Hillary Clinton Lost Iowa Because She’s Untrustworthy And Out-Of-Touch
Don’t buy the Hillary Clinton spin. She lost Iowa, and lost badly. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to put away a 74-year-old self-avowed socialist who last year trailed by a whopping 51 points in the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll.
Even more damaging were some of the intangibles found in the New York Times’ entrance polling. Among voters looking for someone who “cares about people like me,” Sanders trounced Clinton 74–22 percent; for those who sought an “honest and trustworthy candidate,” the gulf was even wider — Clinton got only 10 percent compared to Sanders’ 83 percent.
During the 2000 presidential election, voters saw then-Vice President Al Gore (D-TN) as a serial exaggerator with a problem telling the truth. In 2004, U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) was defined in the minds of the American people as an opportunistic flip-flopper, unsuitable to be a wartime commander-in-chief.
From the outset of both races, Republicans never stopped driving these themes because political narratives don’t take hold overnight. They require time, discipline and consistency to truly sink in with the American public.
In both 2008 and 2012, President Barack Obama (D-Il) was never defined by a comparable line of attack, and that is a big reason I believe he won two national elections.
Since the day America Rising opened its doors in March 2013, when most Americans were not even thinking about another presidential campaign, our organization relentlessly pushed the narrative that Secretary Clinton is “dishonest” and “untrustworthy.” Just like with Gore and Kerry, we have never stopped hammering these two themes, and it’s a big reason Secretary Clinton finds herself in the unenviable position she’s in today.
Throughout 2013, the Clintons’ propensity to live at the crossroads of money and politics was repeatedly exposed. The millions of dollars flowing into the Clinton Foundation (including from foreign governments) reminded voters that the Clintons practically invented the term “crony capitalism” when they opened the White House to the highest bidders.
During Secretary Clinton’s 2014 book tour that served as her re-introduction to politics, America Rising helped echo and drive her incredibly tone-deaf statement about being “dead broke.”
As the calendar turned to 2015, the public’s attention was drawn to her secret email server, and holes were immediately poked in her “convenience” excuse with an America Rising video of her bragging about having two email devices.
Throughout this campaign, Secretary Clinton has struggled to keep up with the rapid race to the left by the Democratic Party, whose hijacking by radical protest movements and fringe socialists would make it unrecognizable to its former leaders like President John F. Kennedy (D-MA).
In the end, Secretary Clinton is still the odds-on favorite to ultimately emerge as the Democrats’ nominee, although the Clinton campaign can’t be looking forward to the caucuses in Nevada and Colorado coming down the road.
What is indisputable is the race should never have become this close. I also do know this: if Secretary Clinton does end up as the nominee of the Democratic Party, her problems with “trust” and “honesty” are just beginning. America Rising and Republican allies, including but not limited to the Republican National Committee, American Crossroads, Future45 and Citizens United, will never let their feet off the gas on these important issues.
