Gone are questions about her authenticity. Here, black voters say Clinton’s history as a civil rights stalwart -- she first visited the state as a college grad investigating the problem of youths incarcerated in adult jails for the Children’s Defense Fund -- trumps any trust issues that dog her elsewhere.
.
The script has been flipped, for the first time, in her favor.

Her stories about her own mother’s abused and abandoned childhood resonate deeply with African-American women -- and there are about 100,000 more black women than men of voting age in the state. And to them, it is Bernie Sanders who is viewed as an unknown quantity, whose big ideas of free college and healthcare are greeted with skepticism.
...
Here, older African-American voters who have struggled with racism and poverty are pragmatic, and believe in the incremental change Clinton espouses. “They don’t have the luxury of an Iowa college student” to vote for ideals, Hodges added.

Many voters say they would have been happy to support her eight years ago if it wasn’t for the historic nature of Barack Obama’s candidacy. Clinton’s support for Obama since then has only increased their desire to help her this time.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just clinched another endorsement from top Hispanic Democrat Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, days before voters cast their ballots in a slew of Super Tuesday states next week.

"Hillary has the determination to defend and expand our country's economic and social progress, and to continue to break down barriers and move our country forward so that opportunity reaches everyone," Luján, the second most senior Hispanic member of Congress and a former vice chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in a statement Friday. "Every job matters to Hillary and she believes all Americans should have the dignity of a paycheck to raise their families, put a roof over their head, and store away a little money for their children's education at the end of each month."

Luján, who serves as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in charge of electing Democrats to the House in 2016, also pointed to Clinton's electability ratings as one reason she's drawn his support.

"Hillary has strength, compassion and a sense of responsibility to care for others that is second to none," Luján said. "She has what it takes to connect with a diverse group of voters across the country and will fight to motivate and unite people behind her, which will benefit all Democrats come November."

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will campaign Monday in Hampton Roads and northern Virginia, her campaign said Thursday.

The visits come on the eve of Tuesday's presidential primary when voters in Virginia and 12 other states cast ballots or participate in caucuses.

Details of the former secretary of state's Virginia itinerary will be made public in the coming days, her campaign said. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, campaigned for the candidate earlier this week in Alexandria and Richmond.

Hillary Clinton will campaign in Nashville this Sunday, two days before next week's Tennessee primary, the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate has announced.
...
Her visit will mark Clinton's second campaign trip through Tennessee after holding rallies in Memphis and at Nashville's Fisk University on the same day in November. That evening, Clinton attended a private fundraiser in Nashville at the home of businessman Bill Freeman.

Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, campaigned in Memphis earlier this month.

Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, is a heavy favorite to win Tennessee's Democratic primary next week, with a poll last week showing her with a 26-point lead in Tennessee over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Her lead is boosted by a massive advantage among African-American voters in Tennessee, a trend polls have found in other states as well.

The 2012 “Texts from Hillary” meme, which featured a sunglasses-clad Clinton scrolling through her Blackberry aboard a military flight to Libya, had given rise to a flood of think pieces hailing her “badass cool.” The Washington Post wanted president Barack Obama to give vice president Joe Biden the boot and replace him with Clinton. Taking stock of Clinton’s approval ratings, Nate Silver noted in a 2012 piece for the New York Times that she currently held “remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.”

How times have changed. “The FBI And 67 Percent of Americans Distrust Hillary Clinton,” booms a recent headline in the Huffington Post. Clinton’s favorability ratings currently hover around 40.8%. Bob Woodward complains that “there is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating.” “Hillary’s personality repels me,” Walker Bragman writes in Salon.

How can we reconcile the “unlikable” Democratic presidential candidate of today with the adored politician of recent history? It’s simple: Public opinion of Clinton has followed a fixed pattern throughout her career. Her public approval plummets whenever she applies for a new position. Then it soars when she gets the job. The wild difference between the way we talk about Clinton when she campaigns and the way we talk about her when she’s in office can’t be explained as ordinary political mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable swings of public opinion reveal Americans’ continued prejudice against women caught in the act of asking for power.

We beg Clinton to run, and then accuse her of feeling “entitled” to win. Several feminist writers have analyzed the Clinton yo-yo. Melissa McEwan sees a deliberate pattern of humiliation, which involves “building [Clinton] up and pressuring her to take on increasingly prominent public challenges, only to immediately turn on her and unleash breathtaking misogyny against her when she steps up to the plate.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is coming to Birmingham on Saturday, her campaign confirmed Wednesday. Further details have yet to be released, but the former secretary of state's visit is scheduled for just a few days before Alabamians head to the polls for Tuesday's March 1 primary.

