Dateline Goffstown New Hampshire.
Hillary Clinton did not do half bad attracting herself a crowd yesterday on the quad of Saint Anselm College, of course it was a beautiful day and seemingly endless waves of families with young daughters rolled up in Hybrids parked in Battalion Formation to see a Woman On The Brink of Becoming U.S. President.
Lots of mothers with daughters that was a potent motif in that crowd believe me. Over five thousand in attendance by my rough estimate.
My Ghod Security was STRICT at this event, metal detectors and the TSA screened everyone and everything and the Hilltop was seething with Secret Service Agents in Kevlar Vests and Aviator Sunglassses.
Gone are the days when The Reverend Jesse Jackson (That Protestant Prince of Controversy) could idly wander the Campus with three Secret Service Agents in Tow & spontaneously harangue the students.
Citizen Clinton was introduced by the redoubtable Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a passionate rhetorical style and a voice that fairly throbs with indignation. Our Senior Senator has had a profitable autumn making Donald Trump's life perfectly miserable ginnin' up her own name stating out some nice political turf as well and if all and sundry get HRC elected so much the better.
It bears some watching because while HRC and EW are on the same page about corporate criminality etc, Warren is a lot more definite and detailed in her views. Again she is staking out some territory and hopes to secure herself a place at the table when and if any of this is getting read into law. But then as we soar thru the modern liberal litany, Warren tends to be more detailed and definite in her views about a lot of issues. This is something to watch down the line, if HRC wins a chunk of her legislative probably depends on keeping EW in her coalition.
And then Citizen Clinton took the stage and crowd roared like starvelings invited to a barbeque....the Lady seems to have at last found her constituency and in NH having the battlements manned by suburban women is no small thing believe me.
Her mantra was that 2016 represents a "consequential election" and indeed it is.....but HRC's response to the challenge was to hype hype the independence and integrity of the NH downticket, Senatorial Hopeful Maggie Hassan (locked into a tight race with Kelly Ayotte) in particular came in for a very weighty load of praiseful praise.
Ditto Carol Shea-Porter (who has been elected to the US House and never yet Re-Elected)....the big competitive races in NH are in part tailor made to HRC's suddenly blatant appeal to women voters across the board.
Clearly Clinton wants very badly a "Downticket Mandate" a bigger US House Contingent (who knows maybe the democrats can pull off the hat trick and take the House Rotten Boroughs and all)....if she can take the US Senate and Roll Up a Big Turnout next month she can obliterate Trump's claims of a rigged election and demonstrate her nice long coat-tails to all and sundry. Just remember, even Obama wasn't really able to shift the balance of power in Congress much past 2010. In HRC's mind legitimacy and her own ability to govern are clearly linked to grabbing off a democratic majority somewhere on The Hill.
One of the consequences of Trump's "skeezer tapes" is that it has allowed Citizen Clinton a priceless opportunity to reintroduce herself to women and to move left on a lot of "women's issues". Saint Anselm College is a famously conservative catholic school and never has Planned Parenthood come in for such fulsome praise on that Campus...The Monks must've been hiding under their sparse beds and covering their ears with their equally sparse pillow.
Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton are not pulpit virtuosas by any stretch neither of them will make anyone forget Aimee Semple McPherson....but they have a similar style, some snark, a few digs at the opposition, a few statistics, some fulsome praise, endorsements and a Bright Future If We All But Work Together.
Its a sort of "Hubert Humphrey" approach, if delivered in a less manic fashion than the Late Vice Presiden, of the two, Warren seems to be better at it, but that is simply because she is willing to risk more in terms of specifics.
Take student debt, Warren talked about making college "free", Clinton prefers the term "affordable", now affordable gives her a lot more room to manuever when it comes time to submit legislature to congress but "free college" resonates better with the electorate and its easier to remember as well.
Meanwhile Clinton offers free public college tuition for incomes under 125k, indexing student debt to income along with restoring technical Education in the High Schools (hey Hillary PLEASE throw "Civics" in there while you are at it!)
So its all reasonably specific but its not quite "Free"...
On thother hand she does seem to want to raise the minimum wage and you set your watch by her desire to rebuilt our infrastructure with Union Labor, in these reaches of the Liberal Litany she wand Warren are very simpatico.
More and more I get a weird Truman style vibe from HRC closet moderate or not like Harry Hillary's Mind Seems Made Up on a Host of Issues "A Little Touch of Harriet in the Night" in other words. Keep in mind plenty of people dismissed Truman as a squish in the lead up to 1948 its not always indicative of indecision it comes from a desire to preserve the maximum freedom of action.
If HRC has a Big Rhetorical Moment its her invocation of "America is Great Because America is Good" but thats a sort of final rebuke to Trump and his Apocalyptic Narrative its also something straight out her Husband's Detailed Playbook. Its not a specifically Liberal Notion its mostly promulgated to remind everyone she is a reliable negotiating partner and neither utopian nor declinist.
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