by David Brock
But defense was only part of our approach. I learned long ago through my years as a right-wing warrior that the best response to an ambush is to attack. So I was always deliberate in constructing war rooms to build in offensive capacities as well.
Correct the Record went on to do more than five hundred on-the-record interviews with the media as we established ourselves as the go-to place for facts about Hillary’s record. But we also attacked the attackers—going up against everybody from Rand Paul, to the Republican National Committee, to—yes—Dick Morris. We placed more than one hundred op-eds from a wide range of experts and leaders highlighting Hillary’s accomplishments—while knocking down the lies that she was a “do-nothing” secretary of state or that she was a late convert to progressive priorities like addressing the gap in income equality. And we trained more than one hundred Hillary surrogates to go out and spread the truth—everywhere from national TV shows to local union halls.
During this critical precampaign period, we were pretty much all Hillary had to fend off the bad guys.
With the founding of Correct the Record, three organizations became part of what the media would call Hillary’s “shadow campaign.” With Priorities USA raising money to spend on paid advertising, Ready for Hillary building grassroots enthusiasm on-and off-line, and Correct the Record serving as a sort of ad hoc comm shop, we had built an unprecedented coordinated effort on behalf of a candidate who was perhaps two years away from formally declaring her candidacy—that is, if she decided to run. (I was once asked in an editorial meeting at ABC News what would happen if Hillary decided not to make the race, after all. “Well, then I was wrong,” I joked.)
Once again, part of the story was that we were harnessing the dubious Citizens United decision to our advantage—but a bigger part of the story was that we were identifying and seizing on opportunities to gain strategic advantage in an era when we knew that, at the end of the day, we would be on the short end of the money stick. As Bill Clinton had always said, we didn’t need to raise more than the other guys—we just needed to raise enough, and be smarter in how we used it. We now had a structure to raise enough money, and a multipronged apparatus that represented a truly new approach to preparing for a presidential campaign.
For my part, and I think this went for a lot of my fellow organizers who had been committed to Hillary in 2008, we were extramotivated by the knowledge that we’d been granted a second chance to help elect her, and by a desire not to squander that second chance. This time, we would get it right. This time, things would be different.
Chapter Six
How to Beat Hillary Clinton
After six years of single-minded focus, conservatives thought they had succeeded in destroying Barack Obama. As the 2014 election approached, his approval ratings were in the basement, and in November, dozens of Democrats met their electoral doom simply because they were tied to the president’s agenda.
Thus, as they looked ahead to 2016, the right wished to believe that retaking the White House could be as simple as taking their 2014 attack ads and swapping out those head shots of Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan and Mark Udall and other losing candidates in exchange for pictures of Hillary Clinton; she, too, could be tied to the unpopular incumbent and dragged to the bottom of the sea.
“Hillary Clinton has a Barack Obama problem,” read a missive from America Rising that hit reporters’ inboxes in the summer of 2014. “No matter how many of her advisors whisper to reporters that she’s different from Barack Obama, Americans still know who she is: Barack Obama Part Deux.”
Republican politicians fell all over themselves agreeing. “She was part of his administration,” Rand Paul told Fox News the week after the midterm election, “and I really don’t know of many, if any, policies they disagree on.”
Meanwhile, fellow presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal, making the conservative policy rounds in Washington, “painted a gloomy portrait of America’s domestic and global standing in the Obama era, and in a nod to the upcoming race for the White House, he made sure to link Hillary Clinton to the policies of the president she served as secretary of state,” according to the Atlantic.
“Hillary Clinton is very beatable,” speculated Paul Ryan, “because a Hillary Clinton presidency is basically the same thing as an Obama third term. I don’t think she’ll be able to shake that.”
“Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” Mitt Romney told Fox News, “are two peas in the same pod.”
As attempts at branding your Democratic opponent go, “Obama’s third term” was an understandable choice. Conservatives who have spent Obama’s entire presidency attacking him would love nothing better than for his perceived flaws to doom his potential successor; there might have been a certain satisfaction to be had from the idea that, like George W. Bush, Obama was such a failure that future nominees would still suffer from the damage he had done to his party’s brand.
But this line of attack looked doubtful as we headed into 2016.
For one thing, President Obama’s approval ratings had rebounded, rising back above 50 percent in early 2015. Presidents are generally regarded more favorably as their administrations fade into the rearview mirror; moreover, economic indicators continue to suggest that the mood of the country overall is likely to improve between now and Election Day. For all the chaos and controversy of his term, history is likely to judge President Obama kindly; he will leave the country in inarguably better shape than he found it.
For another, as Hillary begins to actually campaign for the presidency, she will outline her own policy priorities, making it more difficult for Republicans to simply project their least favorite Obama policies onto a blank slate and slap Hillary’s name on it. She’ll offer her own ideas for preserving and extending the progressive gains made since 2008.
