Free The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" by Hugh Hewitt Page A

defense can easily be misunderstood as protecting the largely Anglo populations in small towns and rural America from the largely minority populations of the big cities.
    You will want to pluck that chord—carefully. Most Americans, including most Americans of color, are worn out by the politics of race. And while every explosion of racial conflict, whether in Missouri with Michael Brown, Florida with Trayvon Martin, New York City with EricGarner or anywhere else, cause ratings to soar for the networks that heavily invest in breathless coverage, the fact is the spectacle attracts the aggrieved on all sides of the issues, not merely those who believe America “has a race problem.” We will return to your tricky triangulation on the issue, but know that it flows beneath the Electoral College conversation as well.
    No, you must direct your ire and the campaign against the College towards the Red States and work to keep the small Purple or Blue States in the fold with a wink and a nod. Do so via a number of devices, but do not begin this phase of the campaign until after the nomination is secure. Iowa and New Hampshire especially will not cotton to anti-small state talk, but for them we have solutions once the caucuses and primary are behind us.
    The College is so weird to most Americans that most of your argument is already made. Challenge defenders to answer “Why North Dakota with more cows than people and oil than common sense ought to be able to have three electoral votes when Washington State, home of so much that matters—and I don’t mean just the Seahawks—and the Buckeye State have thirty times the people and less than eight times the political punch of either of the Dakotas or Montana or Wyoming?” Feel free to throw in punches at Dick Cheney here, the all-purpose Beelzebub for campaign 2016, as Wyoming’s greatest contribution to the Union over the past two centuries and hardly justifying half the electoral power of New Hampshire.
    The trick will be to pit the smallest, most deeply Red States, rhetorically, against the bluest, nearly-as-small states, thus framing the grievance as small state v. micro-state, not big cities against the small towns and farmers. Voters must understand you to be specifically for them, even though you are for yourself and the familia .
    Now, envy is a useful thing to harness on your behalf, but envy never completely trumps self-interest. Recall the referendum on Scottish independence in September of 2014. Its rise to parity in the polls, to near victory until the last two weeks, was fueled by the envy of the small against the large.
    Ultimately, however, the economic self-interest of the small ultimately trumped the envy and resentment Scots felt against the English. When banks and manufacturers threatened to bolt Scotland en masse, that self-interest—even among some previously independence-minded Scots—became of greater importance to voters there than the near certain-to-have-been-fleeting joy of punching John Bull in the snout. The hangover of the celebration, Scots concluded by a large margin, wasn’t worth the party.
    Defenders of the College will attempt to paint its greatest virtue as stability and the risks of the popular vote election of the president as too great and too precarious by far to try. To which you must calmly and repeatedly reply: “I trust the people,” adding, “Communication in the new era of social media make all voters equally powerful in all places,” and “The amending process is slow and deliberate, and can be trusted to balance out all the pros and cons, and in the process, educate the world about governance and constitutionalism just when it needs it most.”
    Add, “What critics of my proposal to abolish the College note how ‘Abolish the College’ flows off the tongue—I have reserved the domain name and Twitter handle, fail to grasp when they charge that instability will follow the success of the Amendment, is that a byproduct of the