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by OP ED » Sat Oct 15, 2016 8:31 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Sat Oct 15, 2016 8:38 pm
(Re: Bill Clinton's campaign for governor of Arkansas in 1980):
...Arkansas had seen no first lady like Rodham, a Wellesley graduate who wore bookworm spectacles and a hairdo that was not blown out in the Southern manner. At 32, she was a full partner at one of the nation’s oldest law firms. She had never changed her name, and Rodham was how her clients knew her.
“Frank and I went to every festival in Arkansas,” White told me. “I had lots of people say, ‘Hillary’s never been here — and she’s the first lady.’ I think the fact that she did not go to these little county fairs and that she was seen as not embracing that role caused people to resent her, right or wrong.”
Six weeks before the election, Clinton enjoyed a 41-point lead over the challenger, who entered the race with only 2 percent of the public knowing who he was. But on Nov. 4, Frank White beat Bill Clinton, 52 percent to 48 percent. At an election post-mortem a few weeks later in Little Rock, Rodham spoke on behalf of her husband, who was still devastated by the stunning upset and did not attend. Explaining the election results, the governor’s wife observed somberly, “It’s more easy to enthuse people if they think there’s going to be a change, instead of more of the same.”
Rodham may not have been on the ballot, but Gay White remains convinced that “how they perceived her was very much a factor.” Two years later, when Clinton ran again against White, he ran a television ad apologizing for his mistakes. And, Gay remembers, Rodham “changed everything: her whole appearance, her wardrobe. She started wearing makeup. She took Bill’s last name. They did the things they needed to do.”
Bill Clinton won the rematch in a landslide. The Clintons returned to the Governor’s Mansion in 1983. Neither of them has lost a general election since.
...
In the early months of his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton confidently told voters that they would be getting “two for the price of one” with Hillary in the White House. Still, George Bush’s campaign operation, like White’s, did not give much thought to attacking her. Although the race was seen by many on both sides as a sort of generational referendum, the Bush campaign did not disseminate the photos it had gathered of her dressed in hippie attire or details of her 1971 clerkship for the left-wing lawyer Robert Treuhaft. In part, this simply reflected a political era that still observed certain unspoken rules. “In those days, you didn’t go after a candidate’s family,” says David Tell, who ran Bush’s opposition-research team. But it also reflected the feeling that, as the Bush campaign strategist Charlie Black recalls: “We didn’t need to talk about it. There already were certain people, especially older voters, who didn’t like the idea of a co-presidency and a ball-busting first lady.”
Arkansans had struggled with the same notion throughout Bill Clinton’s tenure as governor. Hillary briefly gave thought to running for governor herself in 1990, but her polling showed that the public was disinclined to vote for her. (“She didn’t receive it well,” said the Democratic consultant Raymond Strother, who delivered the results to the Clintons.)
...the Clinton brain trust directed the pollster Celinda Lake to conduct focus groups on the candidate’s wife. A follow-up memorandum prepared by top campaign officials warned: “In the focus groups, people think of her as being in the race ‘for herself’ and as ‘going for the power.’ She is not seen as particularly ‘family oriented.’ More than Nancy Reagan, she is seen as ‘running the show.’ ”
...
t fell to Hillary to resolve a conflict that Americans had not yet really resolved for themselves, and her response was what we now recognize as the quintessential Clintonian defense: to offer up a cosmetically reassuring version of “Hillary” while resolving thereafter to reveal as little of Hillary as possible. A pattern had also emerged that would carry on throughout Clinton’s public life: Her protectors would overprotect; her attackers would overattack. And the American public would emerge from the episode with a welling distaste for all parties involved.
...
In late 2006, Barack Obama commissioned the pollster Larry Grisolano to conduct a series of focus groups in Iowa and New Hampshire to test themes that might support an insurgent candidacy by the first-term senator. “What that research showed,” Grisolano recalls, “was that there was a market for a fresh truth-teller like Obama. And it worked well in contrast to somebody who was eagerly grabbing the mantle of the establishment.” But Clinton’s senior strategist, Mark Penn, argued that she should emphasize her gravitas over the history-making prospect of a female president. “We opted for qualified and experienced over relatable,” says her former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, “which I think was a mistake.”
...
For the first time in her adult life, White does not know for whom she will vote. She has found little to admire in Trump, but she is a lifelong conservative, and her husband ran quite literally against Clintonian liberalism. There is disapproval in her voice when she speaks of the Democratic nominee, if also a trace of respect, and she strains to recognize the independent young woman whose decision not to change her last name so alienated rural Arkansans back in 1980. What she sees instead, she says, is “layer after layer of armor.”
Still, White believes she knows the woman underneath it, and understands the choices Clinton made to recover from defeat 36 years ago. “She really hasn’t been able to be an authentic person, you know,” she told me. “And so she hasn’t been. Not for some time.”
by OP ED » Sat Oct 15, 2016 9:01 pm
by 8bitagent » Sun Oct 16, 2016 1:12 am
by 8bitagent » Sun Oct 16, 2016 3:31 am
by Luther Blissett » Sun Oct 16, 2016 11:13 am
by 8bitagent » Mon Oct 17, 2016 1:34 am
by 8bitagent » Mon Oct 17, 2016 1:53 am
by 8bitagent » Mon Oct 17, 2016 2:35 am
Two icons of the progressive community, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are appearing together on Sunday for the first time to jointly pitch the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
by MacCruiskeen » Mon Oct 17, 2016 3:36 pm
‘Centrist Soft-Liberal Feminism’ - Presidentialising Hillary Clinton
In Alerts 2016
Post 17 October 2016
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/aler ... inton.html
by MacCruiskeen » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:23 pm
by Jerky » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:38 pm
OP ED » 16 Oct 2016 01:01 wrote:Quite. She wants something and she will have it no matter who she has to be to get it.
In that sense I have a lot more respect for her than her main opposition who simply likes hearing his name chanted. Like some of my Goetic associates.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:46 pm
by 0_0 » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:52 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:57 pm
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