LilAnn
MEMBER
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
- Messages
- 385
- Reactions
- Country
-
- Location
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/us/hillary-clinton-will-interrupt-vacation-to-campaign-in-midwest.html?_r=0
Hillary Rodham Clinton had planned to spend the last two weeks of August on vacation, unwinding and fund-raising on the exclusive shores of Long Island. But, as it turns out, this is no time for a vacation.
Amid concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s softening poll numbers and her exclusive use of a personal email server as secretary of state, she will interrupt her Hamptons stay next week to travel to the Midwest and try to shift attention back to her campaign message by unveiling new policy positions.
She will then return to the Hamptons, where she and former President Bill Clinton are renting a beachside estate in Amagansett that costs $100,000 for a two-week stay, and will attend several $2,700-per-person fund-raisers hosted there by her wealthy friends.
With questions about Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email persisting — a federal judge said Thursday that the practice did not comply with government policies — and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. considering seeking the Democratic nomination, the late-August doldrums have proven anything but.
“Two weeks is a long time in politics,” said Richard Socarides, a Democratic strategist and former White House aide to Mr. Clinton. “The only way to counter it is to talk about policy and talk about substance.”
On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton will leave Long Island, where her husband has been spotted golfing and on Tuesday celebrated his 69th birthday alongside Jon Bon Jovi, to take her economic message to “reshuffle the deck” in favor of working Americans on the road.
On Thursday, she will attend a grass-roots organizing party in Cleveland, her first campaign stop in the critical battleground of Ohio, and on Friday, she will address the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis.
A campaign aide said the events in Cleveland and Minnesota had been on Mrs. Clinton’s public schedule for weeks and are unrelated to any recent news.
For weeks, Mrs. Clinton has insisted that voters do not care about her use of private email and instead want to hear about how she will help them economically. “Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys,” she told reporters in North Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The topic does not typically come up in Mrs. Clinton’s wide-ranging town hall-style meetings, where voters ask her about everything from criminal justice reform to whether they can get a hug. (“Sit down right there, and when I finish my Q. and A., I will give you that hug, I promise,” she told the woman.)
But there is a growing recognition in her campaign that the continuing inquiries into her email practices and the Republican attacks amplifying the story have started to filter into the mainstream.
“We do think people have questions about this,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “It’s a very confusing topic, and I think as you’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, we have changed our strategy in that we are trying to do more education.”
This week, the campaign started to hold regular conference calls with reporters and surrogates to explain the latest developments on the email subject. Mrs. Clinton’s aides have also emphasized high-profile endorsements, released policy proposals and gone on television in Iowa and New Hampshire with a new ad called “Reshuffle.”
This week, her press secretary, Brian Fallon, held a conference call to remind reporters forcefully that “Secretary Clinton did not send or receive classified materials,” and Mrs. Clinton unveiled the next part of her $350 billion plan to make college more affordable. The proposal would triple the number of students who volunteer for AmeriCorps to 250,000 and double the award for two years of service to $23,000.
“There’s a theory that when you run for president, you should have ideas about how to improve people’s lives, and that you should communicate those ideas to voters,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and the policy director of Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “It’s not about emails or Washington or food fights; it’s about solving problems people are experiencing.”
But there are indeed signs on the campaign trail that voters are paying attention to the broad strokes of the email controversy. In a CNN-ORC poll released this week, 56 percent of Americans said Mrs. Clinton had done something wrong by using a personal email account and server as secretary of state; in March, 51 percent said the same.
Margaret Pirkl, 42, a nurse in Des Moines, said the various scandals that had surrounded the Clintons over the years turned her off. “Morally, this country is collapsing,” she said.
“Republicans could take that and make her look really, really bad,” said Otistine Brown, 66, a retired schoolteacher in Las Vegas who plans to caucus for Mrs. Clinton in February.
Among the places where Mrs. Clinton enjoys stalwart support are the Hamptons, where she and Mr. Clinton have spent the past several summers, walking their dogs on the beach, attending clambakes and raising money for their family’s philanthropic foundation. This summer, the fashion designer Tory Burch is among those hosting fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton.
Alan Patricof, a longtime donor and friend, said the pancake breakfast he and his wife, Susan, were hosting for Mrs. Clinton on Aug. 30, for up to $2,700 per person, had almost reached capacity at more than 300 people.
He said the criticism over Mrs. Clinton’s emails was just the latest attempt by Republicans to try to take down the Clintons. “Republicans have been on their case since 1991,” he said.
But, like many supporters of Mrs. Clinton, he said it was important for the campaign and its surrogates to explain that the subject was “somewhat of a tempest in a teapot.”
“To me, it’s their Swift boat issue of 2015,” he said, referring to the Republican attacks on John Kerry’s Vietnam War record that helped derail Mr. Kerry’s 2004 presidential candidacy against George W. Bush.
