What’s the case for Hillary?

WASHINGTON — “The best darn change-maker I ever met in my entire life.” So said Bill Clinton in making the case for his wife at the Democratic National Convention. Considering that Bernie Sanders ran as the author of a political revolution and Donald Trump as the man who would “kick over the table” (to quote Newt Gingrich) in Washington, “change-maker” does not exactly make the heart race. Which is the fundamental problem with the Clinton campaign. What precisely is it about? Why is she running in the first place?

Like most dynastic candidates (most famously Ted Kennedy in 1979), she really doesn’t know. She seeks the office because, well, it’s the next — the final — step on the ladder.

Her campaign’s premise is that we’re doing OK but to patch in the nanny-state we can do better. There are holes safety net. She’s the one to do it.

It amounts to Sanders lite. Or the short-lived Bush slogan: “Jeb can fix it.” We know where that went.

The one man who could have given the pudding a theme, who could have created a plausible Hillaryism was Bill Clinton. Rather than do that — the way in Cleveland Gingrich shaped Trump’s various barstool eruptions into a semi-coherent program of national populism — Bill gave a long chronological account of a passionate liberal’s social activism. It was an attempt, I suppose, to humanize her.

Well, yes. Perhaps, after all, somewhere in there is a real person. But what a waste of Bill’s talents. It wasn’t exactly Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair, but at the end you had to ask: Is that all there is?

He grandly concluded with this: “The reason you should elect her is that in the greatest country on earth we have always been about tomorrow.” Is there a rhetorical device more banal?

Trump’s acceptance speech was roundly criticized for offering a dark, dystopian vision of America. For all of its exaggeration, however, it reflected well the view from Fishtown, the fictional white working-class town created statistically by social scientist Charles Murray in his 2012 study “Coming Apart.” It chronicled the economic, social and spiritual disintegration of those left behind by globalization and economic transformation. Trump’s capture of the resultant feelings of anxiety and abandonment explains why he enjoys an astonishing 39-point advantage over Clinton among whites without a college degree.

His solution is to beat up on foreigners for “stealing” our jobs. But while trade is a factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs, even more important, by a large margin, is the emergence of an information economy in which education, knowledge and various kinds of literacy are the coin of the realm. For all the factory jobs lost to Third World competitors, far more are lost to robots.

Hard to run against higher productivity. Easier to run against cunning foreigners.

In either case, Clinton has found no counter. If she has a theme, it’s about expanding opportunity, shattering ceilings. But the universe of discriminated-against minorities — so vast 50 years ago — is rapidly shrinking. When the burning civil rights issue of the day is bathroom choice for the transgendered, a flummoxed Fishtown understandably asks, “What about us?” Telling coal miners she was going to close their mines and kill their jobs only reinforced white working-class alienation from Clinton.

As for the chaos abroad, the Democrats are in see-no-evil denial. The first night in Philadelphia, there were 61 speeches. Not one mentioned the Islamic State or even terrorism. Later references were few, far between and highly defensive. After all, what can the Democrats say? Clinton’s calling card is experience. Yet as secretary of state she left a trail of policy failures from Libya to Syria, from the Russian reset to the Iraqi withdrawal to the rise of the Islamic State.

Clinton had a strong second half of the convention as the Sanders revolt faded and as President Obama endorsed her with one of the finer speeches of his career. Yet Trump’s convention bounce of up to 10 points has given him a slight lead in the polls. She badly needs one of her own.

She still enjoys the Democrats’ built-in Electoral College advantage. But she remains highly vulnerable to both outside events and internal revelations. Another major terror attack, another email drop — and everything changes.

In this crazy election year, there are no straight-line projections. As Clinton leaves Philadelphia, her lifelong drive for the ultimate prize is perilously close to a coin flip.

There have been several interesting letters over the last month and many show the results of how the Republican Party has brilliantly set up the most sophisticated, adaptive, diverse, powerful and extremely well-funded network of a print, social media and TV propaganda machine. From that influence, we saw one reader write how Liberty Guard is “engaged in public education,” another delivered a very twisted review of Saul Alinsky’s work, another person wanted elected officials to write our safety and health laws so that businesses would not be burdened, and of course we have “FOX News.”

Some recent internet chat comments say current campaigning reminds them of reports on how the German government was overtaken in 1938 with screaming speeches, racial profiling and fear mongering. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), American Nobel-winning author, penned “It Can’t Happen Here” in 1935, a semisatirical novel about our presidency being won by a fascist. In the book he wrote, “if fascism came to America, it would come wrapped in the flag and whistling ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’” Lewis’ book summary on Wikipedia is an interesting read on this political ideology.

Also from the history files, there was another large political fight and the United States Office of Strategic Services described one candidate as: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time, blame them for everything that goes wrong; and take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.” That excerpt is from their report describing Adolf Hitler’s psychological profile during the late 1930s. What? The reasoning power of those in authority has been robbed from them by an unknown entity. Who or what could it be?

Absurd legal rulings have confused and shaken the faith of the “bedrock” citizens.

No ID required of those who choose to remain anonymous. So, apparently, voting doesn’t matter anyway.

Recent home invader, shot by his (or somebody else’s) pistol, was identified by fingerprints only.

No recourse to the established protocol of lethal injection. Judge Bean must be spinning!

Adherence to lofty principles must take into account practical measures dealing with those who have no such concepts.

Why is there such a big racket about the Democrats’ emails regarding Bernie? He is not a Democrat! He is an Independent, has been for all the 20-some years he has been working in the government. Caucused with the Democrats, but never believed in the party’s platform enough to join the party. Until, he needed the party in his run for the presidency and expected the Democrats not to be upset by the way he is using them.

I believe Ralph Nader was another man with great ideas, but you remember how that turned out. Go on the internet, check him out. He is the one who was very instrumental in getting the U.S. in to two unpaid wars, which we are still involved in losing many of our men and women. I wonder how a Donald Trump presidency is going to look?