The Washington Post couldn’t just note on the front page Saturday that Hillary Clinton would make her presidential campaign official on Sunday. No, the headline was “Clinton to enter race with savvy understatement.”
Obama campaign manager David Axelrod approved: “Humility is the order of the day,” he said. “Last time, they launched as a big juggernaut cloaked in the veil of inevitability and at 20,000 feet. There was a tremendous backlash to that.”
Post reporters Anne Gearan and Philip Rucker go long in describing her up-close-and-personal strategy, trying to warm up her image, as if the liberal media had done anything to harm it:
The idea is to showcase Clinton’s abilities as a problem-solver and crusader for the rights of those struggling to climb into or stay in the middle class. The intimate events with voters are also designed to help the former secretary of state connect with ordinary Americans and listen to their concerns, supporters said.
Jay Jacobs, a former New York Democratic Party chairman and longtime Clinton friend, said he thinks the events will present Clinton “as she is known by people who are close to her: as a very warm, genuine, thoughtful, certainly intelligent, regular person.”
“There’s been so much that we’ve seen that seems to create an image, by the press and by others, those who are looking to derail her, but now the voters are going to hear from Hillary,” Jacobs said.
Clinton’s human-scale approach is modeled on the listening tour she conducted across New York state at the start of her successful 2000 Senate race. She came to that campaign as a sitting first lady and political celebrity with no roots in New York, but her efforts to seek out New Yorkers’ opinions — in diners as well as people’s living rooms and kitchens — surprised many voters and some critics.
“It became a two-way conversation that impressed voters not by just what she said, but by how intently she listened,” Jacobs said. “I think that’s Hillary. That’s something that has worked before and it’ll work again.”
The positive pull quote in bold text came from Clinton fundraiser John Morgan, extolling her lack of any real primary challengers gives her an advantage:
“I think she’ll be in Iowa eating corn on the cob instead of clinking champagne flutes with donors,” Morgan said. “She can do this much quicker, much more efficiently because she’s not fighting for donors. Rubio, Bush, that whole crowd is in mortal combat for dollars. She’s not. That’s her advantage.”
In paragraph 20 and 21, there is the brief nod to the GOP critique. Everything else is Democrats talking her up:
With Clinton’s launch, Republicans are revving up their attack machine. The Republican National Committee announced an online ad Friday to highlight past scandals, including her use of private e-mail at the State Department.
“From the East Wing to the State Department, Hillary Clinton has left a trail of secrecy, scandal and failed liberal policies that no image consultant can erase,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “Voters want to elect someone they can trust and Hillary’s record proves that she cannot be trusted. We must ‘Stop Hillary.’”
