Hillary Clinton’s first visit to SC since 2008 campaign

Hillary Clinton

The presumptive Democratic nominee came back to South Carolina today wielding a middle-class-populist message (is it populist if it’s middle-class, or merely “popular”?).

She kept telling us besieged members of the bourgeoisie that she was going to “go to bat” for us. She used other metaphors for what she would do, but I’m very happy to report that I didn’t hear her say that she would “fight” for us. She may have and I missed it, but I was listening for it, because I hate it so.

So I guess that’s one way in which she’s distinguishing herself from the populism of Elizabeth Warren, while still trying to go after the same segment of the party — so as to, you know, keep what’s-her-name out of it.

Maggie Haberman of the NYT reported that Hillary’s “southern twang is back,” but I certainly didn’t hear it. Maybe you had to be from New York to pick up on it. Nevertheless, the candidate traced her experience with SC back to when she worked for Bennettsville’s Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund, and later attended Linda and Phil Lader’s Renaissance Weekends down in the Lowcountry.

The candidate’s best-received line was when she said, after noting how much the White House ages presidents, “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I have one big advantage… I’ve been coloring my hair for years.” She promised we wouldn’t see her go gray in the job.

Beyond that, here are most of my Tweets from the event:

The Jack Kuenzie thing was out of sync. It was before the event, but got held up for some reason.

By the way, you know that item where I said “Weird situation after speech. Her people won’t let us near her, and won’t let us leave…”? Twitter kinda went ape about it, in a modest way: There were 33 direct reTweets and 11 favorites, and lots of reTweets of reTweets. I lost count.

Which made me kind of insecure. I had not tried to leave the hall at that point; I had just heard we couldn’t from another media type. Specifically, on the first of three times I got pushed back by Clinton staff, I told Dianne Gallagher, who was headed toward the candidate, that they weren’t letting us near her. Dianne said something to the effect of that put is in a fix, because they weren’t letting us leave the room, either.

After people made such a big deal about that Tweet, I wrote to Dianne to make sure I had heard her right. She replied, “Oh yeah. They said we had to wait. Wouldn’t open the door for us.”

I was relieved to have heard her right the first time.

It was no big deal, as one Tweeter had the good sense to note. But a lot of people seemed to think it was a metaphor for something…

12 thoughts on “Hillary Clinton’s first visit to SC since 2008 campaign”

  1. Brad Warthen Post author

    Forgot to mention that the occasion was that she was speaking to the South Carolina House Democratic Women’s Caucus and the South Carolina Democratic Women’s Council at their Third Annual Day in Blue.

    No, I don’t know what a “day in blue” is. Must be a red-state/blue-state thing…

        1. Bryan Caskey

          I think it would be great if more candidates lapsed into fake regional dialects:

          Rubio in Boston: Hello Bahstan! This is wicked ahwsahm to be heah with ya!
          Graham in NYC: Yo! Noo Yawk! How’s it hangin?
          Cruz in Wisconsin: Nice to be wit ya, I was born in Canada doncha know.

    1. Brad Warthen

      Hey, I’m not gonna type it TWICE, unless someone once again starts paying me to…

      And I know most of y’all don’t see it there, so…

      1. Mark Stewart

        Nope. But glad you got retweeted.

        Will I be able to use that word in Scrabble a decade from now?

    2. bud

      My exact thoughts Kathryn. I just rapidly scrolled past all the annoying tweets. It’s my least favorite of the social media outlets.

      1. Brad Warthen

        And it’s the very favorite of journalists and political professionals.

        No one has ever devised a better way of keeping up with current news developments…

        1. Brad Warthen

          Although I’ll confess that the 280 interactions (so far; they’re still coming in — about 5 came in while I was typing this reply) on that one Tweet of mine can get creepy. People are investing it with FAR more import than I attached to it…

          At the same time, I’d like to see such dynamism here on the blog. Which is why I try to merge the two venues whenever I can…

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