Voters hungry for leader who tells it like it is
By BILL ROMJUE
Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 2:00 pm
The Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune
In the absence of an actual political campaign, Hillary Clinton’s supporters have flooded Iowa and New Hampshire with “Ready for Hillary” organizers. They are bolstered by polls pointing to a seemingly inevitable Democratic presidential nomination and hypothetical double-digit wins against virtually every Republican in the 2016 general election.
Lurking behind this apparent juggernaut, however, are a number of concerns. Over the past year, Clinton’s public image has been sullied by a series of missteps and unforced errors. Many of her supporters believe that once a campaign staff is in place, the mistakes will stop happening, but others are concerned that her hiatus from politics has cost her the sharpness that characterized her 2008 campaign. Regardless, she will still have to deal with an endless number of Republican-inspired hearings on emails and Benghazi while maintaining peace among three political generations of ambitious Clinton operatives.
Adding to the pressure is the genuine need for a substantial victory over the Republicans. Merely winning the White House is not enough. Unless Democrats win back the Senate and gain large numbers of new seats in the House, she stands to face the same obstructionist Congress that has so hobbled Barack Obama’s agenda since 2011.
Moreover, the Democratic bench is remarkably thin. Catastrophic midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 have stripped the party bare of promising young officeholders in down-ballot offices. Its congressional leadership is remarkably aged. Five of the top six leaders in the House and Senate are septuagenarians.
But there are bright spots and opportunities. In both 2008 and 2012, nearly two-thirds of the voters younger than 30 supported Obama. The waiting time for young candidates, particularly young women, has disappeared. What’s needed is a recruiter-in-chief at the top of the ticket that can inspire them to run on her agenda.
For Hillary Clinton, finding a message that will inspire a movement is critical to her success and her ability to govern effectively. And that message is at hand. She only needs to muster the courage to present her own vision of what America can be 10 or 20 years down the road and tell us how she will get us there.
Then she can take a page from Elizabeth Warren and begin to identify with the millions of voters who live paycheck to paycheck more and more at the mercy of the corporate oligarchs, the 1 percent who dominate nearly every major industry in America, who have absorbed nearly all of America’s economic gains in recent decades and whose greed knows no end. In an era when even Republicans like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are beginning to speak in populist tones about income inequality, she can rest assured this path is real.
Hillary Clinton has enormous political strengths. She is a known quantity. Try as they might, it will be nearly impossible for even the billionaire Koch brothers to redefine Hillary Clinton to the American people. They already know her. Lesser candidates have been destroyed before they have had the chance to connect with the electorate, but not Hillary. When she describes her bright vision of America’s future and a glimpse of what her leadership might be able to achieve working toward that vision in just a few years, Americans will listen.
If she can relate to the pain they feel as their lives are stretched to the breaking point, and tell them truthfully that she will fight for them, they will believe her. They want to believe her. That’s why she is well ahead in the polls. But she must close the deal. She will need to take the initiative. She cannot afford to get bogged down in nonsensical back-and-forth with her detractors. And, above all, she must shake the perception that the decisions she makes are calculated.
Our country has arrived at what is often called “a teachable moment.” We have a sense that the system is rigged against us. We might not be able to put our finger on it, but it is real to us nonetheless. We are crying out for a truth-teller — a politician who will tell it like it is. That, in a nutshell, is the appeal of Elizabeth Warren.
And that is the path that Hillary Clinton must take. Tell the truth: Medicare is threatened by unrestrained profiteering inside our health system, but Social Security can easily be fixed. Profiteering also is the primary driver of budget deficits. Investments in infrastructure, education and renewables are critical to our future. Small business needs less regulation, but some giant corporations need more.
Truth. Courage. Vision. These are the ingredients that can inspire a new generation of leaders.
Can Hillary do it?
12:53 PM PT: Bill Romjue is "tulvania". I will apologize to the Tribune
12:57 PM PT: I am Bill Romjue and had been using tulvania as a pen name. I'll apologize to The Tribune and handle this better in the future.