail sent out Friday morning, the Clinton campaign said: “We’ve got more work to do.”
Asking for contributions, the memo still stressed her experience and presumed long-term political viability against the GOP nominee:
“With your help, we can make it clear that the Democratic Party needs a nominee who can go the distance in a long, challenging campaign to win the White House, and that the American people need a president who can be an effective champion for them on day one,” it said.
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson told reporters that they’re ready to fight nationwide, and sought to minimize the perceived impact of Iowa.
“We went from being very, very, very far behind when she started this race in January to turning out a lot of people. And we brought a lot of new people into the process,” he said. “I think judging the entire nominating process on 8 percent of the population of one state is a dubious exercise.
“We’re going to continue to fight on, and we’re going to fight on in also the states across the country. We’re going to fight on in New Hampshire, and South Carolina and Nevada, then all the states on February 5.”
But the Clinton message may begin to incorporate more humanizing themes, outside those showing she’s simply spent a lot of time in Washington.
FOX News entrance polling ahead before the Democratic caucusing indicated that 52 percent of Iowa voters were more concerned with electing a candidate who could “bring about needed change” than seeking one with the “right experience.” This far outweighed what had been believed to be Clinton’s strong suit, which 20 percent of the caucus-goers said was most important to them.
The preference, along with a massive turnout of Democratic voters, resulted in the blow to the Clinton campaign, which has long been hailing the senator’s 35-year political career, including eight years as first lady, as superior credentials over her rivals for the White House.
As if already picking up on that point at the end of the evening, in a speech to supporters at the end of the evening, Clinton immediately began speaking about “change.”
“We have seen an unprecedented turnout here in Iowa. And that is good news, because today we’re sending a clear message: that we are going to have change, and that change will be a Democratic president in the White House in 2009,” she said to cheers. “I am so proud to have run with such exceptional candidates … together we have presented the case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning.”
Obama in his victory speech fervently started hitting those themes, claiming them as his own.
“We are choosing hope over fear, we’re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America,” he said.
Off-stage, political analysts were parsing out just what happened to the candidate who just a few months ago was considered to have a near lock on the nomination.
Heavy turnout is believed to have led to some of the disappointment, as analysts had predicted early on that the more people who showed up at the Iowa precincts, the better the opportunities for the perceived outsiders, Obama and Edwards. Iowa Democratic party officials reported that with 99.2 percent of the precincts reporting, 236,000 attended the caucuses.
According to campaign sources who spoke with FOX News, Clinton’s team believed, early on, that the turnout would not exceed more than 150,000. By the end of the evening, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee acknowledged that turnout could end up being more than 200,000.
He otherwise kept the outlook bright.
“As the boss said earlier, today is just the beginning. It’s not the end. Tomorrow you hit reset and you start all over again in New Hampshire and you run hard for five days,” he said.
As the country’s first, most viable woman candidate for president, it is probably most surprising that Obama did better among female voters in the entrance polling, 35 percent to 30 percent.
David Yepsen, political columnist for the Des Moines Register, told FOX News that he believed Clinton had failed to get a cogent message out to the voters, despite a huge operational presence in the state. He said on the Republican side, Mitt Romney may have suffered from the same shortcomings. “Who are they and what do they stand for? I think they failed on that.”
From here, he predicted that the “anti-Hillary Clinton vote” will now “coalesce around Barack Obama. That’s part of the story tonight.”
Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers played down the impact on Clinton Thursday, and said it was the media, not the Clinton campaign that had assumed the early primaries were to serve as nothing more than “a coronation’ for Clinton less than a year ago. But nonetheless, Powers told FOX News, being in third place was “not good for her by any stretch of the imagination.”
FOX News’ Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Major Garrett and Aaron Bruns and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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