Democrats are less-than-thrilled to learn their 2016 presidential nominee over the weekend attacked the states that voted for President Trump.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t care. The fallout is not her problem.
What she said in front of an overseas audience about the states that voted Republican is as cheap and divisive as anything Trump himself has said, and it has left Democrats scrambling to do damage control.
“Those are kind of fighting words for me because I’m partial to Missouri voters,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told the Washington Post. “I don’t think that’s the way you should talk about any voter, especially ones in my state.
A 2016 Clinton surrogate said elsewhere, “She’s annoying me. She’s annoying everyone, as far as I can tell. Who lets her say these things?
“Look, this was bad. I can’t sugarcoat it,” Clinton’s former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, said Tuesday evening.
“She was wrong and clearly it’s not helpful to Democrats going into the midterms and certainly not going into 2020,” she added. “She’s put herself in a position where Democrats are going to have to distance themselves from these remarks and distance themselves from her, particularly those Democrats that are running in the states that Donald Trump won.
Clinton’s remarks at the India Today Conclave 2018 in Mumbai have been characterized as tone-deaf. Some have even said she put her foot in her mouth. She did nothing of the sort.
Unlike the president, Clinton is a careful speaker, only seldom departing from comments that have been prepared in advance. The idea that her comments about Trump supporters came tumbling out of her mouth spontaneously is absurd, especially considering her fondness for focus groups.
Clinton has been in politics for 30-plus years. She knows her comments may put vulnerable red- and purple-state Democrats in a tough place. She doesn’t care.
The former secretary of state is known for having a vindictive mean streak (ask anyone who crossed her in 2008), and she has a long list of people she holds responsible for her 2016 defeat. The Democratic National Committee is on that list. She has also declared herself a leader of the anti-Trump “resistance,” a gig that has the potential to be far more lucrative and rewarding than the normally quiet life of a failed presidential candidate. Put all this together and you get an idea of what’s going on.
Like that stupid 1998 movie “Bulworth,” Clinton is saying what she really thinks. But that’s where the similarities end. Her cutting loose has nothing to do with alleviating her conscience. It has nothing to do with her simply wanting out of the game. It has everything to do with settling scores. It has everything to do with protecting her brand by absolving herself of responsibility for 2016. It also has to do with the fact that attacks like the one she launched Saturday are done for the benefit of audiences that are eager to pay to hear their political, social and ideological biases confirmed.
Clinton is likely never running for office again, so she doesn’t see the fallout from her finger-pointing and denigrating of opponents as her her problem. She doesn’t have to pretend anymore to care about all the voting blocs. She doesn’t even have to care about the Democratic Party. She is free from all of that.
She is simply doing what Clintons do best: watching out for her own interests, consequences be damned.
