New, Improved Hillary

Hillary Clinton spoke.   She did not shout.

Last night

Hillary changed!   I have commented that she was shouting and needed to stop.   Talk with passion but don't shout, I advised.   Well, someone finally got through to her.


Click here to watch her last night.   You can click anywhere along the 17 minute talk an hear her speak with earnest intensity.   This is presidential:    Last night's victory speech

For comparison, here is an example of the "rally" Hillary, here in San Jose on May 26:

 Click here. Listen nearly anywhere.

Rally talk: shouting last week

Meanwhile, Trump is backing away from his position on Judge Curiel, not saying he regrets or takes back his words but instead saying he was "misinterpreted."  

My progressive friends who think Trump is in a deep, deep hole on this are mistaken.   Not only is this not a fatal mistake, it may not even be a mistake at all, although I do believe he turned up too loud and audibly the reliable and long-used Republican dog-whistle of the Southern Strategy of resentment over the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.

Trump has room to turn this into a win, or at least a tie.  After all, it is the position of Hillary and the progressive left that gender, ethnicity, and race are essential elements of personhood.  Oppression is gendered.   Oppression is based on ethnicity.  Those things matter.    Black lives matter.   Ethnicity matters.   Gender matters.   Trump simply asserted what Hillary says.   

I predict that shortly here Trump or his surrogates will figure this out and throw it back at Hillary, saying she and the left and the media are total hypocrites.

The left embraces gender and ethnic consciousness

Now the establishment voices (Democrats, media, GOP incumbents) are asserting that it is shocking for Trump to say ethnicity matters.  He said it inelegantly.  Eventually Trump will have communicated that he meant that discrimination can go both ways and this is not an outlier GOP thought.   It is the centerpiece of the Southern Strategy.

Trump-voter resentment is the notion that white native born "regular" Americans now get the short end of the stick thanks to "reverse discrimination."   Hillary is openly saying that discrimination against women, Hispanics, blacks, gays is present and unfair.   Trump is openly saying that equally present and unfair is the reverse discrimination against proudly native born whites.

Trump sounds rattled, but I predict he won't stay rattled.   Once Trump gets his mojo back and starts attacking he will get out of this jam.   He will say something like:  "Crooked Hillary says that black lives matter but she loves discrimination.   That's right, discrimination against honest hard working people, including white people who live here legally and pay taxes.   She wants politically correct discrimination.   I want fairness.   Just simple fairness.   The crazy lying media call that racism.  I call it fairness, without bending over backward to be unfair."

Trump will be be OK on that issue, eventually, I predict.

But the jam he is stuck with is the appearance of shockingly careless behavior.   At a place and issue where he needed to be careful and precise he was sloppy.   It fed the notion that Trump-the-outsider doesn't really have the temperament to handle delicate matters.  This is brain surgery, not a knife fight.   Trump is stuck looking like a bull in a china shop.

This is why the Hillary-is-solid-mature-reliable notion versus Trump-is-careless-sloppy-impulsive-immature is a frame that can work for her.  This is why her speaking style matters:

The solid mature candidate needs to speak, not shout, and she seems to be wising up.