Saturday, May 23, 2015

Clinton Campaigning in a Bubble, Largely Isolated from Real People

At McClatchy:

CEDAR FALLS, IOWA — Here’s how Hillary Clinton campaigned for president this week: She took a private 15-minute tour of a bike shop that had closed for her visit. She spoke to four small business owners chosen by her staff in front of an audience of 20, also chosen by her staff. She answered a few questions from the media following weeks of silence.

And after a little more than an hour, Clinton was off, whisked away by aides and Secret Service agents, into a minivan and on to the next event.

Members of the public who wanted to go inside the building to support her, oppose her or merely ask a question of her were left outside on an unseasonably cool Iowa day. Most didn’t bother showing up.

“I am troubled that so far in this caucus cycle she hasn’t had any public town halls,” said Chris Schwartz, a liberal activist from Waterloo, as he stood outside the bike store hoping to talk to Clinton about trade. “If she had a public town hall then we wouldn’t be out here. We would much rather be in there engaging with her.”

Welcome to Hillary Clinton 2.0. Mindful of her defeat by Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton has embraced a new strategy – one that so far does not include town-hall meetings and campaign rallies, media interviews, even public events.

Instead, she holds small controlled events with a handful of potential voters in homes, businesses and schools. She repeats many of the same lines (“I want to be your champion” is a favorite), participants are handpicked by her staff or the event host, and topics are dictated by her campaign.

Brent Johnson, 35, the owner of Bike Tech, said Clinton campaign staffers walked into the shop a week earlier and asked him if he’d be interested in hosting an event. He and the three roundtable participants were on a conference call with the campaign the day before to hear Clinton’s “basic talking points” about helping small businesses. A campaign aide says they found guests through the small business community.

Clinton’s approach – made possible by her lack of strong competition for the Democratic nomination – comes as she works to relate to working American families after years of being criticized as an out-of-touch Washington insider garnering hefty paychecks for her speeches and books.

But the campaign to show the world that she’s never forgotten her middle-class, Middle America sensibilities can be a tough sell from inside a bubble of armored cars, Secret Service agents and wary aides.

“It’s going to come back and haunt her,” said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. “I think it will backfire.”
She can't talk about her record. She's a walking radioactive meltdown of scandal baggage and political corruption.

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