A thousand explanations have emerged since Election Day of how Hillary Clinton lost.
The Russians and the FBI, two popular culprits, may have contributed in their own way to her defeat, but Clinton’s own campaign deserves tons of blame.
Since Election Day, remarkable reports have come out, alleging jaw-dropping errors by Clinton’s team. We’re trying to keep a running tally.
The latest in the growing list of Clinton’s reported campaign mistakes involves her chief primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
Here’s the gist: Clinton’s campaign reportedly ignored advice and counsel from Sanders’ people during the general election, despite that the senator’s primary victories in places like Michigan and Wisconsin — victories which suggested team Sanders knew a thing or two about rural and working-class voters.
The Daily Beast reported Tuesday:
[T]he “Bernie world” side was offering Clinton’s team their plans — strategy memos, lists of hardened state organizers, timelines, data, the works — to win over certain voters in areas she ultimately lost but where Sanders had won during the primary.
…
Assurances were then made with various Clinton senior staffers that they would follow through with subsequent meetings and phone calls to address these gaps and warnings. Instead, meetings were canceled and “rescheduled” into oblivion.
One high-profile Democratic operative confirmed to the Beast that the Clinton team seemed uninterested in listening to warnings from the Sanders camp.
“I offered to help and never heard back from anybody — quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised,” said Robert Becker, who handled the Sanders’ operations in Iowa and Michigan during the Democratic primary.
“There was no outreach to me.”
The Daily Beast article comes on the heels of separate reports, which, when taken together, paint a deeply unflattering picture of the Clinton campaign team.
Here are the other reported missteps:
- Clinton’s team allegedly scolded SEIU volunteers who took it upon themselves to bolster support in Michigan. The campaign reasoned at the time that they needed those volunteers to stay in Iowa to fool Trump into thinking he should focus his attention in the Hawkeye State.
- The failed presidential candidate’s team for some reason actually agreed to a plan concocted by interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile in which millions of campaign dollars were dumped into efforts to boost popular voter turnout in safe, Democratic-leaning strongholds, including New Orleans and Chicago, and not into crucial swing states.
- Clinton’s team reportedly turned away campaign volunteers in Michigan due to a lack of campaign paraphernalia, including canvassing literature and yard signs.
- Clinton’s campaign manager, 36-year-old Robby Mook, dismissed President Bill Clinton’s repeated warning that they were making a terrible mistake by ignoring white and working-class voters. Like the SEIU volunteers who tried to lock up Michigan for Clinton, the former president also took it upon himself to do what the campaign was apparently unwilling to do itself.
