#Hillary2016’s pre-campaign hires spark allegations of “white dudefest 2016”
The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak has an unintentionally hilarious piece on the state of La Clinton’s “pre-campaign” hires and how the current “all-white, all-male” cast has Democrat strategists hitting the panic button:
Hillary Clintonβs pre-presidential campaign has made some high-profile hires recentlyβbut all of them, so far, are white males. And Democrats have noticed.
Does Hillary Clinton need binders full of women?
Some Democrats, particularly women and people of color, think so.
In interviews with The Daily Beast, nearly a dozen Democrats, said they were worried Clintonβs hires for the top echelons of her pre-campaign havenβt taken gender and racial diversity into account.
Their concern started after early leaks about heavy hitters recruited for the likely 2016 presidential candidateβs proto-campaign all had two distinct things in common: they were white and male.
βDemocrats need a leader that can bring together races and nationalities, especially now and especially to win. That starts at the top of the campaign, and Hillary Clinton will need to demonstrate that level of commitment to set the right tone and strategy going forwardβ said Aimee Allison, senior VP at PowerPAC+, a group founded by major Democratic donor Steve Phillips to build the βpolitical power of the multiracial majority.β
The situation is altogether more jarring, several Democrats interviewed said, when one considers 2008 Hillaryβs campaign manager was Patti Solis Doyle, the first Hispanic woman to manage a presidential campaign.
One operative quipped that the top levels of the campaign are in danger of looking like βwhite dudefest 2016.β
And it gets even better. Read on:
The Democrats who spoke to The Daily Beast didnβt want to be named for a variety of reasons: some were trying to land campaign positions in the 2016 election cycle, or their bosses are expected to support Hillary, or they feared retribution and wanted to speak freely.
The frustrations over racial and gender diversity are especially acute among those staffers who worked on the most recent Obama campaign. Many of them found that women and minority staffers were not elevated to the very top rungs of the campaign structureβnor did they receive nearly enough credit for its eventual success.
One post-campaign retrospective from Rolling Stone drew particular ireβit pointed out ten of the Obama campaignβs βreal heroes,β nine of whom were men.
The question of diversity Clinton could face was handled improperly by Obama in the last election cycle, said a strategist who worked on the presidentβs reelection campaign.
βOn these historic campaigns, where youβre trying to change the very image of what the word βpresidentβ evokes, what you think of when you think of the word βpresident,β the leadership was pretty male, pretty white,β she said.
Not exactly a surprise when you consider the White House won’t even practice what it preaches when it comes to one of their pet issues: “equal pay.” As always, it’s “do as I say and not as I do” with Democrats – no matter the issue, really.
And related to “Hillary 2016” talk, Mike Allen at Politico has a good read on her (predicted) future political plans, and talked to numerous Democrats “close to the Clintons” who say she will officially launch her second campaign for President in April and that massive preparation is underway in advance of the expected announcement. Β The article also says Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), long speculated to be running and who could have quite possibly been Hillary’s toughest competition in the primaries, “is making no behind-the-scenes preparations” – so apparently Warren was serious when she said she had no plans to run.
As they say, stay tuned, because there’s never a dull moment when it comes to the Clinton political machine … nor the media’s love/hate relationship with Bill and Hill.