No, her campaign is not officially over since this guy has not sung, but if it isn’t now in the tea leaves that Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s campaign is going nowheresville, it is in the coffee grinds:
EARLY, Iowa – During a swing through a conservative pocket of the state Friday, with only four days before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, Michele Bachmann visited a local restaurant to discover only a handful of people waiting for her.
Bachmann was accompanied by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, the district’s congressman and her close friend in Washington.
“You actually get your own private presidential candidate and member of Congress,” Bachmann told one voter, before sitting with the woman for several minutes over coffee.
In the back of the room, near a wall decorated with several yard signs, a small area between tables had been cleared for a microphone stand, which stood unused.
The tiny crowd – which, at its height, numbered around 15 people – included two members of the restaurant’s wait staff, and three construction workers on their lunch break.
“We’re just eating lunch, working in the area,” said Jim Olson, a worker from Marcus. He wore a campaign sticker an advance man had given him, and told NBC he planned to support Bachmann in the caucus.
Earlier Friday, at the Black Bear Diner in Sioux City, a similar scene played out, where staff and about 50 patrons were caught off guard during breakfast when Bachmann dropped by, moving table to table and signing autographs.
Basically voters are now deciding where is the most politically potent place to give their vote — to a candidate that they think has a chance or best articulates what they believe. And it doesn’t seem to be Bachmann.
I wonder if she’d get a better crowd at Godfather’s Pizza?
Photo via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.