Some Hillary Clinton backers say Sanders is so unpalatable they would look for another option in the unlikely event that he emerged as the Democratic nominee – including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. | AP Photo Hillary Clinton confronts her 43 percent problem In the final days before Iowa votes, Clinton is trying to thread the needle between the views of her big-money donors and the surprisingly high number of Iowa Democrats who describe themselves as 'socialists.'

DES MOINES – Mitt Romney had a 47 percent problem. Hillary Clinton’s problem is 43 percent.

That’s the share of Democratic caucus goers in Iowa who identify themselves as “socialists,” according to a recent Des Moines Register poll. It’s a percentage that has turned a once-easy line of attack – painting Bernie Sanders as too far left to be electable -- into a trickier endeavor for Clinton in the last days before the Iowa caucuses.


Now, as she makes her final argument, Clinton faces a dilemma. She is appealing to an electorate that’s clearly energized by Sanders’ populist rhetoric. But he’s not just any populist. He’s a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist calling for a political revolution to overthrow the “billion-aihs,” as Sanders refers to them in his thick Brooklyn accent. That puts him in direct conflict with the big money donors funding her campaign -- the very targets of Sanders’ wrath – and they’re beginning to voice their frustration over the emergence of a viable challenger spouting such “radical” ideas.

“Bernie Sanders is a fringe candidate,” said Eleni Kounalakis, a major Clinton donor who served as ambassador to Hungary during Clinton’s time as Secretary of State. “Not just because he is advocating for policies that are pie in the sky and impractical, but also because he has no proven ability to advance these fringe strategies. He’s been in Congress for decades and hasn’t been able to advance any of his fairly radical ideas.”

Kounalakis, who hosted Clinton at her San Francisco home for a $2,700-a-head fundraiser last November, said that “Sanders could very well come out of Iowa and New Hampshire looking like a viable candidate. But in terms of leading the country? He’s simply too radical and his ideas are just fiction.”

Some Clinton backers say Sanders is so unpalatable they would look for another option in the unlikely event that he emerged as the Democratic nominee – including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“[Michael] Bloomberg was a transformational mayor,” Doug Band, Teneo president and longtime top adviser to Bill Clinton told POLITICO. “I have incredible respect for him as a leader, visionary and philanthropist.” Band said a scenario in which Sanders and Bloomberg, running as an independent, are up against a Republican like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump “isn’t going to happen. But hypothetically speaking, if it did, it’s not even close -- I would choose Bloomberg, as would so many others.”

That her supporters see themselves more in line with a billionaire independent puts Clinton in a tight spot -- those backers are important allies for Clinton, many of them longtime personal friends. But as textbook one-percenters, they are potentially political poison in Iowa, where Sanders’ most potent line of attack on Clinton has been highlighting her paid speeches in front of Goldman Sachs, and her personal connections to Wall Street.

On Wednesday night, Sanders criticized Clinton for leaving town to attend a fundraiser at Franklin Square Capital Partners in Philadelphia.

“My opponent is not in Iowa tonight,” he pointed out, drawing loud boos from the crowd. “She is raising money from a Philadelphia investment firm. Frankly, I'd rather be here with you." On Thursday, he released a new ad attacking Goldman Sachs for injecting “millions in campaign contributions and speaking fees” into politics.

Clinton has not managed, so far, to form an effective response to those attacks, which could hurt her here in a tight race that has her up by a hair.

“[In Iowa] Bernie Sanders is really shorthand for ‘the Democratic party should move to the left,’” said John Deeth, a well-known local Democratic activist and blogger. “That’s identity politics as much as the woman president thing is.”

It puts her in a difficult bind, Deeth added.

“Her smart strategy is to motivate her own supporters," said Jeff Link, a Des Moines-based political consultant with close ties to former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. And her well-heeled donors launching grenades at Sanders’ extreme views is “the kind of talk that drives protest voters insane,” he said. “It gets them more fired up, not less fired up. I don’t think that’s helpful to her.”

Those protest voters, Link said, appear to be a growing demographic. While it’s normal in Iowa for a populist Democratic candidate like Dennis Kucinich or Howard Dean to have a following in Iowa, Link admitted he was “kind of surprised” by the 43 percent of voters who identify themselves as socialists today.

Adam Mason, state policy organizing director of the CCI Action Fund, a social services organization that endorsed Sanders, explained the leftward drift.

“Our members have been frustrated by business as usual politics and the status quo Democratic party,” said Mason. “It's a frustration among Iowa Democrats who think we start negotiating from the center, and we don’t see those on the right doing so.”

Clinton, who has largely abandoned an offensive strategy in the last days of campaigning, has steered clear of the kind of argument she tried eight years ago, when she tried to cast Barack Obama as a candidate too far to the left to be electable.

Back then, she dredged up a questionnaire from Obama’s state Senate run in Chicago, where he indicated he once opposed the death penalty and backed a “single-payer” health insurance system.

Campaigning at a bowling center in Adel, about 30 minutes outside Des Moines, Clinton shifted away from her attack on Sanders’ “Medicare-for-All” proposals as good in theory, but unfeasible in reality. Instead, she sought to portray herself as the tougher candidate when it comes to Wall Street reform -- an effort to undercut any sense that she is beholden to the billionaire class.

“Senator Sanders and I are absolutely clear on this,” Clinton said Wednesday, speaking to about 300 Iowans who packed the bowling alley. “We will not let Wall Street wreck Main Street again…. We agree that we can’t let that happen again. And we also agree we can’t let the big banks pose a risk to our economy.”

She moved closer to Sanders’ core income inequality argument, asserting that she is the only candidate with a plan to target the “shadow banking sector.”

“It wasn’t just the big banks,” Clinton said of the 2008 financial crisis. “It was an investment bank, Lehman Brothers; it was a big insurance company, AIG; it was Countrywide Mortgage; it was another bank called Wachovia -- and others who are part of the non-traditional banking sector.”

Of her plan, she said, “everybody who’s looked at it says it’s the toughest, most effective, comprehensive plan to prevent what happened to us before from every happening again.”

And she used the fact that “the Republicans are advertising against me” as proof that she is the candidate feared by Wall Street titans.

“These are guys who try to make smart investments,” she said of the Koch brothers, “started with two hedge fund billionaires, started their own super PAC, started attacking me.”

She cast a new ad by billionaire Joe Ricketts that is targeting Sanders as "too liberal" as an attempt to “muddy the waters to confuse Democrats about who has the toughest, most comprehensive plan.”

Fueled by a message that continues to resonate with progressives, the Sanders' campaign shrugged off Clinton’s Wall Street focus – and donor class concerns about the Vermont senator’s electability.

“Isn't that what the same folks said in 2008?” spokesman Michael Briggs said.