The visit will be Clinton's third in Alabama since declaring her run for president. She previously stopped in Hoover and was in Montgomery to mark the 60th anniversary of the bus boycott.

Since presidential candidate Hillary Clinton quietly updated the healthcare policy page on her campaign website over the last few days, most commentators have focused on the especially notable paragraphs stating that she will "continue to support a 'public option' — and work to build on the Affordable Care Act to make it possible."
...
Clinton's support of the public option has drawn the most attention because it revives a provision of healthcare reform that was dropped from the ACA during the drafting and debate era of 2009-2010 — to the disadvantage of the package as a whole, in the view of many reformers.

It's also Clinton's strongest counterpunch to the single-payer plan proposed by her Democratic opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an excessively expensive program that would start reform from square one and eliminate many of the cost controls written into the ACA. Along with her other proposals, it's a reproach to Republican presidential candidates whose only idea is to scrap Obamacare in its entirety, without seriously contemplating how to cover Americans in its stead. However you feel about Obamacare, the difference in their approaches is unmistakable.

As Charles Gaba notes, Clinton isn't kidding when she says she supported the public option in the past — the evidence can be found among those accursed emails of hers, which document her efforts to keep the provision in the bill. (She was acting as an outsider, as she had left the Senate to become secretary of State in January 2009.)

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – North Carolina Democratic leaders in the legislature announced Tuesday their endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.

In a press conference, the leaders said Clinton has a record of fighting for the middle class. Clinton would work to ensure pay equality for woman and protect everyone’s right to vote.

Rep. Larry Hall (D-Durham) said Clinton’s experience made the leaders endorse her over Bernie Sanders.

“Hillary has been here, she’s been with us. She’s been effective on the issues and she is going to bring so many segments of citizens together to solve our common problems, Hall said.

In politics, the name of the game is public support. And Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is boosting her already large list of supporters. More than 170 Black women leaders are endorsing Hillary Clinton for President in 2016, among them: Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, Karen Weaver, mayor of Flint, Michigan, Shonda Rhimes, Bishop Vashti McKenzie, Alexis Herman, former Secretary of Labor, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and former NAACP president Hazel Dukes. Clinton’s campaign believes these women will mobilize their networks and other groups in efforts to make her the first female President of the United States.

Dukes has known Hillary Clinton for decades, meeting her years ago when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. Dukes says Clinton is not a “Johnny come lately, she is a progressive” and she would be “pragmatic in her approach to getting things done” on issues like education, employment and health issues. Dukes is also looking down the road on issues important to people of color. “One of the most important things is when I look and think about this election, the next President of the United States of America will have the opportunity to appoint at least three Supreme Court [Justices].”
...

Virtually every young woman I've taught plans to have a family and a career. In 1980, when Clinton was an attorney and about to become a first-time mother, her law firm had no maternity leave plan until she informed them she would take four months off to care for her newborn. This bold step effectively established the firm's first family leave policy. Clinton didn't just advocate for maternity leave, she created it at a time when women were expected to give up their careers when they became mothers. During her time as senator, Clinton introduced eight pieces of legislation with the explicit goal of expanding and protecting women's reproductive rights and fought hard for a woman's right to emergency contraception. Many college women are familiar with the Plan-B pill. What they don't know is they largely have Hillary Clinton to thank for it. As a candidate, she isn't scared to talk about issues like sexual violence on campus, something particularly relevant to female co-eds today, when 1 in 5 college women are sexually assaulted. There's also no candidate with a more long-standing and authentic passion for shattering the glass ceiling and closing the gender wage gap. While there's no question that Sanders should be applauded for voting for gender equality legislation, Clinton has written many bills personally, lived through and overcome the challenges firsthand and has the battle scars to prove it.

Perhaps these concerns aren't on young women's radar, but have we even told them about this history? Have their feminist mothers, grandmothers, aunts and big sisters shared their stories, their struggles and their victories? Have they talked and listened to these young women who so badly want to be a part of a movement and make a difference? Have we taken the time and care to explain why Hillary Clinton is revolutionary? If we haven't, we should. The truth is Hillary Clinton has been fighting for the young women of today since before they were born. They just don't realize it ... yet.