Last week was a good one for Hillary Clinton. It started with her appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” Kate McKinnon did her customary Clinton impression, this time sitting in a bar, trying to forget about Donald Trump. Clinton played Val the bartender, who seemed to embody how the former Secretary of State would like to be seen: as a hardworking, wryly funny older friend, whose earned wisdom you can turn to at the end of a long day. They sang “Lean On Me,” and, after Clinton left, McKinnon pronounced, “She was real and smart and really nice in person!”
Two days later, the “Today” show found Clinton flipping pancakes for voters in New Hampshire. When she was asked yet again about her e-mail accounts, she dismissed the question and cited the extraordinarily impolitic boast made a few days earlier by the House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, who had told Fox’s Sean Hannity, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today?” The Republicans were embarrassed, and Clinton benefitted. Last Thursday, McCarthy was forced to drop out of the race to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House.
Clinton is still scheduled to testify before the Benghazi committee a week after the first Democratic Presidential debate, which will be sponsored by CNN and held on October 13th, in Las Vegas. The Benghazi hearings would seem to have little credibility left, but both events will mark a new stage of the campaign for Clinton, one in which she will have to relinquish the tight control she has maintained over her appearances. At the debate, she will be joined onstage by Bernie Sanders, who has launched a strong challenge and is now favored by twenty-five per cent of likely Democratic voters, to her forty-two per cent, and by Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb, all of whom are polling in the one-per-cent range. Vice-President Biden, because he is polling at around eighteen per cent, is eligible to take part, even if he declares at the last minute.
Biden’s role has been a big open question. Another is why this first debate is so late in coming. The Republicans have already had two, each of which attracted more than twenty million television viewers, and will stage ten more. The Democratic National Committee has authorized only six. One is the Saturday night before Christmas; another is the Sunday night before Martin Luther King, Jr., Day—not times likely to attract large audiences. Given the concerns about the Presidency being passed between a couple of families, why set up a schedule that seems designed to squelch lesser-known candidates’ chances?
The lesser-knowns have objected, but Clinton doesn’t seem to mind. One reason for that might be gleaned by looking back to October 30, 2007, when the Democrats debated in Philadelphia. Clinton was the front-runner then, too, and it was the thirteenth time the candidates had met. But it was also, arguably, the first time that her opponents—Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, and, most improbably, Barack Obama—seriously challenged her, on all fronts. Edwards accused her of “doubletalk.” Obama called her out for “changing positions whenever it’s politically convenient”—she was “for NAFTA previously, now she’s against it”—and for not being “truthful.” A lot of the time was taken up asking why records of her official work in her husband’s White House were sealed in the Clinton Presidential library. She responded with what must have been intended as judiciousness but came across as obfuscation. When Tim Russert, one of the moderators, tried to determine whether she was in favor of issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants—she had indicated both yes and no—she called his question a “gotcha.”
In the days that followed, Clinton and her campaign tried to frame the debate as a Hillary-against-the-world moment, a “pile-on,” orchestrated by what she called, in a speech at Wellesley College, “the all-boys’ club.” Clinton had been considered the winner in most of the previous debates, and even many of her supporters acknowledged that this one marked a turning point. A week before, she was at 48.5 per cent in an average of polls, the highest she had ever been. (Obama registered 21.2.) Immediately afterward, she began a decline and, despite some rebounds, never matched that number again.
From her perspective, there may have been something broken about the 2008 debates. A remarkable eighteen million people voted for her during the primary season, and she and her supporters may feel that a process that derailed her then is not one to follow now. But, if Clinton has concluded that the lesson of 2008 is to avoid debates, she does not yet understand why she lost that night in Philadelphia. Polls still show that a perception of dishonesty is her greatest problem among voters. (“They don’t trust you. They might not like you,” Savannah Guthrie told her last week.) Often, that perception is the product of unfair partisan attacks, but, as in 2008, it is also sometimes the result of her decisions. Last Wednesday, Clinton announced that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that is a high priority for President Obama, even though she had praised the negotiations when she was Secretary of State (“the gold standard in trade agreements”) and referred to them proudly after she left office.
The thinking appears to be that she’ll score points with Sanders voters and with organized labor, while Biden, as a loyal member of the Administration, will have to support the T.P.P.—a classic triangulation. But it echoes Obama’s nafta comment from the Philadelphia debate, just as the questions about her White House records now sound like a prelude to the e-mail issue. Fair or not, she needs to push herself to a greater level of openness, and figure out how to have a good week based on a real-world confrontation, not a comedy-sketch encounter. Clinton stayed in the 2008 race for eight months after her loss in Philadelphia. By the end, Barack Obama was a palpably stronger candidate. So, for that matter, was Hillary Clinton. A few weeks after Philadelphia, she had picked herself up and gone to the next debate, in Las Vegas—the site of this week’s meeting—where she performed well. The last question, from a young woman, was a “fun” one: “Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?” Clinton laughed. “Now, I know I’m sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice,” she said. Then she added, “I want both.” ♦
