Iowa: Hillary Rodham Clinton came to Iowa to give voters an intimate glance of who she’d be as president. What they got instead was a glimpse into the complicated relationship between the current inhabitant of the White House and the woman who hopes to follow in his path.
The Midwestern state’s caucuses will kick off the presidential nomination process in 2016. In 2008, Clinton lost the caucuses — and ultimately the nomination — to Barack Obama, a stunning defeat for the former first lady who had been considered the Democratic primary front-runner that year.
On her second try, Clinton appears unlikely to face a formidable Democratic opponent in the primary. Still, she is trying to show Democratic voters that she’s taking nothing for granted.
On a two-day swing through Iowa, the opening act of her 2016 campaign, Clinton embraced two of the most politically fraught planks of Obama’s legacy: the health care law and the push for an immigration overhaul. But even as she cast herself as continuing the Obama administration’s domestic policies, Clinton carefully drew a subtle contrast between her leadership and that of the president.
“I want fix our political system. I want to get things done,” she told small business owners, sitting between cardboard fruit cartons at a produce company warehouse. “We have to start breaking down the divisions that have paralyzed our politics.”
Clinton’s success will depend, at least in part, on how she walks the fine line between praising Obama enough to maintain the support of his loyal coalition, particularly the black and millennial voters who overwhelmingly backed his candidacy, and putting enough distance to woo independents frustrated with Washington partisanship.
Just days into her early campaign, that strategy is already on display.
While Clinton’s kickoff video was an upbeat appeal to inherit the diverse coalition that twice elected Obama, at events in Iowa she took a more downbeat tone, describing the middle-class dream as slipping away from many Americans.
“Unfortunately the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” Clinton said on Wednesday. “We need to reshuffle the cards and begin to play a different hand.”
In polling conducted by CNN last month, 57 percent of Americans said their “perfect candidate” would be someone who changed most policies of the Obama administration. Already, Republicans are stressing the deep ties between the two, describing Clinton’s candidacy as a “third Obama term.” Shortly before Clinton entered the race on Sunday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush released a video message deriding the “Obama-Clinton foreign policy.”
On foreign policy, Clinton has magnified the differences between her positions and those of the president she served. She expressed public disagreement with the administration’s early position against arming the Syrian opposition. Earlier this month, Clinton voiced cautious support for Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, though she remarked that the “devil was in the details.” Previously, she said she was skeptical that Iran would abide by any deal struck with the US. (Agencies)