Bill Clinton

Posted By: Nick

 
There was a lot of discussion over at Daily Kos today about whether Barack Obama should use Bill Clinton in his campaign.  This came up because Clinton remarked today that he would campaign for Obama wherever and whenever Obama asks him to.  I made as vigorous a case for Bill that I could because I firmly believe he is a huge asset that Obama would be a fool to waste.

When I worked for Hillary Clinton in the primaries I was assigned to a small, rural town that was almost 100% white.  I spent a number of months there, getting to know the people and how they think.  The town had been hit hard economically in the past decade or so and had gone from a middle class community to a struggling, lower to lower-middle class town.  Bill came to the area a few different times and his events were always overflowing.  The people there loved him.

In his stump speech (that varied a bit each time, but generally remained the same) he says something along these lines (and I’m paraphrasing, but getting this as close as my memory allows):

When you’re President it’s easy to forget where you came from.  When you’re President you have all these benefits: everyone stands whenever you enter a room; you have your own secret service agents to drive you everywhere you need to go and to protect you; you ride around in a plane so cool that they make movies about it.  If you’re not careful, you just might start to think that you’re somebody.  But you need a President who feels your pain.  You need a President who knows what you’re going through right now.  Because that kind of President knows how important it is to help you in your time of need.  And remember, Hillary and I never had any money until after I left office.  Hillary knows where you’re coming from.  Hillary feels your pain.

That is exactly the kind of thing those people wanted to hear.  They already had such respect for this man, so when he showed up and told them things like that, and asked them to vote for Hillary, they did.  That region of the state voted for Hillary in higher percentages than any other.  My experience there convinces me that a major reason for that outcome was Bill Clinton.

Obama can use this to his advantage.  The media has talked a lot about how these people must be racists; they won’t vote for a black man.  That’s a load of crap.  These folks care about one question: who’s going to help us?  Obama’s image of an Ivy League lawyer from the big city (Chicago) doesn’t endear him to these people.  But Obama does feel their pain.  They just don’t know it.  Obama needs to let Bill Clinton reach out to them.  They respect him, and they’ll listen.  And then they’ll vote for Barack Obama on election day.