In 2008, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign focused on toughness. This time around, she has embraced the historic position of potentially being the first woman president. “She feels more available to run authentically as a woman,” says Jay Newton-Small, author of ‘Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way Washington Works’.
However, Hillary Clinton has long fought for global women’s rights, establishing that the violations of women’s rights are also a human rights violation. In 1995, Clinton addressed a special session of the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing. The speech laid the groundwork for her position on women’s rights. “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights,” Clinton said.
Now, her struggle is to share her passion to inspire voters around the country, including young women who are flocking to Bernie Sanders. “Hillary lost millennial women in New Hampshire by 82 percent,” says Newton-Small. “She’s not succeeding in making a case to them about why she’s the one to lead them.” Newton-Small says Clinton is missing out on the opportunity to explain her history as an advocate for women’s rights to the younger generation.
Clinton also has to face critics who question her ties to Wall Street. And of course there’s the email scandal, which could follow her into her presidency, should she be elected.
“I’m not sure what we’ve seen is terribly out of the ordinary,” “HRC” author Jonathan Allen says about the emails. However, the FBI investigation could be troubling, he says. “That said I think the bar for prosecuting a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign is pretty high,” he says.
Finally, Clinton also has to court the African American community. “Clearly black voters have seen that Hillary Clinton speaks to their issues in a different way,” says Michael Dyson, author of “The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America.” “I think her strength will be addressing the needs of African American communities with a sensitivity that President Obama couldn’t necessarily publicly display along with a powerful public policy,” says Dyson.
Below is an automatically generated transcript of the conversation. It isn’t 100 percent accurate, but is pretty close. Since it is automatically generated, it may contain errors.