Clinton gives her take on Sanders supporters in leaked fundraising recording
Hacked audio of a conversation between Hillary Clinton and donors during a February fundraising event shows the Democrat nominee describing Bernie Sanders supporters as "children of the Great Recession" who are "living in their parents’ basement."
Speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by former U.S. ambassador Beatrice Welters, Clinton says in a clip released by the Free Beacon that many of her former primary opponent's supporters sought things like “free college, free health care,” saying that she preferred to occupy the space "from the center-left to the center-right" on the political spectrum.
During the conversation, also reported in the Intercept, Clinton confesses to feeling "bewildered" by those to her far-left and far-right in the election.
"There is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates," she said. "And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel."
While stressing the need to not serve as a "wet blanket on idealism," Clinton paints fans of the then-surging Vermont senator as political newbies attempting to deal with an economy that has fallen short of their expectations.
"Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement," she said. "They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future."
Clinton added: "If you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing."
"I think we all should be really understanding of that," Clinton said.
The audio, which according to the Free Beacon was "revealed by hackers who breached the email account of a campaign staffer," surfaces the same week that Sanders hit the campaign trail to try to win those same young voters that Clinton has struggled to attract since clinching the Democratic nomination.
Editor’s note: The headline and lede of this story have been changed to better reflect Clinton’s tone. The audio was originally published on Sept. 27, not Friday as first reported.