Amazingly, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a Communications Director. Constructing approximately five answers to press questions per year must be an incredibly grueling job.
Monday morning Jennifer Palmieri sat down with MSNBC’s Morning Joe to chat about the state of the campaign.
Morning Joe showed a absurdly ridiculous footage of press who were required to stay behind a literal mobile rope-line as Mrs. Clinton made her way through a parade.
“We try to allow as much access as possible, but it can’t get in the way of her being able to campaign,” Palmieri said of the Clinton campaign’s dealings with media. “We’re doing smaller events. That’s really important to her. That’s like the foundation she wants to get in the beginning of the campaign and talking to voters.”
As much access as possible?
“She’s thought a lot about how she wants to interact with voters, particularly at the beginning of the process and it was really important to us that she build that foundation… She’s been Secretary of State for four years, she hasn’t been out talking with, been able to campaign, and wanted to get that, be able to do a lot of one on one’s, you can’t do that forever in a country of three hundred million people, but she really wanted to get that part done before we started talking to the national media.”
“The press is important, they’re not as important as voters but they’re an important part of the process. Now we’re ready to do, she’s been doing local interviews we’re going to do national interviews too. I also understand because I do watch what happens around this table, that we pay a price with the press when we don’t do interviews and when we do do smaller events that don’t have the access that a larger event may allow.”
Oh, so it’s because the campaign holds smaller events that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hold press conferences or take questions from the press. Now it all makes sense.
But what about self-described socialist Bernie Sanders? When asked about the wild-haired Senator, Palmieri confirmed the campaign was concerned.
“We’re worried about him, sure. He’s a force. He’ll be a serious force for the campaign and I don’t think that will diminish. We’ve said from the start this is going to be very competitive… it’s to be expected that Sanders would do well in a Democratic primary. I think we don’t need to attack each other. He’ll run his campaign, we’ll run ours… we knew this was going to happen in the Iowa caucus. It’s going to be a slog, but I feel like she will win and I feel like she will prevail.”
Sanders has been gaining traction in the polls, true. But for a platform so left of center, I find it hard to believe Palmieri’s concerns are grave. Wisdom dictates that underestimating one’s opponent is unadvisable, but it will be inordinately difficult for anyone to best the Clinton machine.
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