Bill Clinton Proposes a Strategy for Harris to Defeat Trump
In eastern North Carolina, the former president explains to voters that the pandemic is the cause of inflation, rather than Democrats, and emphasizes that prescription-drug prices are a key issue in the upcoming election.
TroibNews 
ROCKY MOUNT, North Carolina — On Sunday, the morning after Donald Trump spoke about Arnold Palmer's endowment, Bill Clinton addressed a congregation at a Black megachurch, cautioning attendees about the stakes in the upcoming election regarding insulin prices, prescription drug costs, and access to insurance for those with preexisting conditions.
“And we’re talking about Haitian immigrants eating pets?” Clinton remarked, prompting a wave of affirming murmurs and amens from the crowd. “And apparently there’s no price for this.”
In a few succinct sentences, the former president articulated the challenge of facing an opponent who has dramatically altered the landscape of American politics. Nearly eight years after Clinton’s wife was defeated by Trump, the Democratic Party — and the press — continues to grapple with engaging an unpredictable figure whose behavior seems to provoke increasing apathy.
William Jefferson Clinton, however, appears to have found a strategy that resonates. It harkens back to one of his memorable remarks from the 1992 presidential campaign, where he pointed out that Republicans were more concerned about his past than the future of voters.
In today’s context, the message is to prioritize issues like insulin affordability over Trump’s controversies.
Clinton advised that Vice President Kamala Harris should promote her message with an open hand.
“I think that for her, her message is she wants to be inclusive and open a new era of working together,” he told me last weekend. When asked if that meant spanning party lines, he affirmed, “Yes, I think it’s really important because I think people are basically sick of all this paralyzing bad-mouthing.”
This does not necessarily require a break with President Biden, he added, but he suggested a different approach for Harris to engage with the sitting president.
“I think that what she ought to do is to pick the things that she cares the most about and she believes and go beyond what’s been done,” he proposed, implying how Harris could acknowledge Biden’s accomplishments while also pushing for progress.
“I still don’t think most people know the Democrats favored the immigration bill,” he noted. “I think if they did know it would make a difference.”
He emphasized the importance of keeping the focus on tangible policies, regardless of Trump’s sensational statements about pet consumption.
“That’s why I talked about grocery prices and preexisting conditions,” Clinton recounted, reflecting on the party’s successful attack ads during the 2018 midterms. “We beat him in the midterms over preexisting conditions.”
Clinton understands well that Republicans tend to face significant backlash when they threaten widely cherished programs like Social Security, Medicare, or the expanded healthcare benefits instituted by Presidents Obama and Biden. Historical Democratic victories illustrate the point that while Americans may express conservative tendencies rhetorically, they generally support a more liberal role for government in practice.
Clinton’s insights capture how Democrats can defend their position, take proactive measures, appeal to voters fatigued by political hostilities of the Trump era, and navigate the complexities of an unpopular incumbent.
Harris has made efforts to integrate these approaches, but she has struggled to deliver them with the same coherence and skill as figures like Clinton or Obama. The reality is that Democrats have enjoyed the leadership of two generational talents in recent history.
At 78 — and as he often reminded audiences in North Carolina, still younger than Trump — Clinton visibly bears the signs of age. He wears hearing aids, sports tennis shoes with slacks, and often finds discussions with old friends veering towards health.
Yet, accompanying him across eastern North Carolina revealed flashes of perhaps the most skilled political performer of our time.
Due to Covid and his past controversies, along with Biden’s lack of need for a prominent generational peer, Clinton has spent little time on the campaign trail since the disappointment of 2016.
That election still looms large in his mind. At one point, I overheard him mentioning a supporter: “But for Comey.” The context wasn’t necessary.
Clinton expressed his enthusiasm for being back in front of an audience with a microphone, especially during an election season.
In his familiar Southern environment, often with predominantly Black crowds, his accent deepened, leading him to reminisce about outhouses, snakes, and to declare, “I love that place,” about Bojangles.
