The Beltway’s Clinton derangement syndrome: What I saw inside a Hillary campaign briefing-HRC Room

[hrmjustin]

HILLARY CLINTON ROOM

JOAN WALSH

So I attended that now-infamous briefing with Clinton campaign officials in Brooklyn last Thursday. I wasn’t going to write about it. No news was broken. Still, I learned some things I could see myself using along the way. It was a snapshot; here’s what senior officials thought about the race six weeks in, and seven months from the first caucuses in Iowa. I knew it was set up to give increasingly restless Clinton beat reporters time to ask questions of campaign officials, to diffuse the obviously building tension. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it seemed worth a try.

But it turns out news was broken, in a way. The briefing itself became news; its structure, its ground rules, its very existence. CNBC’s John Harwood wrote a withering take on it. It led to reporters from rival news organizations gathering to formalize their complaints about access to the Clinton campaign. They told other reporters about the meeting, but strictly on background, an irony that wasn’t entirely lost on the reporters who then covered it. (This Paul Farhi story about said reporters failing to “practice what they preach,” trying to control his story about the flap, is hilarious.)

Media covering the media’s complaints about the way media is treated; what could be more Beltway-centric inside baseball? But as long as people are writing about it, it’s clear the briefing scandal illuminates the increasingly toxic relationship between the press and the Clintons. So I’ll share what I saw, since now the event has become news in itself.

Let me shock you up front: I actually came away from it marginally more sympathetic to the Clinton beat reporters than before I went in. Essentially, they’re a bunch of people trying to do their jobs. Some are well-paid and pampered; many are not. A lot of reporters had schlepped up from a Clinton event in South Carolina earlier that day. They carried luggage and laptop bags and looked tired and bedraggled, resentful at having a command event scheduled that afternoon but unwilling to miss it. What if it did break news?



http://www.salon.com/2015/06/02/the_beltways_clinton_derangement_syndrome_what_i_saw_inside_a_hillary_campaign_briefing/

[Thinkingabout]

1. The press needs to change tactics, they are up in arms about Hillary not anwering questions but

when the questions include the email non scandal, Benghazi, and the never ceasing questions about TPP which she has addressed, why answer any questions. Hillary needs to spend her time dealing with issues which are important to the DNC and her campaign for president. The lock out is on the silly questions, get over asking the same questions over and over.

[hrmjustin]

2. The media owners want a gop president so reporters will try to take her down.

[Thinkingabout]

4. 'Tis true, they do not have an answer for Hillary, she scares the crap out of them and they

seem to get a cheering section in many different areas. She is too smart, too strong and right on the issues.

[hrmjustin]

10. Well said!

[Cha]

16. They have such heavy water to carry.

[hrmjustin]

17. lol. The media is a huge disappointment.

[DURHAM D]

3. Great read.

Thank god there was one adult in the room.

[hrmjustin]

5. This is just so sad.

[DURHAM D]

6. Actually it made me smile.

The "press" is no longer respected and they can't figure out why. Well duh. They try to create and "make" the news not report the news. The are a marauding bunch of hyenas.

Fortunately Hillary has a lot of patience and seems to find the humor in the dilemma as noted by the Jake Tapper interview on HillaryMojo.

[hrmjustin]

9. Yes i think she can work around the media.

[William769]

7. Two things in stark contrast from what you read here on DU by the anti-Hillary crowd

1, "polling shows that stories about the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton’s infamous personal email server, aren’t damaging her – at least among Democratic primary voters".

2, "let voters, not reporters, dominate the campaign."

And the icing on the cake: "After 30 years of wrangling, Clinton can’t win with the national media, but I think the campaign has decided it doesn’t need to. It’s going to look for ways to be cordial, and serve folks beer occasionally, but it’s not going to be driven by irritated beat reporters. And let me use voters as sock puppets here: I really don’t think voters will care." With that said, you will hear griping that she cannot win in GD without the national media the very same people the anti-Hillary crowd despise & hate. Can anyone say irony?

[hrmjustin]

8. Sad but true.

I think it is clear some here are more interested in tearing down instead of building up.

[okasha]

11. Hillary's given the national press a Comanche divorce--

they came looking to get their egoes fed, and found all their stuff and themselves tossed out of the lodge.

That's gotta smart.

[Thinkingabout]

14. Good post, I am not sure you can look at poll numbers and detrmine it is for any

particular reason, just deduction from those who wants to say those are the reasons.

[KMOD]

12. I always find it funny, in a strange way, when the press

tries to make the story about them.

[hrmjustin]

13. The love meta or process stories.

[Cha]

15. I like these two paragraphs.. strong postitive aspects. Mahalo Justin..

"I also learned that campaign polling shows that stories about the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton’s infamous personal email server, aren’t damaging her – at least among Democratic primary voters, and they’re the focus for now. I asked a question about how the campaign balances its need to consolidate the Obama coalition with ideas about reaching working class white voters, and heard them say those are questions more suited to the general election than the primary. They emphasized their polling shows Clinton doing very well with the Obama coalition, despite that spirited 2008 rivalry. I heard a lot of talk about millennials and women, who seem to be the white voters the campaign is best suited to lure.

Finally, I learned that they consider this early period of the campaign a success, on their terms. Clinton’s small-group “dialogues” — oh, it’s not a listening tour, I learned that, too: she’s having dialogue with voters – have performed several functions for the campaign. Yes, they provide kind of a soft launch for a woman who hasn’t campaigned in seven years. They also let her reach voters in a person to person way some of these same reporters said she’d never pull off. And finally, they let voters, not reporters, dominate the campaign. You can mock it, you can wish it were otherwise, but mostly it’s working, so far."

[hrmjustin]

18. It is killing the press that she is not bowing down to them.

[Cha]

19. The "press" isn't the only crowd it's killing. She's learned.

[hrmjustin]

20. Yes that is true.