As Hillary Clinton wrapped up a town hall on her first day campaigning in 2016, the year in which she hopes to become the first woman elected to the US presidency, she had a few parting words.



“You can’t make America great again if you insult and demean the people of America,” Clinton told a crowd of nearly 800 who had packed into a school cafeteria to see the former secretary of state on the first Sunday of the new year.

The reference to Donald Trump’s campaign slogan was lost on no one, and it prompted a round of applause.

It is through his pitch to “Make America Great Again” that Trump catapulted to the top of the Republican field, where six months since launching his candidacy he continues to hold a commanding lead with just 26 days remaining until voting begins.

But the America Trump has envisioned stands in stark contrast to the country Clinton vowed to protect on Sunday, kicking into gear a battle that could define the remainder of the race.

And as the Democratic frontrunner told it, it was imperative that Americans not only understand what was at stake in this election – namely, she said, the progress made by Barack Obama and Democrats over the last eight years – but also why she would be the best choice to thwart Republican hopes of taking back the White House.

Sticking to her stump speech, Clinton ran through the issues that comprise her agenda – a decidedly progressive platform that expands in any given week.

Economic policies to boost the middle class by raising the tax rates of the wealthiest Americans; immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in America; an ambitious plan to combat climate change; ways to counter racial disparities in the criminal justice system; reducing gun violence through stricter firearm restrictions; Wall Street reform; expanding healthcare reform; and even even detailed proposals for tackling substance abuse, Alzheimer’s disease and, soon, autism.

“Now we’re getting into the serious part of the primary,” Clinton said, before making a direct appeal to voters in New Hampshire, which hosts the first primary contest. “If you care about any of these issues, please come out and vote on 9 February. Make sure you are part of the solution.”

Although Clinton has found a formidable challenger in the Democratic primary in Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, she focused her fire on her Republican opponents.

For every proposal she believed would mark progress, Clinton said, Republicans would simply “turn back the clock”. She offered familiar lines on their opposition to Planned Parenthood, while reiterating her commitment to women’s reproductive rights, and mocked Republicans for denying the existence of climate change.

Even on foreign policy, the central issue upon which Republicans have attacked Obama and Clinton, as his former secretary of state, she chided her critics for lacking a coherent plan of their own.

“The fact is – if you don’t have a foreign policy, you don’t have much to say except to try to criticize the other people,” she said, teeing up an anecdote she often shares on the campaign trail that involved Clinton mailing copies of her book Hard Choices to each Republican candidate.

“There are so many of them they could have a book club,” she quipped, to laughter.

Beneath the jabs, Clinton’s objective was clear: to establish not only herself as a candidate who could throw punches at the opposition, but also a case for why she should be the Democratic nominee. She presented herself not only as an experienced hand on global affairs who was uniquely positioned to confront the challenges posed by Islamic State, but also as a candidate with an answer to seemingly every domestic issue that might keep Americans up at night.

While discussing the rise of terrorism, for example, Clinton criticized Republicans for framing the war as between the west and Islam.

“This should not be the west against Islam, it should be everyone who cares about their children, their future, against these evildoers,” she said.

After a pause, Clinton added: “This is an important difference between me and those Republicans.”

Jay Madnick, an engineer who attended Clinton’s first town hall of the day in Derry, said he was impressed with “how well she spoke” to Democratic priorities. Identifying himself as an independent who leans Democrat – but could be persuaded by the right Republican – Madnick lamented that the other party appeared less serious.

“The one thing I noticed that separates both her and Bernie Sanders and [former Maryland governor] Martin O’Malley from the Republicans is, they’re not attacking each other,” he said. “The Republicans are attacking each other as much as they can, while the Democrats are presenting their differences with Republicans.”

The only Republican Madnick said he liked, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, was perceived as “too moderate”, he said.

“They’re just off the charts, playing to people’s fears.”

Clinton has raised the latter point often on the campaign trail, invoking Trump’s penchant for offensive comments as part of a broader indictment against the Republican field. On Sunday, she again condemned his suggestion to ban all Muslim immigration into the US while suggesting that the other Republican contenders were simply couching similar views behind milder rhetoric.

The tactic is hardly new – when Trump launched his campaign last summer by controversially likening Mexican immigrants to “rapists” and “killers”, then too Clinton dubbed the entire Republican field as ranging “across a spectrum of being either grudgingly welcome or hostile towards immigrants”.

It nonetheless remained a sign of what Republicans, who set out to make inroads among minorities, women and young voters after losing these demographics heavily in 2012, will be forced to re-litigate on a national scale this year. While the Republican primary remains relatively open at this juncture, the Trump effect and its impact on the field is already abundantly clear to some.

Following Clinton’s town hall in Derry, one voter – who did not give his surname – remarked it was as though “two different elections” were taking place.

“The discussion on the right is all about, ‘They’re coming to get us, they’re coming to get us, they’re coming to get us,’ and the discussion on the left is all about the economy,” said Peter, of Derry.

“It’s hard to believe that the Republicans and the Democrats are running in the same race.”