“The Democratic candidates for President, anxious to woo back the disaffected middle class, have all but abandoned their traditional role as champions of the disenfranchised,” Ms. Ifill wrote in January 1992.
“It is almost an oversight, this eerie silence on the campaign trail about issues that affect the poor. But it is a telling omission for the party that had traditionally spoken for the disadvantaged …”
“Instead, wooing the middle class has become all the rage. They are angry and they vote. What Presidential candidate could resist?”
.. She noted the criticism among Democrats, including followers of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, that Mr. Clinton, by now the Democratic nominee, had “decided to sacrifice black voters’ support in exchange for winning back the Democrats — most of them white — who voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush.”
“Politicians call it taking the base for granted, a tactic that is the opposite of the one Republicans chose at their national convention to woo their base of evangelicals, conservatives and bedrock Republicans.”
.. Gov. Bill Clinton’s voice has been hoarse and strained for months, but it was not until he won the New York primary that he had the political luxury of taking the advice any good doctor would have been giving him for months: Shut up.”
Review: The Anti-Clinton Brigade’s Four-Letter Word Obsession
Objections to Mrs. Clinton’s swearing have nothing to do with profanity per se, but with hypocrisy. Swearing is the clearest evidence we have of how different her public and private selves really are. Sure, the former secretary of state may appear cool and disciplined on the outside, smiling and pleasantly nodding as her political opponent threatens to throw her in jail. But beneath that porcelain surface, she’s a scheming empress of fury.
.. he wonders if cursing poses the same problem for conservatives that Bill Clinton’s willingness to answer “Boxers or briefs?” did. Liberals didn’t get why Mr. Clinton’s choice to entertain the question was a big deal. But conservatives — who in Mr. Haidt’s research assign a high value to ideas like “respect for authority” and “sanctity” (whereas liberals lend greater weight to concepts like “fairness”) — recoiled at such casual degradation of the Oval Office.
Even Republicans know the Bill Clinton attacks don’t work
Matthews said, female voters viewed attacks on Hillary Clinton’s spouse as “inherently unfair. Ultimately, it came back down to this: Bill Clinton’s not the one who’s running.”
When it came to criticizing Hillary Clinton as an enabler, Matthews said, the reaction was, “yeah, you’re angry. It’s a normal reaction. Any line of messaging on this generates sympathy for her, or voters said it was completely irrelevant.”
The women in the America Rising focus group also identified areas they would consider off-limits in terms of Clinton attacks: “It was her age, her stamina, her health and her looks,” Matthews recalled.
.. With 26 days to go in the race, Donald Trump has said he plans to launch a full-scale attack on the former president. “We’re going to turn Bill [Clinton] into Bill Cosby,” his campaign CEO Steve Bannon told Bloomberg News earlier this week.
.. On Thursday night, Sean Hannity plans to feature three of Bill Clinton’s accusers: Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey. And Trump’s campaign has promised new revelations from previously unknown women.
.. But Democratic allies are thrilled with the politically nonsensical narrative.
.. Brock called it “a giant exercise in projection. If there’s a Bill Cosby here, it will turn out to be Donald Trump, not Bill Clinton.”
.. in Clinton’s 2000 Senate race, her operatives found that suburban women in New York disliked Clinton because of her decision to stay with her husband.
.. the campaign chose not to address the issue head-on, focusing instead on working-class women upstate, who viewed Hillary Clinton as a champion.
.. Democrats close to Clinton speculated that the individuals guiding Trump’s strategy, like Bannon, are most likely focused on what will happen after Nov. 8 — and empowering the Trump base to become a movement of anti-Clinton opposition, whether it’s through a media operation or a grass-roots movement.
.. the biggest problem with the attacks, some Clinton allies said, was the source:
Group’s Tactic on Hillary Clinton: Sue Her Again and Again
Judicial Watch, the indefatigable Clinton adversary that has probably done more than any other individual or organization to create the narrative that Mrs. Clinton is still battling: that she is untrustworthy.
.. Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. A vast majority are dismissed. But Judicial Watch caught a break last year, when revelations about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server prompted two judges to reopen two of the group’s cases connected to her tenure as secretary of state.
.. The questions, some with multiple parts, ask her to explain her rationale for using the private server and her reaction to warnings about the potential for security breaches, among other things. Her answers, to be provided via written testimony to the court, are due by Thursday.
.. Suing the government, repeatedly, is an expensive proposition; Judicial Watch has an annual budget of about $35 million that pays for close to 50 employees — a mix of lawyers, investigators and fund-raisers. Mr. Fitton says the group receives donations from nearly 400,000 individuals and institutions every year. One of its biggest funders, according to public filings, is the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which was created by the banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife, who died in 2014. In the 1990s, Mr. Scaife was one of the leading financiers of the right-wing effort to bring down the Clintons, bankrolling conservative think tanks and publications — as well as Judicial Watch.
.. Litigiousness is in the organization’s DNA: Its founder, Larry Klayman, once sued his mother. Mr. Klayman has described himself as a conservative Ralph Nader, but during Bill Clinton’s presidency, he often behaved more like a self-appointed Kenneth W. Starr, papering Washington with subpoenas related to every would-be Clinton scandal. His departure from the organization in 2003 was accompanied, unsurprisingly, by litigation: Mr. Klayman accused the organization, and his successor, Mr. Fitton, of “fraud, disparagement, defamation, false advertising and other egregious acts.”