The Huffington Post caused quite a stir two weeks ago with the now-infamous report about Barack Obama’s remarks about “bitter” working-class families in small towns. Today, the Huffington Post has a follow-up report about Hillary Clinton.
During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.
But a telling anecdote from her husband’s administration shows Hillary Clinton’s attitudes about the “lunch-bucket Democrats” are not exactly pristine.
In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.
“Screw ’em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”
Sam Stein’s HuffPost item notes that the anecdote was documented in Benjamin Barber’s book, “The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House,” and was confirmed by Harry Boyte, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship who was at the same retreat.
“[Hillary Clinton] sees herself as the champion of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy mentality,” Boyte said. “The comment before that was that ‘the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they weren’t on our side,’ and she was agreeing with that comment. She said we should write them off: screw them.”
So, is this the next big example of “molehill politics“? It’s hard to predict, but I kind of doubt it.
First, there’s no audio or video. Barber and Boyte say they heard the same comment, but it’s tough to base a media flare-up on their recollections.
Second, if Clinton made the comments, she did so more than 13 years ago. Obama’s comments came two weeks ago, in the midst of the race, during a campaign fundraiser.
Third, I don’t imagine the Obama campaign would pursue this, in large part because it would keep his controversial comments in the news, as observers compared the two.
And for what it’s worth, I get the sense Clinton’s attitudes have changed over the last 13 years. She reportedly said “screw ’em” in relation to those working-class voters she perceived as having shifted to the GOP, but since then, she’s demonstrated far more willingness to reach out to political opponents on the Republican side of the aisle.
Still, the last HuffPost item led to quite an uproar, and we’ll see if this sparks similar interest. I’d be surprised if it did, but after watching this campaign for a while, I’ve been surprised before.
Stein concluded, “The Clinton campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.”
We’ll see what happens.