On the PBS NewsHour on Monday, political analyst Amy Walter spoke just like the “mainstream” media as a whole, seeing all the peril for Hillary Clinton in how she’s too centrist – both on domestic and foreign policy.
As they discussed an analysis by Dan Balz of The Washington Post about how Hillary is going to be affected by Obama’s Iran deal, Walter announced the media line:
AMY WALTER: This is going to be the very interesting thing for Hillary Clinton going forward. We talk a lot about the problem on her liberal left on some of the Wall Street issues. I think the bigger issue is going to be on foreign policy.
Remember, she’s a lot more hawkish than a lot of Democrats are, certainly than even the president is, on some of these issues. She was a lot more skeptical on Iran — she said so in her memoir — than this president is. What is she going to talk about on all of those issues going forward in a primary, where, as we know, the last time around, it was Iraq that really tripped her up?
Walter and Susan Page of USA Today toed Hillary’s line in explaining how she’s going to make the campaign all about the needs of the people, and not about her. There was no skeptical note about how Clintonian this is, especially in relations to scandals, like the e-mail “shredding,” just as how Bill Clinton's campaign was always about the public, not his privates. No, the campaign’s all about you, not her ethics:
SUSAN PAGE: Ted Cruz, when he announced, needed to get people to notice him. He needed to get some attention. He needed to gather some names and e-mail addresses to use for fund-raising and other purposes. Hillary Clinton, she has got nothing but attention, and she’s got millions of names.
What she needs is to, in a way, reintroduce herself to Americans in a slightly different way. So I would expect her to do something that is a little less traditional than what we are seeing from Rand Paul tomorrow. I think it will be smaller, more intimate, very much use of social media to try to say, I’m an authentic person. I understand your lives. I am worried about you. I’m approachable.
Page also failed to say a candidate might be seen as dishonest and untrustworthy when they have to say “I’m an authentic person.” And Walter cooperated:
WALTER: And I think that Susan is exactly right. It has to be less about her and more about the audience, which is: I know everybody has been focused on who I am. What I need — and what she needs to tell them is, I need to tell you why I’m going to be working for you. And this is not an entitlement that I get the nomination or that I get the presidency. I can’t wait to work every single day to get your vote.
That would be the message, I think, that she needs to give, and I think that we’ll hear.
