Subject: Fwd: CLIP | LA TIMES: Clinton comes alive with Latino audience in Texas
From: Dan Schwerin <[email-masked]>
To: Robby Mook <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], Jennifer Palmieri <[email-masked]>, John Podesta <[email-masked]>, Kristina Schake <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 23:49:23 -0400

This enthusiastic write-up gets at why I think it's important to let her
have a prompter on a reasonably regular basis in a rally setting. She hit
all her lines and they worked in a way that doesn't always happen when
she's just up there riffing.

Begin forwarded message:

*From:* Betsaida Alcantara <[email-masked]>
*Date:* October 15, 2015 at 11:39:44 PM EDT
*To:* Clips <[email-masked]>
*Subject:* *CLIP | LA TIMES: Clinton comes alive with Latino audience in
Texas*

Clinton comes alive with Latino audience in Texas
<http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-latinos-20151015-story.html>

By: Evan Halper
<http://www.latimes.com/la-bio-evan-halper-staff.html#navtype=byline>

LA TIMES

October 15, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton demonstrated Thursday one of the biggest reasons she
will be exceedingly difficult for any of her Democratic rivals to overtake:
Latino voters.

Parachuting into San Antonio to pick up an endorsement from Housing and
Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who is often mentioned as a
possible running mate, Clinton rallied supporters and went deep on policy
in a session with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. During the short
visit, she put on full display how deep and durable are her ties with one
of the most important voting blocs in the nominating contest.

Along the way, a candidate who often struggles to connect demonstrated how
much more alive she can seem with a Latino crowd.

 “I love being ‘La Hillary,'” she told her enthusiastic supporters here, in
reference to the affectionate nickname some of her backers use. “I want you
to know I am not just La Hillary, I am also Tu Hillary” -- your Hillary.

The crowd roared with appreciation as Clinton recounted hours she spent
walking the streets of San Antonio as a volunteer four decades ago in the
1972 election,  registering voters with the bushy-haired boyfriend who
would go on to become her husband and eventually the president.

“I was a blond girl from Chicago,” she said. “But I drove around south
Texas and the valley. People welcomed me into their homes. I sat at a lot
of kitchen tables. I drank a lot of strong coffee. I listened as people
shared their worries, their stories, their dreams.”

Democrats are unlikely to make a serious challenge in Texas -- a state that
has voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1980. But
Latino voters will be key to the outcome in several states that will be
hotly contested, including Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

Latinos could be even more important in the outcome of the primaries. As a
group, they voted heavily for Clinton when she ran for the nomination in
2008, and so far she has maintained a large lead among them this time
around.

Addressing the crowd here, Clinton strung together a narrative from a
repertoire of anecdotes familiar to those who follow her as she campaigns.
In some appearances, those tales fall flat, here, she showed how effective
they can be.

Almost everything Clinton said, she hooked to the experience of immigrants
and their children. During the session with the Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce, she charged that the rhetoric of the Republican candidates, which
she characterized as anti-immigrant, is dangerous.

“We have to ask ourselves hard questions about how … some of the really
harsh inflammatory language coming from Republican candidates about
Hispanics has just added to the ongoing problem we face," she said.

"Condemning people with this type of rhetoric" makes people feel "free to
not only speak in pejorative terms, but even act in a way that is
prejudiced and hurtful,” Clinton said.

At the rally later in the day, she recalled the language Donald Trump has
used to talk about Mexican immigrants and repeated a line she has used
before: “Basta!” -- Spanish for "enough."

The crowd had probably heard Clinton use the line before. Still, it went
wild.

After Clinton's strong performance, a Biden bid looks more debatable
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-clinton-biden-strategy-20151015-story.html>

“For me,” Clinton said, “this is personal.”

She joked about the mango ice cream she had consumed hanging out with
immigrant families in Texas, she recounted how touched she had been to see
immigrant children jumping into the arms of their farmworker parents when
she babysat for them as a teenage volunteer, she put immigration reform in
more human language than her opponents have managed.

Emilia Flores, a 70-year-old nurse, said she had tuned out Clinton before
the rally, sick of hearing about the controversies involving her emails and
the Clinton Foundation and everything else.

After Thursday, however, she said she had made up her mind to vote for
Clinton.

“She sounded like she personally is feeling for us," Flores said. "She’s
got the knowledge of what we go through.”

Armando Gonzalez, a 65-year-old retired carpenter, said of Clinton’s
recollections: “You never hear that.… It gets you kind of teary. It is
true. As migrants, we are treated like second-class citizens.”

Gonzalez, whose parents were Mexican immigrants, said Clinton’s forceful
speech on behalf of immigrants reminded him of the late Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy. And in talking about his own experience, he put in a nutshell why
making those connections are so crucial to the outcome of the election.

“My parents were immigrants who couldn’t vote,” he said. “But now I can,
and now my kids can vote. And we’ve got all these votes, and they are all
going Democrat.”