Her eyes already on next November’s general election, Hillary Clinton heads to Orlando on Wednesday to build up her team in Florida.
While most of the attention has been on the Republican primary field, Clinton’s hold on the Democratic nomination has only increased in recent weeks even as doubts about how she will do in the general election remain in place. That being the case, Clinton’s already trying to put a campaign organization in place in key swing states, like Florida, that will be battlegrounds come next November.
Democrats can often have a bumpy presidential primary process and they have tossed aside favorites for their nominations before as Clinton knows well from first hand experience eight years ago. But she has a far larger lead over Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley now than she ever did over Barack Obama and John Edwards last time out.
Sanders still has a chance to score a few wins, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire. But Sanders could have peaked too quickly and, last week, Quinnipiac released a poll showing him behind Clinton in Iowa by 9 percent. With the holidays here, Americans can be expected to focus on other things besides politics which could mean Sanders’ window is starting to close.
Even if Sanders has a breakthrough in Iowa or New Hampshire, it’s tough to see where he goes after that. Iowa and New Hampshire feature less African Americans and Hispanic voters than most Democratic presidential primary and caucus states. Plenty of Democratic presidential hopefuls--Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley come to mind--collapse after doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire since they couldn’t win over African Americans in states like South Carolina or Hispanics in states like Nevada. Clinton, much like her husband back in 1992 against Harkin, Tsongas and Jerry Brown, is counting heavily on support from these voters and Sanders hasn’t made inroads with these voters so far.
All this being the case, Clinton can start laying the groundwork for the general election. Florida remains the biggest swing state on the electoral map and the GOP will have a very rough time winning back the White House in 2016 if Clinton carries Florida. Democrats might have carried Florida three out of the last five presidential elections but Clinton isn’t doing well against the leading Republican candidates in some polls in Florida. As her trip to Orlando later this week shows, the Sunshine State’s on Clinton’s mind and she rightfully sees the Republicans as a bigger threat to her in Florida than Sanders ever will be.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