When I inquired whether he would consider running for another term, he modestly deferred.
“I like to see younger people do it,” Clinton remarked, quickly adding, “I like being asked to help because I can say what I believe.”
This is the intriguing aspect of Clinton at 78 — he possesses immense intelligence, much of his talent, and considerably less restraint.
During his stops in Fayetteville, Wilson, Greenville, and Rocky Mount, he embraced the role described by Barack Obama as “Secretary of Explaining Stuff.” Clinton navigated topics such as the significance of legal immigration, the effects of grocery store ownership concentration on food prices, and expertly illustrated supply chain impacts on inflation:
“Suppose there were three bicycles in Wilson and everybody rode a bicycle and every one of you wanted one,” he posed. “Think it would drive the price of the three up? That’s all that happened, and it happened everywhere in the world.”
He also highlighted that Russia and Ukraine produce 30 percent of the world’s wheat and explained how Moscow’s invasion led to a spike in that commodity’s global price.
What I find most captivating about Clinton is his concise messaging. One memorable line from last summer’s Democratic convention was about Trump: “Don’t count the lies, count the I’s.”
Last weekend, Clinton reiterated that and introduced several more memorable remarks.
Reminding audiences how they demonstrate care by showing up at funerals, he asserted: “Voting is showing up for your country.”
He contrasted Harris with Trump, saying: “If you hire somebody to run the country, you want her to make it better, not to make you madder.”
From the pulpit, he referenced one of his beloved verses, Isaiah 58:12, portraying Harris as a “repairer of the breach” and argued that the upcoming choice was between “builders and breakers.”
In Fayetteville, he recounted brushing shoulders with “two guys in MAGA caps,” adding, “they were ragging on me and I was ragging on them.” He emphasized, however, that “we were in a good humor. If you can stay in a good humor, people can hear you. If you start name-calling right off the bat, we all go deaf.”
His most striking line may reflect a sobering reality for him and Democrats alike.
When queried about the Democratic Party’s dwindling support from blue-collar voters — a trend that spans racial demographics — he commended Obama’s support for the working class through measures like the Affordable Care Act and the auto industry bailout. But why hasn’t this translated into votes?
“Partly because life is more than money and partly because they didn’t feel it,” Clinton asserted.
This recognition is noteworthy, coming from a man whose own campaign was built on the motto “It’s the economy, stupid,” indicating that cultural and identity issues also play significant roles.
Few areas exemplify this better than eastern North Carolina, a region that has undergone a significant rural political shift, initially led by white Democrats who turned to support figures like former Senator Jesse Helms in the 1970s and 80s, contributing to a Republican stronghold.
For Democrats to prevail now, they must drive high turnout among Black voters while also winning enough support from white urbanites and suburbanites for narrow victories.
North Carolina Democrats managed this feat in Obama’s first election in 2008 but have faltered in presidential races since then.
As I traveled with Clinton throughout the region, I posed the same question to his rally attendees about why the party has lost these voters.
Grady Todd, a power company worker who donned a camo Carolina Panthers cap at the Fayetteville rally, characterized his views simply: “Democrats have a better history of creating jobs.” Yet he lamented, “I’m the only Democrat on my line.”
“Everybody on my crew is for Trump, even my foreman, who said if the Democrats win he’s afraid of what could happen for his grandkids,” Todd shared.
He remarked on the contrast with his Trump-supporting brother, stating, “He believes everything he sees on the internet for Trump.”
Michael McGuinness, a civil rights attorney from Elizabethtown, remembered a time in the 1960s when registering as a Republican felt akin to being labeled a felon. He acknowledged that Democrats have contributed to a “degree of neglect of working-class folks.”
Vince Durham, an attorney in Rocky Mount who attended a post-church rally, reflected on how it was still acceptable to be a Democrat during Clinton’s presidency. He questioned, however, what changed, noting that for years, Republicans have “spewed hate to make it seem like we’re crazy liberals.”
