PHILADELPHIA ― Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager insists there’ll be no lasting impact of the “boisterous and at times cacophonous” protests that marked the first day of the Democratic convention. But the leaking of emails from the Democratic National Committee has damaged attempts at bringing Bernie Sanders’ supporters harmoniously into the fold, Robby Mook concedes.
“I think it was very unfortunate, clearly,” he told The Huffington Post Monday night. “I think it unwound a lot of the work we’ve done to tie our campaigns and our different organizations together. However, I think we will get through this.”
Sitting in a a snack-wrapper strewn room with one TV and no windows in the Wells Fargo Arena, Mook did not wear a sense of panic on his face. Minutes earlier, the convention’s first night had begun with speakers being drowned out by jeers from Sanders’ delegates.
“Honestly, some of the attention that people draw from one dramatic moment or another at a convention, that’s noise,” Mook said of the coverage. “What matters at this convention is talking about Hillary Clinton’s lifelong fight for working families and vision for the future.”
He said the Clinton camp expected the first day to be “a sausage-making day of some sorts.”
By night’s end, Mook looked a bit more prescient. The jeers persisted. But an address from Sanders’ himself had been positively perceived. And though the delegates had continued making their case ― in methodical, loud chants ― the sense in the hall was that the week’s festivities wouldn’t be derailed by it.
The same couldn’t be said about the leaking of DNC emails, which showed members of the committee plotting ways to undermine Sanders’ campaign and tipping the scales of the primary in Clinton’s favor. Conceding the damage, Mook insisted that the more important story was not the content of the emails but the identity of the leaker.
“I’m not the one alleging this,” he said of his argument, leveled earlier in the day, that Russia actors had been behind the hack. “It is experts. No one is reporting that we are wrong. People are reporting anything from we may be right, to we are almost certainly right. And look, if this is true, it is incredibly disturbing, the idea that a foreign nation would be acting aggressively to influence the outcome of our elections. I don’t think there is any greater threat to our national security, the idea that a country can manipulate who is in charge.”
Mook declined repeated questions as to whether he believed these same Russian actors had leaked then DNC emails at the explicit behest of Donald Trump’s campaign. He would only note that various ways in which the GOP presidential candidate had made statements our outlined policies favorable to the Russians.
As for Trump, Mook said he wasn’t terribly surprised about the polling bounce that the Republican nominee had received from his convention in Cleveland. But he did seem aware of the jitters Democrats have begun to express that a dramatically better-funded Clinton campaign remains in a tight race at this juncture.
Clinton had spent $57 million on ads to Trump’s $4 million as of mid-July, while polling averages have showed him closing the gap. The numbers would be worse if not for the expenditures, Mook said. They countered the negative headlines emanating from congressional GOP investigations into the consulate attacks in Benghazi and hearings over Clinton’s use of a private email, Mook argued. He referred to these investigations as “publicly funded opposition research projects.”
“People always love miraculous things that we should be able to get up on TV and pick up 10 points voter night just like a congressional candidate with 10 percent name recognition,” he said. “Well, that’s not going to happen. But we can help give voters a fuller understanding of our case so that when that negative incoming comes from the other side, when Donald Trump attacks her at the convention that they have a broader context in which to evaluate that information.”
Moving out of the convention, Mook said that the Clinton campaign would make two strategic alterations. One would be to lean more heavily into an economic argument. “We really need to help people understand the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on the economy, because I don’t think that most people do,” said Mook. “We are going to spend a lot of time in August on that: in our earned media and our paid media and our digital space.”
The other would be to ramp up efforts to mobilize the vote. The Clinton campaign has quite publicly embraced a 50-state strategy to the election. And Mook said they wouldn’t revisit that approach, even if there was a push to consolidate resources in strategic states. The election, he predicted, would not be won by bleeding Trump out ― making him compete in so many states that he was left vulnerable in all of them.
“I think that’s a mistake,” said Mook. “I think it is a mistake to think we are going to win this because of resources. I think we’re gonna win it because we have a better argument and we do a better job of mobilizing people.”
Before You Go
