Killing a bullshit Clinton meme: Bernie Sanders Is No Favorite Son
Hillary Clinton’s campaign says that she’s losing New Hampshire because Bernie Sanders, being from neighboring Vermont, is a “favorite son” in the state. But according to reporters and editors at four of the state’s top news outlets, that’s “a load of crock” and “would make most New Hampshire stomachs turn.” In fact, most New Hampshirites probably didn’t know who Bernie Sanders was until he launched his presidential campaign. And bobcat-killing and the opiate epidemic are more likely to be at the top of their list of concerns than, say, immigration.
Those are just a few of things the pundits and candidates are getting wrong about New Hampshire as we head into its first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday. In a roundtable interview moderated by Politico’s senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian, five of the journalists who follow New Hampshire politics most closely revealed more about what's really going on on-the-ground in the Granite State and what we in Washington are missing.
Charlie Mahtesian, Politico: One of the things we’ve heard is a lockstep message coming out of the Clinton camp—this idea that Hillary Clinton’s not going to do that well because it’s Bernie’s backyard. They’re downplaying expectations since she’s trailing in the polls. My question, though, is how well does New Hampshire actually know Bernie? Is it the case where he’s the third senator from New Hampshire, as Clinton would like to believe? Is he known in the Connecticut River Valley, known in southern New Hampshire?
Roger Carroll, Nashua Telegraph: I was watching CBS news the other night, there was a woman doing standup in front of a bridge in Manchester. She said that Sanders is practically a favorite son here in New Hampshire. You know what, that is a load of crock. There’s no other way to—that is, I mean, I’m sitting there, you know how a dog turns its head when it doesn’t quite get something? [Sighs deeply].
Look. People in the Connecticut River Valley knew who he was. They knew who he was when he was mayor of Burlington, because Channel 3 has a really strong signal that beams in. But you go 15 miles to the east and nobody knew who he was, he was 50 points behind at this time last year. So, as Colonel Potter from MASH used to say: Horse hockey!
<snip>
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/new-hampshire-primary-political-reporters-213604
= new reply since forum marked as read
