She then ventured into what is for her mostly uncharted territory, talking about her own experiences growing up: how, for example, she wore thick glasses in junior high and high school and how that made it tough for her to meet boys.
“We’re not all the same in every setting we find ourselves, are we?” she said, arguing that people are composites of the many different faces “that all add up to the people we are.”
The speech included criticism of an opponent, Mr. Obama, although even that was couched in explicitly personal terms.
Picking up where she left off yesterday, Mrs. Clinton said that when she first drafted her health care plan, some advisers told her it would be politically expedient not to include a mandate for universal coverage.
“In other words, you want me to leave out millions of people from my health care plan; so O.K., who do we leave out?” she said. “Do we leave out Shannon’s daughter? People say she has a deteriorating condition. Maybe we should just leave her out.”
Des Moines, Dec. 18
One way to cause pandemonium in a Hy-Vee supermarket in Des Moines is to send Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Magic Johnson there at the same time.
The trio entered, in size order, and greeted a group of high-school students in the market’s coffee shop. (Hillary said, “Hello!” Bill said, “Good Morning,” and Magic said, “What’s up, baby?”)
Despite the best efforts of Mrs. Clinton’s staff, it wasn’t long before Mr. Clinton wandered out of a roped-off area and towards the deli counter. Along the way, he was asked about his wife’s new, more personal, emotional tack. “I do think having people who know her is a good thing,” he said. “I think it’s great.”
A scrum of reporters followed the former president. Many of the kids and grocery store employees hovered around Magic. Only Hillary was left with plenty room to maneuver.
The former president didn’t discourage the attention. He answered questions about Joe Lieberman’s endorsement of John McCain. And he talked to an Entertainment Tonight reporter about what he does during his downtime with Hillary. (“We’re always laughing about something,” he said.)
Mrs. Clinton’s handlers were not at all pleased with the former president for monopolizing the press.
“Jay!” Huma Abedin, her traveling “body person,” yelled at Jay Carson, who is currently Hillary’s traveling press secretary, but who used to be the president’s spokesman. “These kids have to go to school and you guys are doing this? Are you kidding me?”
Mr. Carson broke up the impromptu press conference moments later, and the reporters moved back to a blue rope, where Hillary said how excited she was to have Magic Johnson out campaigning with her. The first question went to Mr. Johnson, about whether he would run for mayor in Los Angeles.
“The citizens have asked me,” he said, but he wasn’t interested.
When asked why he was supporting Mrs. Clinton instead of Mr. Obama, he answered, “Thirty years’ experience right here. This is not going to be an easy job.”
Mrs. Clinton was then asked about what seemed to be her renewed vigor on the stump.
“You mean I got my groove back?” Hillary said. “I feel great. I feel great. You know, I love campaigning.
“You know, I occasionally read what you write,” she said adding, “I know that people have been saying, you know, we got to know more about her, we want to know more about her personally. And I totally get that. It’s a little hard. It’s a little hard for me. It’s not easy for me to talk about myself. I’d rather talk about Magic.”
Des Moines is Iowa’s central hub, and while most reporters sleep at the Marriott, with its dependable monotony and coveted reward points, the Hotel Fort Des Moines exudes a certain old-world charm. (In some circles here it is known as the “Hotel Itchy Scratchy.”) There are a lot of hotels and motels and fast-food restaurants in Iowa. Days Inn and Kum & Go, Comfort Inn and Arby’s appear at regular intervals and hang over the highways like neon lampposts.
During a long drive from Dubuque on the state’s eastern border to Council Bluffs, which is separated from Nebraska to the west by the Missouri River, I passed more than a dozen cars laying abandoned and embedded in the ice on the side of the road. Some had flipped onto their sides, probably blown over by gusts of wind, or they had skidded on the frozen black puddles that lurk at nighttime just inches outside the white lanes. Or they had collided with the deer you can hunt eight times a year. Or they had been taken out by low-flying turkeys.
Follow Jason Horowitz via RSS.
