Today's Hillary News & Views begins with news from the campaign trail in New Hampshire, where she’s been joined on the trail by progressive Senators that support her candidacy.
Mother Jones reports:
Sen Al Franken (D-Minn.) opened for Hillary Clinton Saturday night in Portsmouth with one very important message: she's good enough, she's smart enough, and doggone it, she's a Paul Wellstone progressive.
Clinton's final pitch to New Hampshire voters is as much about the people she surrounds herself with as it is the former secretary of state herself. On Friday, four woman senators were there to co-opt Bernie Sanders by arguing that the "revolution" America needs is electing the first woman. Stefany Shaheen, daughter of the New Hampshire senator, warmed up the crowd in Portsmouth by name-dropping celebrity backers Lena Dunham, Gloria Steinem, Abby Wambach—proof she's not only experienced, but maybe cool. Franken was there to follow-up on a subject of intense debate over the last week—what it means to be a progressive.
"Let my clarify something: why they let a guy up here," Franken began, flanked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Gov. Maggie Hassan, and the former secretary of state. He didn't waste any time invoking the legacy of the late Minnesota senator, a progressive icon who died in a plane crash in 2002 shortly before the midterm elections:
“I'm Al Franken, I'm a Senator from Minnesota, and I hold the seat that Paul Wellstone once held. And I can point to someone on this stage whom I wouldn't be senator from Minnesota [without], and that is Hillary Clinton. My first election was kind of close. I won by 312 votes. Hillary Clinton came twice for me, once in October and then I got a call from her the Sunday before the election, she said "I'm coming out." And we did a big rally in Duluth and got more than 312 votes at that rally, I gotta tell you. I'm a Paul Wellstone progressive. And let me tell you what that means: Paul said, "We all do better when we all do better." Now if I knew what a haiku was, I'd say that was a haiku. But evidently I'm told it isn't. But Paul knew that we all do better when we all do better.”
He launched into a personal story of growing up middle-class in Minnesota. And then he returned again to why they let the guy up there.
"Sen. Shaheen, my colleague, and I, like the only other [Senate] Democrats who have endorsed in this race, have endorsed Hillary Clinton for a reason," he said. "Because this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff. This is Sherrod Brown. This is Cory Booker. This is Tammy Baldwin. We are progressives. And we know what it takes to get things done."
Clinton went door to door herself yesterday.
Wall Street Journal reports:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign says she has little chance of winning Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, but the former secretary of state appeared determined to make up some ground Saturday.
Mrs. Clinton’s calendar included a full complement of tried-and-true get-out-the-vote efforts, stretching from morning until evening. There were campaign rallies and town hall events – three were planned in three different cities. The former secretary of state dropped by a restaurant to chat with diners who were enjoying some biscuits and gravy. And Mrs. Clinton even knocked on a few doors.
On Beacon Street in Manchester, Mrs. Clinton stopped at several homes to make a personal pitch, discussing topics ranging from Alzheimer’s to credit unions and banks. She provided a couple hugs upon request , even hugging a dog named Dunkin.
Mrs. Clinton spent about 45 minutes navigating the snowy street, asking homeowners for their support.
Janet Poisson spoke to Mrs. Clinton about the relationship between credit unions and banks. Afterwards, Ms. Poisson was upbeat about the conversation but was still mulling her options.
Will Mrs. Clinton get her vote?
“Most likely,” Ms. Poisson said. “This helps.”
NBC News reports:
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright slammed Bernie Sanders on Saturday, expressing concerns over the Democratic presidential contender's "lack of knowledge" about foreign policy.
"We have to have a president that is ready on Day 1 to deal with problems," Albright told NBC News in an exclusive interview. "I have never seen such a complicated international situation, and we can't afford learning on the job."
Albright, who has been stumping for fellow former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire this weekend, added that Sanders' responses to foreign policy questions at the last presidential debate "surprised" her.
"I've been very concerned about his lack of knowledge," she said, citing his answer to a question about which country poses the biggest threat to the U.S. right now.
"I think that he gave very kind of simple answers," she said. "In contrast to Secretary Clinton, who not only talked about what was going on in each of those countries, but also [spoke about] the other concerns about it, and the relationship to each other, and what the United States had to look out for."
