INDIANOLA, Iowa — Hillary Clinton returned to Iowa on Sunday for the first time in nearly seven years with a message focused on the 2014 elections, but with the 2016 presidential election in mind.
“Hello, Iowa!” Clinton told the more than 6,000 Democrats who converged on a hot-air balloon field outside of Des Moines for Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry. “I’m back!”
“It does really feel just like yesterday when I was here,” Clinton said. But, she added, “It’s been seven years, and a lot has changed.”
But the more things change, the more they stay the same. The last time Clinton was in Iowa, she was a candidate for president. This time, she is widely assumed to be a candidate for president again, if unofficially for now.
Clinton addressed the prospect of her next presidential campaign with only perfunctory coyness, and everyone in the crowd was in on the joke. As Iowans well know, no politician travels to the Hawkeye State by accident.
“It is true, I am thinking about it,” Clinton said of running for president, as she has before. “But today, that is not why I’m here. I’m here for the steak.”
Joined by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton was the headline speaker and the main attraction at the annual steak fry, an Iowa political institution. Harkin, a Democrat, will retire from the Senate after this year, and this steak fry was the 37th and last.
The event also marked an important first: Hillary Clinton’s first trip to Iowa since 2008, when she posted a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, behind Barack Obama and John Edwards. In her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton described the result as “excruciating.”
But if Bill Clinton has been called “the comeback kid,” Harkin said Sunday, “I have a new phrase.”
“President Clinton and Hillary Clinton are now the comeback couple,” said Harkin, who once himself faced Bill Clinton in a Democratic primary, during the 1992 election.
Hillary Clinton said nothing to suggest her comeback will end with her recent tenure as secretary of state. Her speech touched on parts of her biography, including her upbringing and her political résumé, in the same manner as a presidential campaign stump speech.
The remarks struck a populist tone, a favorite theme among many Democrats lately, hitting on issues including the minimum wage, paycheck fairness, and expanding the economy.
“I know we face economic, political and security challenges,” Clinton said. “But we can meet those challenges and seize opportunity, too.”
Clinton was careful to couch these issues in the 2014 midterm elections, which will decide whether Democrats hold on to their majority in the Senate. She offered her support for Iowa Democratic candidates including Rep. Bruce Braley, who is running to replace Harkin in the Senate.
“Too many people only get excited about presidential campaigns,” Clinton said. She added gamely, “Look, I get excited about presidential campaigns, too.”
Bill Clinton, who Harkin described as “the person that accompanied Hillary Clinton back to Iowa,” was noticeably less spotlight-stealing than usual, but no less meandering in his remarks than is his signature.
“We have to pull this country together to push this country forward,” Bill Clinton said, as he urged support for Democratic candidates in 2014.
The Clintons and Harkin stood before a massive American flag as they spoke, with a few tractors dotting the grassy field behind it. The crowd, sitting in fold-up chairs and on blankets on the muddy field, stretched across and up a hillside. There were roughly 10,000 meals served, an approximate measure of the crowd, according to a spokeswoman for the Iowa Democratic Party, making this the largest steak fry since 2007, when Hillary Clinton shared the stage with Barack Obama and other Democratic presidential candidates.
As is tradition, the Clintons spent a few minutes grilling steak before the speaking program, at a grill far removed from the crowd — but surrounded by the hordes of press who attended the event.
“These look really good,” Hillary Clinton said as she admired the slabs of meat.
After the grilling photo-op, the Clintons re-emerged from behind a barn to speak with the press. In classic Clintonian fashion, Hillary Clinton was disciplined and on-message, taking questions for only a few minutes before she walked away. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, draped his arm around Harkin’s shoulder and could hardly be pulled away by aides 10 minutes later.
When one reporter asked Bill Clinton whether Hillary Clinton would be liberal enough to win the Iowa caucuses, Bill Clinton responded, “I won it twice!”
But that was as much as he or Hillary would remark on the 2016 election. When one reporter asked whether Bill Clinton would be disappointed if Hillary Clinton did not run, Bill Clinton laughed, “I will not be baited.”
“This is about the people running right now, 2014,” Hillary Clinton told reporters before her speech.
Neither Clinton needed to explicate what was clear even when left unspoken: The Harkin Steak Fry was the dawn of a new Clinton era, and a new presidential election cycle — the two things likely one and the same.
Offstage, a campaign-like apparatus was already whirring. Ready For Hillary, the pro-Hillary Clinton group that has worked to build a nationwide list of Clinton supporters, was out in force at the event, distributing all manner of Hillary Clinton swag and parking its promotional bus in plain view. Some Ready For Hillary volunteers hailed from Iowa but many from elsewhere, including Washington.
“They’re amazing,” Bill Clinton said of the group. “They’re like Energizer bunnies. They’re everywhere.”
But the group hardly needed to get the word out about Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Many Democrats who attended the steak fry already assume Clinton is running for president.
Tristan Carman, a local college student who volunteered at the event, called it “an unofficial kickoff event” for Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“She’s ‘waiting’ until after the midterm,” Carman said, bending his fingers into air quotes, “but she’s running.”
Anita Varme, of Des Moines, was a precinct captain for Barack Obama during the 2008 Iowa caucuses. This time, she said, she plans to volunteer for Clinton’s campaign.
“I didn’t feel like it was Hillary’s time” in 2008, Varme said, adding that it had not been long enough since Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Now, I think it’s Hillary’s time.”
After the Clintons spoke, supporters swarmed along a fence where the Clintons shook hands, signed autographs, and posed for selfies.
After one woman met Hillary Clinton, she gushed to her friend, “Look, I’m shaking.”
“I’m ready for you!” a man shouted to Hillary Clinton as she passed him along the fence.
Should Hillary Clinton run for president, she would start with a commanding advantage over other Democrats in the Hawkeye State. A recent CNN/ORC poll showed Clinton winning support from 53 percent of Iowans, compared to just 15 percent for Vice President Joe Biden, who ranked second.
But Iowans of both parties agree, Clinton will need to spend plenty of time in Iowa prior to the 2016 caucuses to maintain that early dominance.
At a tailgate Saturday before the rivalry football game between University of Iowa and Iowa State University, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, offered Clinton the same advice he gives all potential presidential candidates.
“If she wants to run for president, my advice is, come early, and come often, spend a lot of time and money in Iowa, and listen to the people of Iowa and their questions,” Branstad said.
As Hillary Clinton finished her speech Sunday, she hinted that she would indeed return, and soon.
“It’s really great to be back,” Clinton said. “Let’s not let another seven years go by.”
