David Brooks, "The Mobilization Error": Does Morality No Longer Matter?

Can Hillary win in 2016 by relying on Obama's base of voters? In a New York Times op-ed entitled "The Mobilization Error," David Brooks writes:

"Every serious presidential candidate has to answer a fundamental strategic question: Do I think I can win by expanding my party’s reach, or do I think I can win by mobilizing my party’s base?

. . . .

As The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman reported this week, Clinton strategists have decided that, even in the general election, firing up certain Democratic supporters is easier than persuading moderates. Clinton will adopt left-leaning policy positions carefully designed to energize the Obama coalition — African-Americans, Latinos, single women and highly educated progressives."

Brooks's conclusion:

"Voters want better politics, not a continuation of the same old techniques. By adopting base mobilization, Clinton seems to have made the first big decision of her presidential campaign. It’s the wrong one."

Right? Wrong? The bigger question: What will it take to be elected without answering questions from the press and with all the baggage pertaining to Benghazi, the erasure of her emails from a private server, and scurrilous foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation?

Will African-Americans blindly accept these shortcomings?

Will "highly educated progressives" (ironclad corroboration of the shortcomings of higher education) decide that immorality, unlike illegality, should not disqualify presidential candidates in today's Brave New World?

Do "voters want better politics"? Is there such a thing? Has there ever been such a thing?

Stay tuned . . .