What is "so remarkable about Secretary Clinton is that she understands the relationship between domestic to foreign policy and vice-versa, and to the various, specific facts and how much she worked on it," Albright said.
Earlier Saturday, during a Clinton rally in Concord, New Hampshire, Albright defended Clinton's progressive and foreign policy credentials, and also made a plea to young women in the audience to vote for Clinton, arguing she is the best candidate to defend women's rights.
"Just remember, there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other," Albright — who was the first-ever female secretary of state — told the audience, repeating a catchphrase she has become known for.
Clinton got choked up meeting a supporter who is caring for his ailing mother.
The Huffington Post reports:
Hillary Clinton was on the verge of tears when she met a man caring for his 84-year-old mother with Alzheimer's disease backstage at a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Clinton's campaign posted a video of the man, who only has a part-time job, telling the Democratic presidential candidate he cannot afford to pay for adult daycare for his mother, so he takes her to work with him. Clinton fights back tears as she turns away from the man and says, "oh my gosh" -- prompting the man to apologize and say he didn't mean to upset her.
"No, no I'm so glad you did, oh my gosh, thank you, thank you," the former Secretary of State said, her voice cracking. "Your story is so incredibly moving and it's also a story for so many people, that's why I keep fighting."
Clinton has released a plan seeking to cure Alzheimer's by 2025 and called for $2 billion per year to be dedicated to research into the most common cause of dementia. Clinton has also said she will push for expanded Medicare coverage for Alzheimer patients, which would provide some relief for families that have to care for loved ones with the disease.
"Families are trying, like you are, to do the best they can, but they've got to have more support, and they've got to have more quality respite care, day care that is affordable where they feel ok," she told the man in New Hampshire. "But I would also like to see you get more support through your employment."
Clinton went after a student loan company yesterday.
Raw Story reports:
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said during a student town hall on Saturday that student loan servicer Navient Corp. has been “misleading people” and “doing some really terrible things.”
“Their behavior is outrageous,” Clinton said at New England College, where she was campaigning ahead of the state’s nominating contest on Tuesday, Feb. 9.
Navient is being investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for breaking consumer protection laws.
Clinton is tweaking her stump speech while in NH.
CNN reports:
In the closing days before the Granite State primary vote on Tuesday, Clinton took on directly her perceived stiffness at an event here in Henniker on Saturday, responding to a woman who asked why she seems more "rehearsed" the Sanders.
Acknowledging that she has heard this critique before, Clinton said a friend had showed her a blog post about how Sanders supporters love his trademark fly-away hair.
"Boy, that wouldn't really work for any woman we know," she remarked.
"The fact is I do have a somewhat narrower path that I try to walk and I do think sometimes it comes across as a little more restrained, a little more careful, and I am sure that is true," Clinton said. "I am who I am, I can't do some sort of personality transformation."
On Friday night in Manchester, Clinton compared her time campaigning for presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968, who was running an insurgent campaign against sitting Vice President Hubert Humphrey, to what Sanders' supporters are doing now.
"I want you to know that I am truly glad that you are involved in this process and in the Democratic Party. You are bringing energy, ideas and urgency to our shared causes," Clinton said. "And I can't help but think about how I felt when I first came to New Hampshire in 1968 to campaign for my presidential candidate, Gene McCarthy, to end the war in Vietnam."
Clinton continued to put herself in Sanders' young supporters shoes, adding that she learned in the 1960s and 70s "what you are proving everyday, you can make change every day without being elected, you just need to go do it."
The Washington Post picks up on the double standard Clinton obliquely referred to on the stump:
There’s a second major reason millennials prefer Sanders to Clinton, and that one is more stylistic than substantive.
It has to do with his so-called “authenticity,” by which is usually meant his willingness to look and sound like a hot mess.
I suspect young Americans have always been skeptical of anyone trying too hard to look and sound a particular way (see: Holden Caulfield vs. the “phonies”). But that skepticism is heightened among today’s youth.
