The Democrats are currently holding their convention in Philadelphia, where they have officially nominated Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee. Over the course of the past two days, an important theme has emerged that reveals how Hillary will frame her campaign in relation to her rival, Donald Trump. Hillary’s supporters referenced protecting children numerous times, stressed the importance of raising kids well, and posited that Hillary is uniquely qualified to secure children’s futures.
This theme of protecting kids featured prominently in Michelle Obama’s excellent speech on Monday evening.
Obama spoke of her daughters Sasha and Malia. She told the audience that she and the president appraoch their role as public figures in the same way they approach parenting:
…we insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country. How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high. With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models. And let me tell you, Barack and I take that same approach to our jobs as president and first lady because we know that our words and actions matter, not just to our girls, but the children across this country…
This clear rebuke of Donald Trump takes a track that has so far not featured as a major criticism from the Clinton campaign: Donald Trump is bad for our children. Commentators regarded it as Michelle Obama’s most powerful public speech ever.
Obama’s messaging was not just good speechwriting, however. It was also part of a campaign effort to mobilize the message that Donald Trump sends a bad message to the nation’s children. A week before Obama’s speech, the Clinton campaign published a video featuring young children watching Trump deliver insults and threaten violence. The message of that campaign ad preceded and mirrored Michelle Obama’s argument that Donald Trump is no role model.
The emergence of the argument that Hillary is going to protect America’s children should surprise no one, given her long history of work with the Children’s Defense Fund and other political causes. The theme itself echoes the book she wrote as First Lady: It Takes a Village. In that book, published in early 1996 as part of her husband’s reelection campaign strategy, Clinton described the importance of the community in raising children well. She wrote:
Children exist in the world as well as in the family. From the moment they are born, they depend on a host of other “grown-ups”–grandparents, neighbors, teachers, ministers, employers, political leaders, and untold others who touch their lives directly and indirectly…Each of us plays a part in every child’s life: It takes a village to raise a child.
In this book written twenty years ago, then, we see the contours of an important theme for Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
Protecting children and the knowingness of mothers produced one of the most poignant moments in Philadelphia. On Tuesday night, a collection of women wearing red flowers pinned to their chests addressed the convention audience. These “Mothers of the Movement” are the mothers of black people killed recently. The deaths of their children, including Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland, have stirred national protests about the persistent racism in American society. During the Democratic primary, these mothers featured in a Hillary campaign ad.
These women told of their loss, of the pain of experiencing racism, and of the need for more reform and more respect for children of color. Their testimony in favor of Clinton offered the candidate some credibility, but it will probably not assuage the concerns of many Black Lives Matter activists who view Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill and Hillary’s comments about “superpredators” as indications that the candidate cannot be trusted on racial justice.
Their speeches stood in marked contrast from Michelle Obama’s from the previous night, who provided a redemption narrative about the promise of America. Obama described waking up every morning in a house built by slaves and watching her two black daughters playing with their dog on the White House lawn. The Mothers of the Movement were not so lucky, and their presence demonstrated the incompleteness of the redemptive project praised by people like Michelle Obama.
Taken together, however, these various moments from the first 2 days of the DNC provide a key insight into Clinton’s election strategy. Hillary is focused on protecting children. And while the first woman to be elected as a major party’s presidential candidate might be trafficking in maternalist sentiments, her decades of work on children’s issues shows that this is not merely electoral opportunism.
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