ESPN host Stephen Smith said former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton telling voters to get over themselves about a Biden-Trump re-match is “detached” from how the voters are feeling.
Clinton told voters to “get over yourself” during a television appearance with late night host Jimmy Fallon, highlighting how President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are the “two choices,” The Hill reported.
“I don’t think it was a very wise statement on her part,” Smith told CNN’s Abby Phillips Tuesday. “Look how that worked out for her in 2016. I think that’s something we have to recognize. Yes, you won the popular vote, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t the President of the United States. It was him [Trump]. You can look at her not campaigning in Wisconsin in the last days, not campaigning in Pennsylvania in the last days. You can look at some of the stuff they were staying about her to sort of distracted things from where it should’ve been in terms of Comey and the report from the FBI. You can bring up a whole bunch of things but at the end of the day, the last thing you need to do is to do anything that could agitate a particular voter in this particular election.”
Smith said voters are not concerned with Trump’s criminal crimes, but instead are voting based on concerns about their own lives. (RELATED: Trump Leading Biden By More Than He Ever Has Before)
“The voters, a lot of them out there, tens of millions of them out there, by the way, don’t care what he’s going through right now,” Smith said. “They don’t care about his guilt or innocence, his perceived guilt or innocence. They don’t care about the 91 counts. They’re thinking about their lives and a lot of times we see politicians taking the positions that they’re taking and while we can respect their candor and their honesty, they do seem a bit detached that time from what the voters are actually feeling and what the voters are actually thinking.”
“Nobody wants to hear that from Hillary Rodham Clinton at this particular moment in time because, especially if you’re Joe Biden, what are you really worried about right now? You’re worried about folks coming to the polls. You’re worried about them showing up to the polls to vote for you. You’re not worried even about them voting for Trump. You’re worried about them not showing up to vote for you. That doesn’t exactly encourage them to get out of their seats and go to the polls,” he added.
Trump and Biden have stood neck-and-neck in 2024 general election polling. Trump is currently up by an average of 0.8 points against Biden, according to RealClear Politics.
Voters have expressed high disdain for the Biden-Trump rematch. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 67% of respondents are “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.”
A majority, including Democratic voters, have further disapproved of Biden running for re-election mainly due to this age and job performance. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll from March found that 48% of Democrats said they believe the 81-year-old president’s age is an issue for re-election. Several more polls, including an AP-NORC survey from February, found that 37% of Democrats wanted Biden to run and 51% believed Biden had “hardly any” ability to effectively manage government spending.