The economic gap between Hillary Rodham Clinton and an average, “everyday American” is wide enough to drive a Scooby van through.
On Monday, the newly minted Democratic presidential frontrunner had nearly completed her 1,000-mile journey from her mansion in Chappaqua, N.Y. to a first campaign event in Iowa, in the van her staff has likened to the rattletrap “Mystery Machine” from the 1960s cartoon “Scooby-Doo.” The trip was intended, in part, to rebrand the former secretary of state, a 67-year-old multi-millionaire accustomed to private jets and presidential suites, as a warrior for the me middle- and working classes.
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It’s quite the rhetorical needle to thread. Making the transition from a jet-set international icon who soaked up seven-figure book advances and $200,000 speech fees to a populist pocketbook Democrat is not a simple one — in many ways it’s the single greatest challenge faced by her nascent campaign struggling to energize a Democratic core, and grassroots donor base, intent on fighting economic inequality.
“It’s a trap. She’s not going to reinvent herself as the everywoman, and you can’t go out there and say, ‘I’m one of you,’” said a top Clinton adviser from the 2008 campaign. “But she can say she cares about people. She can say, ‘I’m a rich person, but I actually care about people unlike the Republicans.’ … In that regard, the van thing is remarkably dangerous because she runs the risk of looking phony, it could cement the idea that she’s inauthentic — Saturday Night Live already has half of its show written for next week.”
To keep that from happening, her staff has been scrubbing all of its written materials for any verbiage that suggests Clinton experiences the same kind of anxieties most people face — when her campaign talks about a new sense of ‘humility,’ this is it.
The goal: to avoid the kind of damaging gaffe like her now-infamous declaration last summer that the Clinton family were “dead broke” when they left the White House. Even before that debacle, campaign staffers said that Clinton took notice of how effective President Obama’s attacks against Mitt Romney’s work with Bain Capital were, and she was determined not to let any of her opponents, in either party, mount a similar attack.
To accomplish that, she will mine her less-than-affluent past over the next few days when she interacts with voters, and the hardscrabble childhoods of her parents — especially her late mother Dorothy whose parents packed her onto a train to live with relatives when she was just eight years old.
“Her mother’s own childhood — in which she was abandoned by her parents, taught Hillary that every child deserves a champion… that continues to be her core motivation,” read the talking points distributed to Clinton media surrogates and party leaders in the last 24 hours. “After law school, Hillary chose not to go to a big New York or Washington law firm. Instead she went door-to-door in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the Children’s Defense Fund.”
The three-page document, forwarded to POLITICO by a senior Democrat, also urges her allies to talk about Clinton’s “middle-class” childhood in Oak Park, a tree-lined western Chicago suburb. “Hillary has never forgotten where she comes from,” the memo reads. “Her dad was a World War II veteran, he owned a small business … and Hillary and her two brothers helped out.”
That strategy comes with its own risks — poll respondents routinely cite her lack of trustworthiness and authenticity as top concerns — but Clinton doesn’t have a choice; for all the talk about the resurgence of foreign policy as an electoral priority, the country’s stumbling, incomplete recovery from the great recession is certain to dominate the 2016 campaign as it did in 2012.
Clinton’s new campaign manager Robbie Mook has instructed his staff to adopt a humble, underdog’s posture, but it’s been hard for Clinton and her rich, powerful family to shake off some of their gold rust. As the new candidate was rumbling across the gritty byways of Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio — stopping to gas up and scarf Chipotle — daughter Chelsea was gracing the cover of Elle in pricey Cartier jewelry, her hair blown into a glamorous corona by a wind machine. And Clinton’s friends told the Associated Press that the former first lady had made her final decision to run while vacationing at the waterfront mansion of her dear friend, the fashion designer Oscar De La Renta.
It’s not clear if Clinton’s wealth will negatively impact her campaign — American don’t seem to hold money against a candidate unless he or she seems to be out of touch (Mitt Romney failed with “47 percent,” George H. W. Bush when he appeared unfamiliar with a supermarket scanner). But Clinton’s opponents will almost certainly portray her as a hypocrite.
Lis Smith, an aide to Clinton’s possible Democratic opponent, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, says the “Scooby van” trip is a distraction designed to take the focus off the hard policy choices Clinton needs to make — and whether she’s progressive enough to satisfy a party base that has moved past the Clintonian moderation of the 1990s.
“Obsessing over tactics and optics and modes of transportation is kind of cynical,” she said. “Do we embrace more robust Wall Street reform? Are we the party that is clear-throated on immigration reform? Will we cast aside the outdated belief that Social Security should be cut and instead embrace expansion? These questions are central to the debate going forward — not campaign tactics.”
