Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., does not want to stray too far from the good graces of the political dynasty that made her. Or at least, that’s one explanation for why the junior senator from New York would flatter Hillary Clinton, claiming that the former secretary of state ran a “strong” presidential campaign in 2016.
Clinton’s campaign was anything but strong. In fact, there’s little good that anyone on any side can say about it today.
“I do think all of us who are running, particularly the women candidates, are standing on Hillary’s shoulders right now,” said Gillibrand, who is running in the 2020 Democratic primary, in a recent radio interview. “She did achieve 65 million cracks in the highest and hardest to crack ceiling, and she actually won the popular vote, so she did a lot right.”
I suppose there is a version of reality where winning the popular vote is an important achievement, but this is not that reality. The popular vote does not determine who wins presidential elections, which is why Clinton’s 2016 team was only moderately interested in outperforming Trump in this area. The real prize, as every presidential candidate knows, is the Electoral College, which Clinton lost by a wide margin (304 to 227).
“To win the popular vote by three million votes just shows she ran a strong campaign, and she certainly in my opinion was the most qualified,” Gillibrand continued in the radio interview, “capable person ever to run for president ever, so I loved what she put out there in terms of herself and how much confidence she had and how much she believed in herself and always had a strong vision for America.”
In fact, the opposite is arguably true. A campaign that can win the popular vote and yet fails to win the electoral college is worthy of great ridicule.
I understand the Clintons are Gillibrand’s political patrons and that the New York senator has been walking on eggshells ever since she spoke negatively in 2017 about Bill Clinton’s long, sordid history of treating women as sex objects. But come on. A “strong” campaign would have had a better response to its candidate maligning Trump voters and potential Trump voters as “deplorables.” A “strong” campaign would have come up with a message beyond “it is my turn.” A “strong” campaign would not have benched Bill Clinton in favor of a lightly experienced 36-year-old campaign manager and his computer election model.
A “strong” campaign would have visited Wisconsin at least once during the general election.
Gillibrand knows all of this, but you’ve got to keep happy the people who put you in the Senate.
