Clinton shifts from policy to populism

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

May 6, 2008

Hillary Clinton is accompanied by North Carolina Governor Mike Easley as she campaigns from the back of a 1956 Chevrolet pick-up truck at Rotary Centennial Pavilion in Gastonia, North Carolina. (Getty Images Photo / May 6, 2008)

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. - Hillary Rodham Clinton began the campaign in pearls, assembling a team of fundraisers that included luminaries from New York's financial services industry.

She's ending it in pickup trucks, Dairy Queens and fire stations, taking a 2-by-4 to "Wall Street money brokers" and vowing to break up oil-rich OPEC.

No development in the 2008 campaign is quite so striking as Clinton's transformation from a front-runner policy wonk with deep pockets to a cash-starved populist staking her hopes in today's North Carolina and Indiana primaries on a promise to lower gas prices.

"If I were president, I would be jumping up and down in the White House" to cut gas prices, she shouted to a crowd of several hundred supporters here in the northwest Indiana suburbs.

Necessity is the mother of Clinton's populism, longtime observers say.

"It's a highly effective argument in a primary during an economic downturn," says Doug Schoen, a former pollster for Bill Clinton.

"She's not a true populist - not at all," Schoen said. "She wasn't getting white males in Wisconsin, Virginia and Maryland, and she needed those votes and this is the message. ... Politics is not only about finding a message, it's finding circumstances that fit the message - and the weak economy provided her with that opportunity."

Don't expect Clinton to be "giving the 'Cross of Gold' speech at the Democratic National Convention," quipped Schoen, referring to populist William Jennings Bryan's 1896 convention speech railing against Eastern money interests.

Nonetheless, Clinton has been delivering a kind of CliffsNotes version of that speech to mostly white crowds throughout Indiana all week. On Sunday night, she asked members of the state's Democratic Party, "Why don't we hold these Wall Street money-brokers responsible for their role in this recession?"

While it's unclear whether Clinton's change in tone will pay off, a realclearpolitics.com survey of pre-primary polls showed Obama with a shrunken 7-point lead in North Carolina, and Clinton with a 5-point edge in Indiana.

"I think we've got him where we want him," said a Clinton field organizer, on condition of anonymity. "We forced him into a debate on the economy and we'll win that any time."

Despite her rhetoric, Clinton's connections to Wall Street are deep. Of the seven companies whose employees have contributed the most to Clinton, five are Wall Street firms - Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers. Donors from those firms have given a total of $1.8 million.

Many of Clinton's top campaign bundlers, known as "Hill Raisers," have made their fortunes in the financial services industry, including financier Alan Patricof, venture capitalist Steve Rattner and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs executive.

Still, Clinton's resurgence has been fueled by her focus on pocketbook issues vital to white, blue-collar voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Her stump speech earlier in the campaign included a grab bag of detailed proposals and line-by-line descriptions of her universal health care plan, but she has distilled it down to a discussion of voters' economic problems - and a promise to punish the villains she believes are responsible for their woes.

"We're going to go right at OPEC. They would no longer be the cartel, a monopoly," Clinton said of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

A year ago, Clinton's speech included a pledge to make policy decisions based on evidence, not political expediency. Now she unapologetically touts a bill creating a summer gas-tax holiday, though economists say it would increase oil company profits by spurring consumption.

Obama has ridiculed the plan as a "gimmick," but Clinton launched a new TV ad yesterday, defending the plan and asking, "What has happened to Barack Obama?"

FUELING THE DEBATE

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

Wants Congress to vote to suspend the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day to give Americans relief from high gasoline prices. "All I hear about is gas prices. Gas and diesel, everywhere," Clinton said recently. "I want the Congress to stand up and vote. Are they for the oil companies, or are they for you?"

BARACK OBAMA

Calls Clinton's proposal a gimmick "calculated to win elections instead of actually solving problems." He contends it would save a mere 30 cents a day and cost thousands of construction jobs because money from that tax goes into a federal fund to pay for highway projects, such as bridge and road construction. Says his proposal for a tax cut on the middle class would be more effective.d