In the social media era, meticulous image management is both a necessity and a source of constant resentment and cynicism. We are bombarded with carefully curated Instagram feeds, tweets and other forms of self-conscious digital preening. We must be camera-ready at all times, lest an unflattering image find its way onto Facebook. Yet what’s perhaps the bravest, most powerful boast you can make online? “#Nofilter,” a humblebrag hashtag applied to unedited photos. Or perhaps its close cousin, “#IWokeUpLikeThis.”
It is precisely Sanders’s au-naturel-ness that endears him to his young fans: his unkempt hair, his ill-fitting suits, his unpolished Brooklyn accent, his propensity to yell and wave his hands maniacally. Sanders, it appears, woke up like this.
These qualities are what make him seem “authentic,” “sincere” even — especially when contrasted with Clinton’s hyper-scriptedness. Sanders, unlike Clinton, doesn’t give a damn if he’s camera-ready.
This is, of course, a form of authenticity that is off-limits to any female politician, not just one with Clinton’s baggage.
Female politicians — at least if they want to be taken seriously on a national stage — cannot be unkempt and unfiltered, hair mussed and voice raised. They have to be carefully coifed and scripted at all times, because they have to hew as closely as possible to the bounds of propriety available to both their sex and their occupation. They can’t be too quiet or too loud, too emotional or too cold, too meek or too aggressive, and so on.
Slate as well:
Aware that her tough demeanor put off some voters, she presented herself as a positive, cheerful pragmatist. “A progressive who likes to get things done.” A warrior for the middle class—but a pleasant and amiable one, not a calculating establishment politician. This, too, made Clinton an easy target for her opponents in the media. By attempting to seem genuine, the theory went, Clinton proved herself to be a fraud: Anyone who had to try to seem genuine could not possibly be genuine. On the far left, a hypothesis emerged that Hillary was only pretending to seem affable and populist in order to obscure her deep Wall Street ties.
In stepped Sanders: Brash, no-nonsense, straight-talking, uncompromisingly liberal. (Or so he liked to claim: In actuality, Sanders has a spotty record on gay rights and a terrible record on guns.) Oh, and he’s a man. Democrats flocked to him as a more progressive alternative to Clinton, despite the fact that his legislative strategy hinges on a “political revolution” that will apparently involve Republicans instantly dematerializing upon his inauguration. He and Clinton have mostly minor policy disputes, but Sanders is heralded as a true progressive, even though his most liberal proposals are politically dead in the water. Still, Sanders’ angry populist demagogue shtick goes over extraordinarily well with young liberals, especially white ones, who are weary of horse-trading incremental change. As Rebecca Traister recently noted, Clinton would be committing political suicide if she were equally loud and indignant and unkempt and fiery. “No one likes a woman who yells loudly about revolution,” Traister wrote. Hillary is, once again, boxed in by gender politics—and once again, a male alternative has swept in to claim her prize.
Only twice in American history has a woman been a serious presidential contender; both times, that woman was Hillary Clinton. The paucity of data itself speaks volumes. Why don’t we have other women to compare Clinton to? Could it be because most women, facing the challenges that Clinton faces now, are not allowed to rise to the top tier of candidates? Is it because any woman powerful enough to run for president will quickly become undone by the image of power she projects? Are women simply hesitant to put themselves through the indignities that Clinton has suffered? I don’t know the answers, but the questions worry me. They suggest that no female candidate, however qualified, can ever be strong enough to fight back a challenge from a Sanders-type male rival. In other words, in any given race featuring a female candidate, there will always be a Bernie Sanders who can do what she can’t do and say what she can’t say. And if there will always be a Bernie Sanders, then there may never be a female president of the United States.
Vox deconstructs the “moderate” vs. “progressive” nonsense:
"Progressive" is an ideological term. It refers to a position on an ideological spectrum, namely to the left. A progressive's opposite is a conservative.
"Moderate" is a practical term. It belongs to the second category of assessment. Broadly speaking, it refers to a candidate who focuses on consensus-building and incremental progress, someone who doesn't believe the US political system is capable of sudden, lurching change, or just doesn't want that kind of change.
A moderate's opposite is a radical, someone who believes rapid, revolutionary change is both possible and necessary.
