Republicans in search of an attack line against Hillary Clinton have begun to cast her as a tired relic of the past — an implicit contrast to their own bench of up-and-comers like hip hop-listening Marco Rubio and libertarian-leaning Rand Paul.
But Democrats are confident that giving voters the chance to make history by electing the first female president — by definition a forward-looking act — would trump any argument that Clinton is too 20th century and give her a “change” mantra of her own.
“If Secretary Clinton runs, she’ll be the nominee — the first female nominee of either party,” said Stephanie Cutter, a former top adviser to the Obama White House and campaign. “That breaks through the ‘old’ tagline that the Republican geniuses are cooking up because, if handled correctly, women of all ages will absolutely be inspired by that. I don’t recommend that be the totality of her message or platform, but there’s no way to hide that fact and it certainly shouldn't be discounted. “
It’s the type of “first” campaign that was a hallmark of the Barack Obama 2008 effort, even if he didn't overtly run that way. Clinton ran a campaign that was focused primarily on experience and strength in 2008, after the pollster for her poll-driven campaign found that her gender could hurt more than help.
There’s no question that one of Clinton’s challenges in 2016 would be demonstrating that her candidacy is about the future and not a bygone era. Her husband ran two decades ago at age 46 as a turn-the-page change agent — famously using Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” as his campaign theme song against 68-year-old George H.W. Bush, in case the generational contrast wasn’t obvious already.
Early attempts by a handful of Republicans to portray Clinton as a figure of the past are not solely about underscoring her age — she will be 69 on Election Day 2016 — but the fact that national elections are always framed as choices between moving forward or looking back.
(PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton’s life, career)
In the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama didn’t directly attack Clinton as a candidate of the past. But the contrast in that race was unmistakable, too: He was the 40-something upstart with the potential to make history, she the product of Washington and triangulation whose vote to authorize the Iraq War put her a little too close to George W. Bush. In an election cycle centered on change, primary voters demonstrated “Clinton fatigue” and went with Obama.
Yet this time, with a different political environment and, most likely, the absence of an Obama-like figure to contend with in a primary, Democrats believe that Clinton’s potential to become the country’s first female to win the White House would galvanize voters of all ages.
Jeremy Bird, who led the Obama campaign’s field organization said that the idea of a Madam President would be “inspiring to a lot of people.”
“The energy that would come if she decides to do that would be cross-generational, and cross-gender,” Bird said.
In her last presidential run, Clinton generally avoided talking explicitly about her gender — save for her reference to “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” in her June 2008 concession speech.
Part Two; Hillary Clinton’s answer to the has-been charge;
Yet now, even without being explicitly political in the five months since leaving the State Department, Clinton has been clear about her desire to see a female president “in my lifetime.” Such comments come after the country made history in 2008 and 2012 by electing the first black president. And Clinton’s early work at her family’s foundation is focusing on women and children.
Her moves might help compensate for a potential problem that Republicans don’t need to do much to highlight: She is a former first lady, a former secretary of state and a former senator whose last national campaign harkened back to the prosperity of her husband’s two term
Now her future now is at least partially tethered to voter perceptions about Obama, despite the fact that she left his administration after one term. Clinton would need to address the rear-view-mirror issue in the election.
(Republicans have their own version of this: Whether 60-something Jeb Bush would be able to rise above “Bush fatigue” — though the former Florida governor is seen as much less likely to run.)
Three years out from the election, the generational question has been driving the discussion lately about a potential Clinton candidacy. When Clinton launched her Twitter feed last month with what some called a trying-too-hard-to-be-hip reference to the “Texts from Hillary” meme, Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith wrote that “the new dagger at Clinton’s heart is generational.”
The potential antidote? “<H>er possible status as the first woman president. That would be new, and its newness is why she could win,” he wrote.
The New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, meanwhile, observed last weekend that a smattering of Republicans are road-testing the age attack, including potential 2016 GOPers in their 40s and 50s who see a chance to appeal to the younger voters who’ve voted for Obama the past two cycles.
Democrats responded to the article with mostly sincere outrage, suggesting that Clinton — whose supporters have rallied to her side whenever she has been viewed as the victim of a political attack — was being treated unfairly.
It’s not just the transgenerational appeal of another “first” candidacy that could blunt the age attack — it’s also the fact that Clinton is an aggressive campaigner, a fact pointed out by both Cutter and pollster Geoff Garin, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 race. The “old” issue tends to work best when it adheres to an existing narrative about a candidate.
“Hillary Clinton is a dynamic figure in American politics, not a static figure, in a way that cuts against the point that Republicans wish they could make about age,” said Garin. “People see her as somebody who as Secretary of State was constantly on the move. “
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