Observations from the Hillary Clinton for President Washington DC Kick Off Reception, Part Two

Once inside, more than a thousand donors who shelled out anywhere from $1,000 to $4,200 (the most any individual donor can give this cycle, $2,100 for the primary and the same amount for the general). Terry McAuliffe announced that the event raised $2.7 million, a striking amount for one night’s work, he shouted with enthusiasm to the throngs at his feet, even though he had a microphone in his hand.

“This campaign is on fire!” he says, before emphasizing that Hillary still leads in the previous six national polls, as well as most state polls, quickly gliding over the fact that she is tied in Iowa.

‘This cycle, we are going to raise…” McAuliffe pauses. “Ten trillion dollars!” he exclaims. (That’s not a misprint, he was joking.)

“We know she is the candidate with the experience… She could walk into the Oval Office tomorrow and be ready to lead this country.” A jab at Obama, I suspect.

Then Bill Clinton comes out. You would never know this man had heart surgery about two and a half years ago; he looks fantastic and has not lost anything from his glory days of speechifying.

Bill talked a great deal about how “long before Hillary was in public office, she was dedicated to public service.” And then he recited her accomplishments from Yale Law School – and yes, he told a version of the “I’ve met the greatest people of my generation, and she’s the best” story – until about age 35.

He said that sometime shortly after the McGovern campaign of 1972, Bill told Hillary she should leave him. (Less of an awkward silence than I would have expected, but it’s a friendly crowd.) She responded, he said, with “Don’t you like me anymore?” And Bill said that he responded way back when that he loved her, but he thought she should and would go on to great things in some place like Chicago or New York, instead of following him back to Little Rock. He even predicted she could run for office someday. And he said, “she responded, ‘oh, I’ll never run for anything.’

The crowd ate up this anecdote with a spoon.

As I said, Bill Clinton was in his element; you could hear a pin drop during his pauses as the assembled donors watched in rapture. For Hillary… not so much. It wasn’t a bad speech (and it was off-the-cuff, no teleprompter), but just an adequate-to-good one. For my taste, Hillary’s standard stump address has way too many bland, happy-sounding phrases. A few from my notes:

“I come to this campaign from a lifetime of being an American.” (Good, she meets the Constitutional requirements.)

“I believe there’s nothing that we as Americans can’t do if we put our minds to it.”

“I want to set the goal that America will be America again.”

When Hillary told the anecdote of changing the light bulbs and saying to herself, ‘take that, Iran, and take that, Venezuela,’ because we shouldn’t be sending money to countries with regimes that oppose our values” it wasn’t the applause or cheer line one might have expected. A crowd that ate up everything on health care, education, pre-school education, alternative energy etc. may have found even that mild rebuke of those particular foreign regimes too hawkish for their sensibilities.

I didn’t get the exact words, but Hillary said something in the vein of, “This campaign isn’t about me – it’s something you and I are going to do together to get this country moving in the right direction.” Among the crowd of well-off Washingtonians, with former Clinton officials like Mickey Kantor and Madeline Albright, and lawmakers like Jerold Nadler, and various other movers and shakers of the Washington Democratic crowd. I’m sure that line is part of the stump speech, but it was ironic in a ballroom full of a thousand people, many of whom actually hope to make up the staff of the next Clinton administration.