And besides, while, historically, it has been a steep hill to climb for a party to retain control of the White House for a third straight presidential election (it has happened only once since the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951), Hillary Clinton won’t face the same headwinds that Richard Nixon did in 1960, Gerald Ford did in 1976, Al Gore did in 2000, or John McCain did in 2008. She can break that precedent by virtue of the unprecedented nature of her candidacy. Hillary is poised to break the last, highest glass ceiling, and polls show that a clear majority of Americans are ready for a woman president.
Besides the history-making aspect of her candidacy, through her years in public service Hillary already has her own strong political brand, one that any candidate would envy and that her enemies fear (although they frequently deny it). On the Democratic side, one has to go all the way back to the candidacy of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to find a putative nominee in such a commanding position, both within the party and in the electorate as a whole.
So, as they brushed the confetti from their hair in the wake of their 2014 triumphs, conservatives looking ahead to 2016 with clear eyes understood that defeating Hillary would be a much tougher task than their bluster about “third-term-itis” suggested.
Start with the fact that Hillary would enter the race more popular—and, critically, better known—than any other conceivable candidate. In fact, in December 2014, Gallup found that she topped notables like Oprah Winfrey and teen peace activist Malala Yousafzai as Americans’ most admired woman on the planet—the nineteenth time (and seventeenth in the last eighteen years) that she had held that distinction.
Three months later, another Gallup poll illustrated just how difficult it would be to ruin Hillary’s image. Asking Americans for their impressions of a variety of potential 2016 candidates, Gallup found that 50 percent viewed Hillary favorably, compared with 39 percent who had an unfavorable view. The difference between those two numbers—an 11 percent net favorability rating—must have worried conservatives; no Republican candidate enjoyed a net favorability rating greater than 5 percent.
But it was the sum of those two numbers that must have caused the most heartburn for the right. After twenty-plus y
ears in the public eye, Hillary was a known quantity; 89 percent of Americans were familiar enough with her to have an opinion. By contrast, nearly a third of respondents didn’t know enough about Jeb Bush to rate him favorably or unfavorably, and less than half knew enough to rate Marco Rubio. Even the sitting vice president, Joe Biden, had a “familiarity score” more than ten points lower than Hillary’s.
Another challenge for Hillary’s antagonists was that Democrats had united early, and strongly, behind her. A March 2015 CNN survey found that 62 percent of Democrats supported Hillary; no other candidate got more than 15 percent. Before the race had even begun, Hillary had majority support among liberals (59 percent) and moderates (63 percent), men (56 percent) and women (67 percent), whites (56 percent) and nonwhites (67 percent), those under fifty (59 percent) and those fifty and older (66 percent), those who earned under $50,000 a year (64 percent) and those who earned more (56 percent), those who had attended college (63 percent) and those who had not (60 percent).
With Democrats largely on board, conservatives worried, Hillary would be able to spend months patiently building her organization, honing her message, and raising money—all without the pressure of a heated primary battle, despite GOP efforts to stoke one.
It was a nightmare scenario for the right: A carefully orchestrated launch, a quick and bloodless scrimmage against token Democratic opposition, a coronation at the convention in Philadelphia, and Hillary could emerge in July 2016 tanned, rested, and ready—flush with cash, unmarred by friendly fire, and prepared to take it to whichever Republican ended up the last man standing in what would assuredly be a crowded, fiercely contested GOP primary.
And no matter who emerged as Hillary’s Republican opponent, he would find himself standing on a debate stage next to a far more seasoned, inarguably more experienced candidate.
Indeed, one of the reasons America is so ready for Hillary is that she is so ready to lead. In her career, she has been a civil rights activist, a prominent attorney, an advocate for children and families, an influential and policy-focused First Lady, an accomplished senator with a legacy of bipartisan achievements, a dedicated philanthropist, and, of course, secretary of state.
Whether any presidential candidate has ever been more prepared for the office is a question for historians. But, to be certain, no 2016 candidate is even in Hillary’s galaxy: not two-term governors Chris Christie and Scott Walker; not freshman senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz; and not Jeb Bush, who hasn’t held elected office in a decade.
Experience, of course, isn’t everything. But in an April 2015 poll, 55 percent of voters found experience a more important characteristic in a presidential candidate, compared with 37 percent who instead preferred a candidate who could offer a new direction—a clear advantage for Hillary.
If Republicans won’t be able to beat Hillary on the strength of their nominee’s leadership abilities, they certainly won’t be able to beat her on the popularity of their platform. With the wedge issues that worked in the past—such as gay marriage and abortion rights—no longer dividing the electorate in a way that benefits Republicans, the terrain heavily favors the Democrats, who, polls show, enjoy an advantage on nearly every major issue, from immigration reform and infrastructure to tax reform and gun control.
This advantage is particularly pronounced on what seems likely to be the most important issue of the election: the economy—specifically, growing concerns about economic inequality as the middle class still struggles to recover from the Bush recession.
For all their rhetoric about being the party of growth, Republicans have no actual policy solutions that suggest any real departure from the trickle-down approach that Americans have seen fail time and time again. They have nothing to offer families struggling to pay for college or invest for retirement, moms and dads trying to balance career and child rearing, working people frustrated by the unfair treatment they receive from their employers, or any American who feels like it’s gotten harder and harder to get ahead. Their economic “policy” is the same it’s always been: Tax cuts for the rich, scraps for the rest.
