Clinton supporters worry their candidate has no clear message
Following their candidate's trouncing in the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton supporters are worried that the Bernie Sanders campaign is winning the messaging game.
"I love her but I still don't understand what her campaign is about," a Clinton voter told The Hill. "If I had to take stock, I'd say [lack of clear messaging is] a big, if not the biggest problem facing the campaign," said another. Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist who worked for Al Gore in the 2000 election, agreed, arguing that Clinton "has not laid out a compelling vision for where she wants to take the country," failing to weave varying policy priorities into a coherent theme.
In the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, Clinton performed remarkably poorly among millennial voters, some of whom cite Clinton's lack of a consistent message as a reason why they're feeling the Bern. "I feel like Clinton lies a lot," said one college-age voter in New Hampshire. "She changes her views for every group she speaks to."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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