Doug Schoen Calls Hillary Clinton a ‘Dead Letter’ and ‘Yesterday’s News’

Former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen said that the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee “hopefully is a dead letter now and yesterday’s news,” during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” and he advised the party to move forward.

Schoen, a Democrat who worked for former President Bill Clinton between 1994 and 2000, pointed to his new book, “America in the Age of Trump: A Bipartisan Plan for What Needs to Be Done Now.” The book describes how the Democratic Party can move forward following a catastrophic 2016. After the party lost the White House and majorities in both the House and the Senate, the Democratic consultant urged it to learn from the mistakes it made in 2016 and listen to the voices of the voters.

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“Well, Hillary Clinton hopefully is a dead letter now and yesterday’s news,” Schoen said. “I don’t think she represents much at this point except herself.”

Clinton has appeared on the political scene several times in the months since her crushing loss to President Donald Trump, blaming sexism, misogyny, Russia, former FBI Director James Comey, and the investigation into her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state for her Election Day defeat.

In early June, Schoen told the Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney that Clinton’s reemergence proves “even if it’s only in her own mind” that “she is running” for the presidency again. Schoen added that Clinton had “made it very clear” that “she’s back in the game” through a series of speeches.

“This speech at Wellesley where she said she’s joining up with the resistance … she’s blaming everybody — it startles me she doesn’t blame herself,” said Schoen. “She’s not an introspective at all.”

Schoen suggested it’s time for the Democratic Party to move forward and past Clinton.

“What I say in the book is, I talk about the need for bipartisanship, because if we’re facing problems you can certainly point fingers either way, as both parties do,” Schoen told LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham. “But we’re one nation under God. And if we divide and we don’t come together to fix problems like trade and health care, we all lose as a country and the winner is [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] and then [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, rest assured. They are happy for us to fight among ourselves.”

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Issues such as how to renegotiate fair trade deals, what to do about North Korea’s escalating nuclear and ballistic missile threat, and how to deal with China on both fronts are issues the country as a whole must confront together, Schoen argued.

“It’s not just trade. It’s a range of things,” Schoen said. “But I would make another point on China that, to me, is more transcendent than trade — hopefully you’ll agree — which is North Korea. If we don’t get tough on China and say ‘Turn the lights out, cut off economic ties,’ we could be in a world war or a conflagration sooner rather than later. And that, to me, means we have to give ultimatums to the Chinese because our well-being as a nation and our national security depends on it immediately.”

Schoen also emphasized the importance of pressuring and even punishing China to reverse its human rights abuses.

“I care about human rights,” Schoen said, noting that if the U.S. told China, “Until you stand up for human rights, we’re not doing business with you,” such a statement “would resonate all over the world.”

Ingraham concurred, noting that “we seem to have a double standard on Russia versus China on human rights.”

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Gage Skidmore, Flickr)