<\/a>I stopped by the brand new Hillary Clinton campaign HQ in St. Louis yesterday. It\u2019s a small-ish storefront on a busy street in the city, at 4039 Lindell Blvd<\/a>. It\u2019s currently staffed by two enthusiastic college students, who are equipped with laptops, a couple of folding tables, and a few chairs. It\u2019s just the beginning: there are no phones, no wi-fi. The storefront windows are festooned with Hillary posters. I\u2019m told there is, in fact, a state campaign director on board, but she was at lunch when I wandered by. And a grand opening is set for August 23.<\/p>\n All of this is encouraging news. I hope the now-empty office morphs\u2014quickly\u2014into a crowded place, filled with volunteers doing data entry, making phone calls, and marching out into the streets to get out the vote in November. I\u2019ll be one of them, and I\u2019m going to recruit as many other people as I can. Hillary is one of the most qualified candidates for President we\u2019ve seen in many years, and she deserves to be the first woman elected to the Oval Office.<\/p>\n I just hope that the powers that be in her campaign, and in the Democratic party, are serious about campaigning in Missouri. The young women staffing the folding table at HQ yesterday said that this was going to be the only office in Missouri. They thought that the campaign\u2019s thinking is that Kansas City didn\u2019t need an office, because \u201cit has a very strong group of volunteers.\u201d\u00a0 I hope they\u2019re wrong, and that the campaign is thinking bigger than that.<\/p>\n Pollsters and pundits [whose opinions I take with a large grain of primordial Himalayan salt\u2014unless they agree with my own leanings, of course] are calling Missouri a \u201clean-Republican\u201d state. That\u2019s a big change from the deep-red designation we\u2019ve had for the past decade. That means that Hillary has a chance here. It also reflects the tightening race between entrenched Republican Senator Roy Blunt and Democratic challenger Jason Kander.<\/p>\n