Voters are more polarized than ever and media are to blame for it, according to presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think there are a number of factors. Again, I’m not sure I totally understand it all. The media environment, particularly the social media environment, drives negativity. It’s what captures eyeballs. It’s what gets people to tune in or log on. It is just human nature,” she said in an interview published Monday by Vox.com.
“Saying something negative about somebody, whether it was a negative ad 30 years ago or a negative tweet or other allegations today … there’s just a really rich environment for that to capture people’s minds and change their attitudes,” she added.
Her remarks, which were made during an interview conducted on June 22, come as she battles a 40-55 percent favorable-unfavorable rating, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
Recent polling also found that 56 percent of voters disapprove of how the Federal Bureau of Investigation handled its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private, unauthorized email server when she worked at the State Department.
Still, Clinton said her lousy polling numbers, and voter polarization in general, are not in response to any specific event, but because new media focuses on pushing negativity, Clinton alleged in her Vox.com interview.
“There’s a lot of behavioral science that if you attack someone endlessly, even if none of what you say is true, the very fact of attacking that person raises doubts and creates a negative perspective. As someone Exhibit A on that, since it has been a long time that I’ve been in that position, I get that. I get it,” she said.
“And it’s always amusing to me that when I have a job, I have really high approval ratings; when I’m actually doing the work, I get reelected with 67 percent of the vote running for reelection in the Senate. When I’m secretary of state, I have [a] 66 percent approval rating,” she added.
Clinton also claimed her unfavorable polling numbers only kicked in when the “discredited negativity” came out in opposition to her second White House bid.
“[I]t seems to be part of the political climate now that is just going to have to be dealt with,” she said. “But I am really confident that I can break through that and I can continue to build an electoral victory in November. And then once I’m doing the job, we’ll be back to people viewing me as the person doing the job instead of the person seeking the job.”
“Look, I’m not making any special plea, because it’s just reality. But every recent study has shown that if you take all of the media and all of the Republicans and all of the independent expenditures, tens of millions of dollars of negative attacks have been run against me,” she added. “And that’s just something I’ve learned to live with, and I don’t pay a lot of attention to it anymore.”
Clinton’s interviewer, Ezra Klein, pushed her on whether she has contributed to the general polarization in American politics, and pointed specifically to an October Democratic debate when the she said she is “proudest” to have Republicans as an enemy.
“Not very much. I mean, you can go back and look at how I’ve worked with Republicans, and I think I have a very strong base of relationships with them and evidence of that,” she responded.
“But, you know, they say terrible things about me, much worse than anything I’ve ever said about them. That just seems to be part of the political back and forth now — to appeal to your base, to appeal to the ideologues who support you,” she added. “We have become so divided, and we’ve got to try to get people back listening to each other and trying to roll up our sleeves and solve these problems that we face, and I think we can do that.”
