The New York Times has an interesting news report out this evening recounting the large and enthusiastic crowds greeting Bernie Sanders in his first official campaign swing through Iowa:
Challenging Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Gains Momentum in Iowa
Here's the lede:
A mere 240 people live in the rural northeast Iowa town of Kensett, so when more than 300 crowded into the community center on Saturday night to hear Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many driving 50 miles, the cellphones of Democratic leaders statewide began to buzz.
Kurt Meyer, the county party chairman who organized the event, sent a text message to Troy Price, the Iowa political director for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Price called back immediately.
“Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear,” Mr. Meyer said he had told Mr. Price about Mr. Sanders. “Mrs. Clinton had better get out here.”
That ugly specter of "inevitability" comes back from the grave of Clinton's 2008 Iowa train wreck to rear its ugly head:
The first-in-the-nation caucuses, on Feb. 1, loom as a major test for Mrs. Clinton: She came in third in Iowa during her presidential run in 2008, and anything less than a decisive victory this time would rattle her shell of inevitability and raise questions about her strengths as a standard-bearer for an increasingly liberal Democratic Party.
...
If Mrs. Clinton wins the caucuses but not by a significant margin, she will risk being embarrassed, and the runner-up will look like a serious challenger to what once appeared to be Mrs. Clinton’s inevitable road to the nomination.
As I noted the other day in
kos' latest attempt to convince the unwashed masses here that Hillary Clinton
really, really is a liberal champion:
The only thing she's scared of about Bernie are debates. He could expose her for the phony populist she is, because she will never come out for breaking up the TBTF banks, or taxing the rich at the level they should be taxed, or being against free trade policies that further damage the American working class.
And, sure enough, the
NYT reporters confirm exactly that:
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers are most concerned that Mr. Sanders might prove effective, particularly in the Democrats’ televised debates, at painting Mrs. Clinton as squishy or untrustworthy on liberal issues.
Ya' think?
If Bernie keeps drawing big crowds in Iowa and New Hampshire -- and gets a concomitant bump in online fundraising due to the attention and enthusiasm -- they better start worrying about more than how a scruffy, white-maned old dude could embarrass her on a debate stage.