Clinton campaigns on fear of Trump and hope for a female president
The day before the California primary, Charles Jones sat in the hot sun in Leimert Park Village Plaza with a few hundred of his friends and neighbors. He was waiting for Hillary Clinton to arrive at a get-out-the-vote rally in this heart of the black community in Los Angeles. When I chatted with him, Jones told me he was not a Hillary supporter — yet. He said he wanted to see what she had to say about the unequal treatment that African Americans too often receive at the hands of the police.
His answer came powerfully a few minutes later, embodied by the three women who introduced Clinton to the stage: Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, the black man who died from a chokehold while a squad of New York cops attempted to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes on the street; the Rev. Wanda Johnson, whose son, Oscar Grant, was killed by a policeman’s bullet in the back as he lay on his stomach, handcuffed, in a San Francisco subway station; and Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager fatally shot by an overzealous block watch volunteer while he was walking from a convenience store to his dad’s house. All three mothers are campaigning for Clinton.
Clinton has called in dozens of her surrogates, such as Carr, Johnson and Fulton, and has continued to campaign hard across the state for black votes, white votes, Latino votes, any votes, even though the Associated Press and NBC have both declared that she has nailed down the nomination even before the ballots of Californians are counted. She does not want to suffer the embarrassment of losing the primary to her persistent rival, Bernie Sanders.
Sanders name was not mentioned once by anyone in the long parade of elected officials and black celebrities who preceded Clinton to the Leimert Park stage, however. Jason George, a “Grey’s Anatomy” star, came the closest when he said “all our candidates are cool,” but that Hillary fans must now reach out to supporters of that other guy so that Democrats can close ranks and defeat Donald Trump. “We can’t follow the first black president with the most racist president since the Civil War,” George said.
Lakers basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also imagined for the crowd the awfulness of a Trump victory. Trump has nothing planned for black voters, he said, unless it is “banjo and tap dance lessons so we could provide entertainment at the Republican National Convention.”
By the time Clinton showed up, all the speakers had made it quite evident what the heart of her pitch to voters is going to be in the months to come. No. 1: She would be the first female president. No. 2: Trump is uncouth, unqualified and unhinged.
In her speech, Clinton hammered at the second point, saying she cannot quite believe Trump has said so many bizarre things. She told the audience that foreign policy is not always a big issue in presidential campaigns, but now that Trump has insulted U.S. allies, ruminated about withdrawing from NATO, spoken nice words about creeps such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and suggested it is no big deal if Saudi Arabia, Japan and various other countries get nukes, the presumptive Republican nominee “has made foreign policy about the biggest issue you can imagine.”
A few hours later and several miles to the south, Clinton delivered similar hard hits against Trump at a large rally inside a gym at Long Beach Community College. There, though, the first pillar of her campaign seemed to offer the most appeal. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom had taken the stage earlier to ask if folks in Long Beach were “ready to make history” by electing the first female president. It was obvious they were. The front ranks of the crowd were filled with women who listened to her speak with adoration and tears in their eyes.
After the rally ended, I struck up a conversation with Long Beach resident Stevi Meredith. In 2008, she told me, she had campaigned for her fellow African American, Barack Obama. In 2012, she went to work for him again in Ohio. Now that she has lived to see the first black president, Meredith said, she wants to see the first woman sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.
“If we can’t get this done now, I don’t think I’ll ever see a woman president in my lifetime,” she said.
I asked Meredith if I could take a photograph of her, as I often do as a reminder of whom I’ve talk with. As she removed her sunglasses for the shot, she seemed just a bit embarrassed. She had been crying during Clinton’s speech.
Much has been said about Hillary Clinton’s likability, or lack thereof, but the reaction of the crowds who saw her on Monday indicated that she has correctly identified the two big things she has going for her. She has an opponent who is loathsome to millions of women (not to mention Latinos, blacks and plenty of men) and those same women, whether they are completely enthused by Clinton or not, are eager for history to be made by one of their own.
Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
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