After a quarter-century of near-constant public exposure and scrutiny, she inevitably connotes sameness — which is a chief reason that she and her supporters are stressing the milestone of a first woman president. That emphasis is part of a tricky balancing act in which she’s trying to say and do several contradictory things at once.
She’s promising fresh solutions to the nation’s problems, but she’s arguing that they’re best fashioned by two people — Tim Kaine and her — who are more or less career politicians.
She’s campaigning for a third Obama term and yet not. She’s blaming sustained, savage attacks by the G.O.P. for her unfavorable ratings while telling Americans that she’s positioned and equipped to woo and work with Republicans more successfully than Obama did.
The mixed signals are straight out of HBO’s political satire “Veep,” in which the fantastically insincere politician Selina Meyer used the slogan “Continuity With Change.” There’s an oxymoronic echo of that in Clinton’s bid.
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