How Hillary Clinton Locked Up The Democratic Nomination In 10 Steps
1. Cracks In The Glass Ceiling
On June 7, 2008, four days after the final votes were cast in the lengthy and contentious Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton gave quite possibly the best political speech of her career. She was bowing out of the race, conceding what news organizations had already called. Barack Obama had won more pledged delegates and had more so-called superdelegates lined up behind him. He was going to be the party's nominee.
Depending on how you counted, Clinton had won the popular vote and could have taken the fight all the way to the convention. But instead, she brought her supporters together at the Building Museum in Washington, D.C., to mourn what could have been and look ahead.
2. The Democratic Establishment
So-called superdelegates are a pretty good stand-in for the Democratic Party establishment. They are elected officials and party leaders, and they overwhelmingly support Hillary Clinton. Back in November, when NPR first looked at the declared allegiances of these superdelegates, Clinton had a 45 to 1 advantage over her most serious opponent, Bernie Sanders.
Clinton had the endorsement of all but one Democratic woman in the Senate, and Sanders won the endorsement of only one of his Senate colleagues, Jeff Merkley. Endorsements don't necessarily sway voters, but they do indicate institutional support and in this case a coalescing behind a single candidate.
3. Embracing President Obama
There was no love lost between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the primary in 2008. But when it was over, Clinton endorsed her opponent and even called for the end of the roll call vote at the convention, moving that Obama win the nomination by acclamation. She worked hard to make sure that her supporters, even those known as PUMAs ("party unity my a**"
, came around to supporting Obama.
She and her husband, Bill, campaigned tirelessly for Obama through the fall. And then, when Obama asked, she agreed to join the Obama administration as secretary of state. She then worked tirelessly in that position, traveling to more than 100 countries promoting Obama's agenda.
Why does this matter? Because her loyalty didn't go unnoticed by voters who supported and continue to support Obama and Obama himself.
4. Support Of Black Women
Black women love Hillary Clinton. At least that's what exit polls from state after state will tell you. In Alabama, 93 percent of black women voted for her. In Virginia, it was 85 percent. And this is no small thing because in 2008 and 2012, African-American women were the most reliable Democratic voters. This support was a critical part of Clinton's firewall against Sanders in the early voting states of Nevada and South Carolina, and made a big difference for her in the March 1 Super Tuesday states and beyond.
How did Clinton earn such overwhelming support? Years and years of relationships. One of Clinton's first jobs was working with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund. And in more recent years, she has quietly reached out to the mothers of young African-Americans killed in gun violence or encounters with police.
"When you're openly grieving and the secretary of state steps to you, you'd better endorse her, because she's already endorsed you," said Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland, a woman who died in her jail cell last year. Reed-Veal and other "mothers of the movement" were campaigning for Clinton.
Clinton had no surrogates more powerful than those mothers.
5. Learning From Her Mistakes
In 2008, Clinton was the candidate with town halls that were too big, infighting advisers, and an operation that didn't get into the nitty-gritty details of delegates and missed the political phenomenon about to overtake her. In 2016, Clinton's campaign purposely kept the events small and emphasized listening. She hired a no-drama campaign manager and brought on Obama's polling and delegate gurus. The campaign's mantra has been, "We're working for every vote and taking nothing for granted." Even if no one believed them at first, the 2016 Clinton campaign has always operated like it was expecting a tough primary (it got one from Sanders) and a challenging general election fight, too.
Compared with Sanders' big rallies, her small town halls and coffee chats have seemed puny and low on energy. But for those who attend, there's a real connection.
6. Tacking Left, Even Before Bernie Sanders
Clinton and her team knew from the start that economic populism was running strong through the Democratic electorate. In the very first remarks of her campaign, Clinton called for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on campaign finance, and she decried the growing separation between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else.
7. All Those Plans
Clinton has a mountain of policy papers and more on the way. They cover everything from opioid addiction and mass incarceration to paid family leave and Alzheimer's. If there's an issue Clinton has heard about on the campaign trail, she likely has a plan to address it.
It's something people mock her for.
8. Benghazi Hearing Zen
Sanders had been gaining steam throughout the summer, but the campaign hit a wall in October 2015. That's when Clinton turned in a strong debate performance and then a week later made it through an epic 11-hour hearing of the House special committee investigating the attack in Benghazi.
The hearing also focused on Clinton's exclusive use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. When the hearing was over, the reviews were nearly unanimous: Clinton had performed well under pressure, and the committee's Republicans failed to find any smoking guns. The committee has still not released its investigative report and has largely been quiet since the hearing.
9. Sanders Let Her Off The Hook
It was perhaps Sanders' most memorable line of the entire campaign. It came in the first Democratic debate of 2015, and it largely neutralized one of Clinton's largest liabilities, at least for the primary.
"The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails," Sanders said to applause.
Clinton responded saying: "Thank you. Me too, me too."
10. Doing The Hard Work
There were the photo lines with volunteers before and after public events, the calls to superdelegates, the trips to states she had no chance of winning, with the hope of narrowing the margin and securing a few more delegates. That's what Clinton did.
Her campaign's volunteers and staff held house parties, they knocked on doors in snowstorms (people are extra friendly then) and spent hours making phone calls.
Organizing isn't glamorous. It's the grunt work of campaigning. But her campaign credits that hard work with her narrowest-of-margins win in the Iowa caucuses. The demographics of the state favored Sanders, but she was able to pull out a win. Barely.
In short, Hillary Clinton and her campaign never took it easy.
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/07/480673009/how-hillary-clinton-locked-up-the-democratic-nomination-in-10-steps
