Iowa Democrats are, at long last, ready for Hillary. Well, mostly ready. At a campaign event near the state capitol building Monday night, the buttons and signs and chants—"When I say 'Madam,' you say, 'President!'"—were ample evidence that the former secretary of state is consolidating support among her party's activist base in Iowa. And the conclusion of the 2016 Democratic primary fight is treated—by supporters, activists, and the candidate herself—as foregone.
Clinton's performance Monday, part stump speech and part grassroots rally-cry, almost entirely ignored the upcoming Democratic caucuses on February 1.
"I know what we have to do to build on the progress that we've made," Clinton said. "And the first thing we have to do is not let the Republicans rip it away by winning the election in November!"
What a difference eight years has made. In 2008, the Hawkeye State's Democrats spurned Clinton for Barack Obama in what became a knock-down, drag-out war between the two candidates. Despite a long primary fight, Obama's Iowa win presaged his eventual nomination and general-election victory, but not before nearly tearing apart the state's activists on either side of the Clinton-Obama divide.
Heather Johnson, a 37-year-old Clinton precinct captain in Davenport, remembers 2008 well. After a Monday afternoon Clinton rally in Davenport, Johnson tells me how she and her Obama-supporting friends in 2008 had to stop speaking for several weeks leading up to the caucuses. "It was bad," she says. But she adds the acrimony among the activists just isn't there this time around. The divide may even have been bridged, at least somewhat.