Hillary’s re-launch had all the excitement of a honeymoon with Rosie O’Donnell. All I could think as I watched the festivities is, “How much did paying those people cost the campaign?!”
Hillary should send a “Thank You!” note to Rachel Dolezal for keeping the spotlight off what is yet another Hillary Clinton unmitigated disaster.
Forever the optimist, Hillary planned for “overflow.” And why shouldn’t the most popular woman in the world plan for the wild throngs of supporters and sycophants. Unfortunately, only those paid by Deray showed up.
Even MSNBC couldn’t spin the lack of attendance and the lack of enthusiasm:
ALEX SEITZ-WALD: It was a pretty enthusiastic crowd–there was however an overflow area behind the stage that didn’t really get filled. Campaign officials say that was just a precautionary measure [Ed.: in the unlikely event a lot of people actually wanted to hear Hillary] in case they needed more room. I’d say a largely enthusiastic crowd but they were not overwhelmed.
RICHARD LIU: She was saying how she was going after the everyday American. But those who are maybe watching the background and who was there in the crowd, they didn’t seem to reflect necessarily the everyday American per se, in terms of looking at diversity and those who were there but, of course, that’s just what we saw on the camera. What did you see there on the ground?
JOY REID: Yes, it was a predominantly white crowd. Interestingly enough, it was a pretty young crowd given a campaign-type of event but distribution of age was a lot more what the campaign wants to see and I did speak with a lot of young voters who were excited particularly about issues like gay rights and women’s rights. But yes, in terms of ethnic diversity, the campaign, when I spoke with them, they said they were very happy with the level of diversity. There were African-Americans here, there were Asian-Americans here, there were Latinos here. There were Latinos, deliberately so, on the stage along with African-Americans.
But if you look at the Democratic party as a whole, was this crowd as diverse as the party? No it was not. But that’s something that the campaign is going to have to deal with. It’s also about who’s really paying attention at this particular moment and who’s in New York, quite frankly [Ed.: good point–there are only several million blacks and Latinos in NYC]. So there are a lot of factors going into it, but I would say on the diversity side they were on the low end here.
LIU: Right. So well said there, Joy, about this being one event, on Roosevelt Island, and there are many more events to be had as the election moves on.
