Saturday, July 25, 2015

DEAR HILLARY, MAYBE THE REGULAR-GAL THING ISN'T WORKING

Oliver Willis:



Which, of course, is working brilliantly for Trump. The John McCain insult? Remember when that was supposed to bring Trump's campaign to a screeching halt? Nahhh -- the new (post-McCain) YouGov poll has Trump at 28% and Jeb Bush in second place at 14%.

Which brings me to new Gallup polling on Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton's [favorable] rating has slipped to 43% from 48% in April. At the same time, Clinton's unfavorable rating increased to 46%, tilting her image negative and producing her worst net favorable score since December 2007.



You know when she was riding high? When she wasn't having kaffeeklatsches with ordinary voters and ordering Chipotle burrito bowls on bus-tour dinner breaks. She was riding high around the time Texts from Hillary went viral:



We liked her in 2012, when we thought she had swagger. The phone obviously has a bad connotation now, but she could benefit from getting some of that swagger back.

I think everybody learned the wrong lesson from 2012. It wasn't that a presidential candidate has to seem "regular" and "relatable" to win in 2016. Voters in 2012 weren't rejecting a rich guy; they were rejecting a rich guy who seemed as if he'd love to fire them. And who barely seemed to have human feelings.

Hillary is political royalty. She might get her groove back if she acts as if she is, and as if she kind of enjoys her power, and knows how to leverage it. And I don't mean by being rude to the press -- ordinary (non-Republican) voters don't care about that. I mean by seeming larger than life, and thus seeming like a big enough force to tackle America's problems.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama can seem elite while also seeming like champions of the people. Hillary has pulled that combination off in the past. She needs to get back to that.

8 comments:

William F. Glennon said...

Her numbers have been falling because she's been invisible. It's been all Klown Kar all the time for a couple months at least, and Trump has made it worse

There are candidates whose poll numbers go up when they're out of the public eye. You definitely don't want to be one of them

Tien said...

It was my understanding that she was just the beneficiary of an internet meme at the time. Other people were making her look tough and cool based on one photo. That does not make her cool or tough.

Anonymous said...

Yeah this won't work. People like meme's even if they don't like the people in the meme.

Hillary was a meme, the meme was cool. Hillary Clinton is not cool, very far from it. And there is nothing more pathetic and worthy of scorn for being a loser as trying to bring back a dead meme.

Alex Jones is an internet meme. If Hillary tries to bring back her meme, it would make her as stupid as Alex Jones.

Feud Turgidson said...

Between now and November 2016, there's time for her to faves to recover completely, collapse Do No Revive, rise to life support, level to hover during reassessment, then soar when everyone wakes the fuck up and realizes that Bernie's 800 years old and was never in it to win it & Jeb!'s a freaking Bush.

I will now cease to be concerned with such pollsey things for 6 months at a minimum.

Ken_L said...

Steve will you just relax? You're getting as bad as every other pundit, excited about every trivial development as if the election is in a few weeks.

Hillary might be dead or incapacitated of natural causes by November 2016, or ISIS might have collapsed, or the stock market might have crashed again (it's overdue), or China and Japan might be in a shooting war, or 101 other things might have happened that transform the political situation in America. Let's see how she's tracking in about a year, when normal people will start to pay more than superficial attention to the campaign. Until then, she will do well to continue to avoid the media and let Republicans provide lots of lovely material for 2016 attack ads and debate gotchas.

Daro said...

Madame Moneybags has so successfully spliced and diced every policy into a derivative donor payment, she'd make a Goldman Sachs trader blush.

Victor said...

Right now in our MSM, it's all Trump, all of the time.
They track his poll numbers daily.

I think that by laying low, Hillary is just collecting fodder for her canon to be later.

As the other asshats in the GOP Klown Bus try to out-Trump Trump, they'll continue on the road to not being able to get back to some more centrist position later.

The GOP base likes its meat raw.

Most of the public likes it medium (I prefer medium-rare in a steak, myself).

Anonymous said...

I can't believe Hillary Clinton did that thing that made her poll numbers drop! She should find a way to get past that thing. And obviously we all know what that thing was and have various ideas about how to deal with it. We're not just making things up because it's July and there's no real political news.