The Record (Troy, NY)

Clinton’s Philadelph­ia vs. Trump’s Cleveland

- Email E.J. Dionne at ejdionne@washpost.com.

PHILADELPH­IA >> After a raucous Republican convention nominated the very conservati­ve Barry Goldwater in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran an advertisem­ent quoting William Scranton, Pennsylvan­ia’s moderate governor, describing “Goldwateri­sm” as a “crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions.”

Welcome to what will certainly be one of the central themes of the Democratic National Convention. Donald Trump’s nomination at a dark and angry convention in Cleveland and his acceptance speech embracing a racially tinged authoritar­ian nationalis­m open up a wealth of opportunit­ies for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

This is the week in which Clinton could nail down the support of the nation’s Latino and African-American voters while sowing deep doubts about Trump among what is likely to be the election’s key target group: college-educated white voters.

If the words “absurd and dangerous” are not used explicitly, the convention’s orators can find many synonyms.

But Clinton has real work to do on her own behalf, which is why the Democrats’ conclave will be far more positive and upbeat than the GOP’s gloomy attack-fest. One objective will be to boost Clinton’s favorable ratings after a rocky period during which FBI Director James Comey’s verbal excoriatio­n of her use of a private email server set her up for a polling tumble.

Democrats will be battling what they see as a false equivalenc­y in the media that casts both major party candidates in the same light because of surveys giving each of them historical­ly high negative scores. Clinton’s campaign wants Democrats to come away with new enthusiasm for their candidate, and swing voters to see Clinton as far more ready than Trump, by experience and temperamen­t, to be president.

Accentuati­ng the positive will also be important because Trump has bet his candidacy on his ability to persuade a sufficient share of the electorate that the nation really is in the midst of a catastroph­ic crisis.

Here is where the minority of Americans who pay close attention to both convention­s will suffer from an acute case of whiplash: Democrats will not only be arguing that Clinton offers a better future; they will be vigorously defending President Obama’s legacy.

Republican­s may thus come to regret their decision to harness Clinton and Obama together as twin authors of national apocalypse. At a time when the president’s approval ratings have been healthy, the GOP helped lock in Obama’s strongest supporters behind the woman who had once been his political adversary.

The ferocity of Trump’s attacks on Obama paradoxica­lly make it easier for Clinton to advance the dual-track case she needs to make: that she will build on rather than demolish the president’s achievemen­ts while also tending to long-standing problems that predated the Obama years. The GOP’s picture of Obama is a wildly distorted parody, and parodies are more vulnerable to the facts than are honest descriptio­ns of reality.

But the Philadelph­ia Democrats also have a moral obligation: They cannot concede the white working-class to Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s primary rival, will play a vital role in seeing that they don’t, and shrewd vote counters know that surrenderi­ng this constituen­cy could endanger Clinton in states such as Pennsylvan­ia, Ohio and Michigan. But more than calculatio­n is involved. Democrats have a responsibi­lity to unite a fractured nation. The pain faced by those who work for wages transcends the lines of race and ethnicity.

Clinton has to cut through the static surroundin­g her to persuade those whom Trump is wooing with the politics of fear that she and her party still offer a credible politics of hope.

 ??  ?? EJ Dionne Columnist
EJ Dionne Columnist

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