Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just gave a lesson in how not to talk about the 2024 election.
During an interview on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” on Monday, Fallon asked Clinton to weigh in on the key predicament facing both President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as Election Day approaches: “What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices?”
Clinton’s response was blunt: “Get over yourself, those are the two choices.”
After an affirming comment from Fallon — “Yeah. I love that!” — the crowd began to clap.
She continued, “You know, it’s kind of like, one is old and effective and compassionate, has a heart and really cares about people; and one is old and has been charged with 91 felonies. I don’t understand why this is even a hard choice. Really. I don’t understand it. But we have to go through the election and, hopefully, people will realize what’s at stake because it’s an existential question.”
The core problem with Clinton’s communication style in her remarks is an absence of empathy.
Clinton is right that the 2024 election has possibly existential stakes for our democracy, and that Trump and Biden are vastly different candidates. But how she expressed that view left more than a little to be desired. While she may not hold office anymore, she remains among the most prominent political figures in the country and, like any Biden surrogate, she has a responsibility to address voters’ doubts in a way that meets them where they are. She not only failed to do that — she seemed uninterested in it.
The core problem with Clinton’s communication style in her remarks is an absence of empathy. Polling indicates that Biden is cursed by the same problem as she was in 2016 — high unfavorability that puts him on roughly equal footing with Trump. Clinton not only fails to grapple with the reasons that some segments of the population might find both candidates prohibitively distasteful, but also appears to not want to understand it. “Get over yourself” and “I don’t understand it” are not messages of persuasion. Nor do they qualify as firing up the base. They’re borderline scornful.
But any serious political observer should be able to understand why Biden’s disapproval is high. Yes, much of the blame lies with a combination of political polarization and the burden of incumbency. Voters frequently attribute everything bad in society to the president, regardless of whether he has influence over it. But some of it is linked to inflation during Biden’s presidency, and the belief among many voters that Trump’s management of the economy benefited them more than Biden’s. “Get over yourself” will not rebut those arguments.
Clinton’s self-satisfied response also betrays an inattentiveness to one of the biggest issues dividing the Democratic caucus. While she speaks of Biden being self-evidently “compassionate,” polling indicates that huge swaths of the Democratic electorate — particularly young people — disapprove of his approach to Israel’s brutalization of the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks. While it’s unclear what things will look like closer to November, Biden’s alienation of young and progressive voters on the issue could dampen the turnout. Expressing bewilderment at people who believe that Biden is complicit in genocide will only further repel those who believe that a protest vote or deliberate abstention is in order.
This is to say nothing of engaging the huge part of the American public that never votes — one-third of eligible voters didn’t vote in the last election. This group of people can't be dismissed as a bunch of apolitical morons who can’t tell that Biden and Trump are different people. As a population that skews low-income and nonwhite, a disproportionate number of them are likely to feel that mainstream institutional politics have little to offer them and that their lives are not meaningfully changed by who is in office. That’s far from an unreasonable sentiment to hold, and it won't change unless Democrats view it as their responsibility to change that.
Rather than dismissing the parts of the public who find both candidates objectionable, Democrats should be scrambling to crack the code to winning them over. Curiosity on this matter will not just lead to more delicate messaging, but also policy ambition. What is Biden willing to do to address the mass killing of civilians in Gaza? What can he offer people who feel they’re far away from being able to pay their most basic bills? 2024 is an existential election for democracy — but these, too, are existential questions.
