Hillary Clinton has several prominent desis on her campaign. Besides Huma Abedin, her policy director is Neera Tanden, who defends her in the current New Yorker:

Neera Tanden, the campaign’s policy director, expressed admiration for Obama but cautioned that the general election will be brutal. “You cannot let your guard down with these guys,” she said of right-wing politicians. “They take people’s strengths and make them weaknesses; if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. They’re not ready to give up. They’re not ready to lose the Congress and the Presidency. I don’t think Grover Norquist”–the conservative lobbyist–”is sitting around thinking that’s going to be great for him. His salary depends on it, at the very least. Both of the Clintons have been through it and won before. But if we don’t think that the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, is going to have high negatives by the end of this process, then we’re crazy…

“Hillary believes in governing,” Neera Tanden said. When Tanden worked as her legislative director, Clinton would call again and again from the Senate floor to gauge the effect that a new amendment would have on a bill. Such attention to minutiae is rare in a legislator… Tanden, who was in her twenties when she joined Clinton’s staff, in 1997, and “sort of grew up working for her,” found that Clinton really wanted to know what a mid-level aide thought about policy issues. “She asks questions, and she has a very high b.s. detector on people,” Tanden said. “You get in her foxhole, she gets in your foxhole…”

… she became a Democratic leader in the Senate in part because she understood the powers of the Presidency and the need for an overarching strategy in any major conflict with the executive branch–for example, Neera Tanden said, during the fight to prevent Social Security from being privatized. Presumably, she would turn her knowledge of Congress to her advantage should she return to the White House. [New Yorker]

Tanden is familiar with economic struggle:

… you can accompany Ms. Tanden, informal, fast-talking, connected to her cell phone as to a body part, across the street to the restaurant she frequents these days, the cafeteria in Macy’s basement. She works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day…. [her husband] hates the way she brings the work home, the stress…

”I personally feel that if I didn’t have the good public schools of Bedford, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. My mother was on welfare for a couple of years, then she got a job as a travel agent. Finally, years later, scrimping and saving, she was able to buy a house… The Democratic Party, the policies that the Clintons and Hillary believe in, I feel like a living example of someone who benefited…’

… Tanden went to [UCLA] and became involved in politics on the Dukakis campaign, where she met her husband, Ben Edwards, an artist. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, she worked on the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign in California…

She herself has a very fond memory: Mrs. Clinton gave her a wedding shower at the White House. ”My mother was there… ‘She, as an immigrant, with me first-generation and working there, she was ecstatic to come to the White House.” [NYT]

The thrust of the New Yorker piece is that Obama is far more comfortable in his skin, inspiring people rather than combating, than Hillary:

Hillary’s fear of public exposure was connected to those early years in Arkansas. “To be so humiliated, and ruthlessly… In Arkansas, she went to a place she wasn’t welcomed, big time. Everything was wrong with her. She didn’t paint her toenails when she wore sandals, she didn’t look like a cocktail waitress when she dressed up. Everybody really felt they could insult her with impunity.” [New Yorker]

This quote sounds like an exact copy of Dubya’s worst trait, acting like president of 50.5% of the people and shafting those who didn’t vote for you. It’s precisely the source of Obama’s appeal:

Clinton’s instinct to fight back was honed in the rough world of Arkansas politics. Once, when the two couples were talking about policy matters, Danner proposed a way to offer retail discounts to Arkansas’s substantial elderly population. To the astonishment of Danner and Pietrafesa, Hillary responded, “The last thing we need to do right now is something for folks who didn’t vote for Bill.” [New Yorker]

Clinton (f.)’s been throwing some elbows these last couple of weeks, taking a Barack Obama quote on Ronald Reagan wildly out of context at the last Dem debate and putting out a campaign ad today repeating that lie:

… in the original context, Obama was describing the dominance of Republican ideas in the 1980s and 1990s, without saying he supported them, and asserting that those ideas are of no use today… watching the use of rough-edged tactics against a fellow Democrat, some of those who supported him then are having second thoughts. “They’re obvious distortions…” a onetime Clinton supporter said the Clintons’ recent tactics have been “all about deceit. This is harmful to the party…” [WaPo]

The word for today: Rovian.

Related posts: Race becomes a factor, Yale, yonly, Obama homers, Hillary dithers, Huma resources, Obama outro (updated), Hillary and Indira (updated again)