ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Too soon?

President Barack Obama suggested this week that he worked harder than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did to capture the White House.

“You know, I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW hall and there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points,” Mr. Obama told reporters Monday, ahead of his foreign trip to Greece, Germany and Peru.

Mr. Obama outperformed Mrs. Clinton in the rural suburbs in the Midwest, like traditionally blue-collar, Democrat-leaning Macomb County, Michigan. Of the 700 counties Mr. Obama won twice, nearly a third flipped to President-Elect Donald Trump, including Macomb.

“How we organize politically I think is something that we should spend some time thinking about. I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas don’t matter if people don’t hear them,” Mr. Obama said. “And one of the issues the Democrats have to be clear on is, given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grass-roots level, something that’s been a running thread in my career.”

Mrs. Clinton has been criticized for her lack of outreach to white, Middle-class America – instead her campaign focused on rebuilding Mr. Obama’s coalition of African American and Hispanic voters in largely urban areas.

She also took off the entire month of August, relaxing and holding fundraisers in Martha’s Vineyard and at the Hamptons, while Mr. Trump set an aggressive campaign schedule focusing on the Midwestern swing states.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, Bill Clinton was frustrated at his wife and her closest advisers for not aggressively pursuing white, middle-class Americans.

On her failing campaign: “As far as [Bill] was concerned, all the blame belonged to [campaign manager Robby] Mook, [campaign chairman John] Podesta and Hillary because they displayed a tone-deaf attitude about the feeble economy and its impact on millions and millions of working-class voters,” the Daily Mail reported.

“During the campaign, Bill Clinton felt that he was ignored by Hillary’s top advisers when he urged them to make the economy the centerpiece of her campaign. He repeatedly urged them to connect with the people who had been left behind by the revolutions in technology and globalization,” the Mail said.

Sign up for Daily Opinion Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.