Rust Belt scratches Clinton’s mettle
Campaigning in the depressed Midwest has shown Hillary Clinton that she needs more than words to beat Donald Trump.
It was a picture-perfect scene. As the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, a huge blue campaign bus with ‘‘Stronger Together’’ emblazoned on the side glided into view.
A crowd of more than 2000 were crammed into the marketplace in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, next to a stone building that housed Union troops during the Civil War and was decorated with the Stars and Stripes and patriotic bunting fans.
To the strains of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, a beaming Hillary Clinton, a day after becoming the first female major-party presidential nominee in United States history, descended from the bus.
Behind her was husband Bill, the former president, and behind him Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, Hillary’s newly minted vicepresidential running mate, and wife Anne.
Team Clinton had crafted a moment campaign managers dream of. Fresh from a well-staged convention in Philadelphia, the Democratic candidate was hitting the road on a bus tour through the Rust Belt.
Yet as the crowd hushed and Clinton began to speak, what had until that moment been campaign poetry became turgid prose.
‘‘I feel like I have a very good idea about how a president can help create jobs, because over the eight years my husband was president, we created 23 million new jobs,’’ she shouted.
For some in the crowd, this was too much. One man began to heckle.
‘‘I understand that there are people that feel like the economy’s not working well for them,’’ Clinton responded. ‘‘I think that gentleman is one of them.
‘‘And I understand that, because I’m not satisfied with the status quo. I think we can do better.’’
Clinton was already descending into the contradiction that underlies her campaign: she was going to strengthen an economy that is already strong. Things had become so much better under Barack Obama, but she realised they were not perfect. She was for the status quo, but she was also against it.
During her 22-minute speech, she lurched from reminiscing about the 2000-kilometre, ninestate bus tour that took her and Bill through Pennsylvania ‘‘way back in 1992’’ to sunny proclamations of America’s greatness and its limitless future.
The encounter was just a snapshot but it gave an insight into the challenge faced by Clinton in persuading Americans unhappy about a stagnant economy and unsettled by unrest at home and terrorism abroad that they should vote for her and not for Donald Trump, her bombastic Republican rival.
After Trump’s four-point poll bounce from the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Clinton pulled back during the weekend, moving slightly ahead of her rival, according to the Realclearpolitics poll of polls.
Yet although a triumph of organisation and made-for-tv moments, the Democratic convention could not hide the cracks in party unity or reservations about her candidacy.
Clinton’s determination to quash the dissent of supporters of her erstwhile primary rival, the socialist Bernie Sanders, created widespread bad feeling. Her delegates were instructed to chant ‘‘USA’’ whenever Sanders delegates chanted ‘‘No more war’’ and ‘‘Hillary’’ when they chanted ‘‘Stop the TPP’’, the Trans-pacific Partnership free trade deal.
During the campaign, Clinton withdrew her support for the TPP, a bete noire of Sanders’s dedicated band of young, idealistic followers. During the convention, however, her close friend Terry Mcauliffe said that once in the Oval Office, she would be in favour of it once again.
That gave Trump, who is adamantly opposed to the TPP, an opening. He is gaining in support among white working-class voters and has an advantage of 39 percentage points over Clinton among whites without a college degree, according to the CNN poll.
He threatens to push Clinton hard in the industrial Midwest and win not just Ohio, a perennial swing state, but the Democratic bulwarks of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Clinton hopes to prevail by preserving Obama’s coalition of black, Hispanic and young voters. Yet she risks neglecting poor, white voters while not inspiring the loyalty, even love, that many minorities still feel for America’s first black president.
In Strawberry Mansion, a depressed black area of western Philadelphia, barely 5km from the opulent parties held by Democratic lobbyists, there was lukewarm support for Clinton.
In attempting to woo Republicans – a dominant theme at the convention – Clinton risks alienating the Left.
After the Harrisburg event there was a furious argument between Andrea Thorn, 43, a waitress at a diner, and a young Sanders supporter refusing to back Clinton.
‘‘I wish that Barack Obama could be my president for the rest of my life but since he can’t, we have to vote for Hillary to stop Trump,’’ the waitress said, exasperated. ‘‘Trump is a dictator, the Hitler of our times, but if people like you are stupid enough, he’s going to win.’’