Why 'Listening' Has Helped Hillary Clinton

In 1999, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton moved to New York with a failed national health care plan on her record and a husband who had been impeached. When she decided to run for Senate, she got called a carpetbagger.  She was trailed by words like "polarizing," "controversial" and "divisive" like a dust cloud trails the Peanuts character Pig Pen.

Then she began romancing the state of New York. She visited places that don't usually attract political leaders in New York — Pindars Corner, Davenport, the Mohawk Valley. Places with no TV stations and very few voters. She spent hour upon hour on what she called her "listening tour." After a year and a half of extreme empathy, personal calls and even overnight stays on people's couches, she won handily.

Fifteen years later, trailed again by that word "polarizing," by stories about her email use and her handling of Benghazi, she's launched her presidential campaign with a  "listening tour" in Iowa, meeting with small clutches of voters at community colleges, diners and businesses in places the Des Moines Register this week described as "small towns that aren't the usual candidate targets." Monticello. LeClaire. Marshalltown.

Probably wise.

Because in New York, the state she actually represented, her constituents think of her mostly fondly. They're skeptical, to be sure. Wary, to be sure. But they hate her less than you might think if your main source of information is the national media. 

Outside Clinton's brand new headquarters in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn, teacher Drew McGhee was taking in a few rays of warm spring sunshine the other day. McGhee didn't vote for Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary — she voted for Barack Obama.

She liked Clinton's announcement video this year. She wants to vote for a Democrat, and a woman. She has some reservations.

"She has a lot of strengths," McGhee said. "And a lot of issues she has to clear up."

But then she remembered meeting Clinton, while she was a U.S. Senator, and her face lit up.

"She's very compelling when you meet her in person," McGhee said.

An oddly high number of New Yorkers have met Clinton in person. When she arrived in New York, she blanketed the state.

"She went up to Buffalo, New York, which everybody thought, 'Well, they're going to really react negatively,' " said Kathy Wylde — then, as now, a muckety-muck at the New York City Partnership, the big business organization. "In fact everybody really liked her."

In 1999, the Clintons were fairly synonymous with "Democrats who like big business," so it's not surprising that Wylde would think warmly of Clinton. But Clinton also made it her business to court every board member of the left-leaning Working Families Party.

"We were small potatoes then," mused Dan Cantor, the party's director. Clinton invited him to his own "listening session" over cheesecake at Junior's.

He blushes a little bit when he recalls how his kids were "super-impressed" when she called him at home. His young party twice voted to endorse Clinton for U.S. Senate.

This time, the New York branch of the WFP voted in February to join the movement to draft Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. (She's said about 40,000 times she isn't running.)  But Cantor says he has only fond feelings for Clinton. He just wants her to sign on to things like a $15/hr minimum wage, and tough financial regulations.  

Which aligns pretty closely with what the mayor of New York has been saying this week.

"Like a lot of people in this country, I want to see a vision," Mayor de Blasio said. This from the guy in charge of setting up all those really successful listening sessions 15 years ago, as the manager of Clinton's campaign for U.S. Senate. 

Those comments have stirred up yet another tempest, landing de Blasio on the front page of the New York Post for being a "TRAITOR." But to voters like Samantha Dell'olio Raffaele, a book publicist now caring for her two young kids, it made sense.

"I kind of agree with that," said the Brooklyn mom, wheeling her youngest past the Cadman Plaza headquarters. "I thought it was strange at first, but I sort of agree with that. I want to see what her plan is first."

Clinton didn't say much of her plan in her announcement video. Just this, really: "Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top."  That kind of made sense to Dell'Olio Raffaele, even though she acknowledged Clinton's ties to Wall Street. "She's definitely connected," she said. "But I think all people in this position are."

Almost everyone I spoke with in Brooklyn had come to this conclusion. Even retired social worker Alan Nyysola, who said his preferred candidate was independent/socialist Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont.  

"She is involved with the banks so I don't know how she can maneuver into helping the little guy," he said, standing next to his brother Clifford, a retired steelworker. Still, he said, he may volunteer for Clinton. "She's the least worst -- not worst," he said. 

He's a little battle weary, a little jaded.  But still willing to listen to Hillary Clinton.