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Today we begin with coverage of the three day bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio that wrapped up yesterday. Hillary and Bill Clinton were joined by Tim Kaine and Anne Holton to visit nine stops by the end.
We get a view of how one of the surprise lunch stops happened from the News Journal.
Rhonda Poorbaugh, who owns Grandpa's Cheesebarn with her husband Richard, said shortly after the store opened at 11 a.m., several men entered. They looked around, opened doors and used a portable metal detector on an employee who was entering the store.
Poorbaugh said she approached one of the men and asked who they were and what they were doing.
"They said: 'You're going to be getting a visitor soon.' And I asked who, and they said Hillary," she said.
The Secret Service agents wouldn't say exactly when the candidate was going to arrive at the store, located at Interstate 71 and U.S. 250, for security reasons.
Once she arrived, Clinton stayed about 30 minutes, having her picture taken with customers and employees in addition to talking to reporters, said Poorbaugh, who did not get to meet the candidate herself.
Many media members ordered lunch along with a cheese tray and a candy tray to go. She said the Secret Service stayed afterward and ate lunch.
Poorbaugh said the store was busier than usual for a Sunday when the Clinton entourage arrived. The two campaign buses also carried vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine; his wife, Anne; and Democratic U.S. senate candidate Ted Strickland.
The tour was intended to shore up support in less visited rural communities of the rust belt, where Republicans have often done well in the past. USA Today reports:
These are the rural communities where there’s a current of anger over the 20-year decline of the nation’s middle class. The resentment stems from trade agreements championed by both parties — including her husband, Bill Clinton — as well as political elites they feel are corrupt and have abandoned the country’s heartland while enriching themselves.
From Harrisburg, Pa., to Youngstown, Clinton sought to make a personal connection with voters while touting her economic plan, which calls for the biggest investment in jobs since World War II. She shared the story of her grandfather, who did “dangerous” work in a Scranton, Pa., lace mill, and pledged to “fight” for those who feel “left behind.”
“There are a lot of people in our country who are frustrated, they feel like maybe the economy has passed them by, their government doesn’t help them, that nobody is listening and nobody cares about them,” she said in Pittsburgh. “I get that.”
Clinton also said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has "zero" economic plans while pointing to his business record of manufacturing his branded products in places like China and Bangladesh. “The only thing he makes in America are bankruptcies, both his own and for the people who do business with him," Clinton said in Hatfield, Pa.
The final stop was Columbus, Ohio where Clinton called for infrastructure programs, according to the Toledo Blade.
“We are kicking off this campaign in Ohio,” Mrs. Clinton shouted to a rousing applause, on the third day of a bus trip that started in Pennsylvania and stopped in Youngstown Saturday night.
“We are going to put millions of Americans to work,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We’re going to invest in infrastructure -- our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports, our water systems. But not just what you can physically see. We need a new electric grid to be able to take and distribute all the clean renewable energy we’re going to be producing.”
Mrs. Clinton also said every home and business in America should have access to high-speed broadband Internet.
She also pledged that four-year colleges would become more affordable by making it debt free. Mrs. Clinton vowed that student debt would be paid at lower interest rates and on a faster timetable. She also said jobs in public service, such as teachers, firefighters, police officers, social workers, would have student debt forgiveness.
Teacherken gave a nice perspective on the bus tour in his diary.
At a number of events there are a large number of young people. Now granted, in Philadelphia the kickoff event was at Temple University, and the concluding event was in Columbus, home of Ohio State. It is summer, but there are certainly summer school students, and maybe others stay near the campus during the time off. What is interesting was to see and hear the enthusiasm of young people, something that got very loud when Clinton would talk about debt-free college.
Key for some of the areas she is going through, especially Johnstown and Youngstown. She talked about subsidizing apprenticeships, and even gave an example of for one union their trade people averaged 70K. For many in these areas there had been a history of trade work in which one could earn a could living without a college degree. Clinton is affirming more than one approach to earning a living. Given that her weakest demographic has been white men without college education, and that she is speaking to their aspirations, not merely invoking fear in them, she has the potential to limit how far Trump can go with that ever decreasing share of the electorate.
On Sunday night, Clinton sat for an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News. The video is split into Part 1 and Part 2, or you can go through the transcript. Topics included being a Change Agent and the infrastructure proposal.
WALLACE: You say you're the real change agent in this campaign, but I think it's fair to say that you're building on the Obama agenda. You're not rejecting it. Sixty-nine percent of Americans think that we're on the wrong track.
We just found out that GDP growth in last quarter was 1 percent. It’s the slowest economic recovery since 1949. And you're offering tweaks, not a dramatic shift.
CLINTON: Well, I think what I’m offering are proven results. I think what I’m offering is that we can build on where we are.
