Much like insurance, Hillary Clinton isn’t bought, she’s sold.
And it’s always been a hard sale.
She has name recognition, and is the default candidate for a significant percentage of the electorate, but there’s always been something missing. It’s why Obama could appear out of nowhere to take her down, and it’s why Elizabeth Warren could do the same thing if only she would run.
That’s why there is the Ready for Hillary shadow campaign apparatus — we must want Hillary.
The selling of Hillary by the Ready for Hillary PAC is playing out in the earliest stages of the Iowa caucuses, as Ruby Cramer at Buzzfeed reports, Clinton Supporters Want Iowa To Want Her:
After the meetings, the exhausted team declared the day a success. Attendees had been excited; had pinned “Iowans Ready for Hillary” buttons to their lapels; had smiled wide watching video clips from Clinton speeches; had even, at one point, broke into spontaneous applause and cheering at her mention.“If we build it, she will come,” said one of the meeting’s organizers, Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general and Clinton administration appointee….Another frustration emerged during meetings. In spending time and resources on a candidate who isn’t even in the race yet, some said, Ready for Hillary stages a “total inversion” of the traditional primary, as state Rep. Jo Oldson put it.Iowa, Oldson said, likes its candidates to beg voters — not the other way around. “This is just a different twist on how Iowans view getting into presidential campaigns,” she said. “It’s Iowa asking her to run, rather than the candidate asking Iowa to elect her.”
All this We Want You To Want Hillary stuff could backfire, as Michael Warren at The Weekly Standard points out, Hillary Supporters in Iowa: She Can’t Be Seen As ‘Ordained’:
A gathering of pro-Hillary Clinton activists in Iowa this weekend revealed how supporters of the former first lady are hoping to learn from the mistakes of Clinton’s failed attempt to win the Iowa caucuses in 2008. America Rising, a conservative opposition research firm, had its cameras rolling at the meeting, organized by Ready for Hillary, a super PAC that supports Clinton.
In one video, a supporter notes that Hillary must not be seen as the “ordained” candidate. “The environment has changed a lot in eight years. There’s even more negativity about everything coming out of Washington,” says the supporter. “All this stuff about her being, kind of, destined to be this, and it coming from top down, and it being ordained, we’ve really got to work hard to overcome that. It’s really got to be grassroots up.”
This shadow campaign should have a shadow campaign theme song.
Bill Clinton’s theme song was Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.
Hillary 2016’s song should be I Want You To Want Me:
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