Hillary Clinton’s most interesting hire yet

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton named a triad of wonks to lead her policy team. Two of them were widely expected: Jake Sullivan, a top aide to Clinton when she was at the State Department, and Ann O'Leary, who served as legislative director in Clinton's Senate office, both made the cut.

But the third member of the team, Maya Harris, is perhaps the most interesting. Harris, the sister of California Senate candidate Kamala Harris, isn't a known member of Clintonland. She didn't hold a key position in Bill Clinton's White House, or on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign, or in Hillary Clinton's State Department. She's a law professor and, most recently, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she published only a single paper — but it's a paper that may prove key to Clinton's 2016 efforts to hold, and even expand, Obama's coalition.

The paper's title is "Women of Color: A Growing Force in the American Electorate," and in it, Harris criticizes politicians and political strategists for only addressing the concerns of women of color "as a part of broader efforts aimed at women, youth, or a specific racial or ethnic group." Women of color, Harris argues, are their own, incredibly fast-growing voting bloc, and any politician who wants to win them needs to make sure "their interests are priorities on the policy agenda..."


(Maya Harris/Center for American Progress)

Harris's paper doesn't delve deep into what kinds of policies are likely to win over women of color, but her basic political theory is an interesting signal of how Hillary Clinton's campaign might try to fashion its own version of Obama's coalition.

There has been wide skepticism that Clinton can sustain the high turnout among minority voters that Obama managed. Harris's point is that most of those voters are women, and that if Clinton wants them to turn out, she needs to give them reason to turn out. In hiring Harris to help lead policy on her campaign, it's a reasonable bet that Clinton is signaling she agrees, and intends to try to give them reasons to come to the polls.


read more: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8429527/hillary-clinton-maya-harris

related:

Former Center for American Progress Fellow to Head Hillary Clinton’s Senior Policy Advisor Team
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026514523