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'Suffs' star Nikki M. James describes meeting Hillary Clinton, one of the show's producers - Iosco County News Herald

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Hillary Clinton slams Arizonas horrifying abortion ban - Washington Examiner

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Satisfying but sobering, too. Fact is, few audience members know much about the American suffrage movement. So the all-female creative team behind "Suffs," which had a high-profile off-Broadway run and opens Thursday on Broadway with extensive revisions, knows they're starting from zero.

Its an opportunity, says Taub, who studied social movements but not suffrage at New York University. But its also a huge challenge: How do you educate but also entertain?

One member of the "Suffs" team has an especially poignant connection to the material. That would be producer Hillary Clinton.

She was, of course, the first woman to win the U.S. presidential nomination of a major party, and the first to win the popular vote. But Clinton says she never studied the suffrage movement in school, even at Wellesley. Only later in life did she fill in the gap, including a visit as first lady to Seneca Falls, home to the first American women's rights convention some 70 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.

I became very interested in womens history through my own work, and writing and reading, Clinton told The Associated Press. And so, seeing Suffs off-Broadway, I was thrilled because it just helps to fill a big gap in our awareness of the long, many-decades struggle for suffrage.

It was Taub who wrote Clinton, asking her to come on board. I thought about it for a nanosecond, Clinton says, and decided absolutely, I wanted to help lift up this production. A known theater lover, Clinton describes traveling often to New York as a college student and angling for discounts, often seeing only the second act, when she could get in for free. For years, Id only seen the second act of Hair, she quips.

Clinton then reached out to Malala Yousafzai, whom Taub had also written about becoming a producer. As secretary of state, Clinton had gotten to know the Pakistani education activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman at age 15. Clinton wanted Yousafzai to know she was involved and hoped the Nobel Peace Prize winner would be, too.

Im thrilled," Clinton says of Yousafzais involvement, because yes, this is an American story, but the pushback against womens rights going on at this moment in history is global.

Yousafzai had also seen the show, directed by Leigh Silverman, and loved it. She, too, has been a longtime fan of musicals, though she notes her acting career both began and ended with a school skit in Pakistan, playing a not-very-nice male boss. Her own education about suffrage was limited to one or two pages in a history book that talked about the suffrage movement in the U.K., where shed moved for medical treatment.

"I still had no idea about the U.S. side of the story," Yousafzai told the AP. It was a struggle among conflicting personalities, and a clash over priorities between older and younger activists but also between white suffragists and those of color something the show addresses with the searing "Wait My Turn," sung by Nikki M. James as Wells, the Black activist and journalist.

This musical has really helped me see activism from a different lens, says Yousafzai. I was able to take a deep breath and realize that yes, were all humans and it requires resilience and determination, conversation, open-mindedness and along the way you need to show you're listening to the right perspectives and including everyone in your activism.

When asked for feedback by the Suffs" team, Yousafzai says she replied that she loved the show just as it was. (She paid a visit to the cast last month, and toured backstage.) Clinton, who has attended rehearsals, quips: I sent notes, because I was told thats what producers do.

Clinton adds: I love the changes. It takes a lot of work to get the storytelling right to decide what should be sung versus spoken, how to make sure its not just telling a piece of history, but is entertaining.

Indeed, the off-Broadway version was criticized by some as feeling too much like a history lesson. The new version feels faster and lighter, with a greater emphasis on humor even in a show that details hunger strikes and forced feedings.

One moment where the humor shines through: a new song titled "Great American Bitch" that begins with a suffragist noting a man had called her, well, a bitch. The song reclaims the word with joy and laughter. Taub says this moment and another where an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson (played by Grace McLean, in a cast that's all female or nonbinary) is burned has been a hit with audiences.

As much as the show has changed, she says, the spine of it is the same. A lot of what I got rid of was just like clearing brush.

Most of the original cast has returned. Jenn Colella plays Carrie Chapman Catt, an old-guard suffragist who clashed with the younger Paul over tactics and timing. James returns as Wells, while Milholland, played by Phillipa Soo off-Broadway, is now played by Hannah Cruz.

