Did Hillary Clinton say anything important in Iowa?

Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Iowa over the weekend, and it sounded a lot like a stump speech in the making. Even the theme was familiar: 'It's the economy, stupid.'

|
Charlie Neibergall/AP
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during Sen. Tom Harkin's annual fundraising Steak Fry Sunday in Indianola, Iowa.

Hillary Rodham Clinton did not announce that she’s running for president during her big Sunday appearance at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa. Nobody really expected she would, though reporters keep asking about her intention. Maybe they just hope she’ll forget herself and let something slip out if they keep up the badgering.

But Clinton talked like a candidate. And by that we’re not just referring to her coy “Hello Iowa, I’m baaaack!” at the start of her speech to the crowd. Her address focused a lot on economic issues, specially pitched to try and appeal to middle class voters. It sounded like the first draft of a stump speech – the kind of thing she’ll repeat over and over in the months to come, with some tailoring of the edges for her particular audience.

Her theme? Surprise, surprise, it appears to be economic problems as experienced by the middle class. (Didn’t another presidential candidate named Clinton once have a sign on their war room wall, “It’s the economy, stupid”?)

In this Clinton appears to be fulfilling the prediction made by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, who earlier this month said she will campaign on nostalgia for the prosperous years when Bill Clinton ran the country.

“Today, you know so well, American families are working harder than ever, but maintaining a middle-class life feels like pushing a boulder uphill every single day. That is not how it’s supposed to be in America,” said Hillary Clinton at the Steak Fry podium, standing in front of a backdrop of a tractor and bales of hay.

Then she looped this idea back into the American Dream, saying that in the US in the past each generation has done a little better than the one before.

“That’s who we’ve always been and that is what our country must be again. So that’s what this election is really about,” said the former secretary of State.

No, she wasn’t referring to 2016 there. Don’t get ahead of yourself. She was talking about the upcoming midterms, in which the razor-close Iowa Senate race between Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley and GOP nominee Jodi Ernst could determine control of the chamber.

Clinton’s words got a polite reception from the crowd. Her biggest applause lines were those which dealt with women’s rights, according to CNN’s Peter Hamby. That’s something of a change – in her, not the audience. During her 2008 run, Clinton generally shied away from “focusing on her gender and the history-making nature of her candidacy,” writes Mr. Hamby.

It was hubby Bill who got the warmest reception, though. He spoke after her (protocol – he’s actually been president, remember) and as Politico’s Maggie Haberman noted, the “Bill Clinton Show was very much in town.”

Bill veered all over the rhetorical map, leaping from excitement at his impending grandchild, to the Arkansas Senate race, to the career of retiring Steak Fry host Sen. Tim Harkin, to the Koch Brothers and the problem of big money in politics.

That could be a problem for Hillary going forward, as her style is inevitably compared to that of her husband. When the couple worked the crowd at the rope line, it was a reminder “how much the former president enjoys the art of politicking more than his wife does,” writes Ms. Haberman.

That’s a comparison the nascent Hillary campaign can’t be too happy about.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Did Hillary Clinton say anything important in Iowa?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2014/0915/Did-Hillary-Clinton-say-anything-important-in-Iowa
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe