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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waves as she walks with Senator Tom Harkin, former President Bill Clinton and Ruth Harkin at the 37th Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, September 14, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young

DES MOINES, Iowa - Hillary Clinton may seem like a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination if she runs for president in 2016, but Iowa Democrats - the first group of voters that the former secretary of state will have to charm on her way to the White House - have another plan in mind.

They want some alternatives to Clinton, who came in third in the Iowa caucuses in 2008 and aren't shy about saying so.

"I want to see what others do, like Elizabeth Warren," says Nancy Bobo, one of President Obama's earliest supporters in the state during the 2008 election. Warren, a senator from Massachusetts who was elected in 2012, said last year, "I'm not running for president and I plan to serve out my term." Still, some voters are holding out hope she'll declare her candidacy.

"No one thought there was any room for anyone else in 2008," Bobo says, "and there was."

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Clinton praised President Obama and rallied Democrats to turn out for the 2014 midterms during her first public event in Iowa since the 2008 pres...

Bobo was one of thousands who attended Sunday's annual steak fry hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, but she was one of the attendees not sporting a "Ready for Hillary" sticker. Hundreds of volunteers from "Ready for Hillary," a political action committee set up by Clinton's supporters to prepare for a possible candidacy, distributed stickers during the event.

Both Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, spoke at the Steak Fry. She was warmly received, but the enthusiasm was not over the top: No chants of "Run, Hillary, run," were heard, perhaps reflecting an understanding from her supporters that Clinton may lack the spark to inspire voters the way Mr. Obama did in 2008, even if she now is the party's best hope at winning the White House.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has been the Democrats' most active potential alternative to Clinton. He has already made three trips to Iowa this year and contributed $31,500 directly to candidates. He also is the only White House prospect paying staff - 11 of them this fall - to work on Iowa campaigns.

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Iowa Democrats: Bring on the Hillary Clinton challengers

Hillary Rodham Clinton joined some of the most powerful women in Congress on Thursday to push for advances on affordable child care, paid family leave and raising the minimum wage that could create greater economic progress for women.

Clinton, fresh off her campaign-style weekend visit to Iowa and her summer-long book tour, used Thursday's panel at the Center for American Progress to focus on issues that could form part of her domestic agenda should she run for president in 2016.

Clinton noted that women hold two-thirds of the minimum wage jobs across the country and three-quarters of the jobs that depend primarily on tips meaning that many of them are working full time but hovering at or below the poverty line.

We talk about a glass ceiling, said Clinton, who ended her 2008 campaign by proclaiming that she and her supporters had put 18 million cracks in it. The floor is collapsing.

These women dont even have a secure floor under them.

The former New York senator and secretary of State noted that she had just read a Bloomberg story listing eight things in a new poverty report that will make women mad. Although there was a slight improvement in Americas poverty rate, she said, for women theres a lot less to cheer about.

Gender inequality in the workforce remains a reality; we ticked up from 70 cents on the dollar for women, versus men in the work force, to 78 cents; and we know that women are more likely to be impoverished even if they are working, Clinton said.

She praised her colleagues on the panel House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut for pursuing policy changes to give women a fair shot. (Pelosi and Clinton engaged in some good-natured sparring over whether California or New York was more progressive on womens issues, with Pelosi touting the recent 10th anniversary of paid family leave in California).

The panel was led by the center's president, Neera Tanden, who introduced Clinton by noting that Clinton's flexibility as a boss when Tanden worked for her had allowed Tanden to balance a demanding job and raising young children. Clintons former congressional colleagues all spoke with frustration throughout the panel about how Democratic efforts to raise the minimum wage and expand paid family leave have stalled in Congress.

Joining the panel was Shawnta Jones of Maryland, who emphasized the importance of subsidized healthcare after she became a teen mother at 17, and Rhiannon Broschat, a 25-year-old Chicago retail worker who said she lost her job at Whole Foods after she had to leave work early to pick up her son on a day when his school closed in a weather emergency.

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Hillary Clinton touts family issues and hints at 2016 domestic agenda

If Hillary Clinton decides not to run for president -- and yes, that is still possible -- her return to the media lion's den might be a factor in her thinking.

She's done a national book tour and the paid lecture circuit, but Clinton got an up-close look at today's frenzied political news environment last weekend when she visited Iowa for the first time in seven years, a spectacle primed for an avalanche of media coverage given her expected campaign and her tortured history with the Hawkeye State.

I joined more than 200 other reporters who swarmed the scene and tweeted away, even though most Americans on social media that day probably cared more about Robert Griffin's ankle.

The press scrum that assembled to witness noncandidates Hillary and Bill Clinton flip Hy-Vee steaks with Sen. Tom Harkin -- behind a barricade, of course -- was as large, if not larger, than the media hordes that covered her at the height of her 2008 campaign.

One reporter got whacked in the head with the butt of a big television camera. Another photographer dramatically toppled off his ladder while straining to get a shot. It was a little absurd. When the Clintons approached the media zoo for question time, Bill Clinton leaned in and relished the scene. Hillary kept her distance.

Political Twitter, though, wasn't just a stream of gauzy Instagram-filtered pics of the Clintons: It was also rife with media criticism, some fair and some not, from politicos and press critics who pointed to the event as another example of lazy "pack journalism" with little journalistic upside.

The sniping had some credibility. What was the competitive advantage of being there, just one more reporter among the herd, all of us racing around to get the same quotes and the same pictures?

This was especially true for the many journalists in attendance who rarely travel outside of Washington or New York to cover politics but decided to open up their travel budget for this one trip.

Couldn't their time have been better spent reporting on an undercovered Senate or governor's race in some other part of the country, far away from the rest of the media scrum? Of course, the academics would say. But the incentive structure of today's click-driven news economy begs to differ. Hillary gets eyeballs. Arkansas' Tom Cotton does not. This is the world we live in.

As much as I believe in straying far, far away from the rest of the media pack -- this was a lynchpin argument in "Did Twitter Kill The Boys on the Bus?," the Harvard Kennedy School study I wrote last year about the hyperactive political news media -- I did find value in covering the Steak Fry.

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Hillary Clinton's madcap media mob

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Thursday that Congress is alarmingly detached from the lives of everyday Americans and encouraged people to turn policy ideas into political movements.

"The Congress, increasingly, despite the best efforts of my friends and others, is living in an evidence-free zone where what the reality is in the lives of Americans is so far from the minds of too many," said Clinton.

Progress on issues like the minimum wage and ensuring equal pay for women has been impeded by lawmakers who are disconnected from the struggles people are facing, she argued. The economic struggles everyday Americans deal with are "roiling beneath the surface of the political debates," said Clinton.

The former secretary of state of spoke at a panel discussion on women's economic security matters at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. She was joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), among others.

Clinton said that addressing women's issues requires ensuring a policy debate plays out in the electoral discourse.

"When we can turn an issue into a political movement that demands people be responsive during the election season, it carries over," said Clinton. "So, these issues have to be in the lifeblood of this election or any election."

The panelists discussed the importance of paycheck fairness, full participation by women in the workforce, voting and investment in early childhood learning programs.

"Where women are left out," Clinton said, "their children suffer, their communities suffer."

Modern day workplace polices "are stuck in the Mad Men era," said Gillibrand.

DeLauro lauded Clinton's record fighting for women and appeared to allude to her consideration of a 2016 presidential campaign.

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Hillary Clinton: Congress living in an evidence-free zone

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Indianola, Iowa (CNN) -- "It's been seven years, and a lot has changed," Hillary Clinton said Sunday in her first visit to Iowa since the state dealt her presidential campaign a devastating body blow.

But there was a moment in the afternoon when it seemed like not much had.

Roughly 200 credentialed media were gathered in a far corner of the Indianola Balloon Field, the grassy expanse where Sen. Tom Harkin was convening his 37th and final Steak Fry, an annual fundraiser that doubles as a point of entry for ambitious Democrats curious about the Iowa caucuses.

After a 90-minute wait, the press scrum -- scribblers and photographers alike -- were herded like cattle through a series of gates and escorted up to a hot smoking grill, waiting to capture the same image: a staged shot of Bill and Hillary Clinton, fresh out of their motorcade, ritualistically flipping steaks with Harkin.

Hillary Clinton stumps for Iowa Democrats, and herself

The Clintons ignored the half-hearted shouted questions from reporters -- "Mr. President, do you eat meat?" -- with practiced ease. They were two football fields away from the nearest voter. Mechanical, distant, heavy-handed: The afternoon spectacle felt a lot like Hillary's 2008 caucus campaign, a succession of errors that crumbled under the weight of a feuding top-heavy staff and the candidate's inability to connect with her party's grassroots.

And then the head fake -- and something different.

After a few minutes, the Clintons walked into a nearby barn, out of view. Most of the media swarm gave up and hustled back to the main event, where nearly 7,000 Democrats were eating red meat and waiting patiently in the sunshine to hear from two of the most famous people in the world.

A few dozen press were still milling about when the duo re-emerged. "There she is!" a television reporter screamed, clamoring for her cameraman.

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Clinton returns to Iowa; so is this a fresh start or deja vu?