1.
Hillary Clinton was the first Presidential candidate to address the AIPAC2016 conference, and, just as expected, she was the second most interesting. The Donald show (Monday evening) casts a shadows over all other AIPAC presidential speeches – so he will be the most interesting. The Sanders no-show is third.
2.
What was the most interesting question about her speech? Not whether she would distance herself from Trump – but whether she would distance herself from the policies of President Obama that are not quite popular among AIPAC rank and file.
So she did. Carefully. Masterfully. Not once did she directly confront President Obama. Not once did she specifically disparage any of his policies. And yet, her massage was clear: I will not be like President Obama. You can trust me. You can vote for me without much hesitation. Sitting among the delegates, I got the feeling that many of them craved that assurance. They were an easy crowd to please. They want to vote for her and needed her to give them something to make them feel secure that their vote is a vote that strengthens the US-Israel alliance.
Clinton left no room for doubt. That is, if you believe that she means what she says.
3.
How did Clinton ensure the crowd that she will not be like Obama? By doing the following:
Hinting that she will not question the need to keep Israel’s qualitative military edge (as Obama did, according to the Jeff Goldberg story from last week).
Saying that she would “vigorously oppose any attempts by outside parties to impose a solution – including by the UN Security Council.”
Promising to go back to a no daylight policy – Israel’s enemies should never assume that they can take advantage of a growing distance between the countries.
4.
She also hit Trump hard. She will not be “neutral” today and who knows what tomorrow. She does not think everything is negotiable. She would like to remind the crowd that a steady hand is what Israel needs.
And of course, she is right about all of these.
5.
Clinton got cheered when she promised to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to the White House. That is quite strange: inviting Israel’s PM to the White House is a very low bar of accommodation and a standard procedure. But the AIPAC crowd needed her to utter the name Netanyahu without her seeming angry or disapproving or reluctant. They needed her to tell them that with all the baggage she has, and despite the leaks, the emails, the harsh conversations, the phone calls, the history – she is able to work with him with no hard feelings.
Clinton said she’d invite him – and that was that. Cheers.
6.
Sam Schulman retweetted me during the speech. I said she wants us to remember that she isn’t Obama or Trump, and he responded by writing: “And I'm not Hillary 2008-2012. Especially forget her. And forget @maxBlumenthal. And forget Morsi.”
Yes – Clinton wanted the AIPAC crowd to erase from memory all sorts of things about her. Things she did on behalf of the Obama administration. Things that some of her loyal advisors wanted her to do. And surely, one of Clinton’s great weaknesses in the US political arena is her image as a dishonest leader. Americans of all walks of life – as was proved time and again in exit polls in the past couple of months – do not see her as trustworthy.
Yet today at AIPAC she was convincing, and the delegates – well, I can only speak for a small section of delegates that were sitting beside me, but judging by the cheers I think other delegates in other sections had the same response – seemed to believe her. Some of them believed her because they do think she is trustworthy. And some of them believed her because her speech convinced them that on this matter she is trustworthy. And many of them also believed her because, to be honest, with Trump as her prospective opponent, they see no other choice.
Full disclosure: I'm attending the 2016 policy conference in Washington as a speaker and as AIPAC's guest.
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