In Hacked Fundraiser Recording, Hillary Mocks Bernie Supporters "Living In Their Parents’ Basement"
The reason why the Trump campaign has been so eager to find transcripts and recordings of the private speeches Hillary Clinton has delivered during her extensive, lucrative speaking career, is because it is there that she reveals that rare glimpse into what she truly thinks, or at least what $250,000 per hour will get her to believe. One such example is a recently hacked recording of Hillary Clinton, where in a private conversation with campaign donors in February, Clinton distanced herself from progressive goals like “free college, free healthcare” and described her place on the political spectrum as spanning from the center-left to the center-right.
The newly disclosed comments first noticed by the Intercept, came in audio from hacked emails revealed this week by the Washington Free Beacon. Clinton was speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by Beatrice Welters, the former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and her husband Anthony Welters, the executive chairman of an investment consulting firm founded by former Clinton aid Cheryl Mills.
The hacked audio provides another peek into the ideological chameleon that Hillary is on a day to day basis. As the Intercept notes, "Clinton has been inconsistent in the past about espousing political labels. She has at times touted herself as stalwart liberal. For instance, she said last July: “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.” But a few months later, she told a group in Ohio: “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center. I plead guilty.”
In one segment of the leaked audio, Hillary focused on her opponent at the time, Bernie Sanders, was pointed to successful programs in Scandinavia which provide universal daycare, family leave, and government sponsored healthcare and college education, as policies that he would seek to adopt. "Progressive" Hillary mocked the compared idea of "free college, free healthcare" to the "extreme" ideas promulgated by the right, which include "populism, nationalism and xenophobia."
It is important to recognize what’s going on in this election. Everybody who’s ever been in an election that I’m aware of is quite bewildered because there is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates. And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel. So as a friend of mine said the other day, I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don’t have much company there. Because it is difficult when you’re running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is — I don’t want to overpromise. I don’t want to tell people things that I know we cannot do.
Recording below::
Clinton then went on to explain why she felt so many Democratic voters, many of whom "live in their parents' basement" were gravitating to Sanders. Ironically, for a presidential candidate that touts the economic recovery the US is going through, she admits these "children of the Great Recession" don't see much of a future...
Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future.
... and with an entire generation unexpectedly finding itself in a dead-end economy, it provides a perfect incubator for what according to Hillary is an army of Bernie supporters: "if you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista... then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing."
I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, “You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.” So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing.
One wonders whose fault it is that millions of young people are stuck in dead end jobs, living in their parents basement, while both Obama and Hillary make TV appearances touting the strength of the economic recovery.
But the punchline was what Hillary, who has been scrambling to secure the much-needed Millennial vote in recent weeks, truly thought about about the millions of young people whose vote she is trying to win: a diatribe of mockery, in which she describes the concept of a political revolution as a "false promise" which has attracted all these disillusioned and disheartened young people "living in their parents' basement." Does Hillary have anything to offer them? No, but she desperately needs their vote, even if behind the scenes at generously paid private functions, she mocks them in front of all those present.
We should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals... But those of us who understand this, who've worked in it know that it's a false promise. But I don't think you tell idealistic people, particularly young people that they've bought into a false promise.
Especially when you are trying to secure their votes?
Then again, considering the eagerness with which Bernie Sanders has endorsed Wall Street's favorite candidate, it is quite clear that the real "false promise" here was Sanders' "revolution" all along. We wonder if in light of this hack, if Bernie Sanders would care to make some statement why he is endosing the candidate who behind closed doors, openly mocks everything that his supporters believe in.
Clinton has been accused numerous times in the past of patronizing young Sanders supporters. On Meet The Press in April, Clinton said she said “I feel sorry sometimes for the young people” who believe Sanders’s claims about her taking money from the fossil fuel industry.
During her remarks, she reiterated her belief that politics is the art of the possible, dismissing the more aspirational approach of Sanders and his supporters. “I want to be very clear about the progress I think we can make,” she said. There was no discussion of her view that the ideology of millions of progressive, young people is a false promise.
And while America's young voters will be given an opportunity to respond to Hillary in just over 5 weeks time, one wonders what, in a world where Donald Trump's every word is brutally attacked by the pro-Clinton media. would emerge if even a handful of Hillary's Wall Street speech transcripts were the finally emerge.
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