BY SARAH FERGUSON | Maybe the flickering image of an Amex gold card projected onto the Jacob Javits Center’s glass walls should have warned me that even when Hillary tries to go populist, she does so with a certain corporate veneer.
Billed as an “organizing event” in the wake of her Super Tuesday wins, Clinton’s appearance at Manhattan’s West Side convention center on Wednesday was a victory lap for the home team — a chance to feel the love from labor groups who have endorsed her — such as the carpenters’ and teachers’ unions — as well as dueling allies like Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio (who was booed briefly for his reticence to endorse Clinton early on.)
For me, going to see Clinton was an effort at reconciliation. Having already been unfriended on Facebook by some women for expressing my profound disappointment with Clinton’s 2002 Iraq War vote, I nevertheless put on my best pantsuit and prepared to hear in person why she’s the best and most sensible choice to lead the Democrats in 2016.
But I could not get in.
At 5:45 p.m., just before Clinton took the stage, the Secret Service shut the doors, leaving a hundred or so of us stranded in the lobby behind the elaborate security check.
Even when I tried to ply my media credentials, I was rebuffed.
“We’re at capacity, ma’am,” one of the Secret Service guys in black polo shirts responded. “The event is closed,” he said—even though reports and photos of the event show that while the curtained-off stage area where Clinton spoke was full, the hall itself was half-empty and could have easily accommodated several hundred more people.
“This would have never happened at a Bernie rally. They just pushed me over the other side,” ranted a disgruntled man who had waited for more than an hour to get in, before stalking off.
“This isn’t us,” a Clinton campaign staffer told the remaining supporters milling in the unheated hall. “We are trying to do something on our end. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
For a moment, the voice of Hillary greeting the crowd amid strains of Katy Perry flashed on one of the TV monitors. But it was CNN and they quickly cut away. (Note to the Clinton campaign: Why not live cast the event on the monitors throughout the Javits Center?)
Contrast this to the reported 10,000 people who filled a stadium at Michigan State University to hear Bernie Sanders speak on Wednesday, and you begin to grasp why Clinton is not running away with this thing — yet.
Sure, the New York event was just a campaign stop, and there are bound to be constraints when you consider the logistics of protecting a former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state who has aroused both enormous respect and venomous contempt in her many years on the public stage. Experience has its downsides.
But the control freakism of the Secret Service was also reminiscent of Clinton’s early refusals to do prime-time interviews and address issues back in 2015, when she first announced, not to mention the recent flap over appearing at a Fox News town hall.
And now there is e-mail-gate… I mean, why did she hide a server in her bathroom?
Even stalwart allies like The New York Times have begun to look pointedly at her role as secretary of state in pressing for the U.S. bombing intervention in Libya that led to the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gadaffi. Instead of promoting democracy there, thus far this assertion of American “smart power” has resulted in Libya devolving into a failed state and ISIS haven, swimming in arms looted from Gaddafi’s vast weapons arsenals.
As the Times wrote last Sunday: “Now Libya, with a population smaller than that of Tennessee, poses an outsize security threat to the region and beyond, calling into question whether the intervention prevented a humanitarian catastrophe or merely helped create one of a different kind.”
Unable to catch Hillary speak live, I contented myself with talking to her supporters about why they believe it is now Hllary’s time.
Carmen Cametta Young, a retired healthcare worker from Queens, said she was for Hillary, “mostly because of Bill.”
“I’m voting for her because I know Bill Clinton will help her run the country. We’re getting two for one, and she would be the first woman president. Give her a chance,” urged Young, speaking with a Jamaican lilt.
“I think it’s the best option we have,” added her friend Lourdes Moretta, a member of the healthcare workers’ union 1199 SEIU. “I don’t think Sanders is going to win, and we have to press for a woman. I want a woman president, and I don’t want to see Donald Trump be president.”
Asked what she thought of Sanders, Moretta, said he was “too much to the left” to win. “He has good ideas, but in this country, people are not ready for it,” said Moretta, who is from the Dominican Republic.
(As an example, she pointed to Sanders’s call for free college tuition: “You should pay something,” said Moretta, who put three daughters through college with hard work and scholarships.)
There were also lots of union members, who had been given comp time to attend, as evidenced from the many mass-produced signs, including one from the Laborers International Union of North America PAC that read: “LiUNA for Hillary, Pipelines = Good Jobs.”
(The abundance of people waving this slogan at Hillary made me wonder about the depth of her professed opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Clinton had initially supported this controversial project when she was secretary of state, and still has close ties to pipeline builder TransCanada. Paul Elliot, the national deputy director for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, is now TransCanada’s top lobbyist.)
And let’s not forget Clinton’s flakking for natural gas fracking abroad while she was secretary of state.
Still, the appeal of having a woman actually ascending to the U.S. presidency is both tantalizing and real. Liz Bernstein, a 62-year-old acupuncturist from Brooklyn, was ecstatic after posing for a selfie with Clinton and shaking her hand. Bernstein, who had arrived at 2:45 p.m. to claim a front-row seat, said she loved how Hillary spoke of the need to bring America together, to “build bridges instead of walls,” and bring more “love and kindness” into the public dialogue — a new line for Hillary, one that Bernstein said made the crowd go “ballistic.”
In addition to core Democrats, Bernstein believes Clinton can draw moderate “rational” conservatives who are freaked out by the Trump Show and Ted Cruz’s extremism. And she’s more than fed up with what she calls the “outright projection and sexism” coming from some in the Sanderista camp.
“Bernie’s speaking to an idealism that’s not rooted in what people’s lives look like,” said Bernstein, who hails from Washington State (aka Berner country). “He’s a lone wolf. He’s a professional criticizer. He doesn’t have the resources to tap into the people who understand the intricacies of political process,” she added, citing Clinton’s ability to martial the support of union leaders.
But if Clinton really wants to shatter America’s biggest glass ceiling, she’d better do more to provide access. How do you lead a movement for change when you’re running as Democratic royalty — a former first lady turned senator turned secretary of state who comes to the platform with plenty of experience yet still acts like she has a bunch of stuff to hide?
