It may not show in the polls, but presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appears to have improved her standing among members of the Democratic National Committee that met last week in Minneapolis.
Lori Sellner, one of seven members of the Minnesota contingent to the DNC, said she saw a lot of excitement generated by Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders but Clinton offered something new. “What I was seeing from Secretary Clinton — I think she’s doing a better job of being more personal and personable,” Sellner said. “I like seeing that a lot.”
A report in the New York Times offered a similar observation: “’I had kind of low expectations for Hillary Clinton: Almost all of the clips I’d seen on television showed her as kind of stiff, distant and reading her remarks,’ said Rick Boylan, a Democratic national committeeman from Florida. Instead, he said, ‘she was on point, direct, strong, and spoke from the heart’ as she delivered lines, like ‘the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump,’ that delighted Mr. Boylan.”
Sellner, in essence, agrees. “I had always heard from different people who had more one on one interaction with her, that she was more personable than she was in speeches,” she said. “That is coming through a little more.”
The approximately 700 Democratic super-delegates like Boylan and Sellner are party influencers. Sellner said she’s often approached by volunteers who are interested in joining a campaign effort. She looks for candidates that will keep the volunteer base energized.
Sellner said she saw that sort of enthusiasm generated by both Clinton and Sanders. And she gave a nod to former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. “I was impressed with Chafee’s record in Rhode Island and O’Malley’s delivery certainly excited the crowd,” she said.
Sellner remains uncommitted. “I think I’m still holding out for a debate or two,” Sellner said. “I also talked to people from Alaska and South Dakota and other states who said they haven’t signed on the line yet.”
The first debate among the Democratic candidates for president will be held October 13 in Nevada.
I am interested on her answer to a couple questions. 1st, how could she and the administration be so wrong on the “Arab Spring”, so many in the intelligence community said it was backed by Muslim Brotherhood and would lead to a total destabilization of the region, which has come to pass. 2nd, what was reset with Russia with the silly red button she gave them, Russia is back to rogue activities that we haven’t seen in decades.
Forget the email scandal, it is her judgement and instincts that we need to question!
Wake Me When It’s Over
Ms. Clinton opposed the Administration’s policies on the Arab Spring, and thought it was wrong to push Mubarak out of power without a better sense of who would replace him. She may be the wrong person to ask about intelligence failures (You know whom you could ask–who was that guy who talked about being welcomed in Iraq as liberators? Who was that, again?).
A question for you is what should the US have done, in the Arab Spring countries and also in Russia? Would you have us go to war over Crimea? Send troops to Tunisia? Or sit on a bar stool somewhere in the backwoods and kvetch?
It’s easy to sit and grouse about failures (it’s also a reflex when it comes to a Clinton–I understand that), but let’s hear what the alternatives were. That may be a harder question.
Clinton was cheering on the Arab Spring calling it a grass roots uprising by the common folks. The intelligence community was calling it what it was, radical Islam (can’t say that phrase yet in our White House) over throwing the dictators that were running the countries, who was right?
What should we have done??? How about have a clue as to what was going on!! Send arms to Ukraine army, reinstate the missile sites in Poland we took out to make Putin like us, didn’t work, imagine that. Find the moderates in the region that are as frightened of ISIS as we should be and help them fight them. Maybe not call ISIS the JV and make a joke out of it would’ve helped a bit too. The millions and millions of refugees flooding Europe now is a result of America “leading from behind”. Competence by Hillary and the Obama administration would have given the moderates a chance to fight the extremists, but by missing the mark so badly, the entire Mid East is on fire.
Hard to fight a war vs an enemy we won’t even identify by name or call out their atrocities. You had better wake up because if we think this is just a Mid East problem we will be calling them the JV again with the same results.
Sometimes you have to fight evil or it will grow….. See Arab Spring if you would like an an example!