You can't be a centrist progressive, because "center" refers to that ideological spectrum. But you can certainly be a moderate progressive — someone who supports the ultimate goals of the left, but who believes a cautious and incremental approach is the best (or only) way to get there.
The distinction matters, because it helps map out the terrain each candidate want to fight on. In a nutshell, Sanders wants the contest to be about ideology and Clinton wants it to be about practicality. He is the champion of ideological progressivism; she is the champion of practical moderation.
So when Sanders attacks Clinton over her progressivism, he is trying to pull the fight into ideology. Clinton defenders try to pull it back to practical matters, saying, no, it's not that Clinton doesn't share these big ideological goals, it's just that she realizes the only way to get there is through modest steps built upon existing programs. Pushing too much change too fast is dangerous (one of many lessons Clinton took from her 1993 health care debacle).
Clinton is headed to Flint, Michigan today.
NBC News reports:
Hillary Clinton has heaped attention on the lead-poisoned city of Flint, Michigan, for weeks, but on Sunday she'll do more than just highlight the crisis. She'll actually see it firsthand.
The Democratic presidential candidate is scheduled to visit the faded American factory town with the undrinkable taps. Her plan is to tour the city with Mayor Karen Weaver, learning about the state of the crisis and the efforts to fix it.
The timing of the trip is remarkable, just two days before the New Hampshire primary election. But it's also part of an explosion of attention from the former secretary of state and first lady.
Ever since the state declared a man-made emergency in early January, Clinton has hammered the problem and the Republican administration that caused it.
She's the only one actually trying to help Flint," said Shayne Hodges, a Flint father of three and friend of Mayor Weaver.
"Secretary Clinton has been in touch with the mayor personally and the two staffs have been in consistent contact," Kristin Moore, the mayor's communication director told MSNBC. "As far as I know," she added, "Clinton is the only presidential candidate—Republican or Democrat—who has reached out."
Clinton's latest comments came Thursday, during the Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC. Moderator Rachel Maddow, who has also focused on the issue for weeks, even traveling to Flint to host a town hall, asked Clinton whether she would launch a federal response.
"Absolutely," said Clinton. "We need to be absolutely clear about everything that should be done from today to tomorrow, into the future to try to remedy the terrible burden that the people of Flint are bearing."
"That includes fixing their pipes, it includes guaranteeing whatever health care and educational embellishments they may need going forward, and I think the federal government has ways where it can bill the state of Michigan," she continued. "If Michigan won't do it, there have to be ways that we can begin to move, and then make them pay for it and hold them accountable."
Detroit News reports:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will hold a meeting Sunday afternoon with Flint residents affected by the city’s water contamination crisis at a Baptist church.
Clinton’s event begins at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church, 1851 W. Carpenter Road, on Flint’s northwest side, the Clinton campaign announced Saturday.
Doors open at 9:30 a.m. and will coincide with with Sunday morning church services. The event is open to the public, according to the Clinton campaign.
After the event, Clinton will hold a private meeting at Flint City Hall with Mayor Karen Weaver, according to the mayor’s office.
Weaver has endorsed Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Michigan’s March 8 Democratic primary, citing Clinton’s personal engagement in the Flint’s water crisis. Clinton has twice sent campaign aides to Flint over the past month to meet with Weaver and assess the city’s recovery needs.
She is expected to use the appearance in Flint to advocate for the U.S. Senate to approve $600 million in aid for Flint, which needs untold miles of lead-soldered pipes replaced to prevent further leaching of toxic lead into the water supply.
The Washington Post notes the few times Clinton and Sanders disagreed in the Senate:
Among the most significant disagreements was on the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007” — the legislative vehicle for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP. Sanders was one of 25 senators to oppose the measure, bucking the majority of both the Democratic and Republican caucuses.
Of course, Sanders wasn’t a Democrat until he decided to run for president. It’s not a surprise, then, that Sanders went against the party majority three times as often as did Clinton.
The Huffington Post reports that Clinton again reaffirmed her support for Social Security, which Sanders had called into question, and he responded with his usual grace and honesty:
"I won't cut Social Security," Clinton wrote in an initialed tweet that included a link to her campaign website’s Social Security page. "As always, I'll defend it, & I'll expand it. Enough false innuendos."
