After handing the presidency to a dangerous, misogynistic clown-boy, you would think the campaign’s top leadership would be due for some serious soul-searching. But, as Politico reported, it seems that we’re not going to get any introspection from the likes of John Podesta or Jennifer Palmieri anytime soon.
During a call with surrogates yesterday, the top brass offered no apology for the loss. Instead, they blamed the surprise upset on factors outside of their control. When campaign advisers talked to Clinton herself, they told her she lost because of the Comey letter. Some blamed Bernie Sanders for “poisoning” the well with millennials. And overall, the staff believed that “Clinton’s loss ultimately boiled down to white working class voters rejecting her because she was a woman.”
These are the wrong lessons to learn. Perhaps, instead, the campaign should have thought about how Clinton’s brand of celebrity feminism—the “yaas queen” strategy—was never going to win over working-class white women. Or, how they should have taken Sanders’s popularity as a huge clue that this was going to be a change election that would not reward centrist-establishment tendencies. Maybe they shouldn’t have laughed off Bill Clinton when he pointed out that the campaign was doing very little to win white working class votes.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But even after failing to elect Clinton, her campaign still can’t see clearly. Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, told staff that, “Someone in this room is going to manage a presidential campaign one day.” Let’s just hope it’s not him.