Local Language
I am not a Hillary fan, but attacking her for dropping her final g's is culturally moronic. Picking up local accents, especially ones you've spent most of your adult life around, is not a sign of "dumbing down" your speech to pander. It's only natural to speak like those around you, and there's nothing particularly ignorant-sounding about an American dropping g's. Would you attack the junior senator from New York if she used an occasional (and equally non-standard) Yiddishism? The poor woman is stuck with that horrible Midwestern screech. Cut her some slack for softening it with a little bit of drawl.
Of course, I could be a little sensitive on these things, since my native speech pattern involves droppin' g's and I haven't used my full-blown native accent for decades--so long, in fact, that I can no longer recreate the full effect. I pander to the educated elite by sounding less like a country music singer and more like the rest of the intellectual class. One of the pleasures of living in Texas was letting up on the final g's.