Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has beaten Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in Monday’s Democratic caucuses in Iowa, it was confirmed on Tuesday, taking her first step towards potentially making history as the first female president of the United States.
“I can tell you, I’ve won and I’ve lost there – it’s a lot better to win,” Clinton told voters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
“New Hampshire,” she shouted over loud cheering at a community college in Nashua. “Stand up for me! Fight for me! And if we win, I will stand up and fight for you every single day.”
Clinton’s victory was not as triumphant as the once presumptive Democratic nominee might have hoped. Sanders, the self-described socialist senator from Vermont, robbed Clinton of a decisive win heading into next week’s primary in New Hampshire, where he has a strong lead of 18 points.
Clinton won 49.86% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, with Sanders on 49.57% – a margin of just 0.29 percentage points. The two appear to have split the number of delegates Iowa will send to the national Democratic convention roughly evenly, with Clinton collecting 23 and Sanders 21.
Clinton said she had breathed “a big sigh of relief” Monday night in Iowa, but she did not entirely lay to rest the ghosts of her 2008 campaign, when her perceived inevitability unravelled in dramatic fashion with a bruising third-place finish behind Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Eight years later, Clinton’s pathway to the nomination seems less in doubt, but it remains fraught with lingering questions over her ability to rally the base of the Democratic party around her candidacy.
In Nashua, she focused her fire on Republicans, not Sanders, although she did draw distinctions between her healthcare plan and his, telling supporters that she wants to build on Obama’s Affordable Care Act whereas Sanders wants to “start over”.
“I know young people think these are just details,” she said. “That I should just fly at 30,000ft and just say, ‘OK, you know, we’re just going to do this and we’re going to do that. Thank you very much’ – but that’s not how I believe we should select the president. I want you to know what I’m going to do for you so that you can hold me accountable.”
Clinton and Sanders will share a stage twice this week, on Wednesday at a forum hosted by CNN in Derry, New Hampshire, and then again on Thursday at a recently scheduled debate in Durham, New Hampshire, hosted by MSNBC.
“I am so looking forward to engaging in the contest of ideas,” she said.
Amid soaring expectations, Clinton embarked on her second campaign for president in April and moved quickly to apply the hard lessons from her previous bid. The announcement was not made with pomp and circumstance but through a video, meant to display the diversity of America, posted to her website.
The former secretary of state then hopped on a bus nicknamed “the Scooby van” and hit the road to Iowa in what her campaign said was the first glimmer of a more spontaneous Clinton. She shunned high-profile rallies in favor of a low-key listening tour, fielding questions not from the media but from “everyday Americans” handpicked by her campaign.
For weeks, Clinton sat around the table saying little while studiously taking notes instead on the domestic challenges facing middle- and working-class Americans: at a small fruit company in Iowa, a furniture manufacturer in New Hampshire, and a famed chicken-and-waffle restaurant in South Carolina.
One week before the Iowa caucuses, she returned to such intimate gatherings while making her closing argument.
In the small suburb of Adel, Clinton stood inside a local bowling alley not for a playful photo op but to remind voters of her campaign’s purpose. She was introduced by owner Bryce Smith, a 23-year-old who said he met Clinton three days after the launch of her campaign at one of the intimate roundtables she held for small business owners.
He had worked at the bowling alley part-time before purchasing it when he graduating from college, despite being crushed with student loan debt, because it had been a local institution since 1957.
Smith’s story had stuck with her as an example of “the American dream”, Clinton said as she stood with her back to the bowling lanes. And as part of her final pitch, she vowed to be a champion for Americans working to make ends meet.
“Americans need a raise, and I have an economic policy that puts raising incomes right at the center,” she said.
Clinton took this argument across Iowa last week, from school gymnasiums to theaters packed to capacity. Embracing her husband Bill Clinton’s economic legacy as well as progress made under Barack Obama, she implored voters to consider what was at stake.
“The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House,” she said – not just any Democrat, she added, but one with the experience to achieve the ambitious promises of a presidential campaign.
She was joined at times by her husband, who deployed his trademark charisma and political skill while serving as his wife’s warm-up act.
There was no candidate “better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament” in his lifetime, the former president said at an evening rally in Davenport before nearly 1,000 raucous supporters.