While Democrats have shifted left over the decades — particularly on cultural issues — the backlash has been a consistent political factor. Clinton acknowledged the absence of easy solutions for regaining support among working-class voters, a demographic that previously powered his victories in states that now belong squarely to “Red America.”
“I don’t think it’s Rome being built in a day,” he commented, offering his party guidance: “What we’ve got to do is more deliberately speak in the language of inclusion and look for ways to demonstrate it.”
Following Clinton on the campaign trail offers a retrospective through political history.
There was an Air Force veteran in Fayetteville who reminisced about meeting him during her service in Germany, and a local power broker, George W. Breece, who appeared at the rally wearing his Clinton-Gore jacket from 1992, receiving a warm greeting from the former president after three decades. Additionally, Clinton interacted with several former associates and Arkansas natives.
Particularly poignant were the encounters with contemporaries Clinton once served alongside as governor and president.
In Wilson, he reunited with the iconic former Governor Jim Hunt, now 87 and struggling with mobility but still dressed in a blazer and tie to welcome his old friend.
Having first been elected in 1976, two years ahead of Clinton as Arkansas governor, Hunt reflected on their collaborative efforts on education initiatives.
Accompanying him in Wilson was G.K. Butterfield, a former U.S. representative who met Clinton during a visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Floyd.
In Greenville, he caught up with former U.S. representative Bob Etheridge, who, similar to many rural Democrats, lost his congressional seat in 2010.
Clinton mentioned more than once that he had advised Harris’s campaign on the importance of rallying support in smaller communities, reminiscent of his own efforts during Hillary Clinton’s two presidential runs.
“This here makes a difference,” Etheridge said post-rally.
What captivates about Clinton, I inquired of Etheridge?
“He just knows how to connect,” Etheridge responded. “He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who can make a complicated issue sound simple.”
After conversing privately following the rally, I wondered whether they had discussed strategy and messaging for this pivotal region. Etheridge clarified that their dialogue centered instead on the well-being of Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to Clinton and a North Carolina native.
Clinton, always the storyteller, bends towards meandering conversations, and as he gets older, those tendencies seem to magnify.
He’s increasingly frank on the campaign trail. In Greenville, he criticized Republicans who insist on Trump’s 2020 victory, indicating, “to prove whether you’re one of the clan or not — and that clan can have a double meaning here.” This week, he referred to GOP senatorial candidate Kari Lake as “physically attractive” but added that she views “politics as a performance art.”
Yet when he took the pulpit at Word Tabernacle in Rocky Mount, he was in his element.
He wove between scriptural references while articulating the heart of “what St. Paul is really talking about” in 1 Corinthians. He lightly mocked JD Vance for attending Yale yet “forgetting arithmetic” and skillfully illustrated the vital role of eastern North Carolina voters in any Democrat's statewide coalition.
He once again addressed inflation, immigration, and the case against Trump grounded in policy.
While Clinton acknowledges Trump’s threat to democracy — invoking former defense secretaries who oppose him — he focuses on delivering the message in an understandable manner.
“Why, Clinton inquired, are we so captivated by the baseball playoffs and college football? Because they have uniform rules.
“If you let this guy get back there, it won’t be on the level,” he warned about Trump. “You know it, I know it, and they know it and they believe it.”
Clinton commended Harris and Biden throughout his appearances.
He reiterated support for the immigration compromise from the White House earlier this year, lauding them for “really trying” to foster bipartisan dialogue. Reflecting on his presidency, he remarked: “I made a lot of compromises,” soon directing his thoughts back to how such efforts were used against his wife.
He recounted an incident where “one of the Gingrich congressmen from Texas” dismissed the 1994 crime bill, which mandated minimum sentences for certain offenses while also funding crime prevention initiatives, as “hug a thug.”
