Story highlights
Every step of Clinton's campaign seems to be an acknowledgment that she's learned lessons from 2008
National polls released over the weekend show Clinton leading Trump
Hillary Clinton has one big advantage over Donald Trump heading into November: hindsight.
Every step of her 2016 campaign – from her embrace of the historic nature of her candidacy to her more personal connections with voters – seems to be an acknowledgment that she’s learned the lessons of her failed campaign eight years earlier.
The efforts may be working. A national Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday found her leading Trump 51%-39% while a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey found her five points ahead.
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Clinton still faces huge challenges. She is dogged by the controversy surrounding her use of a personal email server as secretary of state and has struggled with the perception that she’s dishonest. Perhaps most notably, she has to figure out how to prevail in a year when major blocs of both parties are attracted to outsider candidates like Trump –and are weary of political dynasties.
As her general election campaign kicks into full gear, here’s a look at the lessons Clinton has learned from 2008.
The woman card
Clinton has held many political titles in her long career. But for the 68-year-old candidate, her recently claimed title of grandmother appears to bring her more pride than any other achievement.
“I’ve talked so much about being a grandmother. Now I’m going to be talking doubly about being a grandmother,” Clinton crooned at a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week, as she boasted about the birth of her second grandchild.
The constant reminder to voters that she is a woman is a notable contrast from the way Clinton approached the issue eight years ago. Back then, the second-term senator and her team viewed her gender as a potential liability that could undercut her efforts to exude strength and experience in a field crowded with men.
But this time, Clinton is enthusiastically embracing her gender. In her campaign launch speech in New York City last summer, Clinton said she hoped to make history by becoming the country’s first female president and spoke about her late mother’s struggles and triumphs.
The strategy could be potent against Trump, who is struggling with female voters. It’s a message that’s resonating among Clinton’s supporters — and not just women.
John Bartholow, a 39-year-old student working in retail, attended a Clinton event Raleigh, North Carolina, last week with his 4-year-old daugher in tow. Bartholow had supported Bernie Sanders during the primary, and eight years ago, voted for President Obama. But now, he’s more than happy to call himself a Clinton supporter.
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Looking at his daughter in his arms, Bartholow choked up as he explained why he was there: “I’m here so Ella can see the first female president.”
Where’s the drama?
Clinton’s 2008 campaign was rocked with drama that made the campaign look inept and disorganized.
So far this cycle, no such stories have dragged her down. And to the contrary, Clinton is now competing against an opponent who has confronted several rounds of embarrassing staff turmoil.
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Eight years ago, the Clinton operation was rife with clashes between top aides, staff shake-ups and a series of embarrassing leaks, with much of the dysfunction playing out in public. This time, the campaign has largely avoided such unflattering headlines.
After suffering a crushing double-digit loss to Sanders in New Hampshire, there were rumors of a possible staff shake-up, but it never came to fruition.
Meanwhile, Clinton has watched Trump slog through wave after wave of personnel drama, culminating in the dramatic dismissal of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski last week.
Veteran Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf said Clinton appears determined to minimize the kind of dysfunction that was a harmful distraction last time.
“It seems to me that the Clinton campaign this go-around has taken that to heart,” Elmendorf said. “Now, it’s all easier when you’re wining – but obviously it’s been harder than they thought at the beginning and they’ve stayed on message and on target.”
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An unapologetic hawk
In 2008, Clinton was haunted by her vote to invade Iraq, as her 2002 decision emerged as one of the single biggest dividing lines between Clinton and Obama.
But if being perceived as a hawk and an interventionist was a significant liability for Clinton in 2008, she confronts a different political landscape eight years later.
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Now, the 2002 Iraq War resolution is a more distant memory – Sanders repeatedly tried to use Clinton’s Senate vote against her in the primary, but to no particular effect.
As she heads into the general election season that’s dominated by concerns about terrorism, Clinton finds herself facing an opponent without much of a national security background and who is under fire from his own party for his isolationist-leaning foreign policy.
Clinton is unapologetic in expressing her hawkish views this cycle. She’s even staked out a different policy stance from Obama on Syria, calling for a no-fly zone over the country and suggesting that the United States be more deeply involved in foreign conflicts.
Clinton is garnering support even from national security leaders across the aisle. This month, she won the endorsement of Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to Presidents George H.W Bush and Gerald Ford, along with Richard Armitage, George W. Bush’s deputy secretary of state. Prominent neoconservative scholar Robert Kagan is helping Clinton raise money.
A personal connection
In her first White House campaign, Clinton suffered from accusations of being remote and overly programmed as she ran against an opponent who was the epitome of cool.
This time, the former secretary of state is working to shed the image of being a stiff and inaccessible candidate. Aides say the effort includes shifting emphasis from large rallies to smaller events to allow Clinton to speak directly with voters, and sharing more personal stories about the candidate through social media.
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Her Facebook page, for example, is filled with photos and videos that tell not only the narrative of a first-lady-turned-senator-turned-secretary-of-state, but also the story of a daughter, a mother and a grandmother. And days after clinching her party’s nomination earlier this month, the campaign began to air a series of television ads highlighting her pre-2008 biography, particularly shining a light on the work Clinton did on be half of children.
Tara Minter, 44-year-old African-American woman from Raleigh, voted for Obama in 2008 and is now supporting Clinton. Attending a Clinton rally last week, Minter said she has enjoyed learning about a side of Clinton that she knew little about eight years ago.
“She’s not taking anything for granted this time around,” she said. “One thing I like is she started going on the road months before people were thinking about (the campaign), to earn people’s votes.”
Another shift: Clinton openly acknowledges that she is not entirely comfortable on the stump.
“She’s not as skilled at campaigning as her husband or Barack Obama but she has learned to embrace that,” said Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager and CNN commentator. ” I think that’s the biggest change — that she’s just much more comfortable in her skin this time around.”
Minority outreach
Clinton has made the support from minority voters a bedrock of her 2016 campaign.
By the end of the 2008 primaries, Clinton was largely winning working-class whites, while Obama was outperforming her in states that represented the diversity of the Democratic Party’s base. Her comments that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again” were panned and perceived as divisive.
This year, the Clinton campaign used its hard-fought battle against Sanders to prioritize grassroots outreach across the country in areas with large Hispanic and African-American populations. She is now poised to carry that base into a November battle against Trump, who has offended various minority groups with inflammatory and anti-immigrants remarks.
Bakari Sellers, a CNN commentator and former Democratic South Carolina House representative, said Clinton’s strength with African-Americans this time has largely to do with an obvious variable: the absence of Obama. But, Sellers also stressed that it is difficult to overstate how seriously the campaign prioritized courting that community.
“There is no Barack Obama in the race so that makes it a lot easier for Hillary Clinton. But Hillary Clinton has some very, very, very deep and long relationships with African-Americans,” said Sellers, a Clinton supporter.
During this campaign, he added, the Clintons “really, really, really took the African-American vote seriously.”
