Hillary Clinton unveiled another Iowa politician’s endorsement on Monday, this one catered to the same group of voters that Vice President Joe Biden is cultivating as he mulls a presidential run.
Representative Dave Loebsack, who backed Barack Obama in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, is throwing his support behind Clinton this time. “She has the ideas, the passion, the values that we need in our next president,” Loebsack said Monday. “To put it simply, she knows how to work with others and get things done. That is why I’m proud to stand with her today and announce my support for Hillary Clinton for President.”
Loebsack is the second important Iowa Democrat to back Clinton since the speculation around a Biden run picked up at the beginning of August. The first, former Governor Tom Vilsack, has served alongside Biden as agriculture secretary for the entirety of President Obama’s administration. Though Loebsack’s endorsement doesn’t carry as much weight as the widely known, popular Vilsack’s, it’s another shot across the bow at the vice president: It was announced at the Quad City Federation of Labor’s Salute to Labor Chicken Fry on the same day that Biden marches with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka at a Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh.
Biden has sought out Trumka and other progressive luminaries as he considers a run. He met with the powerful labor leader at his official residence in Washington, D.C. last month, about a week after meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
#share#”There wouldn’t be a single basic right, from a 40-hour week to sick leave, there wouldn’t a single basic right out there . . . but for labor,” Biden said in his remarks to the Allegheny County Labor Day Parade on Monday. He merged that pro-union mantra with Warren’s populist rhetoric throughout the speech. “Today 1 percent of Americans owns 40 percent of all wealth in America,” he said. “A level playing field doesn’t exist.”
#related#While she may be working behind the scenes to keep Biden sidelined, publicly Clinton has tried to avoid the perception that she’s attempting to muscle the vice president out of the race. “I’m not going to address any of the political questions around my friend Joe Biden,” she said during an MSNBC interview on Friday. “He has to make a really difficult decision. You can see him struggling with it, and I just wish the best for him and his family.”
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.