Hillary Clinton had an opportunity Thursday night to make the electoral map a mad scramble. For months, we’ve heard about Donald Trump’s Rust Belt strategy, by which he would parlay a blue-collar coalition into blue-state pickups like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. For three days this week, Hillary Clinton’s party ditched occupying Wall Street in favor of staking out a spot at Joint Base Democrat, sounding patriotic notes that seemed made for the Bush-era GOP. This was setting up to be the split: to Trump, a revived bloc of Reagan Democrats, and to Hillary, a new group of—hold your cookies—Clinton Republicans.
But on Thursday, the day whose main event is bigger than the oratory and pageantry that precedes it, Clinton steered the 2016 presidential election toward a more stable and typical course. At the beginning of her speech, she nodded to her vanquished primary rival, Bernie Sanders, and the historically progressive Democratic platform he helped inspire. “[T]o all of your supporters here and around the country,” Hillary told Bernie during her address, “I want you to know, I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion. That’s the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America.”
There wasn’t much of a pivot from there. As Michael Warren noted, Clinton’s speech turned biographical and went negative against Trump late in the proceedings, and she expanded on the specifics of the party agenda in the latter half of her talk. In a sign of ideological dissonance, she tried to make the case that the Democratic platform was still crafted for all. “[Y]ou heard from Republicans and independents who are supporting our campaign. I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and independents,” she said. “For the struggling, the striving and the successful; for those who vote for me and those who don’t. For all Americans.”
We’ve heard that one before. But given the rhetoric that surrounded it, it rang a little hollow.
