Can Hillary push "Reset"?

Guest Cartoon

"You are too hard on Hillary!"

People have said that to me.   

I do not criticize Hillary for the sorts of things that reverberate in GOP and Fox News and talk radio circles: Benghazi, emails, Whitewater, supposed murders and lesbianism and whatnot.   I consider that she has been in the political arena where people who collect campaign money from oil companies and banks express shocked outrage that their opponent has proven herself to be utterly corrupt by having demeaned herself and her office by accepting naked bribes from oil companies and banks in the form of campaign money from oil companies and banks.   It is just political hypocrisy.

Hillary is who she is:   an experienced and very able practitioner of progressive domestic politics and a moderate national security hawk, and she does this in an environment where the political center of gravity is toward more conservative domestic politics, more traditional social values, and more hawkish foreign policy.

My concern about Hillary is that she is ignoring something voters are clearly saying they want: saying it through their votes for very improbable candidates Trump and Sanders especially, but also through their rejection of Jeb Bush and other overtly traditional candidates.   Voters want some sign of change.  Voters want to push "reset".

They want change in a variety of areas but her Democratic friends are focused on crony connection between Wall Street and other elites and government.  Trump voters who had been part of the Democratic Party coalition (i.e. Reagan Democrats) agree.   That is Hillary's identity problem--her being stuck in the deep mud of her own identity.  That is, she owes her success to her respect within people holding the levers of power, yet voters are uneasy or outright angry with those self interested levers of power.  The political traction that allowed her to get to where she is has now become a liability.

The Clinton Foundation succeeded tremendously in using the connection between government, celebrity, and corporate power.   Hillary is stuck with that history; it is part of her brand.  This connection between government and special interests is not unusual.  Indeed, our campaign finance rules nearly require it.  Supposedly if one takes campaign money from enough people then no one person controls you.  The revolving door of politics and special interests is so common as to be a cliche.  Elected officials and top staff to leave government to go to K-Street or Wall Street and vice versa.   Kasich did.  Cantor did.  Mitt Romney did.  Dick Cheney did the ideal round trip: government to megabucks at Halliburton then back.   The problem for Hillary is that this is better Republican branding--the brand of being business-friendly--not Democratic brand, though both parties do it.  (Democrats do it as a one way street, from government to the big bucks, but not back; Republicans can go back because the "business experience" doesn't mess up their brand.)  

Bad luck for Hillary.  She is stuck with being very business-friendly just at the time that notion got toxic because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders channeled voter anger over the Wall Street bailout, crony capitalism generally, and trickle down economics.

Can Hillary become an agent of change?  Can she credibly appear to distance herself from that history?   She has not yet done so.   

I am reminded of being in the audience at performances for musician groups with a long history--performers who sometimes in mid or late career tour hoping to present new music or older familiar music in a new way.   I like the performer--which is why I paid a high price for the ticket--but I am unsatisfied with what they perform.   For example, imagine the Beach Boys, doing music from my youth.  I might go hoping to hear "Good Vibrations" live.   But instead, they insist on singing gospel songs.   Say, what?   They would be a beloved group but the concert would be disappointing.   They would have the potential to thrill but they are singing the wrong songs.   Hillary is the right performer, but she is refusing to sing the song I want to hear.   Or maybe she can no longer sing it.   In any case, she sounds "pretty good" to me, but I don't get the thrill I want to feel.

That is the reiterated comment I hear about Hillary, that she is "pretty good", the "best possible", and "on balance" what needs to be "settled for".   What is the missing piece: the notion of hope and change, the two words that were the basis for Obama's victory over her 8 years ago.  Voters want "reset", they want someone to be free, or freer, of the established political order.   Hillary is on stage now and she is performing a set the audience finds disappointing.   Voters want to hear her criticize the very special interests that brought her this far, that she is an agent of change, and that she is a vehicle of hope for something different and better.

Can Hillary be the candidate of Hope and Change?   If she isn't, then Trump might be.