WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Hillary Clinton campaign actively ignored Bill Clinton’s political advice.
The campaign threw cold water on Bill’s assertion that Hillary should target white working-class voters. In fact, the campaign said those voters are lost forever to Democrats and that the ethnic makeup of the party had changed.
But Clinton allies are also faulting the campaign for failing to develop a credible message for downscale white voters, arguing she could have won by a larger margin on the economy.
And some began pointing fingers at the young campaign manager, Robby Mook, who spearheaded a strategy supported by the senior campaign team that included only limited outreach to those voters — a theory of the case that Bill Clinton had railed against for months, wondering aloud at meetings why the campaign was not making more of an attempt to even ask that population for its votes.
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But in general, Bill Clinton’s viewpoint of fighting for the working class white voters was often dismissed with a hand wave by senior members of the team as a personal vendetta to win back the voters who elected him, from a talented but aging politician who simply refused to accept the new Democratic map. At a meeting ahead of the convention at which aides presented to both Clintons the “Stronger Together” framework for the general election, senior strategist Joel Benenson told the former president bluntly that the voters from West Virginia were never coming back to his party.
Bill Clinton wavered on the trail between trashing Obamacare — a rogue move that the campaign did not appreciate — and sticking to progressive talking points, like about how “old gray-haired white guys” oppose immigration reform.
Breitbart News lead Hillary Clinton reporter Patrick Howley witnessed the out-of-touch nature of the Clinton campaign in various states around the country throughout the election, before ultimately witnessing Clinton’s defeat at the ballot box.
Howley reported from a Clinton event in Washington, D.C., in November 2015:
Young progressive women posed for cell phone pictures of themselves in the crowd, texted, scanned Facebook, and sought out good selfie angles while Clinton spoke, all the while cradling $10 cocktails purchased from multiple wet bars around the perimeter of the ballroom.
“Lots of policy” one twentysomething Clinton supporter complained to her male friend clad indoors in a high-dollar scarf.
Before the speeches began, some middle-aged white women danced woodenly and offered supportive “Woo”s to each other as the darkened venue blasted female-themed Top 40 hits like Andra Day’s “Rise Up” and Martina McBride’s “This One’s For The Girls.” A baby on a mother’s body harness, meanwhile, made noise during the senators’ speeches, and the occasional supporter, overly fired up, yelled out too loudly in agreement during Clinton’s remarks while other women shot her a sideways glare.
Clinton took the stage only after an extended video showing small cute children reciting progressive talking points, which was greeted with audible crows of “Awww” from the crowd.
As the women and assorted bespectacled progressive men made their way outside to black cars and waiting valets, a homeless man desperately badgered the Clinton supporters for “some help tonight.”
And police sirens, just blocks away in the direction of Capitol Hill, blared in the city night.
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