Clinton camp’s Harvard lash out won’t advance their ideas

Going in, everyone knew this year’s session could be very hot. Parts of the discussion were blazing. 

I have worked on lots of campaigns. Lost some, but won far more. I like to describe campaign work as white-collar migrant work: We spend two years working on a one-day sale, pack the car, and get out of town.

Losing is always tough. But irrational anger and illogical blame are clearly pointless.

Last week at Harvard, Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff was still pretty exasperated. Tired of course, but some of what they are saying simply doesn’t make any sense.

I don’t know anyone in America who thought the Clinton campaign team was running a bad effort. In fact, all year long it was praised for its sophistication and size.   

Harvard spat between Clinton, Trump camps proves Dems can’t accept Trump’s improving https://t.co/o2UMtihUCK

— Washington DC News (@washdcnews) December 3, 2016

I, for one, got tired of having to defend the Trump campaign’s voter turnout program against the sheer number of offices the Clinton campaign had in places like Florida and Ohio.   

They ran a good campaign. However, their candidate was not always helpful to the effort. The Clinton campaign was a behemoth without a compelling messenger. The only thing “I’m With Her” meant was “I’m not with him.” There was no hope, no promise of change and no lofty goals. 

The Clinton campaign theme boiled down to “Donald Trump is a racist.” At Harvard this week, the hits just kept coming — famous exchanges like “I would rather lose than win the way you did.”  

They repeatedly tried to paint President-elect Trump as a racist. I have the scars to show it from my appearances on television. But the charge failed to persuade anyone who wasn’t already a Clinton supporter.

If they really believe Trump is a racist, which in my mind puts them in the category of needing mental health attention, then why didn’t the charge work?

Is it that America is now racist? Is it that dumb American voters were simply too stupid to understand?

Surely they understand how out-of-touch those beliefs would be. If not, then elitism will be the death of progressive politics.

The charge didn’t work for two reasons, both of which are very hard for the Clinton campaign to stomach.

The primary reason, of course, is that it is not true. The second is that their messenger was in no position to accuse anyone of anything. She had ruined her “trustworthiness” time and time again by giving partial truths to spin away her mistakes.

After countless versions of why she installed a server, what was on it, who knew, and what had been erased, her truthfulness account with the voters was completely vanquished.  

It is impossible to be persuasive when your audience believes you to be a liar. Now, to be fair, not everyone thought she was a liar, but millions of voters did.

At Harvard, the campaign was in full fighting mode about all of the press attention to the emails, FBI Director Comey’s first letter and then his second letter.  But let’s be candid and honest.  

These were all unforced errors. There was never any compelling reason to erase anything, give partial answers, and swear everything was turned over only to find out later on that it had not all been turned over.

After Hillary Clinton swore to the FBI that it had everything that existed for its investigation in exchange for a lot of immunity agreements, suddenly thousands and thousands of  new emails turned up.  Director Comey had a right to be angry.  He had no choice but to order a review of those emails.

It wasn’t the Director’s fault the emails hadn’t been turned over originally. Blaming him for the campaign’s unforced errors is absurd.

There is no doubt much to be angry about this cycle. No one expects this country to heal very quickly. But being angry with someone else over your own unforced errors is irrational.

Donald Trump ran a compelling campaign with a powerful message. It resonated deeply with what was once a core group of Democratic voters. Trump won union households in Ohio. His unexpected victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were the direct result of his compelling message.

Hillary Clinton lost this election because she had an inferior message and a massive credibility problem. Continuing to call President-elect Trump and his team racist is both an admission of not understanding the voters and a lack of self-awareness.

Donald Trump is not a racist. American voters are not stupid. And unforced errors are no one’s fault but your own.  Unbridled hate for someone is woven from the same fibers as racism. This hate doesn’t advance your cause. This hate will never alter the outcome.  This hate can consume and blind you just like racism.

Barry Bennett is CEO of Synovation Solutions and is a conservative political strategist.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.