Former President Bill Clinton admitted Tuesday that his wife, Hillary, has difficulty resonating with the same working class Americans who backed his elections, but put the blame in part on "cultural" factors, and accused Donald Trump of "rubbing salt" in Americans' wounds.
"She’s the first woman candidate for a major office," Clinton told "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose. "She’s trying to get the third term of a party. Winning a third term in a row is difficult. And I will say again, the level of disillusionment with the economic, political, and social orders all over the world is very high."
He does believe that Hillary does fine, "where she got a chance to," but that many people aren't hearing her message.
Meanwhile, he acknowledged that Americans are having troubles and are worried about borders that "seem more like nets than walls," and are also worried about terror incidents, and they are attracted to Trump.
"Well, because he promises … look, because he told them that, he’s brilliant at rubbing salt in their wounds,” Clinton said. "He makes them dislike other people and says, 'I'll fix it all and make it the way it used to be."
Clinton said the party has moved "slightly further to the left" than it was after he last ran for office in 1996, but that the Republican Party has moved "way more to the right."
"This is like physics," Clinton said. “Every reaction inspires an opposite reaction. But I think there are reasons, good reasons, why the Democratic Party should be more populist than it was. And I’d like to explain why.”
There is positive populism and negative populism, he explained, with the negative form being a movement that brings about poor choices and change.
"Bernie Sanders, I think, was a much more positive populist,” Clinton said. “That is, he wanted to do things. He had an affirmative agenda, and so did Hillary. And they argued about which one’s was better.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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