Former President Bill Clinton urged his wife’s campaign team to beat Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary by telling voters that Republicans would be happy if Hillary Clinton lost the nomination, according to leaked emails published Friday.
Robby Mook, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, wrote in an email in January that the campaign was testing a poll question in New Hampshire “about how the GOP wants to defeat HRC and we shouldn’t give them what they want.” He was writing to Tina Flournoy, a top aide to Mr. Clinton, who had inquired if the campaign was pursuing the former president’s suggestion.
The polling question harkens back to Mrs. Clinton’s comment in the 1990s about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” that was out to get the Clintons.
Just weeks before the New Hampshire primary this year, Ms. Flournoy wrote that Mr. Clinton was worried that “we’re not breaking through to the Bernie voters as much as needed.”
“He feels that we have to keep ’selling’ HRC personally in addition to the ’stakes are high,’” she told Mr. Mook.
Mr. Mook said the campaign was poll-testing a message “about how Bernie’s health care plan will cost millions of jobs in the insurance industry.”
“We also tested a message about the Supreme Court a while back and it didn’t do terribly well, but I told him last week that I think it’s a fine thing to touch on since it raises the stakes,” Mr. Mook said.
Wikileaks is publishing thousands of emails that were stolen from the personal account of John Podesta, who is now Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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