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Today we begin with a Tweet from late yesterday in which Hillary explains how becoming a grandparent was a transformational experience and how proud she is to see the continuity of love and family as she watches Chelsea in her new role as a mother.
Hillary also responded by email to supporters who had accepted Chelsea’s invitation to sign a Mother’s Day card to Hillary. She mentioned her own mother Dorothy, who passed 5 years ago, and highlighted a couple stories that signers had shared.
Today, I’m thinking a lot about my mom, Dorothy. She had a tough childhood, sent away by her parents and working to support herself as a housemaid by the time she was 14. Despite not always having the support she needed, she found a way to become an amazing, supportive mother to my brothers and me….
Some of you shared stories about your mothers this week, and many of them struck a chord: Juanita from Florida talked about working alongside her mom, who was a farmworker, and listening to her talk about the importance of a good education. Today, Juanita has a PhD.
Sylvia from Texas told me that her mother started working as a nanny when she was just 12, much like my mom. Now, with her mother’s support, Sylvia is getting ready to go to college.
Some previous videos had introduced us to Dorothy, and the campaign yesterday published another biographical essay. In a new video, Hillary retells how her mother’s example lit a spark and urged her on to support family friendly policies such as paid family leave.
Hillary sat for an extended interview on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning and discussed the state of the Presidential race including the dangers of a potential Trump presidency. When asked for three examples where the media should be pressing Trump harder for answers, she quickly went through at least five important topics, including Trump’s opposition to raising the minimum wage, blaming climate change on a Chinese hoax, calling for women to be punished for having abortions, rounding up 11 or 12 million people for deportation, and his recent suggestion to renegotiate the national debt. (Later in the day, Trump announced a reversal in his minimum wage position.)
The interviewer asked about the phenomenon of Republicans for Hillary and how she would get the skeptical voter that might be accessible now.
Well, obviously I’m reaching out to Democrats, Republicans, Independents — all voters who want a candidate who is running a campaign based on issues, who has been willing to put out plans and explain those plans and talk about how to pay for those plans, who has a track record of getting results for people, who understands that although we do live in a dangerous world, there is nothing we can’t meet in terms of the challenges we face if we put our minds to it.
And so I think that for a lot of people — again, who take their vote seriously and who really see this as a crossroads kind of election — I am asking people to come join this campaign, and I’ve had a lot of outreach from Republicans in the last days who say they are interested in talking about that.
The full interview is worth watching.
One surprising example of a Republican endorsing Hillary immediately showed up on NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me radio quiz show. The announcement by P. J. O’Rourke was not a ringing endorsement, as from his ideological position he said her presidency would be “the second worst thing that could happen to this country.” But he warned the prospect of Trump was a very distant even worse scenario.
An article in the Guardian talks about the phenomenon of Hillary supporters in college and university staying quiet about their support but now finally finding their voices.
Koppelman said he was prompted to out himself as a Clinton supporter due to frustration at being unable to be open about it. He wanted to address what he sees as a double standard among some Sanders supporters – that to support Clinton is to fail to support the fight for equality.
“Around the country, low income people, low income minorities are voting for Hillary in vast majorities,” Koppelman said.
“And this attitude on college campuses that ‘if you’re an advocate for social justice issues, you need to be a Bernie supporter’ is really dismissive of those people across the country who are voting for Hillary.
“It’s a ‘we know better attitude’ that is so emblematic of the very things Bernie Sanders is campaigning against.”
Every serious analysis of the general election seems to point to a strong showing by the expanded coalition of the Democratic party this year in an electorate full of segments offended by Trump.
Politico makes a straightforward case for a double digit win by Clinton in November.
Take the 2012 exit poll as a starting point and calculate the two-party vote based off those voting percentages. That year, the electorate was 72 percent White, 13 percent African American, 10 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian and 2 percent something else. Now, add in the assumption that the electorate will be slightly more nonwhite in 2012, with an uptick in Latino vote share to 12 percent and Asian to 4 percent, and with Blacks falling to 12 percent without Obama on the ticket. If Trump performs about three points worse among white voters than Romney did in the two-party vote, perhaps as a result of losing some highly educated suburbanites, while Clinton wins four out of every five Latino votes because of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, that could produce the conditions for Clinton to win the two-party popular vote by just a little bit more than 10 points.
An essay by E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post praises Clinton’s efforts to challenge Trump and expand into groups of voters that have not favored Democrats in recent decades.
And watch Republicans for Clinton become a major force in American politics, an alliance of mostly well-off, well-educated voters — plus women of all classes.
…
And her speech last Tuesday in Athens, Ohio, offered un-glitzy, realistic policies to try to bring back an Appalachian economy that can no longer rely on coal. “At a time when our energy sector is changing rapidly, we need to invest in coal communities,” she said. “We need to figure out how to bring new jobs and industries to them, and we need to stand up to the coal executives trying to shirk their responsibilities to their workers and retirees.”
Now contrast this with Trump’s speech in Charleston, W.Va., on Thursday. “I’m going to put the miners back to work,” Trump declared, “and she said I’m going to put the miners and the mines out of business.”
The first part of that statement is a policy lie, but not the sort of lie politicians typically get called on.
The Washington Post today also discusses how Clinton’s visit today to Virginia, with emphasis on how it plays to her appeal to married suburban women and the more diverse population of Loudoun County.
Affluent suburban women are a key audience for Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, as she seeks to use Trump’s polarizing statements about women, immigrants and others against him. Clinton will hold a discussion about jobs, schools and other concerns in a bellwether county that narrowly supported President Obama’s reelection in 2012 and helped elect a Republican critic of Obama, Rep. Barbara Comstock, to Congress two years later….
Although many suburban women identify as Republican or independent, they often vote on the kinds of pocketbook issues Clinton is emphasizing in her presidential bid — workplace flexibility and fair pay for female workers, accessible health care, and affordable college tuition.
These voters have long displayed a willingness to look past ideological bright lines, and this year that could favor Clinton, whose open courtship is a bet that women who would not support her otherwise will be driven there by Trump.
There was one primary contest over the weekend in the form of the Guam caucus, and news came midday Saturday on the US mainland that Clinton had won it by about 60-40. This netted 1 pledged delegate per the delegate allocation rules, and afterwards Guam’s 5 superdelegates also announced their support for Clinton. At least two had earlier pledged to support whoever would be the winner of the caucus.
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.