Former Obama advisor David Axelrod insulted Hillary Clinton in a very unique way before the 2008 presidential primary, according to documents contained in his new memoir.
Published in Axelrod’s book “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics” is a 12-page strategic memo that the advisor wrote in 2006 to Obama ahead of his first presidential campaign. In the memo, Axelrod described Hillary Clinton as “not a healing figure.”
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“Hillary… and her team have played this course many times before. They know every bunker, sand trap and the lay of the greens,” read the memo, according to the Washington Times. “And she has the best caddy in the business. But for all of her advantages, she is not a healing figure. … The more she tries to moderate her image, the more she … compounds her exposure as an opportunist.”
Moreover, Axelrod also alleged in the memo that Clinton would faced difficulty fashioning herself as a “candidate of the future.”
“After two decades of the Bush-Clinton saga, making herself the candidate of the future will be a challenge,” he wrote.
Though it’s now nearly a decade since Axelrod expressed these specific views, the former White House advisor certainly has not stopped criticizing Clinton. Late last year, Axelrod worried on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Clinton has not yet established what she’ll be running on ahead of her likely bid for president in 2016.
“What happened in 2008 was that Hillary’s candidacy got out in front of any rationale for it and the danger is that that’s happening again,” asserted Axelrod. “You hear ‘Ready for Hillary.’ It’s like, ‘Ready for what?’ And now Hillary’s task is define what it is that she’s running for and running about and what would the future look like under another President Clinton.”
And, other individuals have unknowingly echoed Axelrod’s 2006 memo in characterizing Clinton as a candidate of the past, not the future.
For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently described Clinton’s policies as “20th century relics” and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) likewise called Clinton a 20th century candidate. Both Rubio and Walker are likely GOP presidential candidates in 2016.
Axelrod has been making the media rounds promoting his book, which hit shelves Tuesday.
