During Tuesday's edition of NBC's Today morning program, news anchor Andrea Mitchell addressed a trend that probably has former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff feeling "trumped:" White women are “abandoning” the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential campaign “in droves.”
The host of Andrea Mitchell Reports -- which airs at 12 noon weekdays on the MSNBC cable channel -- started her report by stating: “Hillary Clinton is reaching out to that group that she'd always counted on: white women voters who are now abandoning her in droves during the last two months. “
Next came a video clip of Clinton stating that even though people have to make hard choices, “I really hope you will join our campaign in Iowa.”
Mitchell then noted that the Democrat presidential candidate spent Monday “criss-crossing Iowa” in an attempt “to shore up her support among women.”
Clinton was then shown declaring:
I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault: Don't let anyone silence your voice. I would defend a woman's right to choose and fight against defunding Planned Parenthood.
To show how connected Clinton is with women across America, she stopped for popcorn at a business owned by a female, Mitchell noted before adding:
This after seeing her support among white women in one new poll go from 71 percent in July to just 42 percent now, a 29 percent drop in only eight weeks as Clinton has been hammered with questions about her private e-mails.
“Polls go up and down,” Clinton stated. “People's attention and decision-making changes over time.”
Mitchell indicated that “Clinton is also doing softer interviews on entertainment news,” such as talking to Mario Lopez of the syndicated Extra program about meeting celebrity Kim Kardashian.
“She came to one of my fund-raisers in Los Angeles,” Clinton stated, “and I really enjoyed meeting her.”
The MSNBC anchor then noted that Bernie Sanders -- a self-declared socialist, the junior senator from Vermont and another candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nod -- was campaigning in Virginia.
Meanwhile, Mitchell stated, “Clinton supporters are focusing more on Joe Biden, who they think is running a 'shadow campaign' to test the waters. This week, Biden heads to such battleground states as California, Michigan and Ohio, where -- like Clinton -- he will speak about sexual assault on college campuses."
As NewsBusters previously reported, the former secretary of state declared her candidacy in mid-April, when ABC and NBC newscasts cheered Clinton's decision to make her bid official through the use of a video but failed to identify her as a liberal Democrat.
The positive coverage hit the airwaves even though the former senator from New York claimed during an interview in June of 2014 with ABC's Diane Sawyer that she and her family were “dead broke” after they left the White House.
However, it didn't take long before Clinton's handling of the incident in Benghazi -- when four Americans were killed in 2012 – came up as an issue during the campaign.
In fact, the former first lady was hailed by Washington Post reporter Dan Balz, who claimed that the incident might even help Clinton win the White House in 2016.
But the biggest problems the campaign has faced are the accusations that Clinton kept classified information on a server at her home and then wiped the computer clean of any potentially damaging e-mails.
It wasn't long before ABC, NBC, Univision and Telemundo lost interest in the e-mail story, even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation confiscated the Democratic candidate's computer.
Earlier this month, Gloria Borger – the Cable News Network's chief political analyst – discussed the latest polling data and declared that the controversy surrounding Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was “manna from heaven” for Clinton since it diverted attention from her ongoing scandals.
Then on Sunday and Monday, ABC hid the damaging details of its own poll, minimizing Hillary Clinton's plunging popularity.
Instead, World News and Good Morning America kept the focus on Donald Trump and his continued surge. Clinton's "dramatic" fall appeared only on competitors CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today.
Things must not be going Hillary Clinton's way if one of the Democratic Party's strongest constituencies is so unhappy with her campaign that it is “trumping” the idea of making history by electing the first female president.
In fact, Clinton was in a similar situation in the 2008 election, when Barack Obama surprisingly overcame her popularity and became the first black president. Could a similar situation going to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House again?
