Can Hillary Clinton Win The Angry Voters? - LATimes

[WillyT]

Can Hillary Clinton win the angry voters?
Doyle McManus - Los Angeles Times
8/16/15

<snip>

While Donald Trump has kept the political world transfixed, Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent her summer methodically rolling out a long list of policy proposals. They add up to a platform you might call "soft populism." It's not the insurrectionist socialism of Bernie Sanders but still progressive enough to keep most Democratic primary voters on her side.

Clinton has offered talking points on economic growth, income stagnation, small business, college costs, immigration, criminal justice reform, climate change — and a few other things beside.

But there's one big item missing from her agenda so far, a wonky but important issue that Democrats neglect at their peril: reforming the federal government. Or, to borrow a slogan from the Democrats' 1992 presidential candidate, Bill Clinton: "reinventing government."

It's no mystery why voters are in an angry mood this year. Like Trump and Sanders, many of them believe the political system is broken and the government doesn't work. A Pew Research Center poll found last year that only 24% of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time.

Clinton agrees, at least in principle. "Our political system is so paralyzed by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually get done," she said when she announced her candidacy in June.

She also said she wanted to make the federal bureaucracy "smarter, simpler [and] more efficient." But that's the last time she talked about government reform. A long memo to supporters last week from her campaign manager, Robby Mook, didn't mention the topic at all.

Meanwhile, in her policy speeches, Clinton has talked up an activist role for the federal government: creating jobs through infrastructure spending, shaping corporate behavior through tax incentives, revamping the college loan system, funding preschool education.

Those ideas should all play well in a Democratic primary campaign. But to win a general election, a Democrat also needs to convince less-partisan voters that the federal government is capable of spending their tax money wisely, or that it can be made to by a determined president.

Skeptical voters, especially white working-class ones...

<snip>

More: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0816-mcmanus-hillary-clinton-government-reform-20150816-column.html

[Chan790]

1. No, but neither can the GOP.

It's an anti-insider insurrection unfurling slowly. It's behind Sanders surge and Trump's popular appeal.

The anger is against the very things that Clinton is...an insider and part of the party establishment.

[AgingAmerican]

2. And that is the dilemma that Sanders puts her in

The oligarchy and the status quo are becoming poison this election season. She will need to put distance between herself and them.

[Chan790]

3. She'll have to do more that that.

She'll have to actually take the killing knife metaphorically to the people funding her campaign and the last campaign and her Senate campaign and Bill's successful Presidential campaigns.

She's going to have to repudiate the DLC and Third Way and Centrism and Democratic efforts to appeal to Wall Street and free-trade and pretty much the entirety of her record in public service. To get reelected, she's going to have to make good on that repudiation.

[cantbeserious]

4. ^^^ This ^^^

eom

[DJ13]

7. She's in a box

If she repudiates the status quo to gain the votes she needs to win the primaries she will be throwing a knife into the heart of her appeal to the moderates in her base who comprise her greatest support (in both votes and financially).

Failing to do that will not give her enough support to be the nominee in a time when voters are even more desperate for the "change" Obama was supposed to deliver.

Its the Obama problem all over again, except this time theres no guessing if the challenger really is a liberal.

[jeff47]

12. Hence attacks like "Not Good Enough, Bernie".

Can't win only on her positives, so gotta go negative, and go negative early.

[Catherina]

5. No. Because what she represents & supports is what tons of people are angry about n/t

[840high]

11. Exactly - I'm one of those people.

[Thinkingabout]

6. There can be angry voters of any candidates policies, I don't care for the anti-abortion policy of

The GOP. I would like to see infrastructure bills which put our young folks to work with salaries which they can care for their families. I would like to see Social Security reform in order to provide the benefits I am currently receiving for the babies born today. I would like to see the wages for women improved, there are lots of single parent families where the female can not provide enough for her family. Some issues will get resolved before the general election so I am looking for a candidate who is ready to hit the ground running and not dwelling on what did or did not happen this year.

[ibegurpard]

8. Not a word about the corruption of outside money

And lobbyists? The fact that government completely ignores what it's citizens want in favor of those big money donors and lobbyists? Nope just the tired old "buresucracy" tropes that apply equally to big business and big government...but somehow in stories like this it's the big government that's the problem. Fucking clueless idiot media.

[elleng]

9. 'Reinventing government' won't do it;

Bill C and Al Gore tried, but that's not why THIS voter is angry.

O’Malley calls for Wall Street reforms, breaking up big banks in latest policy initiative.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/07/09/omalley-to-call-for-wall-street-reforms-breaking-up-big-banks/

[ibegurpard]

10. that will never happen

Until we demand and get complete electoral reform.