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Good morning, all! Lots of good Hillary news today coming off of a great post-convention week, so here we go!
Hillary appeared in Las Vegas yesterday for a rally, where she talked jobs and unions.
Before the packed Local 357 hall, Clinton talked jobs – no accident before a working class audience that her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, also believes he can win. This was a friendly crowd: IBEW, the huge electrical workers union, endorsed Clinton in June.
Clinton’s prescription: an infrastructure rebuilding effort that would promote millions of jobs. “Roads, bridges, tunnels, our ports, our airports,” Clinton said. “For every billion dollars, we get 47,500 jobs – good union jobs with good middle-class income,” she said.
Before her appearance at IBEW, Clinton toured Mojave Electric, a local business whose training program caught Clinton’s eye. “We need more skills training, and that includes apprenticeship programs,” she said. “More than half of all jobs in 2020 – not long from now – will not require a four-year education,” she added.
There also seems to have been a bit of a scare with a PETA protester hopping the barricade at the Las Vegas event. Secret Service rushed the stage and you can definitely see a brief flash of fear in Hillary’s face in the video below, but once it was clear there was no real danger, she kept going and even cracked a joke about how the protesters must actually be there to protest Trump, “because Trump and his kids have killed a lot of animals.”
In the midst of a very good polling week for Hillary (and a very bad one for The Donald), even more good news has emerged on the electoral map front. It seems that Colorado may have moved from “lean D” to “solid D,” at least if the latest Clinton campaign ad buy is to be believed.
The 2016 battleground map may soon have one less state on it.
With a clear lead in the polls, demographic advantages and a rival who is out of sync with local GOP leaders, Hillary Clinton is beginning to put some distance between her campaign and Donald Trump, raising the prospect that Colorado, a pivotal swing state, is too far gone for Trump to catch up.
No one close to the Clinton team is ready to say the state’s nine electoral votes are in their column. But with just over three months until Election Day, Clinton and her allies are showing outward signs of self-assurance here by all but cutting Colorado out of their recent ad buys.
Per another Politico article, the campaign is also scaling back on ads in Virginia.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has left Virginia off its upcoming battleground-state television ad buy beginning next week — the second state to be dropped in recent weeks as Clinton holds a significant lead over Donald Trump nationally and in key states.
The campaign’s new television ad buy, which begins next Tuesday, consists of Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The reservations, which could easily be amended in the future, run through Labor Day.
The decision reflects increasing confidence among Democrats that Clinton will keep Virginia, a state that had been expected to be bitterly contested, in the blue column this fall. The pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA is scaling back its Virginia ad campaign later this month, as well.
Now I’d like to draw your attention to a bit at the end of the first article (the one about Colorado). The campaign is now taking a serious look into expanding the map (bolding mine):
That explains why the Clinton campaign has stopped its broadcast advertising in Colorado temporarily (while keeping a national cable and Olympics-pegged buy on air), and why her super PAC Priorities USA Action cut two weeks’ worth of ad time here. Now, with Priorities regularly polling stretch states like Arizona, Indiana, Georgia and Missouri, the group is actively considering expanding the map in the wake of such optimism, with a particular eye on states with Senate races, said a source familiar with the big-money group’s thinking.
We already knew about Arizona and Georgia possibly being in play, but Indiana?!?! Missouri?!?! Holy smokes let’s make it happen!
One way we will make this epic landslide a reality is by registering new voters (3 million new voters, to be exact). The campaign is now promoting a nifty new website where you can register to vote or check your registration status all in one place: iwillvote.com.
In addition to registering new voters, the campaign will, of course, keep pointing out the Donald’s complete and utter ineptitude for the job. As highlighted in a diary by TJoz yesterday, the Hillary campaign has a new ad out hitting Trump on his outsourcing practices.
As we Hill People know well, though, it’s about much more than just hating on Donald that drives us to vote for Hillary. One thing I think we all appreciate is Hillary’s resilience and strength in the face of an often brutal media onslaught and outright sexism. In case this hasn’t been posted yet this week, one article I came across that’s worth reading is this one: What’s Written in the Scars of Hillary Clinton.
Until she ran for president, Clinton was the most admired woman in the world
This might surprise you now, but according to Gallup, in 2015 Americans admired Hillary Clinton more than any other woman in the world. More than Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai or Oprah.
A lot more.
And Clinton didn’t just top the list in 2015, but she’s topped it each of the last 14 years, and 20 years overall. That’s the best record for any man or woman since Gallup began polling this question in 1948. And those numbers matched Clinton's extraordinarily high approval rating during her tenure as Secretary of State, when she reached a high of 66%. That’s far above anything Barack Obama achieved in his entire presidency, and it’s well above even Michelle Obama today.
So what the hell happened? The woman ran for president, that’s what. Who does she think she is?
Look no further than Clinton’s media coverage.
Negative media coverage flipped perception
Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center reports that in comparison with all other candidates, coverage of Hillary Clinton went overwhelmingly negative, with 84% of stories taking a negative slant. That compares with 43% negative reporting on Donald Trump and 17% on Bernie Sanders.
To put it another way, the most qualified presidential candidate in history got twice the negative media as a racist four-time bankrupt con artist who is manifestly unfit for public office.
Along with the negative media coverage, the role of sexism cannot be understated. Watch Hillary Answer Nearly 40 Years of Sexism:
Whether you’re a fan of her politics or not, you have to admire Hillary Clinton’s career: The Democratic nominee for president and former secretary of state, senator, and First Lady has slogged through sexist questions for decades, and yet, they keep coming — year after year, election after election. We may have made progress on “gender issues” as a nation since the seventies, but our most prominent female politician has been forced to answer the same questions despite it all; about “trustworthiness,” “likability,” pant suits, hairstyles, and even comparisons to Lady Macbeth.
Think Clinton’s “trust issue” started this election cycle? Think again. She’s been forced to talk about it for nearly four decades.
Video below:
Finally, it was a week ago yesterday that Hillary claimed her nomination. Want to relive the excitement of the DNC? Check out the new behind-the-scenes footage below!
I also want to add before I leave you to chat in the Friday Morning Coffeehouse that as of yesterday, I am back home in Chicago after the most epic of epic road trips. I want to say a HUGE thank you to those of you who donated to my GoFundMe. With your help, I was able to spend 34 days driving nearly 5,000 miles around 9 swing states. While on the road, I made over 2,000 calls, recruiting nearly 240 volunteers. I was also able to register 23 voters, including at least 3 first-time voters (1 of whom was far older than 18 and had never voted before) and 1 formerly incarcerated individual who was just getting back his right to vote. I am so excited to be a part of Team Hillary, and I can’t wait for the adventures to come as the campaign heads into the final stretch!
Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States. If you want to support this work, consider a donation through GoFundMe.