The Pro Hillary Thread

DETROIT — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promised to stand with the large Service Employees International Union if elected president, and pleaded with members to help her defeat Republican Donald Trump in a speech Monday in the Cobo Center.

The more than 3,000 SEIU delegates are attending the 2016 International Convention in Detroit.

Mrs. Clinton noted the work that SEIU members have done for her since the 1.2-million-person union endorsed her in November, and pleaded with them to help her prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president.

“Trump economics is a recipe for lower wages, fewer jobs, higher debt. He could bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Mrs. Clinton said the White House should be a “bully pulpit” for working families, “but the last thing we need is a bully in the pulpit.”

“We are going to defend the right to organize, protect collective bargaining. Let’s make the jobs of the future good union jobs that can’t be outsourced. Right to work is wrong for workers and wrong for America,” she said.

“Every worker in America deserves a fair wage and a voice on the job,” she said.

“I am proud to stand with SEIU and workers across America organizing the fight for 15 dollars [an hour] and a union,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton contrasted her policies as being pro-family against those of Mr. Trump.

“You’re not just fighting for your members. You’re fighting for all working families. I know that strong families are the backbone of our economy and our country,” she said.

Plotting a general election strategy against Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton’s advisers joke that their challenge feels like Lucille Ball’s in the famed chocolate factory episode of “I Love Lucy.”

As truffles fly down a conveyor belt, Lucy frantically tries to wrap each one before they pass. Falling behind, she stuffs some under her hat, down her blouse and in her mouth. For the Clinton campaign, the conveyor belt is Trump’s mouth and Twitter feed — and the chocolates are his inflammatory statements.

In the three weeks since the celebrity mogul became the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Clinton and her sprawling bureaucracy of a campaign have struggled to keep pace with Trump’s unremitting medley of savage attacks, unorthodox policy pronouncements and casual misstatements.

Clinton advisers are trying to stitch together an overall narrative that they are confident will destroy Trump, but they are still experimenting with tone and tactics as they seek an effective equilibrium. And even as they launched their first big effort this week, Trump’s response to it stole some of their thunder — illustrating vividly that breaking through his barrage of attention-getting words will not be easy.

Clinton’s aides say they have settled on the big story they want to tell about Trump: He is a business fraud who has cheated working people for his own gain, and his ideas, temperament and moves to marginalize people by race, gender and creed make him simply unacceptable as commander in chief.

Our thesis is that this isn’t just a difference in world views akin to, say, a policy debate between John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008. This is somebody who’s uniquely dangerous and disqualified,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary.

On Tuesday, the likely Democratic nominee and her allies opened a coordinated and methodical assault on Trump, starting with reviving his past comments that he had hoped to profit off a housing crisis that devastated millions of families. Other lines of attack will follow.

Right, which is meant to draw ire from the 'working class' people that support him.