Given its parallels to a certain Lin-Manuel Miranda blockbuster about the Founding Fathers, it's perhaps not a surprise that the show has been dubbed "Hermilton" by some.

I have to say, Clinton says of Taub, I think shes doing for this part of American history what Lin did for our founders making it alive, approachable, understandable. Im hoping Suffs has the same impact Hamilton had.

That may seem a tall order, but producers have been buoyed by audience reaction. Theyre laughing even more than we thought they would at the parts we think are funny, and cheering at other parts, Clinton says. A particular cheer comes at the end, when Paul proposes the ERA. A cast member said, Whod have ever thought the Equal Rights Amendment would get cheers in a Broadway theater? Clinton recalls.

One clear advantage the show surely has: timeliness. During the off-Broadway run, news emerged the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe vs. Wade, fueling a palpable sense of urgency in the audience. The Broadway run begins as abortion rights are again in the news and a key issue in the presidential election only months away.

Taub takes the long view. Shes been working on the show for a decade, and says something's always happening to make it timely.

I think, she muses, it just shows the time is always right to learn about womens history.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

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Hillary Clinton and Malala Yousafzai producing. An election coming. 'Suffs' has timing on its side - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Hillary Clinton Pops in Bow-Embellished Shoes for 'The Wiz' Opening Night  Yahoo Entertainment

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Hillary Clinton Pops in Bow-Embellished Shoes for 'The Wiz' Opening Night - Yahoo Entertainment

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Is the political media repeating the errors of 2016?

Eight years ago, virtually all coverage of the 2016 campaign started with a presumption: Donald Trump was a uniquely weak candidate, leading a divided party, and running a campaign that was presumably both underfunded and disorganized.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton, if not beloved that much had to be conceded to reality based on Bernie Sanders primary performance was at least the devil voters knew. Her campaign, combining the resources of the entire political and economic establishment, was perceived as a machine. How could it be anything else when it combined the talent of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama networks?

With the notable exception of a few insightful reporters such as Matt Taibbi, these presumptions guided nearly all analysis and coverage of the 2016 campaign. Convinced that Republicans were more divided over Donald Trump than Democrats over Hillary Clinton, reporters sought out Trump critics while dismissing the blue-collar Democratic voters who swarmed to Trump rallies as isolated exceptions.

When confronted with the bizarre strategic decisions of the Clinton high command, the press reported in awe about the brilliance of the campaigns targeting algorithms rather than its absence from Wisconsin. If anything, that Clinton was spending in Arizona and Texas was proof of how far ahead she was. Taibbi was almost alone in questioning whether the Clinton campaigns obsession with expensive ads over rallies represented an inability to get anyone to volunteer or show up.

The result was that Donald Trumps victory in November 2016 struck the American political class like a thunderbolt out of the blue, one which Dave Chapelle immortalized in one of SNLs few genuinely brilliant sketches of the past decade.

The irony is that the result should not have come as such a surprise. The evidence was there. Bernie Sanders had won nearly 44 percent of the vote in the Democratic primaries against the combined strength of the Democratic establishment. The polls at most showed a 3 to 4 percent Clinton lead for much of the race, and results well within the margin of error in key swing states. They chose to start with a narrative and ignore facts that conflicted with it.

Like the French Bourbons, the American political class has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The last three months have seen a notable shift in coverage. Op-eds calling for Joe Biden to drop out of the race, ubiquitous last fall, have all but vanished. So too have speculative pieces about the supposed disasters that might occur under a second Trump administration.

They have been replaced instead with breathless reporting of the financial advantage enjoyed by the Biden campaign, listing the number of paid staffers in key states with a level of detail that could only have come from spreadsheets provided by the Biden communications team. TV networks and papers compete to interview Nikki Haley voters to highlight divisions within the Republican Party, while a shift in polling averages from a two percent Trump lead in January to a tie today prompts a string of Trump is doomed think pieces.

The current coverage echoes what we saw during the late spring of 2016, refusing to place stories in perspective and ignoring any data points that indicate weaknesses for the Biden campaign.

Lets take polling, for example. While Trumps advantage has waned somewhat from the 3 percent lead he saw at the end of January, RealClearPolitics still has him leading Joe Biden ever so slightly, by 0.2 percent. This hardly seems reflected in the media coverage, which could cause those following it to believe Biden had a 5-to-7-point lead.