Still, Clinton retains some of the markers of her Midwest upbringing. During the 2008 campaign the reporters who shared her beat-up 737 noticed that her eating habits ran more along the lines of Pizza Hut than fancier fare. And the talking-points line about how she “enjoys and thrives when she gets to interact directly with voters” was borne out by her hours working rope lines during the last campaign.
And tactical or not, the van trip seemed to accomplish something that few in the press would have predicted during the tedious weeks-long build-up to Clinton’s Sunday campaign kick-off announcement — it injected elements of surprise, humor and a political Americana into the slog.
The van left Clinton’s Chappaqua mansion Sunday morning, undetected, and the three-car convoy had already made it to Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 300 miles away before the candidate Tweeted a photo of herself posing with a happy family. On Tuesday, the caravan made its way into the Rust Belt, stopping at a Chipotle in Maumee, Ohio, around midday; A security camera image captured Clinton — in shades — ordering a chicken burrito bowl to stay, her trusty aide Huma Abedin standing behind her.
The entourage was scheduled to arrive in Iowa on Monday afternoon time for Clinton’s first official campaign event, a Tuesday confab with students and teachers at a community college in the small town of Monticello. Even that decision seemed geared at downsizing a campaign that bloated to imperial proportions at the start of Clinton’s last run — when the candidate glided into the state on the sleek wings of a Gulfstream corporate jet.
This time she’ll arriving on the ground, and will seek out “smaller more personal settings,” according to a senior campaign aide. “What we are trying to make clear with this very first trip to Iowa is … that it isn’t about her, it isn’t about us … but about everyday Iowans … The middle class are the exact people Hillary has fought for her entire life,” the aide told reporters during a Monday conference call.
How she is received — and how she performs when reporters and voters mob her after a seven-year hiatus from politics — will tell much about the campaign ahead. But her enemies are waiting for any hint that she’s too out-of-touch to connect — and they’ll seize on any sign she’s performing a cynical pantomime of All-American normalcy.
“It’s got all the markings of the manufactured, consultant driven plan to try and look normal,” says Kevin Madden, a former top Romney adviser. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t eat at Chipotle, we know that. So do average voters … ‘Hello everyday people! I am here to dine amongst you in this fast food establishment!’ “
Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this story.
On Monday, the newly minted Democratic presidential frontrunner had nearly completed her 1,000-mile journey from her mansion in Chappaqua, N.Y. to a first campaign event in Iowa, in the van her staff has likened to the rattletrap “Mystery Machine” from the 1960s cartoon “Scooby-Doo.” The trip was intended, in part, to rebrand the former secretary of state, a 67-year-old multi-millionaire accustomed to private jets and presidential suites, as a warrior for the me middle- and working classes.
Story Continued Below
It’s quite the rhetorical needle to thread. Making the transition from a jet-set international icon who soaked up seven-figure book advances and $200,000 speech fees to a populist pocketbook Democrat is not a simple one — in many ways it’s the single greatest challenge faced by her nascent campaign struggling to energize a Democratic core, and grassroots donor base, intent on fighting economic inequality.
“It’s a trap. She’s not going to reinvent herself as the everywoman, and you can’t go out there and say, ‘I’m one of you,’” said a top Clinton adviser from the 2008 campaign. “But she can say she cares about people. She can say, ‘I’m a rich person, but I actually care about people unlike the Republicans.’ … In that regard, the van thing is remarkably dangerous because she runs the risk of looking phony, it could cement the idea that she’s inauthentic — Saturday Night Live already has half of its show written for next week.”
To keep that from happening, her staff has been scrubbing all of its written materials for any verbiage that suggests Clinton experiences the same kind of anxieties most people face — when her campaign talks about a new sense of ‘humility,’ this is it.
The goal: to avoid the kind of damaging gaffe like her now-infamous declaration last summer that the Clinton family were “dead broke” when they left the White House. Even before that debacle, campaign staffers said that Clinton took notice of how effective President Obama’s attacks against Mitt Romney’s work with Bain Capital were, and she was determined not to let any of her opponents, in either party, mount a similar attack.
To accomplish that, she will mine her less-than-affluent past over the next few days when she interacts with voters, and the hardscrabble childhoods of her parents — especially her late mother Dorothy whose parents packed her onto a train to live with relatives when she was just eight years old.
“Her mother’s own childhood — in which she was abandoned by her parents, taught Hillary that every child deserves a champion… that continues to be her core motivation,” read the talking points distributed to Clinton media surrogates and party leaders in the last 24 hours. “After law school, Hillary chose not to go to a big New York or Washington law firm. Instead she went door-to-door in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the Children’s Defense Fund.”