Hillary Rodham Clinton had planned to spend the last two weeks of August on vacation, unwinding and fund-raising on the exclusive shores of Long Island. But, as it turns out, this is no time for a vacation.
Amid concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s softening poll numbers and her exclusive use of a personal email server as secretary of state, she will interrupt her Hamptons stay next week to travel to the Midwest and try to shift attention back to her campaign message by unveiling new policy positions.
She will then return to the Hamptons, where she and former President Bill Clinton are renting a beachside estate in Amagansett that costs $100,000 for a two-week stay, and will attend several $2,700-per-person fund-raisers hosted there by her wealthy friends.
With questions about Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email persisting — a federal judge said Thursday that the practice did not comply with government policies — and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. considering seeking the Democratic nomination, the late-August doldrums have proven anything but.
“Two weeks is a long time in politics,” said Richard Socarides, a Democratic strategist and former White House aide to Mr. Clinton. “The only way to counter it is to talk about policy and talk about substance.”
On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton will leave Long Island, where her husband has been spotted golfing and on Tuesday celebrated his 69th birthday alongside Jon Bon Jovi, to take her economic message to “reshuffle the deck” in favor of working Americans on the road.
On Thursday, she will attend a grass-roots organizing party in Cleveland, her first campaign stop in the critical battleground of Ohio, and on Friday, she will address the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis.
A campaign aide said the events in Cleveland and Minnesota had been on Mrs. Clinton’s public schedule for weeks and are unrelated to any recent news.
For weeks, Mrs. Clinton has insisted that voters do not care about her use of private email and instead want to hear about how she will help them economically. “Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys,” she told reporters in North Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The topic does not typically come up in Mrs. Clinton’s wide-ranging town hall-style meetings, where voters ask her about everything from criminal justice reform to whether they can get a hug. (“Sit down right there, and when I finish my Q. and A., I will give you that hug, I promise,” she told the woman.)
But there is a growing recognition in her campaign that the continuing inquiries into her email practices and the Republican attacks amplifying the story have started to filter into the mainstream.
“We do think people have questions about this,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “It’s a very confusing topic, and I think as you’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, we have changed our strategy in that we are trying to do more education.”
This week, the campaign started to hold regular conference calls with reporters and surrogates to explain the latest developments on the email subject. Mrs. Clinton’s aides have also emphasized high-profile endorsements, released policy proposals and gone on television in Iowa and New Hampshire with a new ad called “Reshuffle.”
This week, her press secretary, Brian Fallon, held a conference call to remind reporters forcefully that “Secretary Clinton did not send or receive classified materials,” and Mrs. Clinton unveiled the next part of her $350 billion plan to make college more affordable. The proposal would triple the number of students who volunteer for AmeriCorps to 250,000 and double the award for two years of service to $23,000.
“There’s a theory that when you run for president, you should have ideas about how to improve people’s lives, and that you should communicate those ideas to voters,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and the policy director of Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “It’s not about emails or Washington or food fights; it’s about solving problems people are experiencing.”
But there are indeed signs on the campaign trail that voters are paying attention to the broad strokes of the email controversy. In a CNN-ORC poll released this week, 56 percent of Americans said Mrs. Clinton had done something wrong by using a personal email account and server as secretary of state; in March, 51 percent said the same.
Margaret Pirkl, 42, a nurse in Des Moines, said the various scandals that had surrounded the Clintons over the years turned her off. “Morally, this country is collapsing,” she said.
“Republicans could take that and make her look really, really bad,” said Otistine Brown, 66, a retired schoolteacher in Las Vegas who plans to caucus for Mrs. Clinton in February.
Among the places where Mrs. Clinton enjoys stalwart support are the Hamptons, where she and Mr. Clinton have spent the past several summers, walking their dogs on the beach, attending clambakes and raising money for their family’s philanthropic foundation. This summer, the fashion designer Tory Burch is among those hosting fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton.
Alan Patricof, a longtime donor and friend, said the pancake breakfast he and his wife, Susan, were hosting for Mrs. Clinton on Aug. 30, for up to $2,700 per person, had almost reached capacity at more than 300 people.
He said the criticism over Mrs. Clinton’s emails was just the latest attempt by Republicans to try to take down the Clintons. “Republicans have been on their case since 1991,” he said.
But, like many supporters of Mrs. Clinton, he said it was important for the campaign and its surrogates to explain that the subject was “somewhat of a tempest in a teapot.”
“To me, it’s their Swift boat issue of 2015,” he said, referring to the Republican attacks on John Kerry’s Vietnam War record that helped derail Mr. Kerry’s 2004 presidential candidacy against George W. Bush.
