Amy Chozick, one of the chief Hillary defenders at The New York Times, made Thursday’s front page with an evident attempt to boost Clinton’s sagging appeal (covered in a brief inside Times story) among blacks, while assuming bad faith on the part of police, in “Black Victims Mothers Step Forward for Clinton.” Both Chozick and liberal Clinton embraced the current liberal media conventional wisdom that President Bill Clinton’s crime bill was grievously flawed and harmed blacks, never mind the former president's own passionate defense of the law.
The Sweet Maple Cafe in Chicago, famous for its grilled cheese sandwiches and sweet milk biscuits, typically closes each day after the lunch rush. But one evening in November, the restaurant opened for an unusual private dinner.
The mothers of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, and a half-dozen other black women who had lost children in clashes with the police or in gun violence, were flown in from around the country and invited to gather around a table. They were joined by Hillary Clinton, who asked them, one by one, to tell her their stories.
Chozick went to the personal anecdote well early and often to humanize Hillary.
Mrs. Clinton appeared “visibly hurt” as the mothers spoke, said Lucia McBath, whose 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot after playing loud music in his car in 2012.
The gathering, held without aides or journalists present, stretched into a nearly three-hour dinner over pork chops and gravy, fried okra and rice. After dessert of apple pie, Mrs. Clinton encouraged the women to organize and travel the country with her campaign.
But somehow the New York Times managed to find out about it...
The Clinton campaign named this sisterhood forged in the shared loss of a child the “Mothers of the Movement,” and they have become an unlikely linchpin of Mrs. Clinton’s success in the Democratic primary. At campaign stops, Mrs. Clinton introduces them as “a group of mothers who belong to a club no one ever wants to join.” The mothers will arrive in New York this week to help Mrs. Clinton compete in the primary on Tuesday.
Having these women by her side has provided Mrs. Clinton with powerful and deeply sympathetic character witnesses as she makes her case to African-American voters. And they have given her campaign, an often cautious and poll-tested operation, a raw, human and sometimes gut-wrenching feeling.
The presence of the mothers has also proved a shrewd political move, influencing black leaders and lawmakers to back Mrs. Clinton.
Racial instigator Al Sharpton was treated with his usual unearned respect in the NYT.
“Those not supporting her are reluctant to go against her, because we led the marches and the rallies on these things and have worked very closely with the mothers,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose National Action Network is hosting Mrs. Clinton and her opponent in the Democratic primary, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for a discussion of civil rights issues at its annual conference this week in New York. “It certainly influences how we related to her campaign,” added Mr. Sharpton, who has not endorsed a candidate.
....
Mrs. Clinton’s outreach to the women began early, even before she officially announced she was running for president, and has continued throughout her campaign.
In December, Ms. Reed-Veal, the mother of Ms. Bland, received a Christmas card in the mail. “I know this is the first holiday without your baby,” the neat cursive handwriting read. “Just know, I’m thinking of you.” It was signed, “Hillary.” She received another note from Mrs. Clinton when a grand jury declined to indict anyone in her daughter’s death.
That kind of personal touch inspired Ms. Reed-Veal to join Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. At a black church in Milwaukee last month, sitting on stage next to the candidate, she told her story and implored the city’s black residents to vote for Mrs. Clinton.
Both Chozick and liberal Clinton embraced the current liberal media conventional wisdom that President Bill Clinton’s crime bill was grievously flawed and harmed blacks (never mind, as Clinton himself stated in defense of the law’s results: “A 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate -- and listen to this, because of that and the background-check law, a 46-year low in the deaths of people from gun violence. And who do you think those lives were, that mattered? Whose lives were saved, that mattered?”)
Chozick skipped all that.
For many of the mothers, supporting Mrs. Clinton meant absolving her of the pain caused by policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, including a 1994 crime bill that built more prisons, put 100,000 additional police officers on the streets and increased sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.
The only criticism of Clinton came not from any pro-police conservatives, but from the soft-on-crime left.
Ms. Garner, who made an ad for Mr. Sanders, said Mrs. Clinton was “constantly throwing around my dad’s name” but had previously “called people like my dad ‘superpredators.’” Mrs. Clinton used the term in 1996 to describe urban gang members and has since said she regrets doing so. And last week, Mr. Clinton faced intense backlash after he drowned out the chants of Black Lives Matter protesters.
“She’s not her husband,” Ms. Nance-Holt said in an interview. “She’s her own woman.”
The mothers must also contend with critics who say that Mrs. Clinton’s early and frequent outreach is a cynical ploy to woo black voters, who have largely swayed the primary in her favor. “People go around and say, ‘You’re being pimped by the secretary,’” Ms. Reed-Veal said. “Who in the heck is going to exploit us?”
While the Times shudders at the thought of the religious right gaining power, it has no problem with the religious left, as embodied by personalities from Pope Francis to Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton shows a different side when she is around the mothers. She talks less and seems more maternal, growing teary and turning to Scripture in response to the women’s pain. “Let us not grow weary of doing good, because in due time we will harvest if we stay focused,” she often says, paraphrasing Galatians 6:9.
