Hillary Clinton and Wishful-Thinking Politics
I was under the impression that Hillary was going for the 50 state strategy. Maybe it was my own wishful strategy--unrealistic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/upshot/hillary-clinton-and-wishful-thinking-politics.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=upshot&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=The%20Upshot&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=0
Road to 2016
Hillary Clinton and Wishful-Thinking Politics
JUNE 11, 2015
Photo
Hillary Rodham Clinton at an event in Houston this month. Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Brendan Nyhan
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign took a beating from some pundits this week for telling the truth: She’s going to employ a strategy focused on a narrow set of the most competitive states.
In other words, she’s running as a modern presidential candidate.
Mrs. Clinton’s statement is what’s called a Kinsley gaffe — taking its name from Michael Kinsley, a journalist who said a gaffe is something true that a politician isn’t supposed to say. By conceding the obvious, she revealed the disjunction between the politics we say we want and the kind we actually have.
In reality, her approach is far less different from those of recent candidates than it might appear. No presidential candidate — including Mrs. Clinton’s husband, whose strategy was compared to hers — competes in every state. The reason is the Electoral College, a winner-take-all system that rewards candidates who focus almost exclusively on closely contested states...............
= new reply since forum marked as read
I got that impression from the first paragraph.
Also in the first paragraph was a like to this article that gives it another meaning
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/opinion/david-brooks-the-mobilization-error.html?referrer=
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
The Mobilization Error
JUNE 9, 2015
David Brooks
Every serious presidential candidate has to answer a fundamental strategic question: Do I think I can win by expanding my party’s reach, or do I think I can win by mobilizing my party’s base?
Two of the leading Republicans have staked out opposing sides on this issue. Scott Walker is trying to mobilize existing conservative voters. Jeb Bush is trying to expand his party’s reach.
The Democratic Party has no debate on this issue. Hillary Clinton has apparently decided to run as the Democratic Scott Walker. As The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman reported this week, Clinton strategists have decided that, even in the general election, firing up certain Democratic supporters is easier than persuading moderates. Clinton will adopt left-leaning policy positions carefully designed to energize the Obama coalition — African-Americans, Latinos, single women and highly educated progressives.
This means dispensing with a broad persuasion campaign. As the Democratic strategist David Plouffe told Martin and Haberman, “If you run a campaign trying to appeal to 60 to 70 percent of the electorate, you’re not going to run a very compelling campaign for the voters you need.”............
