Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is heading back to Iowa for a three-day swing through the early caucus state after a poll showed Hillary Clinton badly hemorrhaging support.
The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll showed Sanders, who has held on to his lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, within striking distance of Clinton in the Midwest. Clinton is the first pick among 37 of likely Dem caucusgoers, while Sanders has risen to 30 percent.
Clinton has lost a third of her supporters since May, the poll revealed.
Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs said Saturday that the the poll shows “the more Iowans get to know Bernie the better they like him and what he stands for.”
“We’ve seen the same thing in New Hampshire and across the country,” Briggs said. “At a time when the middle class continues to disappear and almost all new wealth and income is going to the top 1 percent, the American people want leadership that is prepared to fight for working families and take on the greed of a billionaire class that has enormous control over our economy, our political life and the media.”
On CNN Sunday, Sanders contrasted his positions with Hillary’s on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Keystone XL, Social Security and minimum wage expansion, and campaign finance.
“I speak about a political revolution. No president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it unless millions of people say, you know what? This country belongs to all of us. Our government must represent all of us, and not just a handful of billionaires,” he said.
“It can’t be done within the Beltway itself. We need a mass movement, and that’s what we are trying to create, and are succeeding in creating right now.”
Sanders told ABC, “I don’t know if her campaign is in trouble, but our campaign is doing great.”
“The polls that I saw said that there was massive enthusiasm for the message that we’re delivering and that the vast majority of the people who are voting for me in that Iowa poll — and I think it’s true all over this country — are not necessarily anti-Hillary Clinton, they’re pro-Bernie Sanders,” the senator said, adding those voters are “pro a message that says enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of very wealthy people.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a Clinton supporter, brushed off the poll on ABC.
“Being that we’re in Minnesota and we can see Iowa from our porch and I’ve been down there for Secretary Clinton, I have to tell you her campaign is so much different than 2008. It has energy. It is organized. It is a grassroots campaign. And when I look at those numbers I think about races like one of our Minnesotans Michelle Bachmann in 2012 was surging at this point. We’ve got back in 2004 Dick Gephardt was surging. It’s six months ahead,” Klobuchar said.
“And she is still ahead in these polls. I think she’s running a strong campaign. She was just in Minnesota. And I was in the room and saw these delegates from all over the country inspired and enthusiastic and cheering. And so I think you have to look at her energy, how she is responding to these 17 opponents that, you know, basically are attacking her daily.”
The senator said the former secretary of State acknowledges “you can’t just waltz in and win a Democratic primary.”
“We’ve seen many people in the past think they could do that, and that’s not what happened,” Klobuchar said. “I think she approached this with a vigor from the beginning, having been through this before, that she was going to be scrappy, that she was going to be out there meeting people, talking to people in a grassroots way.”
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