The small venue on Roosevelt Island outside New York City appeared packed to the gills for Hillary Clinton’s second announcement that she’s running for president, but there was much less excitement in Iowa.
CNN dispatched a reporter, Jeff Zeleny, to a “watch party” to gather reaction from what was expected to be throngs of people — but only six showed up.
“The real question here is: Is the enthusiasm going to be out there for Democrats?” Zeleny said in a live report. “I’m at a watch party here in Iowa and, Fredricka, only six people — which includes one staffer — were actually at it. Maybe people were watching at home, I’m not sure, but at this one party we picked randomly, only six people were inside watching it here in Marshalltown, Iowa.”
“Oh, that’s funny,” said host Fredricka Whitfield as CNN showed a few clips of the handful of people milling about the small room. “Those images of that house party, or watch party, I don’t know, looking kind of pitiful, not really very exciting.”
James Warren writes at The New York Daily News:
She invoked the legacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and her husband, even the lyrics of “Yesterday” by the Beatles, released in 1965. She cited a weighty professional past that sets her apart from any prospective candidate.
But she also seemed cautious, even stale and a bit clichéd, in bashing “trickle down economics” of a Republican past and calling vaguely for “growth and fairness,” rewriting the tax code, cutting red tape and spurring innovation.
She catered to her party’s core on gay rights, better early childhood education, paid family leave, cutting student loan debt and upending the key Supreme Court decision on campaign finance.
There was nothing especially provocative, even in proposing greater worker share of profits. And she tried to have it both ways on energy: calling for more clean energy and the extraction of fossil fuels.