"Then, all of the sudden in 2016, all the lefties said it was a travesty, as if I had any choice to pass the bill,” he stated, criticizing those who called out him and Hillary for harsh sentencing.
“Life is full of them,” he emphasized, speaking to the inevitability of compromises in politics.
Consistently, Clinton urged Democrats to maintain a stance of openness.
“Trump is in the resentment business, Harris is in the reconciliation business,” he said in Wilson. “Are you for unity or division?”
Clinton implored the audience not to “give up on your neighbor.”
Through these messages, it’s not difficult to sense Clinton’s apprehensions. Even his casual comments reveal much.
“This is not a close question,” he said about the campaign in Wilson before adding, “It is only a close question because so many people get so much information that basically is not true.”
At that same rally, he reflected on the last time Democrats faced an electoral crisis due to surging inflation. “I saw President Carter lose an election at a time of terrible inflation,” he remarked.
Clinton placed significant emphasis on inflation throughout his speeches. Recalling his own administration, he noted how long it took for people to trust that the deficit was decreasing and suggested the public hasn’t yet accepted that inflation is easing.
He hinted at the uphill battle for Democrats in this extraordinary election year while recalling a visit to Bojangles, where he noted that most attendees would greet him warmly. However, one individual remarked, “Kamala Harris got this for nothing.”
As Clinton recounted his response, he stated: “Sir, she was loyal to the president; he made the decision not to run. And we were out of time. The reason we didn’t have a primary is we were out of time.”
Clinton professed to feel “pretty good” about the race, adding, “I feel much better than I did.”
Yet he did not shy away from acknowledging the considerable challenges facing her, particularly given the speed with which she became the nominee after Biden’s unexpected withdrawal from the race earlier this summer.
“You know, she’s taken a big load on,” Clinton advised. “I told her at the beginning, the Republicans do what they do. And if you just showed up, they think it will be easier to create buyer’s remorse because people don’t know you. So she’s just got to stay out there and be relaxed and be self-assured. They just don’t need to shake people’s confidence.”
In conclusion, his sentiment was clear: “If people believe that she will do a good job and if she’s convincing that she’s not crazy and all this stuff they say about her then I think she wins.”
Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
Aarav Patel contributed to this report for TROIB News
“And we’re talking about Haitian immigrants eating pets?” Clinton remarked, prompting a wave of affirming murmurs and amens from the crowd. “And apparently there’s no price for this.”
In a few succinct sentences, the former president articulated the challenge of facing an opponent who has dramatically altered the landscape of American politics. Nearly eight years after Clinton’s wife was defeated by Trump, the Democratic Party — and the press — continues to grapple with engaging an unpredictable figure whose behavior seems to provoke increasing apathy.
William Jefferson Clinton, however, appears to have found a strategy that resonates. It harkens back to one of his memorable remarks from the 1992 presidential campaign, where he pointed out that Republicans were more concerned about his past than the future of voters.
In today’s context, the message is to prioritize issues like insulin affordability over Trump’s controversies.
Clinton advised that Vice President Kamala Harris should promote her message with an open hand.
“I think that for her, her message is she wants to be inclusive and open a new era of working together,” he told me last weekend. When asked if that meant spanning party lines, he affirmed, “Yes, I think it’s really important because I think people are basically sick of all this paralyzing bad-mouthing.”
This does not necessarily require a break with President Biden, he added, but he suggested a different approach for Harris to engage with the sitting president.
“I think that what she ought to do is to pick the things that she cares the most about and she believes and go beyond what’s been done,” he proposed, implying how Harris could acknowledge Biden’s accomplishments while also pushing for progress.
“I still don’t think most people know the Democrats favored the immigration bill,” he noted. “I think if they did know it would make a difference.”
He emphasized the importance of keeping the focus on tangible policies, regardless of Trump’s sensational statements about pet consumption.
