Hillary's Case: She is "Fighting for Us"

Hillary Clinton leads a coalition of the disadvantaged.   She is "Fighting for US"

Hillary's slogan from the beginning

Each presidential candidate has identified a "base".   Conservative evangelicals for Cruz, frustrated native born whites for Trump, under-30s for Sanders, and so on.    Hillary Clinton has by far the biggest base, but it is the leakiest.

Hillary's base are people in groups that have traditionally been locked out--or now perhaps only more or less subtly edged out--of the traditional power structure.   It is a giant group:   women, blacks, immigrants, non-English speakers, Hispanics, Asians, the poor, recipients of need based government assistance, the disabled.    

My Republican friends often express impatience to me about people in these groups expressing frustration or resentment with the status quo.   They consider it whining over little or nothing.  They say it as an excuse for mediocre effort or laziness or ability or bad life choices.   So they resent affirmative action, they mock trophies for "participation", they suspect grade inflation.   They understand their own achievement to be based on hard work and good choices and they are concerned that America is losing the rigor that rewards achievement in a capitalist economic system.   

In cultural terms, they resent "political correctness", and in political terms they resent progressive income tax rates and needs based government benefits for the undeserving.

(Personal note: I am a healthy white male with a fancy education and had a tailwind of advantage my entire life.  People who enjoyed relentless subtle privilege in the form of presumed ability--or when in trouble, presumed innocence--don't experience its opposite, so they hardly believe it exists.  They don't see it. I am an eyewitness.)

This is the big political showdown in the 2016 General election:   Hillary Clinton leading a very loose coalition of people wanting to break through barriers, versus an alternative mindset led by Trump, Cruz, Rubio and the other Republicans that "regular Americans" are being exploited by those special pleaders.   Republicans reach into the leaky coalition with a message of work ethic and uplift rather than resentment which appeals to immigrants, and to traditional values issues on marriage and abortion and homosexuality which appeals to traditional and values-conservatives within the Democratic coalition, i.e. devout Catholic Hispanics.  As I said, it is a leaky coalition.

Sanders frames the issue in the Democratic nomination one way:  corruption of the power structure.  Sanders condemns donors and K Street and their influence in our politics and will destroy the political money-power structure, in contrast to Hillary who is a tainted practitioner within that power structure.   

Hillary frames the choice another way:  Who is the better fighter for progressive causes?

Hillary's campaign slogan is "Fighting for Us".   Note she says "us".    She isn't poor or weak, but she is a woman.  Her campaign origin story is about her mother's struggle and Hillary's first job being for the Children's Defense Fund.  She adopts her mother's "log cabin" story and in her stump speech calls it her "touchstone" and the source of her motivation for progressive causes.   

She is positioned as a veteran warrior on behalf of her fellow victims in that coalition of the disadvantaged and discriminated against.  Does she sound shrill and angry to some?  Well, she is a warrior.   Her stump speeches are a list of problems and solutions.  She cites the lower income for women than men, the profiling by the police of dark skinned people, the laws discouraging immigration, efforts to discourage black voting, unfair interest rates for college loans, and so on.   Her campaign message is that she sees the barriers, she is on your side, and she can get things done.

This short ad, called "Barriers", demonstrates her message:   https://goo.gl/keqKAp      It is 60 seconds and worth your time.  

"After law school she could have joined a high priced law firm but instead worked to reform juvenile justice in South Carolina. . . . "

As she frames it, only a practitioner in the system can actually get things done.  She isn't soiled by the system, she is experienced in using it, for progressive ends, not selfish ones. 

Sanders voters aren't motivated by effectiveness.  They are motivated by the clean hands evidenced by Sanders' old car, rumpled suit, and unwavering ideological commitment to breaking the money-power structure.  He is not pressed for close details on how he would implement a strongly progressive agenda even though Obama used every bit of his own political capital (and lost the House and Senate doing it) to try to get even a modestly progressive agenda implemented.

If the Primary election issue is about who has the cleanest hands to break the political system, Sanders wins.   If the issue is about who can effectively advocate for the amorphous Democratic coalition, then Hillary wins.   

Happily for the Democrats, what is happening in the Republican primary is well suited for plugging the leaks in the Democratic base.    Democrats will lose some of the xenophobic and fearful "Reagan Democrats" in the swing states--Trump voters, if Trump is the nominee.  This may be a big leak, depending on whether events push fear to the top of mind.    It is a risk.

But the Republican primary has done what Hillary could not do, plug many of the leaks in the Democratic coalition.  GOP attacks on immigrants and Black Lives Matter and Planned Parenthood and the general GOP defense of traditional social hierarchy has sent a message to women and non-whites of all types that the Democratic Party is their true home.

Probably.

There would be an irony here. Could a party that condemned immigration and pushed against affirmative action nominate a Marco Rubio-Nickie Haley ticket, with a Cuban presidential candidate and a dark skinned immigrant female VP?   Yes they could.  Would this re-open the leaks in the Democratic coalition?  Would voters look at a Rubio-Haley ticket--ignore the Primary election rhetoric--and decide that Republicans aren't the anti-immigrant white male party after all?   We may find out.