The White House said it’s comfortable that the Democrat who wins the nomination this year will have an easy time running against the Republican nominee, given how leading GOP candidates are trying to “exploit” people’s fears in the race.
“[W]e’ve seen a campaign that’s been characterized by candidates trying to exploit people’s fears and anxieties and insecurities about the future,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “And those candidates ended up doing pretty well last night.”
“And I think it’s why a lot Democrats woke up this morning … not particularly concerned about the potential matchup that we would face in a general election,” considering that all of the Republican candidates “are now under more pressure than ever to sort of adopt this pessimism and darkness in terms of assessing the future of the greatest country on planet Earth.”
Democrats’ focus on the middle class and progressive policies “draws the outlines of a general election whose outcome bodes quite well for Democrats,” Earnest said.
Earnest reiterated his comparison that the drawn out 2008 Democratic primary ultimately benefited Clinton and President Obama and that a “rigorous debate” in 2016 can do the same for Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“It was a spirited and close race,” Earnest said about Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, in which Clinton and Sanders essentially tied. “But the outcome of Iowa is not indicative of the outcome in New Hampshire,” he added, acknowledging Sanders’s 50 percent lead in the Granite State.
