Hillary Clinton: The art of faking sincerity

By Richard K. Barry

While I’m on the topic of a presidential candidate’s likeability, do you remember when then-Sen. Obama said “You’re likable enough, Hillary” on the campaign trail in 2008?

The obvious point was that Hillary Clinton was more than a little out of touch with the average American voter after years as political royalty.

The question now, as Ben Kamisar at The Hill asks, is how will Hillary Clinton formally announce her candidacy in a way that makes her attractive or, sorry for this, “relatable” to the American people?

Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant, says, “[p]eople want to know their candidate for president, they want to feel them, see what makes them tick, that’s what she did when she ran for Senate in New York.”

A Democratic strategist added that the quest to paint Clinton as relatable starts as early as the announcement video. He called her 2008 announcement video, which had her sitting alone in a living room, “tone deaf.”

“The knock against Hillary in the last campaign was: Can she convey some humanity and feeling and concern for other folks?”

It’s not her strength. We’ll see how it goes. And it all starts with the announcement.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)