EMAIL DETAILS

The Hillary Clinton of 2000 would have beaten Donald Trump | TheHill
Incredibly self serving on Mark Penn's part but interesting none the less...

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/305752-the-hillary-clinton-of-2000-would-have-beaten-donald

The Hillary Clinton of 2000 would have beaten Donald Trump
November 13, 2016 - 08:01 AM EST
[image: Hillary Clinton supporters]

Getty Images
By Mark Penn, contributor 259 Shares

It was a sunny day on Daniel Moynihan’s farm in July 1999 when Hillary
Clinton <http://thehill.com/people/hillary-clinton> first launched her own
political career and months later she would officially announce her
candidacy for the U.S. Senate as a New Democrat. She extolled the values of
“opportunity, community, responsibility and enterprise.”

In her announcement, Hillary backed a balanced budget, investments in
education, welfare reform, tougher child support measures, more police and
even teacher testing. She stressed the need for new jobs for New York and
for continued economic progress.
She launched a campaign that was aimed at the largely Republican working
class voters of upstate New York. It's central promise was that no child
should have to leave their hometown to find a good job.

She explained that the way to overcome the march of technology and
globalization was to modernize the region for the 21st century. It was the
kind of optimistic view of the future and the economy that got Bill Clinton
<http://thehill.com/people/bill-clinton> elected in 1992.

This message drove her to a hard-fought victory against Rick Lazio despite
a record setting spend of over $50 million by the Republicans just to keep
her out of politics. Looking back, she accomplished a reverse Trump. She
courted and won Republican leaning working class voters in economically
depressed areas of the state. She became their champion.

In the Senate, Hillary was a work horse, not a show horse; she gained the
reputation as someone who rolled up her sleeves and worked across the aisle
with senators like Lindsey Graham <http://thehill.com/people/lindsey-graham>
and others. She went on to a landslide re-election in 2006.

She did vote for the Iraq war and that vote became a liability in Iowa in
2008. But it was a sincere vote taken only after consulting with national
security officials from the Clinton administration who also believed that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

She defended rather than apologized for her vote in 2008, willing to pay a
political price for standing by her principles and decisions. Partially as
a result of that, she was universally seen as the leader who could answer
the 3 am call — someone ready to be the next commander in chief.

Now let’s fast forward to the Hillary of 2016. Gone were references to the
basic values of a limited government. Gone were proposals for teacher
testing and more cops. She apologized for her Iraq vote; her national
security resume now relied on her sitting in the situation room during the
raid on Osama bin Laden, hardly an act of political courage.

She opposed the very trade deals she negotiated, called in effect for
single payer health care and made no bones about proposing to raise taxes
$1.5 trillion. Confronted with a challenge from the left, she made her
peace with them by agreeing to back the most “progressive” agenda in the
democratic party’s history. Even President Clinton’s crime bill was thrown
overboard.

Bernie Sanders <http://thehill.com/people/bernie-sanders> was a tough
opponent, but he was no Barack Obama
<http://thehill.com/people/barack-obama>. She could have defeated him
without the fade to the left that brought cries of inauthenticity and
underscored her weaknesses. Few believed she was against TPP and her shift
leftward didn't win her many of the caucuses she lost in 2008. African
Americans, who were out of reach in 2008, came home to her in 2016, and
their votes were not based on ideology but on the Clintons’ long history of
helping their communities.

In the general election, she abandoned the vital center and instead ran as
a continuation of President Obama, wrongly believing that the country
wanted a third term. While some polling dubiously placed Obama’s approval
rating as high as 55%, nearly every poll showed 60 to 70 per cent saying
the country was headed in the wrong direction.

Her closing campaign picture in Philadelphia said it all — she stood
together with President Clinton, President Obama and Hollywood stars. An
entire closing weekend surrounded by Hollywood and the past.

Hillary Clinton speaks at Philadelphia rally: If I'm playing the "woman's
card," then "deal me in” https://t.co/ubFX12y9PY pic.twitter.com/ljji8kKGDl
<https://t.co/ljji8kKGDl>
— CNN (@CNN) November 8, 2016
<https://twitter.com/CNN/status/795826270898622464>

America is a centrist country. Only 26 per cent of the voters in the exit
polls classify themselves as liberals and the other 74% are moderates and
conservatives. By moving to the left, the Democratic Party has increasingly
isolated itself and lost voters at all levels of government from the state
houses to now the White House. The last time the party became this
isolated, Bill Clinton ran as a “different kind of Democrat.”

If the 2016 race teaches us anything, it is that a shift to the left will
not bring in working class voters in rural and economically depressed
areas. They think that such a shift would be a reversion to more government
spending at their expense, and not produce the jobs and prosperity they
need.

Of course there were obstacles like FBI director Comey and Wikileaks that
made the race much harder, though Donald Trump
<http://thehill.com/people/donald-trump> faced “Access Hollywood” and 11 or
more women accusing him of abuse. Still, there were more fundamental forces
at work.

The Hillary Clinton of 2000, even with a basement email server, would have
handily defeated Donald Trump. The forgotten voters would have rallied
behind her and a path forward based on “opportunity, community,
responsibility and enterprise.” That is where the winning future of the
party lies as well.

*Mark Penn was the chief strategist and pollster for Bill Clinton’s 1996
reelection and for Hillary Clinton in 2000, 2006 and 2008.*
------------------------------

*The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.*


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

Sent from my iPhon