The post was a response to something Sanders had tweeted earlier in the day, when he urged Clinton to "join me in saying loudly and clearly that we will never cut Social Security."
Clinton previously had stated that she planned to increase benefits, particularly for vulnerable beneficiaries, but progressive groups worried she might be willing to strike a so-called grand bargain on fiscal policy that increased benefits for some poorer Americans as it cut middle-class benefits.
Those organizations praised Clinton’s Twitter comment as the kind of airtight commitment they were seeking.
"Today, Hillary Clinton clarified her position that she, like Bernie Sanders, will oppose all Social Security benefits cuts, including, of course, raising the retirement age which is an across the board benefit cut," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works. "Expanding, not cutting, Social Security is profoundly wise policy and what an overwhelming majority of Americans want."
"We’re glad that, for the first time, Secretary Clinton has indicated that she will join me in expanding Social Security benefits," Sanders said in a statement, not acknowledging that Clinton previously had professed support for expanding benefits. "But we need more clarity."
Sanders went on to list a series of policy options he believes will fix the program -- ones that he has embraced but that Clinton apparently has yet to adopt -- including lifting the cap on earnings that are subject to Social Security payroll taxes.
"Is she prepared to scrap the cap on payroll taxes?" Sanders asked. "Is she prepared to support legislation that I have offered that would both expand Social Security benefits and extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 58 years as a result of lifting the cap on taxable income on people who earn more than $250,000 a year? I hope so but we’re still not sure."
In fact, Clinton has expressed openness to lifting the cap on her website and on the campaign trail.
"Hillary understands that there is no way to accomplish that goal without asking the highest-income Americans to pay more, including options to tax some of their income above the current Social Security cap, and taxing some of their income not currently taken into account by the Social Security system," her site states.
Remember that great article from Scan that argued Clinton hadn't voted for war in Iraq?
Slate reports that the claim is supported by the Congressional record, too:
President Bush, she told the audience, had made a “very explicit appeal” that “getting this vote would be a strong piece of leverage in order to finish the inspections.” In other words, a resolution to use force would prod Saddam Hussein into readmitting U.N. inspectors, so they could continue their mission of verifying whether or not he had destroyed his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons sites. In other words, Clinton was now claiming she voted the way she did in the interests of diplomacy; the problem was that Bush went back on his word—he invaded before giving the inspectors enough time.
Listening to her rationale Wednesday night, I didn’t know whether she was telling the truth. I had written many Slate columns about the Iraq debate and the ensuing war, but I couldn’t remember the details of then-Sen. Clinton’s position. Looking up those details now, I have come to a conclusion about the rationale she recited at the New Hampshire town hall: Hillary was telling the truth.
“Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first … I take the president at his word that he will try hard to pass a United Nations resolution and seek to avoid war, if possible. Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely and war less likely—and because a good faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause—I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation. If we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go away with delay will oppose any United Nations resolution calling for unrestricted inspections.”
She added, “This is a difficult vote. This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make. Any vote that may lead to war should be hard, but I cast it with conviction. … My vote is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of preemption or for unilateralism or for the arrogance of American power or purpose.” A vote for the resolution, she argued, “is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our president. And we say to him: Use these powers wisely and as a last resort.”
Colin Powell, intentionally or not, is backing Clinton up on her e-mail dilemmas.
Daily News Bin reports:
Colin Powell is now calling on his own emails to be released to the public so it can be clearly seen by all that he didn’t reveal any information which was classified at the time, and that his emails were harmless. “I wish they would release them so that a normal, air-breathing mammal would look at them and say, ‘What’s the issue?'” He also stated he believes the emails in question are still not classified, despite any retroactive reclassification.
Powell didn’t mention Clinton by name, but he didn’t have to. By stating his own emails that weren’t classified at the time are a non-issue, he’s also labeling Clinton’s emails that weren’t classified at the time as a non-issue. This is key because Powell is not only widely respected, he’s a republican. This weakens the arguments being made by some republicans that Clinton has done something wrong with her emails, because she’s now being absolved by one of the most respected republicans out there.
