Clinton's economic message, combined with skepticism about TPP, won the Rust Belt
Last edited Sat Mar 19, 2016, 12:45 PM - Edit history (1)
The article also talks about Sanders negative trade attack ads vs Hillary's ads which gave a positive message on economic growth. Good article.
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Clinton's economic message, combined with skepticism about TPP, won the Rust Belt http://politi.co/1pRUUqM
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Clintonites: How we beat Bernie on trade
Her broader economic message, combined with skepticism about TPP, won the Rust Belt.
By Annie Karni
03/18/16 06:54 PM EDT
For months after she launched her campaign last April, Hillary Clinton faced internal pressure from her Brooklyn headquarters to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal she helped craft as secretary of State. Both of her Democratic opponents at the time had quickly rejected the deal, and Clinton’s delay made it seem as though she was avoiding a difficult political decision. But Clinton insisted on holding out until she read the final details of the plan, sources said.
In October, citing last-minute loopholes that would favor China and the lack of currency manipulation enforcement, Clinton ultimately came out against the deal.
At the time, her opposition to the fine print was ridiculed as a classic Clintonian flip-flop. But now, Democratic strategists said, her carefully nuanced position on trade actually helped her win the industrial Midwest — a string of wins Tuesday night that all but ensure Clinton will become the Democratic nominee.
Clinton’s position of supporting trade deals in general but rejecting the current version of a deal based on specific objections, her campaign said, was more in line with the position of a majority of Democratic voters today than Sanders’ blanket moral opposition to trade deals overall.
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“Voters agree that we have to compete and win in a global economy and that means we have to make things in the United States that we can sell to 95 percent of the world’s consumers who happen to live outside of the United States,” said Clinton’s senior strategist, Joel Benenson. “What the data from the exit polls says is these voters were more aligned with her fundamental view of trade.”
.............Indeed, in planning on how to beat Sanders in the Rust Belt, Clinton’s campaign also made an early calculation that a broader economic message would ultimately win out over a debate about trade.
Clinton’s strategy for winning the industrial Midwest, advisers said, began in the ballroom at Caesars Palace the afternoon after her Nevada victory. There, surrounded by casino workers, she began talking about “breaking down barriers for all” and the importance of competing in a global economy — a message targeting manufacturing workers in the Rust Belt.
“If we open our hearts to the families of coal country and Indian country, if we listen to the hopes and heartaches of hardworking people across America,” she said last month in Nevada, “it’s clear there is so much more to be done. The truth is, we aren’t a single-issue country. … Some country is going to be the clean energy superpower of the 21st century, it’s probably going to be China, Germany or us, and I want it to be us.”
Last Tuesday, that strategy appeared to have worked:.......................
.......................The other half: “She won because her economic message is about the future, about how we throw gasoline on the good economic things that are happening, as opposed to just talking about the bad things. The young people in the industrial Midwest went to other places where the grass is greener. They want to come back home.”
Clinton instead pushed back on Sanders’ opposition to the Export-Import Bank, and doubled down on the idea that America needs to compete and win in the global economy.
"We engaged with him on trade more forcefully," Benenson said. In the end, "I guess he came off as an economic isolationist.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-trade-220985#ixzz43LFtOVpE
Hillary Clinton speaks to workers at the Detroit Manufacturing Systems facility on March 4, 2016, in Detroit. | Getty
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-trade-220985#ixzz43LFJrGFv
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