Hillary puts people first

“Putting people first” was Bill Clinton’s original campaign slogan. He even wrote a book by that name, which was published during the 1992 presidential campaign.

In the campaign video that launched her presidential campaign yesterday, Hillary Clinton took the slogan literally. She put people — a rainbow coalition of them — first, making only a brief appearance at the end to give us the news of her candidacy.

The ad could hardly have been more fatuous. Are we to vote for Clinton because a gay couple is about to get married, a black couple is going to have a baby, and a white woman is planting tomatoes?

We would do well, however, to follow Steve’s advice and not underestimate Hillary. That goes for her video.

Barack Obama’s campaigns demonstrated that Democratic operatives are masters of sending strong subliminal messages to vacuous people. Sometimes a tomato is just a tomato, but probably not in a Hillary Clinton campaign ad.

Obama’s campaigns also demonstrated that there are enough vacuous people, when combined with “victims,” the Dems’ natural constituency, to carry a Democrat over the finish line.

Clinton is not the campaigner Obama was. But a coalition of the “victims” and the vacuous might nonetheless suffice in 2016, if the economy doesn’t tank and if the GOP fails to find a candidate with broad appeal.

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