“That’s why I talked about grocery prices and preexisting conditions,” Clinton recounted, reflecting on the party’s successful attack ads during the 2018 midterms. “We beat him in the midterms over preexisting conditions.”
Clinton understands well that Republicans tend to face significant backlash when they threaten widely cherished programs like Social Security, Medicare, or the expanded healthcare benefits instituted by Presidents Obama and Biden. Historical Democratic victories illustrate the point that while Americans may express conservative tendencies rhetorically, they generally support a more liberal role for government in practice.
Clinton’s insights capture how Democrats can defend their position, take proactive measures, appeal to voters fatigued by political hostilities of the Trump era, and navigate the complexities of an unpopular incumbent.
Harris has made efforts to integrate these approaches, but she has struggled to deliver them with the same coherence and skill as figures like Clinton or Obama. The reality is that Democrats have enjoyed the leadership of two generational talents in recent history.
At 78 — and as he often reminded audiences in North Carolina, still younger than Trump — Clinton visibly bears the signs of age. He wears hearing aids, sports tennis shoes with slacks, and often finds discussions with old friends veering towards health.
Yet, accompanying him across eastern North Carolina revealed flashes of perhaps the most skilled political performer of our time.
Due to Covid and his past controversies, along with Biden’s lack of need for a prominent generational peer, Clinton has spent little time on the campaign trail since the disappointment of 2016.
That election still looms large in his mind. At one point, I overheard him mentioning a supporter: “But for Comey.” The context wasn’t necessary.
Clinton expressed his enthusiasm for being back in front of an audience with a microphone, especially during an election season.
In his familiar Southern environment, often with predominantly Black crowds, his accent deepened, leading him to reminisce about outhouses, snakes, and to declare, “I love that place,” about Bojangles.
When I inquired whether he would consider running for another term, he modestly deferred.
“I like to see younger people do it,” Clinton remarked, quickly adding, “I like being asked to help because I can say what I believe.”
This is the intriguing aspect of Clinton at 78 — he possesses immense intelligence, much of his talent, and considerably less restraint.
During his stops in Fayetteville, Wilson, Greenville, and Rocky Mount, he embraced the role described by Barack Obama as “Secretary of Explaining Stuff.” Clinton navigated topics such as the significance of legal immigration, the effects of grocery store ownership concentration on food prices, and expertly illustrated supply chain impacts on inflation:
“Suppose there were three bicycles in Wilson and everybody rode a bicycle and every one of you wanted one,” he posed. “Think it would drive the price of the three up? That’s all that happened, and it happened everywhere in the world.”
He also highlighted that Russia and Ukraine produce 30 percent of the world’s wheat and explained how Moscow’s invasion led to a spike in that commodity’s global price.
What I find most captivating about Clinton is his concise messaging. One memorable line from last summer’s Democratic convention was about Trump: “Don’t count the lies, count the I’s.”
Last weekend, Clinton reiterated that and introduced several more memorable remarks.
Reminding audiences how they demonstrate care by showing up at funerals, he asserted: “Voting is showing up for your country.”
He contrasted Harris with Trump, saying: “If you hire somebody to run the country, you want her to make it better, not to make you madder.”
From the pulpit, he referenced one of his beloved verses, Isaiah 58:12, portraying Harris as a “repairer of the breach” and argued that the upcoming choice was between “builders and breakers.”
In Fayetteville, he recounted brushing shoulders with “two guys in MAGA caps,” adding, “they were ragging on me and I was ragging on them.” He emphasized, however, that “we were in a good humor. If you can stay in a good humor, people can hear you. If you start name-calling right off the bat, we all go deaf.”
His most striking line may reflect a sobering reality for him and Democrats alike.
When queried about the Democratic Party’s dwindling support from blue-collar voters — a trend that spans racial demographics — he commended Obama’s support for the working class through measures like the Affordable Care Act and the auto industry bailout. But why hasn’t this translated into votes?
