In her closing remarks at Sunday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton took credit for miraculously saving Flint, Michigan, from its water crisis.
“I sent my top campaign aide down there to talk to the mayor of Flint to see what I could do to help. I issued a statement about what we needed to do and then I went on a TV show and I said, ‘it was outrageous that the governor hadn’t acted,’ and within two hours he had,” Clinton boasted. (VIDEO: Hillary: To Help Flint, I Sent A Campaign Rep And Appeared On TV)
The Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is disputing Hillary’s characterization of her role in the situation and has accused her of politicizing the crisis.
Flint, a poverty-stricken, majority black town, recently discovered lead had contaminated its water supply, and the state’s response has been less than reassuring. Many on the Left, such as Michael Moore, have deemed the less-than satisfactory response racist.
To Clinton, this water crisis presents a golden opportunity to cast Republicans as out-of-touch white men who don’t care for the plight of minorities, while portraying herself as someone who feels for their woes.
“I’ll tell you what, if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action,” she declared to drive home the racial and class divide.
It’s both remarkable and disingenuous for someone like Hillary Clinton to make herself out to be the humble spokeswoman for the dispossessed of America. She’s the very embodiment of our country’s political class and is beloved by Wall Street. She’s also very white and has a background that’s almost a caricature of a fancypants liberal.
It’s also pretty rich for the former secretary of state who refuses to take responsibility for the disastrous results of the Libyan intervention, Benghazi and her own email server to demand a public official own up to a crisis.
Those rich Detroit suburbs that Clinton dissed on Sunday hosted one of her upscale fundraisers last summer. To attend, you had to throw down at least $2,700 toward her campaign. It’s highly unlikely any of the average folk from Flint or similar communities were in attendance.
Additionally, it’s a tall order for Clinton to claim a trusty aide and a TV appearance brought relief to Flint. That assertion is not at all surprising, however, considering how her campaign is operating this election. Remember how her camp has handled the email scandal and spun her tenure as secretary of state?
But the current Democratic front-runner’s comments on Flint are not just a sign of Clinton living in a world of delusion and sycophancy. It is also an attempt to rally an all-important Democratic constituency that surprisingly is supporting her this election cycle: minority voters.
In a primary featuring three white people, Hillary has become the unlikely candidate of choice for non-whites. Among all racial minorities, Clinton touts 71 percent support — a figure more than 50 points higher than her primary rival Bernie Sanders. Additionally, four out of five black adults have a favorable opinion of her.
How is someone like Clinton managing to hold these numbers? It’s due to a combination of strong institutional support from minority groups, a message full of pandering to identity politics and the weakness of her primary opponents.
Clinton has received numerous endorsements from black and Hispanic leaders. More than 50 African-American mayors, the lone black Democrat U.S. senator [crscore]Cory Booker[/crscore], the majority of the Congressional Black Caucus — including its chairman — and several popular minority celebrities have publicly announced that they are backing the former first lady.
Her 2016 message has been tailored to play upon identity politics and make herself out to be the candidate who really understands minority issues. Clinton has both lectured America about white privilege and atoned for her own inherent pasty skin benefits. She is quick to call Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, racist for remarks she doesn’t like and to counter with her own allegedly minority-friendly ideas. The ex-secretary of state has latched herself to the criminal justice reform issue and has even claimed there’s “systematic racism” in our legal structures.
She’s so desperate to win over these voters that she is, in the words of NBC’s Chuck Todd, “wrapping herself in President Obama” and claiming she is an “abuela” — Spanish for “grandmother.” (RELATED: Clinton Accused Of Pandering To Hispanic Voters With ‘Abuela’ Claim)
Clinton’s cringe-inducing appeal is effective in this primary in large part due to the two white guys she’s running against. Besides being seen as not a serious contender, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley law-and-order record as Baltimore mayor has served as the albatross around his neck during the entire campaign.
Sanders, Hillary’s closest rival, has very low recognition among non-white voters, mostly avoids the rhetoric of identity politics, has had disastrous interactions with black activists and takes stands on issues like immigration that run counter to the prevalent views of African-Americans and Hispanics.
Thus, we end up with Abuela Hillary — the great white savior of Flint, Michigan.
It appears that Clinton will be able to pull off this campaign strategy and that her strong minority support could carry her to victory.
With that in mind, we should expect more ridiculous claims of how her TV appearances alleviated the suffering of America’s ethnic minorities.