Sometimes the Clintons are masterful politicians. Staking out a strong position in favor of protection of voting rights was an excellent move by Hillary Clinton for many reasons. It contrasts her with her Republican opponents on the right–as opposed to where she is weak on the issues against her Democratic opponents on the left. It helps expose the Republicans who oppose her as opposing voting rights, leaving them with weak arguments such as raising claims of virtually non-existent voting fraud. Republicans are not in a good position when they whine that allowing more people to vote will mean more people will vote for Democrats. Unlike many liberal positions which go against the grain of Clinton’s cultural conservatism, this is an issue where she undoubtedly does feel comfortable taking the liberal side, as it is not only the right position, but the one which helps her in the election.
This very likely will be Clinton’s strategy. Take liberal positions which will receive popular support (but avoid taking questions so she still has plenty of wiggle room to move to the right), stay quiet on other controversial issues, and stonewall on her personal strategies.
It remains questionable as to how long this will work. She certainly should manage to continue to find some liberal positions to try to shore up Democratic support, even if she leaves some liberals unsatisfied in the cases where she leaves out all important specifics and refuses to answer questions. At this early stage she might get away with avoiding talk about issues where she is to the right of the Democratic Party, from trade to NSA surveillance, but sooner or later voters might start to wonder why she is keeping quiet on so many issues.
The biggest problem might turn out to be the major ethical violations which she refuses to honestly answer questions about. Initially the conventional wisdom was that people already had their minds made up about the Clintons and a couple more scandal wouldn’t matter. That was until the latest polls, showing Clinton losing leads over the top Republican candidates, and falling tremendously on measures such as favorability and honesty. As long as Clinton remains unable to provide any honest answers the scandals will probably continue to hurt her. Some old Clinton hands, along with groups such as Media Matters which are closely aligned with the Clinton campaign. will continue to spin and distort the facts in her favor, but there might be a growing number who abandon her in favor of the truth. For example, when ABC News asked Robert Reich about the latest polls his response was not at all supportive:
The number of people, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, who see Hillary Clinton as trustworthy has dropped in recent months. Why do you think this is?
RR: She hasn’t yet given a convincing explanation for why she used a private email account when she was secretary of state, and why she and her husband have made so many speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop from special interests that presumably want something in return. In other words, she needs to be more open and transparent about everything.
Yes. about everything. But that is never how Hillary Clinton has operated, showing a long history of opposition to both personal and government transparency.
While I disagree with much of what Megan McArdle wrote (especially her mischaracterization of Martin O’Malley’s record), she very will might be right that Clinton Support Has Nowhere to Go But Down. Clinton might improve in the polls from time to time, but she is looking like a progressively weaker candidate for a general election campaign. Fred Barnes is also right that “Stonewalls can work, but not forever and not in the midst of a presidential campaign. A minimal requirement of candidates is that they converse with the press. It looks bad when they don’t. It looks like they’re hiding something.”
The sad thing is that, while Clinton takes the high road on voting rights, her overall conduct leaves her so wide upon to such valid criticism from the right. She is going to have to do better for Democrats to avoid a repeat of 2014 when running Republican-lite candidates led to Democratic voters staying home.