Reardon Reports noted the unprecedented hostility on display at Saturday night’s Democratic Dinner:
Last night supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders repeatedly interruputed Sen. Jeanne Shaheen while she was speaking at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner. In my more than 30 years of attending Democratic events in New Hampshire, I’ve never witnessed rudeness and disrespect like this.
Jeanne Shaheen was the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire. She is the only woman in United States history to be elected both a governor and a U.S. senator. Much to the dismay of her campaign strategists during her 2014 reelection campaign, Jeanne Shaheen ranks pretty high on all the various scorecards measuring how liberal senators’ voting records are.
Why in the world would Bernie Sanders’ supporters treat this woman who made the Democratic Party a winning party in New Hampshire so disrespectfully?
Because she supports Hillary Clinton for president? That’s too simple. I don’t think people are motivated to heckle a sitting U.S. Senator speaking at a Democratic Party event named in her honor simply because she’s supporting a different candidate.
So what is the difference this time? What would make Bernie Sanders supporters behave like this?
As Gov. Dukakis used to say, “The fish rots from the head down.”
I’m not saying Bernie Sanders instructs his supporters to interrupt and heckle the speech of a U.S. Senator.
But what Bernie Sanders does is constantly tell us is Congress is corrupt and the political system is corrupt, and he calls for a political revolution. His supporters clearly have internalized this message. And if you believe Congress is corrupt and the political system is corrupt and what we need in this country is a political revolution, why would you show any respect to the senior U.S. Senator from New Hampshire? And not only is she in the corrupt Senate, she supports the devil herself, Hillary Clinton!
Donald Trump is stoking hatred of Muslims and Latinos. Bernie Sanders is stoking hatred of members of Congress. Both forms of populism are dangerous to the future of our country.
The Week notes that Hillary Clinton has evolved since the 1990’s, but then again, so have we:
Is Clinton just tacking left for the primaries in response to the success of the Sanders insurgency? Will she go back to her '90s self if she wins the nomination?
I don't think so. In part, Clinton may be reacting to Sanders. But really the power of Sanders' challenge is as much effect as cause. It represents a Democratic coalition that is well to the left of where it was in 1994 or 1976. The political landscape has changed, and even Bill Clinton would govern very differently if he took office today than he did in the '90s.
For example, Hillary Clinton has been forcefully arguing for an end to mass incarceration and denouncing the racist effects of these policies. But, as first lady, she supported the 1994 omnibus crime bill signed by her husband that severely exacerbated the problem. Some liberals are surely worried that the 1994 statute represents the "real" Clinton and she'll go back once the primaries are over.
It's important to understand the politics of the era, and how much things have changed. The 1994 omnibus crime bill had, at the time, broad support within the Democratic coalition. Only two Democratic senators voted against the bill, and one was the conservative Alabaman Richard Shelby. Among the members of the House who voted for the bill was…Bernie Sanders. The statute was, in retrospect, a terrible mistake, but it was based on bad assumptions that were widely shared by liberal and moderate Democrats alike at the time. Neither Clinton nor Sanders would make the same mistake again.
Or take gay and lesbian rights. Bill Clinton thought it was politically necessary to sign the appalling Defense of Marriage Act after it passed with veto-proof majorities, and Barack Obama thought it was politically necessary to nominally oppose same-sex marriage. And, yet, the Supreme Court justices they appointed provided four of the five votes necessary to not only strike DOMA down but hold that the right to same-sex marriage was guaranteed under the Constitution. Both Clinton and Obama applauded these decisions, and no serious contender for the Democratic nomination will ever again oppose same-sex marriage. A party's leaders tend to move with their parties.
To assume the Hillary Clinton of 1994 would be an accurate reflection of the Hillary Clinton of 2017 is to fundamentally misunderstand how politics works. When JFK made Lyndon Johnson his vice presidential nominee in 1960, labor and civil rights groups nearly revolted in view of Johnson's fairly conservative record representing Texas in Congress. When he became president, Johnson signed arguably the most progressive collection of legislation since Reconstruction. It wasn't that Johnson changed; it was that he was representing different constituencies in a different political context.