When Bernie Sanders announced his 2016 presidential run, I made the safe prediction that he would be underestimated. Touting the odds against a Vermont socialist was money for the 24/7 non-expert "news" chatterboxes because it meshed with the impressions of the casual observers, most of whom were not familiar with Sanders to begin with. Sanders is the latest politician to show that just because you're unfamiliar with someone does not mean they don't have juice.
Less than a month from the Iowa caucus, Sanders has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in polling there. I have no prediction of who will win in Iowa. I really couldn't care less. The outcome is not worth the endless coverage it gets mainly because the first contest in the country doesn't have any notable track record for picking the eventual nominee (Rick Santorum, anyone?). The most value I get out of Iowa is how it can throw things into disarray at the last minute after months specualtive narratives.
What makes me want to throw in my two cents at this point is how Hillary is choosing to fight back against her slump in the polls. She is slugging upward at Sanders with warnings that he wants to raise taxes to roll all of our health care programs into one. It's such a curious attack coming from someone who I sometimes believe is a cunning operative. It's strange to me because (bear in mind, I've never been to Iowa) Iowa Democrats strike me as somewhat sophisticated. They don't scare easily. Hillary Clinton should know this better than anyone else having been beat there before by young, new, untested (and not to mention, black) Barack Obama in 2008. In spite of this, she has chosen to try to win them over by branding Sanders as a tax-and-spend liberal, a tactic that is traditionally more effective on Republican and independent voters.
With this shift in attack, Clinton has brought upon herself more reason for voters to be skeptical of her. Declining numbers are a tough enough wall to scale, but how you claw your way back can make things worse. Her going after Sanders on health care only reminds progressive Iowans that Sanders is concerned about health care. This is not to say that this public strategy is not paired with some other behind the scenes siege. There's no doubt, she got ground game. It would be wiser for her to stick with that front rather than go after Sanders for being a progressive.
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