Hillary Clinton campaign speech flops with students at Case Western Reserve University

Attendance at the Aug. 27 event was sparse, and amongst the students that did show up, support for Clinton was lukewarm, according to a column in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review.

Several students told columnist Salena Zito they would support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, and one student even said he showed up hoping to see her husband Bill.

“The event here wasn’t just a failure to connect with millennials,” Zito wrote, “but a fundamental inability to read her audience and adjust her speech — or perhaps laziness, or a sense of entitlement that she shouldn’t have to work this hard for support.”

Clinton addressed the students, assuming they all grew up in Ohio, and were old enough to vote when she fought to win the state in her past presidential campaign.

“You lifted me up when I was down and out,” Clinton said, referring to Ohioans who voted for her in the 2008 Democratic primary, failing to recognize that most of the CWRU students were around 12 years old back then.

Clinton otherwise spent the debate slamming Republicans on issues from women’s health to gun control.

“Extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups,” Clinton said. “We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States.”

The Clinton campaign also asked every attendee to sign a loyalty pledge before entering the event.

Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson tweeted back to Zito, clarifying that students were offered the chance to commit their vote, but were not required to do so.

(h/t Campus Reform)