“Partly because life is more than money and partly because they didn’t feel it,” Clinton asserted.
This recognition is noteworthy, coming from a man whose own campaign was built on the motto “It’s the economy, stupid,” indicating that cultural and identity issues also play significant roles.
Few areas exemplify this better than eastern North Carolina, a region that has undergone a significant rural political shift, initially led by white Democrats who turned to support figures like former Senator Jesse Helms in the 1970s and 80s, contributing to a Republican stronghold.
For Democrats to prevail now, they must drive high turnout among Black voters while also winning enough support from white urbanites and suburbanites for narrow victories.
North Carolina Democrats managed this feat in Obama’s first election in 2008 but have faltered in presidential races since then.
As I traveled with Clinton throughout the region, I posed the same question to his rally attendees about why the party has lost these voters.
Grady Todd, a power company worker who donned a camo Carolina Panthers cap at the Fayetteville rally, characterized his views simply: “Democrats have a better history of creating jobs.” Yet he lamented, “I’m the only Democrat on my line.”
“Everybody on my crew is for Trump, even my foreman, who said if the Democrats win he’s afraid of what could happen for his grandkids,” Todd shared.
He remarked on the contrast with his Trump-supporting brother, stating, “He believes everything he sees on the internet for Trump.”
Michael McGuinness, a civil rights attorney from Elizabethtown, remembered a time in the 1960s when registering as a Republican felt akin to being labeled a felon. He acknowledged that Democrats have contributed to a “degree of neglect of working-class folks.”
Vince Durham, an attorney in Rocky Mount who attended a post-church rally, reflected on how it was still acceptable to be a Democrat during Clinton’s presidency. He questioned, however, what changed, noting that for years, Republicans have “spewed hate to make it seem like we’re crazy liberals.”
While Democrats have shifted left over the decades — particularly on cultural issues — the backlash has been a consistent political factor. Clinton acknowledged the absence of easy solutions for regaining support among working-class voters, a demographic that previously powered his victories in states that now belong squarely to “Red America.”
“I don’t think it’s Rome being built in a day,” he commented, offering his party guidance: “What we’ve got to do is more deliberately speak in the language of inclusion and look for ways to demonstrate it.”
Following Clinton on the campaign trail offers a retrospective through political history.
There was an Air Force veteran in Fayetteville who reminisced about meeting him during her service in Germany, and a local power broker, George W. Breece, who appeared at the rally wearing his Clinton-Gore jacket from 1992, receiving a warm greeting from the former president after three decades. Additionally, Clinton interacted with several former associates and Arkansas natives.
Particularly poignant were the encounters with contemporaries Clinton once served alongside as governor and president.
In Wilson, he reunited with the iconic former Governor Jim Hunt, now 87 and struggling with mobility but still dressed in a blazer and tie to welcome his old friend.
Having first been elected in 1976, two years ahead of Clinton as Arkansas governor, Hunt reflected on their collaborative efforts on education initiatives.
Accompanying him in Wilson was G.K. Butterfield, a former U.S. representative who met Clinton during a visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Floyd.
In Greenville, he caught up with former U.S. representative Bob Etheridge, who, similar to many rural Democrats, lost his congressional seat in 2010.
Clinton mentioned more than once that he had advised Harris’s campaign on the importance of rallying support in smaller communities, reminiscent of his own efforts during Hillary Clinton’s two presidential runs.
“This here makes a difference,” Etheridge said post-rally.
What captivates about Clinton, I inquired of Etheridge?
“He just knows how to connect,” Etheridge responded. “He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who can make a complicated issue sound simple.”
After conversing privately following the rally, I wondered whether they had discussed strategy and messaging for this pivotal region. Etheridge clarified that their dialogue centered instead on the well-being of Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to Clinton and a North Carolina native.
Clinton, always the storyteller, bends towards meandering conversations, and as he gets older, those tendencies seem to magnify.
