During Saturday’s “Weekends with Alex Whitt” on MSNBC, reporters Alex Seitz-Wald and Joy Reid both reacted to the crowd at former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic nominee hopeful Hillary Clinton’s speech at Roosevelt Island in New York City on Saturday.
Seitz-Wald said the crowd was enthusiastic, but not as large as was expected.
“It was a pretty enthusiastic crowd. There was however an overflow area behind the stage that didn’t really get filled. Campaign officials say that was just a precautionary measure in case they needed more room. I’d say a largely enthusiastic crowd but they were not overwhelmed.”
Reid explained that the crowd was “predominantly white” and a younger group that seemed excited about issues like gay rights and women’s rights.
“It was a predominantly white crowd. Interestingly enough, it was a pretty young crowd given a campaign-type of event but distribution of age was a lot more what the campaign wants to see and I did speak with a lot of young voters who were excited particularly about issues like gay rights and women’s rights. But yes, in terms of ethnic diversity, the campaign, when I spoke with them, they said they were very happy with the level of diversity. There were African-Americans here, there were Asian-Americans here, there were Latinos here. There were Latinos, deliberately so, on the stage along with African-Americans.”
“But if you look at the Democratic party as a whole, was this crowd as diverse as the party? No it was not,” noted Reid. “But that’s something that the campaign is going to have to deal with. It’s also about whose really paying attention at this particular moment and whose in New York, quite frankly. So there are a lot of factors going into it, but I would say on the diversity side they were on the low end here.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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