Is Hillary Clinton on the verge of a meltdown?
On the heels of reports that many Democrats aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of her running for president again, the former First Lady last week launched a bizarre attack on the Democratic National Committee, suggesting that it had sabotaged her 2016 campaign by failing to set up a top-notch data operation to help her identify and track key voter groups, especially in the swing states.
Clinton claimed that the DNC data operation was so “inept” and “underfunded,” that she had to contribute her own campaign money just to keep it going.
It’s only the latest excuse that Clinton has invented to try to explain how she got beaten last fall, and it’s left many Democrats apoplectic.
“Fucking bullshit,” is how Andrew Therriault, the former director of DNC data operations, reacted in a tweet after learning of Clinton’s comments. In fact, there was plenty of data available showing that none of the key Rust Belt States she ended up losing, including Pennsylvania and Michigan were “safe” – but Clinton’s campaign simply ignored that data on the assumption that they knew the landscape better, he noted.
Clinton’s comments come after news reports have circulated that many Democrats are growing leery of Clinton’s recent efforts to declare herself the leader of the “resistance” to Trump’s presidency.
In a press conference several weeks ago, Clinton described her plans to gin up grassroots protest against Trump domestic and foreign policies. Many analysts saw it as a transparent attempt to boost her prospects for yet another bid for the Democratic Party nomination in 2020.
Clinton, though widely criticized for two disastrous White House bids in 2008 and 2006, seems desperate to get back in the political game – by any means possible.
Back in February, her allies floated the idea that she might run for Mayor of New York. The current Democratic mayor, Bill De Blasio, was seen as facing tough re-election prospects due to a corruption scandal.
But a poll taken among New Yorkers found overwhelming opposition to the idea. And DeBlasio no longer appears so vulnerable.
The DNC’s Therriault has deleted his angry tweets about Clinton but other Democrats close to the DNC have begun weighing in.
Most have indirectly supported Therriault noting that the DNC data operation helped power Democrats to a razor-thin victory in the governor’s race in North Carolina last November.
In an interview with the Hill newspaper, Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, a data firm that works with many Democratic clients, defended the DNC’s 2016 efforts as “the most robust data operation the DNC has ever seen.”
Bonier also noted in a series of tweets that, “the Clinton team was using DNC data throughout the primary. If it was that bad, they knew that for two years but did nothing.”
Much of the DNC’s data operation traces its root to Barack Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns. Obama pioneered methods of organizing campaign volunteers and of identifying voter niches by election district that vastly overshadowed the GOP’s own field operation. These advanced techniques – supported by social media — were widely credited with having propelled Obama over John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012
Clinton was supposed to have inherited these methods and some of the personnel that proved so instrumental to Obama. Any many Democrats hoped that inheritance would allow Clinton to overcome the kind of clunky and disorganized field operations that doomed her own campaign in 2008.
But party insiders say that it was hard to teach the old Clinton dog new Obama tricks.
The data are merely the “raw ingredients,” argues John Hanger a Democratic campaign consultant. “[It’s] the chef that decides what to do with them.”
And the chef, Clinton’s campaign team, was simply not up to the job.
Few Democratic officials seem willing to speak out publicly against a third Clinton bid for the presidency. The DNC’s recently elected chair, Tom Perez, is a staunch Clinton loyalist. He was rumored to have been one of two Hispanic candidates to be vetted as her possible running mate in 2016.
When asked directly, Perez and others, including Clinton’s former campaign manager Robby Mook, seem to welcome the idea of her running again.
But Clinton’s comments and her public demeanor are beginning to raise eyebrows.
During her recent Wellesley commencement address she broke into a prolonged coughing fit much like previous ones that have raised concerns about the state of her health and her ability to survive the stresses of the presidency were she to be elected.
And just as baffling was her dress. Wearing a black beret, Clinton seemed to be channeling the ghost of Monica Lewinsky, the former white House intern whose affair with Bill Clinton led to his impeachment in the House, and which tarnished the campaign of his chosen successor, Al Gore.
Lewinsky was notorious for wearing a nearly identical black beret during her many appearances at campaign events where she often hugged the former president.
Clinton, of course, once famously dismissed Lewinsky as a “narcissistic loony-toon.”
But some of the former First Lady’s angry and disappointed critics – who’ve grown tired of her non-stop grandstanding and finger-pointing – are beginning to wonder if shes suffering from a similar syndrome