MSNBC host Joy Reid said if there’s anyone who might have advice on how to run a successful campaign against President Trump, it’s Hillary Clinton.
“Hillary Clinton did everything right in terms of winning the right demographics, winning the right margins among voters of color — close to it. She didn’t get quite as much as Barack Obama — but there were all these outside forces, including Russia, which is back,” Reid said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
One of the biggest critiques of the Clinton campaign was her lack of focus on the onetime “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which Trump won in 2016.
Critics viewed Clinton’s refusal to campaign in Wisconsin as particularly egregious as the state had not backed a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. This year, the Democratic National Committee is planning to hold its 2020 convention in Milwaukee, although it has been pared back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Clinton, a former secretary of state, senator, and first lady, has brushed off that criticism, conceding only that she “supposed” that more campaign stops in the Midwest could have provided her a few thousand more votes that could have won her a few more states. She too has blamed outside factors for her defeat.
Reid, who has been with MSNBC for years and was just named the network’s newest prime-time host this month, will have Clinton and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on as guests on the first episode of The ReidOut on Monday night.
Reid said she hopes Clinton can provide some insight for Biden’s campaign to secure a victory to course correct the past four years of the Trump administration.
“We’ve got Hillary Clinton, obviously, who was the nominee in 2016, so she knows what it means to face Donald Trump in an election better than anyone else,” Reid said. “And, of course, Joe Biden, who has that task now and who, if he becomes president, will have the monumental task of trying to walk this country back from what I think a lot of people would agree has been a disaster, including on coronavirus.”
