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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Hillary Clinton’s kickoff speech highlighted her advantage over Republicans
How Hillary Clintons kickoff speech highlighted her advantage over RepublicansBy Paul Waldman at the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/13/how-hillary-clintons-kickoff-speech-highlighted-her-advantage-over-republicans/
"SNIP...............
This speech, like much of what Clinton does now, is about creating a synthesis out of two related goals or ideas. She wants to energize liberals in a way that also wins independents. She wants to advocate an economic agenda that will be substantively compelling and also creates a personal affinity with voters. Its Clintons good fortune that she has at least the opportunity to do both at the same time.
Presidential candidates come in two basic types: those who can tell a story of personal struggle and those who can tell their relatives story of personal struggle. For one of the first times, today Clinton told how her mother was abandoned by her own parents and started supporting herself as a teenager. The point of these stories is to tell people, Im just like you. I understand your struggles and your challenges, and Ill advocate on your behalf. The truth is that theres absolutely no relationship between whether a candidate was rich as a child or is rich now and what kinds of policies shell pursue as president. But we can conceive of this relationship between the personal and political as a 2 x 2 array with one bad quadrant, one good quadrant and two that could go either way. Heres my liberally biased version with an example for each, placing Hillary Clinton where shes trying to place herself:
......
So FDR was a wealthy scion who championed the cause of the downtrodden, while Scott Walker came from modest circumstances but advocates the interests of the wealthy and corporations. Mitt Romney was a rich guy whom Americans came to believe cared only about rich people, a deadly combination. Clinton is someone who grew up middle-class and is now rich but who would prefer you think of her as a person just like you. Her policy case makes her personal case more persuasive, whereas someone like Walker has to deal with the tension between his personal story and the beneficiaries of his policies.
Of course, personal affinity isnt all about economic class, and Clinton is obviously counting on women in particular to feel a bond with her and come out to vote. As she said in her speech, I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but Ill be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States. But while that may have been her biggest applause line, the speech was laden with policy talk, much of it about the economy.
..............SNIP"
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How Hillary Clinton’s kickoff speech highlighted her advantage over Republicans (Original Post)
applegrove
Jun 2015
OP
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)1. K & R, excellent post, it is real and believable, thanks for posting.
You laid this out very well.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)2. Good article. k&r. nt
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)3. K&R!