A new leaked audio clip of Hillary Clinton is making the rounds and is turning heads at Hillary’s description of supporters of Bernie Sanders. Many pundits say that the leaked Hillary audio mocks the “Bernie Bros,” but, in reality, Hillary’s target is much more shocking. In the clip, Hillary is clearly criticizing President Obama’s handling of the economy.
The clip is part of a larger recording obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The recording was made at a private fundraiser in McLean, Va. on February 16, 2016. The entire recording is 49 minutes long, but much of the focus is on a shorter segment where Clinton called herself “center-left to the center-right’ and discussed Bernie Sanders supporters. The Intercept provides a transcript of this segment:
Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement. 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.
I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, “You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.”
So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so 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.
So I think we should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals. But to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals.
When the entire clip is heard in context, it is clear that even though Hillary refers to Bernie supporters “living in their parents’ basement,” she is not mocking them. She is attempting to sympathize with their plight as they graduate from college to find no jobs or are underemployed in part-time jobs.
What Hillary doesn’t explain is why there are no jobs. For the past eight years, the Obama Administration, which Clinton was part of for four years, has had the opportunity to enact a laundry list of liberal reforms. The result has been the slowest recovery in 50 years according to the American Enterprise Institute.
Fortune found that even though the unemployment rate has decreased under Obama, wages have remained flat and labor force participation has plummeted. For all the talk about income inequality, the top one percent experienced the most income growth in the Obama years. While the stock market boomed, CNN points out that the economy only grew at an average of two percent, far below the pre-recession average of three percent.
When millennials "don't see much of a future," it is because of Barack Obama's policies. Some growth was strangled amid the implementation of huge new regulatory laws such as Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The massive increases to the national debt under Obama have also contributed to the slow recovery. The US corporate tax rate is the highest in the world and has pushed many companies abroad. The decline of economic freedom, where some industries are favored by the government and others are punished, has also hurt the overall economy.
If Hillary Clinton truly sympathizes with the unemployed and underemployed millennials, she should explain why her policies amount to a continuation of the Obama Administration. Clinton’s plans for higher taxes, more regulation and more entitlements would continue the bureaucratic stranglehold on the economy. What does she offer to disillusioned millennials except four more years of stagnation?
Originally published on The Resurgent
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