And one more thing we’ll do is were going to have work opportunities for people who don’t go to college, because -- you know what? -- most people of any age group don’t go to college and graduate and I’m tired of them being left out.This statement was met with stronger applause from the audience of several hundred, arrayed in the stands of a Little League baseball stadium, than was her speech's section on making college more affordable.Let’s have more skills programs and apprenticeship programs. Let’s help hard-working young men and women who built things like this [gestures around stadium] and keep our economy going, that were going to take care of them as well.
After her speech, Clinton was mobbed by people trying to get her autograph and to take pictures with her. I talked with some of them, and found that she is -- just as Tom Schaller has predicted -- attracting new women into the political system. Angi Determan, 43, of Camanche, has never caucused before but says she's probably going to caucus this year, along with her sister, who has also never been to the caucuses, because of Clinton. "She's great," said Determan, a purchasing manager at a long-term health facility. "She's so much for the middle class, too. She's not just for the wealthy." Already, Determan had turned up for the fundraiser, at which several presidential candidates spoke, because of Clinton. She saw it as a teaching moment for her girls, Kaitlyn, 12, Morgan, 11, and Madison, 5, who accompanied her to the event. "I want them to see they can do anything," she said.
Danica Baker, 31, a writer from Clinton who'd come to the fundraiser with her young, wheelchair-bound daughter, was also attracted to the idea of Clinton as a breaker of the glass ceiling. "I think Hillary Clinton is great," she said. "I'd love to see the first woman president." Baker's friend Danielle Judd, 35, a physical therapy assistant, concurred. "We need new things," she said. "We need something that will update us." Neither woman had caucused before, either. But, thanks to Clinton, they now might.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
