Hillary on Working Class Whites, circa 1995: “Screw ‘Em”

My, my, how times have changed. In her exhaustive dual biography of the Clintons, For Love of Politics, Sally Bedell Smith portrays a very different Hillary Clinton from the “good old girl” on display during the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary last week. Debating the merits of appealing to the Reagan Democrats who had deserted the party in the 80s (and still hadn’t returned completely to the fold in ‘92) Hillary’s recommendation was succinct: “Screw ‘em. You don’t owe them a thing, Bill, they’re doing nothing for you.” The exchange was remembered by Benjamin Barber, writes Smith,a political-science professor who was part of strategy sessions in the Clinton White House leading up to the ‘96 re-election campaign. Bill rose to their defense, remembers Barber, “as if rehearsing an old but honorable debate he had been having with his wife for decades.”

Today, necessity has caused Hillary to morph into the self-proclaimed champion of the Reagan “lunch-bucket” Democrats, the working-class, the good old white boys and girls who just can’t cotton to the idea of a black president. Suddenly, Hillary is their hero. We’re sure polling had nothing to do with it. Mark Penn may be officially gone, but you can be sure that his slicing and dicing of the electorate gave Hillary the information she needed to try to rescue her campaign. To reinvent herself as a shot-drinking, rifle-toting gal with a pickup truck, and a wink and a smile to the blue-collar redneck folks who will just don’t want a black man in the oval office. “Don’t worry, I won’t let it happen,” is her message. “You can count on me, because after all, I’m one of you.”