Axelrod to Clinton: Don't 'overreact' to Sanders surge

Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod thinks Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton should not “overreact” to recent momentum behind challenger Bernie Sanders.

“You know, I would be careful not to overreact,” Axelrod said, speaking from Chicago during a discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday.


Sanders drew nearly 10,000 people to a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night — part of his campaign’s strategy of energizing liberal enclaves across the country and generating national media buzz.

But where the rubber meets the road with Sanders, Axelrod said, is on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an issue on which Clinton has commented only sparingly.

Overreacting, Axelrod said, “would speak to something else that troubles people.”

“An opportunism,” another panelist said off-screen. “A suspicion — exactly. So I think that that’s going to be the most interesting pass exchanged,” Axelrod said of the trade issue.

Axelrod recalled that around this time in the 2004 cycle, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean “was drawing these kinds of crowds and stirring these kinds of conversations.” (Dean dropped out of that race in February 2004 after performing poorly in the Wisconsin primary.)

“Bernie Sanders is going to get votes. He’s a good representative of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He’s pure in his views, he’s very authentic,” Axelrod said, but added that polls show Clinton has a commanding lead and that she is “quite popular with Democrats.”

A new Quinnipiac poll out Thursday shows Clinton with a lead of 52 percent to Sanders’ 33 percent among likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers, down from her 60 percent-to-15 percent advantage in May.

The truth, Axelrod said, is that Clinton is “not that far” from Sanders in her view that the country needs to address the erosion of the middle class, the lack of economic mobility and inequality writ large.

“The devil is in the details over how you address them,” he said.