He’s increasingly frank on the campaign trail. In Greenville, he criticized Republicans who insist on Trump’s 2020 victory, indicating, “to prove whether you’re one of the clan or not — and that clan can have a double meaning here.” This week, he referred to GOP senatorial candidate Kari Lake as “physically attractive” but added that she views “politics as a performance art.”
Yet when he took the pulpit at Word Tabernacle in Rocky Mount, he was in his element.
He wove between scriptural references while articulating the heart of “what St. Paul is really talking about” in 1 Corinthians. He lightly mocked JD Vance for attending Yale yet “forgetting arithmetic” and skillfully illustrated the vital role of eastern North Carolina voters in any Democrat's statewide coalition.
He once again addressed inflation, immigration, and the case against Trump grounded in policy.
While Clinton acknowledges Trump’s threat to democracy — invoking former defense secretaries who oppose him — he focuses on delivering the message in an understandable manner.
“Why, Clinton inquired, are we so captivated by the baseball playoffs and college football? Because they have uniform rules.
“If you let this guy get back there, it won’t be on the level,” he warned about Trump. “You know it, I know it, and they know it and they believe it.”
Clinton commended Harris and Biden throughout his appearances.
He reiterated support for the immigration compromise from the White House earlier this year, lauding them for “really trying” to foster bipartisan dialogue. Reflecting on his presidency, he remarked: “I made a lot of compromises,” soon directing his thoughts back to how such efforts were used against his wife.
He recounted an incident where “one of the Gingrich congressmen from Texas” dismissed the 1994 crime bill, which mandated minimum sentences for certain offenses while also funding crime prevention initiatives, as “hug a thug.”
"Then, all of the sudden in 2016, all the lefties said it was a travesty, as if I had any choice to pass the bill,” he stated, criticizing those who called out him and Hillary for harsh sentencing.
“Life is full of them,” he emphasized, speaking to the inevitability of compromises in politics.
Consistently, Clinton urged Democrats to maintain a stance of openness.
“Trump is in the resentment business, Harris is in the reconciliation business,” he said in Wilson. “Are you for unity or division?”
Clinton implored the audience not to “give up on your neighbor.”
Through these messages, it’s not difficult to sense Clinton’s apprehensions. Even his casual comments reveal much.
“This is not a close question,” he said about the campaign in Wilson before adding, “It is only a close question because so many people get so much information that basically is not true.”
At that same rally, he reflected on the last time Democrats faced an electoral crisis due to surging inflation. “I saw President Carter lose an election at a time of terrible inflation,” he remarked.
Clinton placed significant emphasis on inflation throughout his speeches. Recalling his own administration, he noted how long it took for people to trust that the deficit was decreasing and suggested the public hasn’t yet accepted that inflation is easing.
He hinted at the uphill battle for Democrats in this extraordinary election year while recalling a visit to Bojangles, where he noted that most attendees would greet him warmly. However, one individual remarked, “Kamala Harris got this for nothing.”
As Clinton recounted his response, he stated: “Sir, she was loyal to the president; he made the decision not to run. And we were out of time. The reason we didn’t have a primary is we were out of time.”
Clinton professed to feel “pretty good” about the race, adding, “I feel much better than I did.”
Yet he did not shy away from acknowledging the considerable challenges facing her, particularly given the speed with which she became the nominee after Biden’s unexpected withdrawal from the race earlier this summer.
“You know, she’s taken a big load on,” Clinton advised. “I told her at the beginning, the Republicans do what they do. And if you just showed up, they think it will be easier to create buyer’s remorse because people don’t know you. So she’s just got to stay out there and be relaxed and be self-assured. They just don’t need to shake people’s confidence.”
In conclusion, his sentiment was clear: “If people believe that she will do a good job and if she’s convincing that she’s not crazy and all this stuff they say about her then I think she wins.”
Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
Aarav Patel contributed to this report for TROIB News
