Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered a high-energy message at Davenport’s Danceland Ballroom Friday night. “I’m running on what I think I can do”.
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For Democrats, Monday’s caucuses are the first step of a multi-step process of winning delegates to the party’s national convention.
Polls show a tight race between Clinton and Sanders in Iowa.
One major unknown that has Iowa Democrats buzzing is the race’s third candidate: former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
“Who would disagree with anything Bernie says?” she said.
“We Democrats had been trying to get that done since Harry Truman”, she said.
With so much local support, Knauf feels certain of a Sanders win, concluding, “I see this happening” – at least in his hometown. “I feel like we’ve done everything we could”.
Majority watched Clinton lose eight years ago, and they say her organization now matches the Barack Obama operation that beat her in 2008. Sanders’ plan to create a “Medicare for all” would be nearly impossible to get through Congress, she said.
“He’s not the status quo”, asserted a first-time caucus goer. She has 26 organizational offices with paid staffers throughout Iowa; he has 23 – even if they’re hastily opened and sparsely decorated. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and his late surge on a crest of liberal aspiration was unmistakable, as was Clinton’s tone of urgency as she made a case for experience and ability.
The “Heart-Bern” in downtown Des Moines is palpable – and audible.
She said Sanders had integrity and was a nice guy, but questioned the wisdom of some of his ideas.
“I think it makes a ton of sense to go to those areas where you need turnout to really be high and clearly the schedule reflects that on the Clinton side”, Anderson said.
Megan Weisert, a Drake University student, said she would likely caucus for Clinton or O’Malley, but that Sanders “kind of scares me”.
We have to think much, much smaller. “Maybe in the future”.
The email development doesn’t play well with crowds already distrustful of the former secretary of state, which could further animate them.
“Now with the problems so serious, we do not have the luxury of on-the-job training”, said Wilensky, a tax attorney.
One factor in turnout is always the weather, which in Iowa can be downright terrible in February.
The candidates from both parties will be camped out in Iowa for the coming days. Most of the GOP states award them proportionally, too, but there is a lot more variation from state to state.
Clinton has taken as a badge of honor the spending of conservative super PACs that are targeting her, and she asks audiences to consider why Republicans would appear to prefer her rival Sanders as an opponent in the general election.
The GOP candidates won’t accept that climate change is happening, she said.
She thanked Iowans for telling her about “the opportunities, the worries, the dreams” they have shared with her over the nine months she has campaigned here. “We’re going to enforce that value”. “Because they don’t want to run against me, because they know I can stop them in November”.
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Clinton dismissed Republican economic policies, saying President George W. Bush had regulators take their eyes off Wall Street.