The medias coverage only makes sense under the assumption that the only direction Trumps numbers can go is down the same mistake they made in 2016. Joe Bidens fundraiser with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, which brought in $25 million, was reported as evidence of a built-in financial advantage, while Donald Trumps fundraiser a week later in Palm Beach, which brought in $50 million, was largely ignored.

The media has been eager to showcase Haleys voters, but in many cases struggled to find ones who didnt already vote for Joe Biden in 2020.

The decision by 2020 Biden voters to cross over and vote in the Republican primary for Nikki Haley can be interpreted as a sign of weakness not for Donald Trump but for Joe Biden, especially if they indicate they would have voted for Haley in a general election. If these 2020 Biden voters supported him, they would not be looking for other options.

This is merely one example of how many of the data points being cited in favor of Bidens strength can also be seen as evidence of weakness. Stories that report on the scale of the Biden campaigns hiring in swing states coexist alongside coverage of how young voters, along with both Muslim and Jewish Americans, are refusing to canvass. Joe Biden is hiring out-of-state paid staff for Michigan not merely because he is as rich as Croesus, but because no locals are willing to work for him for free, nor are many local party officials.

In 2016, Hillary Clintons refusal to hold large, in-person events was portrayed as evidence of the strength of a campaign that did not need to resort to such labor-intensive tasks, while Donald Trumps rally-centric approach was seen as a desperate expedient adopted by a cash-strapped campaign. In 2024, Joe Biden also has an excuse for why he cannot conduct events with more than a few hundred supporters. The President of the United States, the man supposedly on the verge of running away with the election, is unable to appear in public without his own partys supporters trying to violently disrupt events while accusing him of genocide.

While the media is quick to dismiss the theory that Joe Bidens inability to appear in public without protest is evidence of his unpopularity, they also ignore the fact that Donald Trump, who is supposedly toxic, faces no such challenges. In 2016, and also in 2020, Trumps events regularly attracted hecklers and protestors.

In 2024, Donald Trump can travel into what was previously Democratic territory unmolested, such as his recent trip to a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta where the largely African American clientele rushed to embrace and be photographed with the former president. Days later, he appeared at a bodega in New York City, and was warmly greeted by the working class crowds on the street. As expected, the media and Democrats dismissed this, ignoring what it may portend for them this November.

Trumps visits to Chick-fil-A and the bodega, it should be noted, were not officially scheduled events, and the crowds were unvetted. This was the organic reaction of a typical crowd at the restaurant in a supposed Democrat stronghold.

When Bidens team tried to replicate Trumps retail stops this week, the patrons of those establishments seemed largely uninterested in the arrival of the President of the United States. That might qualify as a good reception. In many Democratic strongholds, the response to Joe Biden visiting a fast-food restaurant and ordering a milkshake would be for it to be thrown back in his face by a young worker screaming Free Palestine.

Whether or not Donald Trumps enthusiastic reception at the Chick-fil-A means something is unclear, but the fact that Joe Biden could never dream of replicating such events certainly does. At the very least, it should cause informed observers to question assumptions that every voter who is unhappy with their options will automatically default to viewing Joe Biden as the lesser of two evils.

As in 2016, the political media is not interested in asking questions for which they are already certain they know the answer. They may be right. If they are wrong, the result will be shock that would not occur if they properly interrogated the available evidence.

The narrative bubble may even produce the opposite outcome. Democrats, as the party of the media establishment, are far more influenced by coverage than the Trump campaign when it comes to strategic decisions. While Hillary Clinton may well have avoided setting foot in Wisconsin no matter what the New York Times or Washington Post said, profiles praising Robby Mooks algorithm certainly fed complacency within the campaign and provided ammunition for Mook to rebuff detractors.

The Biden campaign will believe the media narrative because they want to. The Trump team cannot afford to, so will need to pick holes in it to identify weaknesses. That difference may well define the election.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.

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Biden 2024 is Starting to Look Like Hillary 2016 - AMAC Official Website - Join and Explore the Benefits

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