... Clinton was the first of the candidates in either party to realize how big a problem heroin and prescription drug abuse has become in New Hampshire, claiming so many young lives. It was at a town meeting in August in Keene where Clinton became aware of the extent of the problem when almost every hand went up at a substance abuse forum signaling a personal experience.

She researched the issue and followed up, says Joe Grandmaison, the former Democratic Party state chair in New Hampshire who crowned Bill Clinton the “comeback kid” after his second-place finish in the 1992 primary. An unabashed Hillary fan, Grandmaison observed that her diligence on the addiction issue recalled the “listening tour” Clinton took when she first ran for the Senate from New York in 2000. “You don’t have to be terribly cynical to think it is mostly a public relations tour, but Hillary demonstrated just the opposite,” Grandmaison told me. “Helping people in this way is who she is, and it’s better politics than normal because it cuts right through the cynicism.”
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In an election cycle that has been anything but conventional, Clinton is running a textbook campaign, methodically laying out her proposals from what she would do about ISIS and terrorism, down to her views on GMO’s (genetically modified organisms in our food). Clinton was asked about GMO’s at a recent Baltimore fundraiser. A donor who was there told Grandmaison that he thought that would stump her, but she has a three-point program.

It’s almost comical how prepared Clinton is, especially when compared to Trump, who offers very little in the way of conventional policies. “She has a different electorate than he does,” says Matt Bennett with Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. While the Republicans are focused on style and rhetoric, the race between Clinton and Sanders is much more substantive, “and she’s got to make clear what she stands for. And because she is the favorite to become president, she is acting like a president.”