Reliable, Moderate, Boring Hillary

Hillary is the mainstream candidate.

Her policies are essentially a continuation of the broad center of American politics going back to Dwight Eisenhower.   Generally sort of liberal, but moderate.   Generally internationalist, but not too bellicose.

It is easy to think of people on either side of her on important policies:

She is less war-eager than Graham, probably a notch or two less war-eager than Bush-Cheney.   On the other hand, presumably a little more hawkish than Sanders.   She is in a moderate middle.

Middle of the Road

She is more "realistic" on social benefits than Bernie Sanders, who famously seeks free public college and medicare for all, but more generous than the Republican establishment or Tea Party, which want to end Obamacare, cut Food Stamps, privatize Social Security.  She is in the moderate middle.

She is more open to free international trade in her support for NAFTA than Sanders or Trump, but now backing off on the Trans Pacific Partnership than establishment Republicans who supported it in Congress.  She is in the moderate middle.

She is much less hostile in tone to outsiders-immigrants-Muslims than Trump, but taking a position that Establishment Republicans assert is the American principle, sounding like Ryan, Romney, Graham, Jeb Bush, GW Bush in asserting that America must be fair to outsiders and generally inclusive.  She is part of the moderate consensus.

She is the only moderate in the race.   (John Kasich sounds moderate in tone but in fact shares the same policies as Tea Party Rubio and Cruz, spoken in milder words and with a longer resume.)   She is expressing generally a continuation of Obama policies and Obama policies have been--thanks to the relentless Republican resistance--centrist, getting attacked from the political right and from the large Sanders-led left.

Gathering facts in New Hampshii

Voters are rejecting mainstream and they are rejecting her personally.   Black Democrats support Hillary but white progressives prefer Sanders.  But more important, I think, is that turnout is way, way down in last night's Mississippi and Michigan elections.   I sat next to a politically active Democratic psychologist in my flight from Medford to LA, and a politically active former Capitol Hill staffer and Clinton administration employee in the longer flight from LA to Miami.  Both supported Hillary, but with a sense of "settling".    Hillary isn't exciting people.

So I will return to comments I made about Hillary Clinton back in September of this year, when I watched Hillary and Donald Trump in back to back performances in New Hampshire.   Trump projects change.  Hillary projects continuity.   Trump will shake things up.  Hillary is reliable.   Trump is a bull in a china shop.  Hillary is same old-same old.

And the voters are saying they want to take a chance on something new and exciting.   Hillary's challenge will be to project that she is both reliable and new, stable and a change agent both.