“She is a born change-maker and everything she ever touched, she made better.”
The message has resonated with the voters who have observed Clinton for decades and deem her a seasoned candidate with the pragmatism for the job.
But a barrier remains in her ability to connect, borne out in a recent poll that found Sanders leading Clinton by a 14-point margin on the question of who cared most about people like them.
Younger voters have once more been enthralled by idealism, in the form of Sanders rather than Obama this time. They are a dominant force in filling stadiums for the socialist senator, despite his being the oldest candidate in the race.
On Monday, the Vermont senator earned the support of 84% of Democratic voters between the ages of 17 and 29 and the majority of those between 30 and 44.
Clinton has tried to win them over, through the backing of TV and music stars or through outreach tailored toward millennials.
Katy Perry, Lena Dunham and Demi Lovato are among the celebrities who have appeared alongside Clinton at her rallies, stressing the historic nature of her candidacy. Her campaign playlist meanders between the tunes of Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Pharrell Williams, featuring no tracks released prior to the 2000s – a contrast to Sanders’s celebrated use of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1960s anthem America.
Clinton has projected a lighter demeanor, in sketches on Saturday Night Live and late-night talkshows – a loosening-up that her campaign hopes will reveal her more personable side. She dutifully poses for selfies on the rope line and recently used her Snapchat account to reference the latest Star Wars film.
“This year, Republicans reminded us that the Dark Side is alive and well,” Clinton wrote on her account, with a spaceship emoji over a space-themed background.
Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, has also become a prominent presence on the campaign trail, focusing on younger voters and students. It was Chelsea who first took sharp aim at Sanders’ proposal for single-payer healthcare earlier this month, saying it would “dismantle” the American healthcare system.
Clinton echoed similar themes in recent weeks, blending a populist tone with one that was practical, if not conciliatory, on the need to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans. She would shift from an impassioned riff on holding big banks accountable, her voice often reaching a crescendo in the vein of Sanders, only to moments later soften to speak with frankness about the inner workings of government.
“Theory isn’t enough. A president has to deliver in reality,” Clinton told voters at a recent campaign stop in Indianola, Iowa. “I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in the real world.”
The challenge remains to convince voters who are frustrated with the status quo to put their faith in a candidate whose experience is as much a liability as it is an advantage.
Nicole Larson, a 27-year-old bridal consultant who attended a Clinton rally in Davenport on Friday, embodied this dilemma. She supported Clinton in 2008 and admired the former secretary of state’s breadth of knowledge, but was torn in her decision this time and was leaning toward Sanders.
“I love the fact that he wants to shake up the system, whereas Hillary wants to use the system we have,” Larson said, before echoing the idea that prevented her making history in 2008: “I really think we need some change.”
On a sweltering morning in June last year, hundreds of voters folded around the narrow sidewalks of Roosevelt Island in New York City. Many were the young Americans whom Clinton sought to introduce herself to – not as the caricature in the media, but as a transformational candidate on the brink of history.
It was here that Clinton held her first campaign rally, standing on a stage mounted against the backdrop of the new World Trade Center. She spoke openly of her mother, Dorothy Rodham, from whom Clinton had learned the meaning of struggle and survival. She waxed poetic about her hero Eleanor Roosevelt.
It was readily apparent that the Clinton of 2016, unlike her 2008 self, was prepared to embrace the mantle of potentially becoming the first female president of the United States.
After a stirring speech that ran through a checklist of progressive causes – from income inequality to LBGT rights to immigration reform – Clinton grew sober upon closing.
“We’re going to build an America … where a father can tell his daughter: ‘Yes, you can be anything you want to be. Even president of the United States,’” she said.
Months later, on the first Saturday of September, Clinton rallied hundreds of supporters at a launch event for a national “Women for Hillary” group in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was 20 years to the day since Clinton delivered her celebrated speech on women’s rights in Beijing at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women.
The predominantly female crowd was brimming with enthusiasm as Clinton openly taunted her Republican rivals for accusing her of playing the gender card.
“If equal pay for equal work is playing the ‘gender card’ – then deal me in,” she declared.
After Iowa, she is still in the game, but the first hand has been tougher than she expected.