The three-page document, forwarded to POLITICO by a senior Democrat, also urges her allies to talk about Clinton’s “middle-class” childhood in Oak Park, a tree-lined western Chicago suburb. “Hillary has never forgotten where she comes from,” the memo reads. “Her dad was a World War II veteran, he owned a small business … and Hillary and her two brothers helped out.”
That strategy comes with its own risks — poll respondents routinely cite her lack of trustworthiness and authenticity as top concerns — but Clinton doesn’t have a choice; for all the talk about the resurgence of foreign policy as an electoral priority, the country’s stumbling, incomplete recovery from the great recession is certain to dominate the 2016 campaign as it did in 2012.
Clinton’s new campaign manager Robbie Mook has instructed his staff to adopt a humble, underdog’s posture, but it’s been hard for Clinton and her rich, powerful family to shake off some of their gold rust. As the new candidate was rumbling across the gritty byways of Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio — stopping to gas up and scarf Chipotle — daughter Chelsea was gracing the cover of Elle in pricey Cartier jewelry, her hair blown into a glamorous corona by a wind machine. And Clinton’s friends told the Associated Press that the former first lady had made her final decision to run while vacationing at the waterfront mansion of her dear friend, the fashion designer Oscar De La Renta.
It’s not clear if Clinton’s wealth will negatively impact her campaign — American don’t seem to hold money against a candidate unless he or she seems to be out of touch (Mitt Romney failed with “47 percent,” George H. W. Bush when he appeared unfamiliar with a supermarket scanner). But Clinton’s opponents will almost certainly portray her as a hypocrite.
Lis Smith, an aide to Clinton’s possible Democratic opponent, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, says the “Scooby van” trip is a distraction designed to take the focus off the hard policy choices Clinton needs to make — and whether she’s progressive enough to satisfy a party base that has moved past the Clintonian moderation of the 1990s.
“Obsessing over tactics and optics and modes of transportation is kind of cynical,” she said. “Do we embrace more robust Wall Street reform? Are we the party that is clear-throated on immigration reform? Will we cast aside the outdated belief that Social Security should be cut and instead embrace expansion? These questions are central to the debate going forward — not campaign tactics.”
Still, Clinton retains some of the markers of her Midwest upbringing. During the 2008 campaign the reporters who shared her beat-up 737 noticed that her eating habits ran more along the lines of Pizza Hut than fancier fare. And the talking-points line about how she “enjoys and thrives when she gets to interact directly with voters” was borne out by her hours working rope lines during the last campaign.
And tactical or not, the van trip seemed to accomplish something that few in the press would have predicted during the tedious weeks-long build-up to Clinton’s Sunday campaign kick-off announcement — it injected elements of surprise, humor and a political Americana into the slog.
The van left Clinton’s Chappaqua mansion Sunday morning, undetected, and the three-car convoy had already made it to Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 300 miles away before the candidate Tweeted a photo of herself posing with a happy family. On Tuesday, the caravan made its way into the Rust Belt, stopping at a Chipotle in Maumee, Ohio, around midday; A security camera image captured Clinton — in shades — ordering a chicken burrito bowl to stay, her trusty aide Huma Abedin standing behind her.
The entourage was scheduled to arrive in Iowa on Monday afternoon time for Clinton’s first official campaign event, a Tuesday confab with students and teachers at a community college in the small town of Monticello. Even that decision seemed geared at downsizing a campaign that bloated to imperial proportions at the start of Clinton’s last run — when the candidate glided into the state on the sleek wings of a Gulfstream corporate jet.
This time she’ll arriving on the ground, and will seek out “smaller more personal settings,” according to a senior campaign aide. “What we are trying to make clear with this very first trip to Iowa is … that it isn’t about her, it isn’t about us … but about everyday Iowans … The middle class are the exact people Hillary has fought for her entire life,” the aide told reporters during a Monday conference call.
How she is received — and how she performs when reporters and voters mob her after a seven-year hiatus from politics — will tell much about the campaign ahead. But her enemies are waiting for any hint that she’s too out-of-touch to connect — and they’ll seize on any sign she’s performing a cynical pantomime of All-American normalcy.
“It’s got all the markings of the manufactured, consultant driven plan to try and look normal,” says Kevin Madden, a former top Romney adviser. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t eat at Chipotle, we know that. So do average voters … ‘Hello everyday people! I am here to dine amongst you in this fast food establishment!’ “
Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this story.
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