PHILADELPHIA — One word has been repeated again and again from the stage of the Democratic National Convention this week: trust.
Dozens of speakers have vouched for the trustworthiness and honesty of Hillary Clinton — from a man with a rare form of dwarfism who said Clinton has corresponded with him for years, to a 9/11 survivor who spoke of the former New York senator’s devotion to her recovery, to Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, who said Wednesday that he trusted her with his U.S. Marine son’s life.
First lady Michelle Obama put it plainly in her Monday night primetime speech: “I trust Hillary Clinton to lead this country.”
This focus on trust is aimed squarely at a worrisome statistic for the Clinton campaign. In a recent CNN poll, only about 30 percent of American voters said they found Clinton trustworthy — a smaller share of voters than trust Trump. That’s down 20 points from March, when 50 percent said they thought she was honest. Clinton’s trust drop-off was fueled by a bruising primary during which Sen. Bernie Sanders painted her as a creature of Wall Street, as well as a now closed FBI investigation into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
“She has acknowledged that she needs to earn the trust of voters and that this is something she needs to focus on … the convention is the beginning of that process,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told Politico this week. And Clinton herself has acknowledged she has “work to do” to close the trust gap.
The Clinton campaign has deployed three main strategies to combat Clinton’s trust issue at the convention, according to Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake. The campaign has featured speakers who Americans trust and admire — such as the first lady and survivors of the 9/11 attacks — to validate Clinton as trustworthy. Speakers have also stressed Clinton’s long-term commitments to issues like health care that predate her desire to run for office, as when Obama told the crowd Wednesday night, “She’s been there for us even if we haven’t always noticed.” And the convention has fleshed out her life story so that she seems more like a whole person, a strategy exemplified by Bill Clinton’s lengthy remarks Tuesday about how they fell in love.
Conventions are always about selling a presidential candidate to America, but with Clinton the moment is even more urgent, given her high unfavorable ratings and the electorate’s lack of curiosity about her. Americans think they already know Clinton because she has been in the public arena for three decades, and they do not easily assimilate new information about her, according to Lake. But voters often don’t know basic facts about her record that could boost her standing in their eyes. “You have to provide it to them in almost captive situations, which is why I think the convention is so powerful,” Lake said.
Stan Greenberg, the pollster for Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign, noted that high unfavorable numbers and doubts about honesty are nothing new for a Clinton running for president. “We always had a huge trustworthy problem,” said Greenberg. Just a few months before the ’92 election, 60 percent of voters were expressing doubts that Bill Clinton had the honesty and trustworthiness to be president, following allegations of infidelity from Gennifer Flowers and claims he had lied about his draft record. After the campaign rallied from the double-digit hit and the Clintons entered the White House, Hillary at first faced higher unfavorable ratings than were usual for a political spouse. Greenberg attributed that to voters objecting to her not adopting the traditional first lady role, as she sought to have a hand in policy decisions and claimed an office in the West Wing of the White House — a first for a presidential spouse.
The current unfavorable numbers for Hillary Clinton — over 65 percent in the latest CNN poll — may be ephemeral, says Greenberg. Polls during conventions are rarely reliable indicators of where voters will end up, he notes. But he attributes these historic highs to two factors. The first is FBI Director James Comey’s harsh criticism of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server even as he announced there would be no charges in the investigation. Clinton’s negatives “were up sharply after that happened,” he said. “But the other piece equally strong were the attacks from Bernie Sanders that she was in bed with Wall Street,” Greenberg said. “So you really had a two-pronged attack” that has driven her numbers down. Sanders’ speech endorsing Clinton Monday could mitigate the effects of his attacks on voters’ perceptions of her trustworthiness.
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