Hillary, on the other hand, has a long and accomplished history of focusing on kitchen-table issues, especially those that affect women and children. As progressive economic theories gain more support her record shows that she is well positioned to speak with credibility to the needs of voters.
Then there is the Democrats’ built-in advantage in the Electoral College, where Hillary as the Democratic nominee will begin the general election with a projected 247 votes. Adding Virginia and Colorado to her column brings her to 269—one vote short of the magic number, even conceding Florida and Ohio to the Republicans. That one vote could be picked up with a win in Iowa, New Hampshire, or Nevada.
Thus, from the moment she left the State Department in early 2013, Hillary Clinton was justifiably seen as the clear favorite to capture the White House in 2016. And conservatives would have to pull out all the stops in their attempt to defeat her.
So how do you solve a problem like Hillary Clinton? Over the remaining chapters of this book, I’ll look at how conservatives plan to answer that question—and how they began to implement that strategy long before she even announced her candidacy.
Oddly, a key element of that strategy was the right’s determined effort to cast doubt on whether Hillary would really be that formidable a candidate at all.
Given that, in the eyes of the right, Hillary has spent her entire adult life pursuing political power—that she is a Machiavellian manipulator who carefully cultivates her friends and revels in plotting the destruction of her enemies—it might seem strange that they also believe (or pretend to) that her campaign is doomed from the jump and that she, in the words of Reince Priebus, is “not really good at politics.”
Yet it is a treasured talking point on the right that Hillary is a terrible politician. They sneer that she is wooden and ill at ease in public settings, and a tone-deaf disaster on the stump. They say she’s tightly wound and thin-skinned, cold and distant, unable to connect with ordinary people, “as gaffe-prone as Dan Quayle and as awkward as Bob Dole,” as neoconservative pundit John Podhoretz wrote in the New York Post.
Conservatives’ evidence for all this is what Podhoretz calls the “spectacular incompetence” of Hillary’s first presidential campaign in 2008. Overlooked is the fact that Hillary won a fiercely contested Senate seat from New York by more than ten points in 2000 and received 67 percent of the vote in her reelection campaign six years later. In those campaigns, Hillary proved herself a compelling and effective candidate, overcoming the initial hurdle of being new to the state with good, old-fashioned retail politics—she often happily bunked in people’s homes while on the hustings—and also a mastery of voters’ local concerns.
Indeed, Hillary’s second-place finish to a once-in-a-generation political phenomenon by the narrowest of margins is all her critics can point to in trying to paint her as a bad politician. But even that is questionable proof that Hillary lacks what it takes to win elections. After all, she won 18 million primary votes, more than any candidate in history—Barack Obama included. Of the seven states with the largest populations, she won the popular vote in six (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio), losing only Obama’s home state of Illinois. And, overall, Hillary won more votes from among women, seniors, Latinos, union members, and rural voters.
None of that should cause us to question that Barack Obama’s victory was a spectacular political achievement—but neither is it grounds to conclude that Hillary Clinton’s defeat was a spectacular political failure. Hillary herself committed no game-changing gaffe, exposed no fatal weakness; if she had a slow start in finding her voice on the stump, she fought through it, developing a resonant message that connected with voters both intellectually and emotionally.
In short, Hillary very narrowly lost a contest that she should have very narrowly won. Obama won in large part because, tactically speaking, his team pitche
d a better game in the primary: They outmaneuvered the Clinton campaign in some fine points of caucus strategy; they tapped into a groundswell of small-dollar fund-raising online; and they scored some big early endorsements from established Democrats on Capitol Hill who made the upstarts’ candidacy more plausible. All that was enough to give him the nomination.
It’s hard to argue that the candidate was the problem. The truth is that Hillary was a strong candidate who ran a strong campaign in 2008, one that, were it not for the presence of another strong candidate running another strong campaign, could easily have propelled her to the White House. And to the extent that her campaign was not perfect (no campaign ever is), there is no particular reason to view those shortcomings as an indictment of Hillary’s own political skills.
The story of Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, is not the story of a politician whose ambition wrote checks that her talent couldn’t cash, resulting in a hubristic downfall on the big stage. It’s the story of a politician who came in a very close second in one of the most thrilling primary races of all time, learned from her loss, and is ready to run an even stronger race the second time around.
The right’s attempt to cast Hillary as a bad politician is but one example of how Republican strategists focus on three different audiences in their effort to derail Hillary’s candidacy. Because most voters already have a fixed view of Hillary, a consequence of having been in public life for more than two decades and having always garnered blanket coverage in the press for her every move, together with the fact that there are fewer swing voters in the electorate overall, Republicans know that one focus must be on turning out their own base. In other words, they need to feed red meat to voters who are already against Hillary—so that they keep up the fight, feel their efforts are working, and ultimately turn out to vent their hostility at the voting booth. (The strategy runs the real risk of overreaching and alienating those genuinely on the fence, but the Republicans seem determined to run it anyway.)
