Chuck Todd: Clinton’s Experience Argument Is ‘Tough to Win in Iowa’

MITCHELL: “What Clinton was doing yesterday was not only attacking Bernie Sanders very sharply, but with echoes of the way she went after Barack Obama. Let’s watch that.”
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CLINTON [February 24, 2008]: “You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear.”
CLINTON [January 1, 2016]: “I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand.”
CLINTON [Thursday]: “I’m not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in the real world.”
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MITCHELL: “Now, what the campaign would say is they’re not campaigning against Bernie Sanders the way they campaigned against Barack Obama because their campaign against Barack Obama was he’s a freshman senator, not experienced, an upstart, he’s naive--she said about Iran and some of the other dictators he would negotiate with. About Bernie Sanders, they are saying he’s been in Congress 27 years. The House and the Senate.”
TODD: “None of his ideas have ever panned out.”
MITCHELL: “Right. Of course, what he would say is how about my idea about voting against the Iraq war, Madam Secretary?”
TODD: “I think her argument here is tough to win in Iowa, but probably is a good argument in the long run.”
MITCHELL: “If you get to the long run.”
TODD: “As the other states come in, as you get more casual active voters who are going to allow electability, who are going to start weighing these other factors. I think we forget that we condition, and I say we, we in the political media and the political class, we have conditioned I think New Hampshire and Iowa voters on both sides of the aisle to dream. You know, on the Right, it’s the conservative that they want, their heart on the Left. I think this is what makes it more complicated for Hillary Clinton. Look that ad. It is a very good closing ad, it is a great general election closing spot, but does it tug at the heartstrings, does it really want to say oh, yes, let’s go, let’s charge the caucuses, where Bernie is tapping into all heart.”