Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dodged a question about her integrity and her Wall Street donations (an issue raised by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders) with a simple diversion that brought out a huge applause line. In the course of explaining her donations, she noted with pride that the majority of her donors are women.
It’s true that at least 52 percent of Clinton’s donors are women (her campaign claims 60 percent). Even so, that’s not an answer to the question she was asked, nor is it even an insight into how popular she is with women.
Although a majority of her donors are women, Clinton has not polled substantially better with women than other Democratic candidates. Between May and September, Clinton’s support among women dropped 29 points. It’s not just that she has been drawing only 42 percent of the female vote in Democratic primary polls, but also that — before he opted not to run — Vice President Joe Biden was actually doing as well or better than Clinton with women voters in matchups against Republicans.
Clinton was trying to redirect criticism from Bernie Sanders of her disproportionate amount of Wall Street donations.
“I have never heard a candidate never, who has received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street, from the military industrial complex, not one candidate say, oh, these campaign contributions will not influence me,” Sanders said. “I’m going to be independent. Well, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something.”
Nothing in Clinton’s response, even beyond her reminder about women donors, actually provided an answer to whether she was bought and paid for by Wall Street.
“So, I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked,” Clinton said, oddly. “Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
She also discussed reinstating Glass-Steagall, which was repealed under her husband. She again claimed she would be tough on all those people sending her money from Wall Street.
