Bernie Sanders attracted yesterday by far the largest audience so far of any candidate this cycle in Iowa - a crowd of some 2500 people - which the Des Moines Register describes as "racially diverse, with a prominent youth presence."
While I've heard Clinton supporters argue that we shouldn't look to how Obama fared against Clinton in 2008 as a guide - and I agree of course that there are big differences this year in how great Clinton's advantages are over the underdog candidates - neither can we dismiss what's actually happening.
One audience member, 59-year-old Council Bluffs Democrat Richard Grondek, said he didn't think Sanders had a realistic chance of winning the Iowa caucuses "until he started drawing crowds like this."
"This feels like the Obama synergy the first time he ran," Grondek said. "The crowds just kept getting bigger and bigger."
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Mary Andrie, a retired special education teacher from Council Bluffs, said her son and daughter-in-law are leaning Sanders, and they're pulling her his way, too.
"I was a really staunch Clinton candidate. I'm a woman and I really want a woman to be president," Andrie said. "But she's not as strong a candidate as she was. She doesn't quite have the energy she had before. There's something lacking there. I haven't quite figured out what it is."
Andrie said she's also "really concerned because Hillary's not getting young people out. They're so discouraged because they wanted so much more from Obama than what he gave them." Sanders is the kind of candidate that can fire up the youth, she said.
I think Democratic partisans are also starting to catch on to the fact that Sanders has called himself an independent over the years not because he didn't care about the Democratic Party but because he felt the Democratic Party had lost its way - had abandoned the New Deal/Fair Deal progressivism which he so deeply believes in. He firmly believes that steering it back onto that course is how we'll get more people to vote Democratic. Here's how he responded to folks in Iowa who questioned how he intended to help grow the party:
Sanders said he's committed to building the Democratic Party, even in very conservative states.
"If you claim to be the party of the working people — if that's what the Democrats are supposed to be, in the legacy of F.D.R., even Harry Truman — how do you abandon the poorest states in America and not talk to those people?" Sanders said to a crowd in Sheldon. "How are you not running strong candidates, putting money into those areas?"
He said Republicans are good at capitalizing on wedge issues such as abortion, gay rights and immigration. But he said Democrats need to go on the offensive by relentlessly focusing on economic issues.
"What you've got to do is say to people, 'Look, we may disagree on that issue, but don't you think your kid has a right to a college education? Don't you think you deserve a decent-paying job? Do you really believe we should be giving tax breaks to millionaires?' " Sanders said. "Those are the issues we've got to take to working people all over this country."
Winter said he's drawn to that message, but still wonders about Sanders' party loyalty. Winter is a longtime Hillary Clinton fan, having served as one of her delegates during her last presidential run in 2008.
"But I came here because I like what Bernie's talking about," Winter said. "If he can show he's committed to the party, I would be open to supporting him."