CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — If Hillary Clinton is worried about liberal challenger Bernie Sanders, she didn’t let it show here on Friday night at the party’s first cattle call event, which saw Democrats’ quintet of presidential candidates finally descend on the same place at the same time.

As expected, at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame Dinner all eyes were on Clinton and Sanders, who sat just feet away from each other. The cavernous ballroom of roughly 1,300 Iowan activists ate up the strain between the party’s leading candidates, while laying bare some of their most glaring weaknesses. The crowd was largely made up of party establishment figures sympathetic to Clinton, but it also comprised a healthy pro-Bernie faction, creating a night of tension for two candidates who insisted on talking past one another, neither fully acknowledging the former secretary of state’s status as a dominating front-runner who remains dogged by Sanders’ fiery, insurgent, and grumpy candidacy.


Meanwhile the audience barely registered the presence of Lincoln Chafee or Jim Webb. But there were signs of a small opening for Martin O’Malley, whose speech was received favorably by a crowd that is nonetheless still working out what, exactly, is his pitch. For the former Maryland governor, who was expected to be Clinton’s primary progressive antagonist until Sanders snatched the mantle from him, it was mostly a relief.

Here are POLITICO’s five takeaways from the Democrats’ first cattle call:

1. Hillary’s sensitive to the critique that she’s a candidate of the past

On the campaign trail, Clinton repeatedly drops lines about how Republican policies are backward-looking and how she wants to move the country forward. But on Friday night, she slipped beyond that standard campaign fare. Facing recent criticism from Republicans — particularly 40-somethings Marco Rubio and Scott Walker — that she represents the politics of her husband’s White House and the 1990s, Clinton, 67, made clear she is fed up with this argument.

“Trickle-down economics has to be one of the worst ideas of the 1980s. It is right up there with New Coke, shoulder pads, and big hair,” she said, in what amounted to catnip to a true blue crowd. “I’m never going to let the Republicans rip away the progress we’ve made. They may have some fresh faces, but they are the party of the past.”

The “fresh faces” reference wasn’t just an elbow thrown at Rubio and Walker, however. It also read like a brush-back pitch to O’Malley, whose “new leadership” slogan couldn’t be clearer in its intent.

2. A healthy number of Iowa Democrats are on the same page as Bernie Sanders. But not the majority.

Faced with questions about Sanders’ polling surge, Clinton supporters frequently say that 30 to 40 percent of the party fits Bernie’s — or Elizabeth Warren’s — ideological profile, but no more than that.

Friday night showed exactly why.

Clinton’s speech regularly brought huge portions of the crowd to its feet with her broadsides against Republicans, and then to a hushed, reverent silence when she spoke about her mother’s hard childhood.

But while Sanders’ stemwinder drove so many “you tell ‘ems” and “hell yeah”s from the crowd that it occasionally felt like a tent revival, well more than half the room felt no need to even acknowledge Sanders’ most powerful lines. It was as if he was talking to the crowd wearing Bernie ‘16 stickers, but not to anyone else. The bulk of the audience effectively twiddled during the loudest stretches of the Sanders stump speech, leaving the rapturous applause to the designated Bernie tables.

The message of political revolution failed to land on ears that weren’t already sympathetic to Sanders, suggesting there are limits to the bounds of his popularity in the state — and within the state party establishment — that by now knows him well.

3. Clinton sees no benefit in acknowledging her Democratic rivals

Hillary Clinton had yet to mention any of her Democratic opponents on the campaign trail heading into Friday night. That didn’t change once the evening’s festivities were over, suggesting Clinton won’t start taking on Sanders unless he starts matching or surpassing her in polls.

Instead, the former secretary of state went after Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Donald Trump by name, throwing the crowd the red meat it so craved and sending a clear message to the audience that she views herself as the front-runner for the nomination.

“We’ve heard a lot recently from the new Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump. Finally, a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine,” she said, to laughs and raucous applause.

“Governor Walker kicked off his campaign by rolling back reproductive rights for women and stripping union workers of their rights,” she said to jeers.

And to Republicans who avoid discussing climate change by pleading ignorance as non-scientists, Clinton mocked their timidity. “I’m not a scientist either, I’m just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain, and I’m not going to let them take us backwards.”

Clinton’s camp sees no need to elevate any of the Democratic rivals trailing her by naming them, and except for a brief nod at the beginning of her speech that did not use any names, she might as well have been the headliner at a political rally for Iowa Democrats.

4. Bernie now recognizes the Democratic Party’s diversity

It’s abundantly clear to the Sanders campaign that it has a real candidate on its hands. But the Vermont senator has never had to appeal to minority voters in his heavily white state, and he’s now starting to take up the challenge.

After tacking a passage about immigration reform onto his stump speech in front of a Hispanic advocacy group earlier this week, Sanders went much further on Friday, drawing huge applause from his pockets of the room by bringing up disproportionately high African-American incarceration rates and his hope to help undocumented immigrants.

Lines like these may be part of any standard liberal stump speech, but Sanders is no standard liberal. His rollicking, red-faced speech on Friday picked up steam with his usual anti-billionaire talk, but there was a noticeable ripple through his delighted supporters when he reached the sections designed to speak to minority voters.

5. O’Malley has the potential to catch fire in Iowa

O’Malley plainly showed the most potential in Cedar Rapids, successfully firing up a crowd full of partisans for rival candidates. But his performance also highlighted his central problem as he concentrates on Iowa: he has yet to define whether he wants to be the progressive standard-bearer or the candidate with executive experience.

“My name is Martin O’Malley, I’m running for president, and I need your help,” he said, effectively acknowledging from the start that he is still working to gain traction and higher name recognition. The crowd rose to its feet repeatedly over the next 15 minutes as he ticked through a progressive wish-list — from Wall Street reform to sweeping clean energy measures. Nonetheless, O’Malley’s central pitch seemed to be based on the notion that his city hall and governor’s mansion experience would impress.

“I am the only candidate for president with fifteen years of executive experience,” he said. “We didn’t just talk about it, we actually got it done.”

The two pitches are not mutually exclusive, but they’re separate messages. Without choosing one to center his campaign on, O’Malley appeared to be a compelling character but not necessarily a viable option — at least for now. He finished to serious applause and scattered “O-Mall-ey!” chants. But they were drowned out within seconds by roars from far more enthusiastic backers of the next speaker:

“Bernie! Bernie!”