Star

The San Juan Daily Star Monday, March 21, 2016 15 Mainland
As Hillary Clinton Sweeps States, One Group Resists: White Men
By PATRICK HEALY
White men narrowly backed Hillary
Clinton in her 2008 race for president,
but they are resisting her candidacy
this time around in major battleground states,
rattling some Democrats about her generalelection
strategy.
While Mrs. Clinton swept the five major
primaries on Tuesday, she lost white men in
all of them, and by double-digit margins in
Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, exit polls
showed — a sharp turnabout from 2008, when
she won double-digit victories among white
male voters in all three states.
She also performed poorly on Tuesday
with independents, who have never been
among her core supporters. But white men
were, at least when Mrs. Clinton was running
against a black opponent: She explicitly
appealed to them in 2008, extolling the Second
Amendment, mocking Barack Obama’s
comment that working-class voters “cling to
guns or religion” and even needling him at
one point over his difficulties with “working,
hard-working Americans, white Americans.”
She could not sound more different today,
aggressively campaigning to toughen guncontrol
laws and especially courting black and
Hispanic voters.
Her standing among white men does not
threaten her clinching the Democratic nomination
this year, or preclude her from winning
in November, unless it craters. Mr. Obama lost
Dennis Bertko, a construction manager in
Youngstown, Ohio, said that Hillary Clinton
“could have a broader message.”
the white vote to Mrs. Clinton, after all, but
still won the presidency.
But what is striking is the change in attitudes
about Mrs. Clinton among those voters,
and her struggle to win them over again.
In dozens of interviews in diners, offices and
neighborhoods across the country, many
white male Democrats expressed an array
of misgivings, with some former supporters
turning away from her now.
Many said they did not trust her to overhaul
the economy because of her wealth and
her ties to Wall Street. Some said her use of
private email as secretary of state indicated
she had something to hide. A few said they did
not think a woman should be commander in
chief. But most said they simply did not think
Mrs. Clinton cared about people like them.
“She’s talking to minorities now, not really
to white people, and that’s a mistake,”
said Dennis Bertko, 66, a construction project
manager in Youngstown, Ohio, as he sipped a
draft beer at the Golden Dawn Restaurant in a
downtrodden part of town. “She could have a
broader message. We would have listened.”
“Instead, she’s talking a lot about continuing
Obama’s policies,” he said. “I just don’t
necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas
of Obama.”
Mr. Bertko said that he rarely crossed party
lines but that he voted for Donald J. Trump,
who is making a strong pitch to disaffected
white men by assailing free-trade agreements
that Mrs. Clinton once supported. “I know a
lot of guys who are open to Trump,” he said.
The fading of white men as a Democratic
bloc is hardly new: The last nominee to carry
them was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and many
blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” now steadily
vote Republican. But Democrats have won
about 35 to 40 percent of white men in nearly
every presidential election since 1988. And
some Democratic leaders say the party needs
white male voters to win the presidency, raise
large sums of money and, like it or not, maintain
credibility as a broad-based national coalition.
To win a general election, Mrs. Clinton
would rely most heavily on strong turnout
from blacks, Hispanics, women and older voters.
Though she won among white men in Arkansas,
Alabama and Tennessee, and tied in
Texas, some Democratic officials and pollsters
say they fear that without a stronger strategy,
Mrs. Clinton could perform as poorly among
white men as Walter Mondale, who drew just
32 percent in 1984, or even George McGovern,
who took 31 percent in 1972.
“Her most serious relationship problem
is with white men, on a policy issue front but
also stylistically, and she is at real risk for running
worse than the average Democrat with
white males,” said Peter Hart, a veteran Democratic
pollster.
Bill Richardson, former governor of New
Mexico and energy secretary under President
Clinton, said Mrs. Clinton needed to focus
more on economic issues and job creation and
to deploy her husband on her behalf. “Priority
needs to be given to stopping the erosion of
the white male voter and Reagan Democrats
to Republicans,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers expressed confidence,
saying her economic policies and
national security experience would appeal
strongly to white men in a general election.
They said she regularly won among those over
45 and argued that Senator Bernie Sanders’s
appeal among younger white men reflected
his popularity with young people generally.
Joel Benenson, Mrs. Clinton’s strategist and
pollster, predicted she would win at least 35
percent of white men nationally — the share
Mr. Obama took in 2012 — and even more in
battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But he insisted that focusing on white
men overlooked the breadth of her support.
Trump Intermingling Business
With Politics as He Campaigns
Republican presidential front-runner
Donald Trump appeared to be wrapping
up a victory speech at his sprawling
Mar-a-Lago club last week when he
turned to the negative ads flooding the airwaves
against him.
Trump recalled being at a professional
golf tournament held at his Miami golf course
recently. Everything was going smoothly, he
said, until one of the ads started playing on
TV as he schmoozed with tournament sponsors.
“I’m with these wonderful people from
Cadillac and all these top executives, and I’m
saying, ‘Look over there! Look! Don’t watch
it! No, you don’t want to watch it!’ “ Trump
said, re-enacting how he tried to distract
them. “I’m saying, ‘Isn’t the grass beautiful?
Look, look. Don’t watch!’ “
It was a rare light moment in an oftenheated
campaign that offered a glimpse into
the way the billionaire businessman’s campaign
has transformed his day-to-day life. But
it also underscored something deeper: As he
crisscrosses the country delivering speeches
at rallies and calling into cable news shows,
Trump’s business ventures are never far from
his mind and have been playing an increasingly
prominent role in his campaign.
In recent weeks, Trump has held election
night parties at three of his Florida properties:
golf clubs in Jupiter and West Palm
Beach, Florida, and twice at his sprawling
Mar-a-Lago club nearby. Each evening, members
of Trump’s clubs have been invited to observe
the festivities, followed or preceded by
lavish dinners or cocktail parties. Reporters
have also been invited to transmit images of
Trump’s particular brand of opulence to the
world.
From the beginning of his campaign,
Trump has pointed to his business success
as his fundamental qualification for the job
of president. He likes to say his “whole life”
has been about making money, and now he
wants to make money for the United States.
He often references his assets and projects —
from the skating rink in Manhattan’s Central
Park, which he rebuilt, to his many skyscrapers
— as evidence of what distinguishes him
from what he describes as the “all talk, no action
politicians.”
Trump’s financial disclosure form released
in July listed nearly 500 business entities
owned at least partially by Trump, according
to the campaign, as well as income
from a web of sources ranging from royalties
from his books to stocks and speaking fees.
But Trump often sounds like he’s promoting
products he profits from, such as the
WGC-Cadillac Championship. Of particular
pride in recent months has been his transformation
of Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office
Pavilion into a hotel.
“We’re building a magnificent hotel,”
Trump bragged to the crowd gathered at a
Tampa convention center for a town hall-style
event this week. “I don’t even like to say that
I’m two years ahead of schedule. I am actually
two years ahead. I don’t like to say it.
You know why? You know why? Because it
doesn’t sound believable.”
Trump’s business ventures have also left
him open to attack from his rivals. Lawsuits
filed against Trump’s now-defunct “Trump
University” business course program by
former students accusing him of fraud, for
instance, have been featured in attacks ads
and the issue has been raised on the debate
stage. And Trump, who is synonymous with
his brand, has been fighting back, at one
point having staff set up displays of various
Trump-branded products at a recent event
to try to prove that the products were still in
existence. (The steak on display in fact came
from a local distributor.)