Comments to Hillary Campaign

I've been getting e-mail from Geoff Garin of Hillary Clinton's campaign soliciting comments about strategy, encouragement to Hillary, and so on.

Here's a somewhat better developed version of my reply.

1. Dissociate herself from the Nineties. The Hillary campaign needs to completely separate her from the DLC/triangulation politics of the 1990's. Reducing Mark Penn's role, criticizing NAFTA, and lowering Bill Clinton's profile are steps in that direction. But more steps need to be taken. Hillary should speak more about the value of labor unions, the importance of working class men and the sacrifices they make for their families, the importance of raising wages, and the importance of reducing the disparity between CEO's and working-class people. The Bill Clinton administration shifted away from the "New Deal Democratic" coalition by being distancing themselves from labor unions, black people, and the poor and embracing deregulation. Although Hillary has already started the shift back, she should be more emphatic about it.

2. Renounce the Bush Doctrine. Hillary also needs to highlight her determination to withdraw from Iraq by also renouncing the Bush doctrine of attacking anybody who is an emerging threat and treating anybody who disagrees with us as an enemy. I get comments from a lot of people on both the right and left that Hillary won't "really" withdraw from Iraq. Renouncing the whole Bush doctrine might make her more convincing on that score.

3. Embrace the "activist" Democratic base. It was reported yesterday or today that Hillary made some negative comments about MoveOn.org and the activist "white" Democratic base after Iowa. She should do a 180 turn and embrace MoveOn, the liberal blogs, and Media Matters (which she helped get started didn't she) and their opposition to the war, support for environmental initiatives, and passion for racial and gender justice. Lots of people on the left view Hillary as more progressive than Obama. The activist left also has the kind of partisan, fighting spirit that Hillary herself is trying to exemplify. Hillary needs to nail her association with the left by openly identifying herself with progressives. In terms of her disagreements, she should emphasize that she agrees with progressive ideals but that it is also important to compromise with other constituencies and deal with some of the the unintentionally negative consequences of progressive initiatives.

4. Finally, Hillary needs to keep coming at Obama from several angles at the same time. For some reason, Democrats generally think that pounding away at one theme ad nauseum is the best way to do things. It's not. Of course, the risk of attacking Obama is that lots of Democrats don't like going negative on other Demcrats. But I don't think the Hillary campaign is in a position to do anything else.

Obviously, Hillary's behind. But she can still win and should be pushing as hard as she can.