Hillary Clinton wooed Hispanic leaders, powwowed with Senate Democrats and campaigned in Virginia with one of her potential vice presidential picks Thursday, making the rounds in and around the Beltway as she tries to put distance between herself and likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Mrs. Clinton, speaking at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Washington, said she regrets the kind of campaign Mr. Trump is running.
“Donald Trump is running the most divisive campaign of our lifetime,” she said. “His message is that you should be afraid — afraid of people whose ethnicity is different, whose religious faith is different or who were born in a different country.”
“That’s, my friends, no innuendo or dog whistle anymore. It’s all out in the open now,” she said. “So we’ve got to come back twice as strong and twice as clear.”
Mrs. Clinton is looking to shore up key Democratic constituencies such as Hispanic voters after winning the endorsement this week of Sen. Bernard Sanders, her chief rival in the primary contests, in what was seen as something of a seal of approval for liberals from the far-left Mr. Sanders.
Her campaign also announced Thursday that she would speak by video to liberal activists at the Netroots Nation conference this weekend in Missouri.
She told the United Latin American Citizens that simply winning the presidential election isn’t enough.
“Together, we must send a resounding message to Donald Trump in November and earn a decisive mandate against demagoguery and fear,” she said. “We need to inspire a level of voter turnout that will help us win up and down the ticket, that will lead to more support of leaders at all levels of government who can put a stop to aggressive, anti-immigration measures.”
She argued that President Obama acted within his authority when he moved to grant work permits for up to 5 million illegal immigrants in the country, even though a deadlocked Supreme Court last month left in place a lower court’s ruling against the president’s deportation amnesty program.
A poll from Univision News released this week showed Mrs. Clinton with a 48-point lead, 67 percent to 19 percent, over Mr. Trump among Hispanic voters — even bigger than Mr. Obama’s 2012 margin, when he won the Hispanic vote by about a 71 percent to 27 percent margin over Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
But the survey said a narrow plurality of Hispanic voters believe Mrs. Clinton is a liar. Other polling shows that solid majorities of voters overall do not think she is honest and trustworthy.
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a possible vice presidential pick for Mrs. Clinton, vouched for the candidate’s character in part by showing his Spanish-speaking skills while campaigning with her before a community college crowd in Northern Virginia.
“Estamos listos para Hillary,” he said, which translates to “We’re ready for Hillary.”
Mr. Kaine said he learned as a missionary in Honduras that the best compliment to someone was to say they were “listo,” “to say that they were ready.”
“In Spanish, in Honduras, what ’ready’ means is more than just on time — it means well-prepared,” he said. “It means you’re ready to get on the battlefield. You’re ready to fight. You’re somebody that can be counted on.”
Mrs. Clinton, elected twice as a U.S. senator from New York, also met privately with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill.
She said the conversation “really focused on the very positive difference that Democrats want to make in the lives of Americans — particularly when it comes to economic opportunity, to tackle the problems that, unfortunately, have been ignored by the Republican majority.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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