Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that Democrats need to do better at selling their agenda ahead of November while acknowledging that midterm elections “are obviously always difficult for the party in power.”
The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the “hand-wringing” occurring among Democrats over how far left or center the party should go is part of their DNA “whether we’re in or out of power.”
“I’m not quite sure what the disconnect is between the accomplishments of the administration, and this Congress, and the understanding of what’s been done, and the impact it will have on the American public, and some of the polling and the ongoing hand-wringing,” she said.
Nonetheless, Clinton said Democrats need to stand up to Republicans’ “nuttiness” and that Americans don’t “want to be governed by people who live in a totally different reality.”
“I would add that in Republican Party politics, you have an even greater disconnect,” she said. “Unfortunately, most of that party has now gone to the extreme and are saying and doing things that have no basis in reality. So we’ve got a good case to make if we get our focus in the right place to do it.”
Clinton said President Joe Biden “is doing a very good job,” praising his handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “excellent” and also pointing to the party’s passage of the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure package.
Still, she called out America’s withdrawal of Afghanistan last year, saying she doesn’t think it helped Biden politically. In dealing with Russia, however, Clinton said, “One of the smartest things that has been done was releasing classified intelligence to prevent the false-flag kinds of operations that Putin was counting on.”
“So I think a lot of lessons have been learned,” Clinton said. “But there is a lot of good accomplishments to be putting up on the board. And the Democrats in office and out need to be doing a better job of making the case.”
