As the Indiana/North Carolina campaign comes to a close, much note is being taken of Hillary Clinton's transformation from hyper-competent policy-oriented substance-person at the start of the campaign, to heroine of the white working class who doesn't care about no stinkin' economists at the end of the campaign.
The transformation has been striking to any number of pointy-headed elitists. The New York Times headlines its story today, "With Right Props and Stops, Clinton Transforms into a Working Class Hero," noting how Hillary has learned to leave out inconvenient facts, like her Wellesley/Yale education as she waxes Whitmanesque on waittresses and cops:
"Whatever the results of the primaries,...Mrs. Clinton has accomplished the seemingly impossible.... Somehow, a woman who has not regularly filled her own gasoline tank in well over a decade, who with her husband made $109 million in the last eight years and who vacations with Oscar de la Renta, has transformed herself into a working-class hero."
Thrush of Newsday covers the same territory here -- taking note of the curious coincidence of this change with the electoral defeat of her former persona, and her need to invent a new one to appeal to a demographic sub-group that has been available because it has been largely unswayed by the black candidate.
Including this blunt assessment from former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen:
"She's not a true populist -- not at all," Schoen said. "She wasn't getting white males in Wisconsin, Virginia and Maryland, and she needed those votes and this is the message. ... Politics is not only about finding a message, it's finding circumstances that fit the message -- and the weak economy provided her with that opportunity."