Clinton speaks to 7,000 Methodist women about faith and good works

If I had any doubts before that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016, this convinces me.   She gave a very personal speech about her own religious background and faith to thousands of women gathered last weekend for the United Methodist Women's Assembly in Lousivill, KY. 

Now, she might or might not have accepted this invitation anyway.   But how better to lay the groundwork for running against a Republican opponent who is, at the very least, going to need to court the evangelical vote?

But what it did beyond seeking votes from these women, in my opinion, is to signal that Hillary is taking seriously the lesson she learned in New Hampshire in 2008:   that she wins people's hearts when she lets people see into her own heart.   After a crushing loss to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses in 2008, she spoke from her heart in an impromptu interview in New Hampshire, even letting a few tears well up in her eyes.

Her chief strategist Mark Penn had been telling her that people cared more about the substance of her policies and arguments;  he seemed not to understand the human side of politics.    He was eventually dropped from the campaign over some conflict of interest thing.   But many people were worried that Hillary would turn to him again to help with her 2016 campaign.

Taking this stance with the Methodist women says to me that she won't make that mistake.   This is not what Mark Penn would have her doing.   But it's what she needs to do.   If she can let the warm, human side show and stand along side her policy wonkishness -- she will be unbeatable.

And while I'm on a Hillary-for-President theme, let me say that the best thing that could have happened to her was the loss to Obama in 2008.    She is much much better prepared now than she was then;   and she won't have to deal with the two wars and the economic disaster that he inherited.    No, it's not a progressive utopia by any means.    But we are in a recovery rather than going into a tailspin.   It will be a much begin a presidency in 2017 than in 2009 -- one obvious reason is that she will be following a Barack Obama presidency rather than a George W. Bush/Dick Cheney mess.

Ralph