The answer to this question is yes, but it’s not just the timing. Matt Lewis joined Morning Joe earlier today to discuss the curious timing of the Hillary Clinton announcement, coming on a Sunday afternoon and via a campaign video and Facebook post, in relation to Marco Rubio’s big event the next day. Matt tells Joe Scarborough that it couldn’t have been planned better … by Rubio:
MATT: I think everyone thought — the hand wringing was that Hillary Clinton was going to overshadow Marco Rubio by giving her announcement the day before his. I think she turned out to be a foil for Marco Rubio.
JOE: She did.
MATT: I think she set him up perfectly.
JOE: She really did help frame everything he said yesterday, didn’t she? It was a dream for Marco Rubio for her to go Sunday and have to frame it on Monday. It was extraordinary. It was — I’m sorry to interrupt, but it was 25 years of Clinton on Sunday, and then on Monday, Marco can frame that. I’m talking, of course, just of the GOP.
MATT: He couldn’t — I mean, he actually couldn’t have planned it any better had he coordinated with her to try to pull this off.
The timing was one error, but the contrast goes beyond mere scheduling. Rubio laid out a vision on Monday, which he extends in a USA Today op-ed this morning:
The real American Dream is about earning a comfortable wage, raising your family in a safe neighborhood, worshiping as you choose, providing your children a good education and retiring with dignity after a long and fulfilling life. And the American Dream is about one thing more than any other. It is about giving your children the chance to do the things you could not do, go the places you could not go and open the doors that were closed to you.
My parents achieved this dream like millions before and since. And in turn, our parents’ generation succeeded in solving the substantial challenges before them and leaving an even grander American Dream for us to inherit. Now their time is over, and our own time has come. The American Dream my parents achieved is slipping out of reach for too many of our people, and our generation will be defined by how we confront this crisis.
I believe we must do as Lincoln did — we must reform government to empower all our people equally. By applying the principles of our founding to the challenges of our time, we can not only reclaim the American Dream, we can expand it to reach more people than ever before. This must be done, because only the American Dream has the power to unite our people and lead us into another American Century.
I believe the Republican Party is best equipped to reclaim the promise of America in our time. We are the party of Lincoln, built on the belief that equal opportunity and equal rights under God are ideas so powerful they can unite people of every culture, tongue, race, and creed. We have been that party in the past. At times we have fallen short. But I believe we are that party today.
What did Hillary deliver? Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post called it an “insultingly vapid” message:
For one, the video was relentlessly, insultingly vapid — a Verizon commercial without the substance. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” Clinton said in what passed for a meaty message. “Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.” …
The Clinton campaign is focused on reassuring voters, as a campaign official put it in a conference call Monday previewing Clinton’s Iowa trip, “it isn’t about her … this is about … everyday Iowans.” But everyday Iowans deserve to hear more from the woman who would be president about what, exactly, she intends to do in office. It disrespects them to spend precious video seconds on the cute boy playing a fish in his school play.
Adding insult to vacuousness was the demographic box-checking nature of the video, however beautifully filmed. Working mom, check. Hispanic entrepreneur, check. Retiring grandma, check. Gay couple, check. African-American family, check. Hardworking small-businessman, check. South Asian, inter-racial, lesbian, check, check, check. If your demographic was not featured, you should write the campaign and it will probably splice you in.
Team Hillary used the Rubio announcement deliberately to act as a distraction from her own campaign, to get the press off her tail. Unfortunately, the contrast became part of the distraction. Joe and Matt are correct — Rubio couldn’t have possibly planned this better, even though they didn’t plan it at all.
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