We have dug ourselves out. We're standing, but we’re not yet running. I’m not happy with the status quo. I’ve said that repeatedly.
WALLACE: But you're offering more government programs --
CLINTON: Well, let’s --
WALLACE: -- more spending, more entitlements, more taxes --
CLINTON: No --
WALLACE: -- more tax penalties and credits.
CLINTON: Well, but let's unpack that. What I’m offering is the biggest job creation program since World War II. And I hope to be able to --
WALLACE: But it's infrastructure, that's what Obama did.
CLINTON: But he didn't get to do enough, and he didn't get enough support from Congress.
It took years this time under President Obama to do something. We’ve got roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, airports, water systems, all failing, all being less than efficient in a time when we want to lift on the economy and take on the rest of the world. And we’ve got some new challenges. We need a new electric grid.
WALLACE: But a lot of it is government. That’s my point.
CLINTON: No, but it's going to be public/private sector. I mean, I’m looking for ways to start an infrastructure bank, seed it with federal dollars, but bring in private investors who want to make those commitments. I believe that America is ready for this, Chris, because we need to rebuild our infrastructure, which will create millions of jobs and lay the foundation for many more millions to come.
Clinton also answered questions related to Benghazi and the FBI’s investigation into her email. She also explained how her mother had been an inspiration and was a big Fox viewer.
WALLACE: You talked a lot in the convention about your mom and about her hard childhood and about her resilience and the lessons she taught you. I wonder in these last few days, have you been thinking of her? And what do you imagine she's thinking of you?
CLINTON: Oh, Chris, I thought about her -- well, I think about her every day. And particularly during the convention, I thought a lot about her when Chelsea got up to speak, because she and my daughter were so close. And I thought a lot about her when I walked out onto the stage to deliver that address.
And actually, that was the part of the speech that concerned me the most. Every time I talk about my mom, I get very overcome. She wouldn’t -- you know, she wouldn't like what you saw at the Republican convention, where, you know, just the outrageous things that were said and the kind of normalization of really offensive rhetoric in our politics. She wouldn't have like any of that. She was a big FOX viewer, I will tell you.
WALLACE: Really?
CLINTON: Yes, she was. And I --
WALLACE: Why didn't you take that from her?
CLINTON: Well, I once said to her -- and she would get upset, I'll be honest with you, she would get upset when some of the people who had on would say these terrible things about me. And that was when I was a senator running for president and for the first two years of being secretary of state.
I would say, well, mom, if it upsets you so much, why do you keep watching? She said, I like some of the people and I have to know what the other ones are saying, so I can understand and be against it.
So I think she had a very strategic reason for watching. She said to me one time, you know, Hillary, I don't understand. You were such a wonderful child to raise. You never gave me a minute's trouble or worry, then you become an adult and you get into politics and I just worry all the time.
So, she would worry, but she would be encouraging and she would say what she said to me when I was 4 years old in the face of a bully, because honestly I think that describes my opponent. I feel I have to get out there, go back out there, stand up to him, not just on my own behalf, because I can take care of myself, but on behalf of all these other people who he has so mistreated in this campaign.
If you are eager for more convention retrospectives, don’t miss the 18 minute convention recap by John Oliver. Time has the video with a very short summary.
The Democratic National Convention started under a shadow after a leaked email scandal forced the resignation of the party chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. However thanks to a series of stirring speeches it got back on track. Oliver had kind words for First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech, thought former President Bill Clinton relived his relationship with Hillary “seemingly in real time,” couldn’t understand why Meryl Streep dressed up as “a plastic tablecloth on the Fourth of July,” and believed that Joe Biden will have a post-White House career as the “most inspiring SoulCycle instructor ever.”
Another touching and humorous account of the convention and acceptance speech comes from Sarah Vowell’s piece Hillary Clinton Made Me Cry.
But the other night when the D.N.C. rolled that montage of non-dame presidential faces I wept so hard I had to open a new box of tissues. I cried like a 14-year-old girl for the 14-year-old girl I once was and because Geraldine Ferraro and Jeannette Rankin did not live to see it. Feeling represented does matter in a representative democracy. (But it matters more to elect the candidate who is not bonkers.)
Turns out, there is such a thing as progress. Now we have our first major-party female presidential candidate. Someday we’ll have another, and we might not have to sit through speeches, however charming, about how she’s datable and maternal. Though we might enjoy speeches about how she is at least as datable and maternal as Richard Nixon.
Today Hillary will be campaiging in in Omaha, NE, where there is a possibility to capture one of Nebraska’s electoral votes, while Tim Kaine in be in his hometown of Richmond, VA.
Bonus Tweets:
Have a terrific day, everyone!
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.