Last night I noticed a Wall Street Journal piece about Iowa Democrats being slow to “rally” around Hillary Clinton, but I only read the first couple of paragraphs before I got bored. Today, Ed Kilgore tells me I quit too soon. If I had read to the bottom, I would have learned that this phenomenon probably has nothing really to do with a desire for a more populist candidate:
State Democratic officials also want a contested race because that boosts the party apparatus and fundraising….“When we have these candidates out here running for office, we invite them to county dinners and the numbers swell at these events,” said Tom Henderson, chairman of Democratic Party in Polk County, which includes Des Moines. “So it is a great, great service for the Democratic Party to have these candidates running for office.”
You have to appreciate that candidates in both parties for state and local office in Iowa (and to a lesser extent, in other early states) are accustomed to enjoying the benefit of world-class mailing lists, state-of-the-art campaign infrastructures, and top-shelf campaign staffers from all over the country. These goodies come to them courtesy of presidential candidates, proto-presidential candidates, people who want to work on presidential campaigns, and people who want to influence presidential campaigns. This is why Iowans so fiercely protect their first-in-the-nation-caucus status, and also why they hate uncontested presidential nomination contests. So of course they don’t want HRC to win without a challenge.
Roger that. In any case, talk is cheap right now. My guess is that everything changes once HRC actually announces her candidacy. When that happens, I’ll bet everyone starts rallying just fine. Iowa Democrats might be eager for their quadrennial infusion of money and pandering, but not so eager that they want to risk being caught on the losing side. Once the pressure is on to become an early HRC supporter or else spend the rest of the year on the Clinton shit list, well, I have a feeling an awful lot of early supporters are suddenly going to come out of the woodwork. We’ll see.
