Hillary Clinton looks forward to the 2016 general election. Clinton: Republican primary positions will have consequences in the general

URBANDALE, Iowa — Hillary Clinton made an emphatically partisan pitch at a town hall outside Des Moines on Wednesday: instead of outlining her own policy proposals in granular detail as she often does in these settings, she asked the crowd to give her their votes to show Republicans their positions carry consequences at the polls.

“Get me elected so that, No. 1, Republicans will realize it doesn’t help them, when they run for president, to be against immigration reform,” Clinton said at her second town hall of the day here, after a man in the audience asked for her views on immigration reform. “They will begin to understand that this is a political issue that has real consequences for their White House hopes.


“I would like to keep talking about this in very emotional terms,” the Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state said of immigration, “but it also has to be political. We’ve got to convince the Republicans their position is going to cost them something. And the best way I know to do that is to elect a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president.”

Clinton’s partisan pitch came as Republican front-runner Donald Trump ate up a second day of headlines and political air with his incendiary proposal for an outright ban on Muslims entering the United States. At both of her town hall events today, she spent a good section at the start of her speeches castigating Trump for his views and accusing him of trafficking “in prejudice and paranoia.”

“We have to enlist help ... from Muslims around the world,” she said. “Instead, Donald Trump is supplying them with new propaganda.”

But even when she moved on from Trump, Clinton’s refrain here was that a vote for her was a vote against the Republicans.

A young man who identified himself as a “proud millennial” questioned Clinton about the political ennui he senses among his peers.

“Politics is everywhere,” Clinton responded. “Electoral politics is an extension of how we interact with one another in a free country. Electoral politics is how we make decisions as communities and as a country.”

With emotion in her voice, she fired back, “If you want to be left out, fine, just don’t complain about anything that you’ve lost your right to.”

Clinton added that “the best way that you can help to shape that future is by really turning out and voting, and sending a message that all the forces of the status quo and everyone who doesn’t want people in this country to see their incomes rise, and their opportunities grow again, send them a message, we’re not going to be fooled.”