Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Democrat who can use a southern drawl with a predominately black audience.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a socialist from suburban New York who proudly embraces her Latina roots, invoked a distinct accent as she spoke to the National Action Network today.
“This is what organizing looks like,” she said, as Al Sharpton could be heard off camera saying, “That’s right.”
“What is what building power looks like,” she continued, clapping her hands together.
“This is what changing the country looks like,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Just moments later, the drawl reappeared.
“I’m proud to be a bartender,” she said, her voice raising.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” she continued. “There’s nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy,” she said, her voice rising again.
“There’s nothing wroooong with preparing the foooood that your neighbors will eat,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.
Hillary Clinton frequently employed an accent for black audiences.
It took Clinton only about 50 seconds to use her accent for a crowd at LeMoyne-Owen College in 2015.
“I gotta tell you,” Hillary said with a distinct drawl, “I loved coming to Memphis in the past.
“You know, I didn’t live too far away for a long time, just across the river. Do we have anybody from Arkansas here toniiiiight?” she asked.
“Now, after the 2008 election, then president-elect Obama called me and asked me to come see him in Chicagooooo,” Clinton said.
“I didn’t know what he wanted. Turned out he wanted me to be secretary of staaaate.
“But before we talked about that, he said to me, ‘It’s so much worse than they told us.’ I said, ‘Mr. President-Elect, that’s exactly what my husband said to me after that election in 1992,” she said, with the southern drawl seemingly coming and going during her remarks.
It’s of course not the first time Clinton adopted a southern accent for a southern audience.
About a month earlier, Clinton was campaigning in Hoover, Alabama and — miraculously — the accent made an appearance.
“You know, when my husband became president thanks to a lot of you in this room, I remember after that election in ’92, him sayin’ to me, ‘It’s so much worse than they told us,’” she said at the Alabama Democratic Conference.
“The debt in our country has been quadrupled in the prior 12 years, the deficits had exploded. And so he had to roll up his sleeves and work hard.”
She added during Bill’s time in office, incomes were rising for “workin’ people.”
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