Hillary Clinton Outlines How She Will Fight Trump

With Donald Trump increasingly looking as if he will be the Republican Party nominee, Hillary Clinton took the time last night after her wins in five primary states to give a taste of how she intends to counter Trumps policy free, demagogic campaign.  A column in the Washington Post contains a summary.  Here are highlights:

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.  . . .  Clinton delivered the speech she has wanted to give for weeks, debuting the case she will make to the country between now and November. And it is a pretty good one.

After Tuesday night, it is no longer presumptuous for Clinton to begin her great pivot to the general election. She trounced Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, and she essentially fought him to a draw in Illinois and Missouri. She added to her delegate lead, and she quieted concerns that she cannot win in the industrial Midwest. 

she introduced her general election pitch, which stressed experience and seriousness. “The next president will walk into the Oval Office next January, sit down in that desk, and start making decisions that will affect the lives and the livelihoods of everyone in this country, indeed everyone on this planet,” she said, before methodically listing off the “three big tests” the next president will face and arguing that GOP front-runner Donald Trump fails each of them.

“First,” she said, “can you make positive differences in people’s lives?” She mentioned a series of policies she would like to pursue — lowering student debt, providing affordable child care, investing in infrastructure. One could object to one proposal or the other — cutting student loan interest rates for everyone, for example, instead of just for those who need it. But she brought the speech back to her larger point about political responsibility. “Every candidate makes promises like this. But every candidate owes it to you to be clear and direct about what our plans will cost and how we’re going to make them work,” she said, establishing a standard that she has satisfied more than any other presidential candidate this year. 

The next test, Clinton explained, is “can you keep us safe?” “Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it,” she said. “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong.” Clinton nailed Trump for being reckless.

Clinton’s third and final test is the most pointedly anti-Trump: “Can you bring our country together again?” She condemned Trump’s “bluster and bigotry,” saying that “to be great, we can’t be small,” she said. “We can’t lose what made America great in the first place.” Once again, she contrasted Trump’s rhetoric with her experience. “Running for president is hard, but being president is harder,” she said. “No one person can succeed in the job without seeking and finding common ground.” Clinton has a record of working with Republicans; like her foreign policy point, she should develop this one to show off her strengths as much as highlight Trump’s weaknesses.

Clinton also ignored warnings that she has wandered too far from the center on immigration, speaking near the end of her speech about “a day when deportations end and families are reunited.” This is probably a sign she believes that locking up the Latino vote is more important in the general election than trying to soothe concerns about illegal immigration among other voters that Democrats may have traditionally attempted to court. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Tuesday night’s address was much cleaner than her first few drafts. Among other things, she wisely removed this meh line: “America never stopped being great; we need to make America whole.” She also delivered her speech with the conviction she sometimes lacks.

Stressing experience may be a questionable strategy in an anti-establishment election year. But her experience is Clinton’s greatest strength. She must show that she is the competent one and that Trump, if he claims the GOP nomination, simply is not.