Krystal Ball doesn't seem to be sold on Hillary Clinton's "listening tour" campaign shtick. In a segment discussing the former secretary of state's carefully-staged campaign swings in Iowa, The Cycle co-host and former Virginia congressional candidate confessed Hillary's campaign rollout isn't doing much for her, and, she suspects, that's probably true of how it's being received by most voters.
Ball made the remarks in a discussion with Brian Beutler of The New Republic. Here's the relevant transcript:
MSNBC
The Cycle
April 15, 2015
3:08 p.m. EasternKRYSTAL BALL, co-host: But, Brian, I wanted to get your take. Is this listening tour, is it working for you? I mean maybe, all campaign events to a certain extent are sort of staged and sort of campy and feel a little insincere. But I have to say this one, to me, feels particularly staged and inauthentic. And we can all see the campaign strategy memo behind what they're doing. Do you think that this is working for folks?
For his part, Beutler conceded that, yes, "in one sense" she's right, adding, "She's introduced herself to the country multiple times now. There's sort of no need to have this kind of like, you know, small communion with people in Iowa, she's sort of already done that."
That said, Beutler noted, "it reflects some lessons that she learned from 2008" and is a corrective to her approach in that campaign where she didn't actively seek to "earn" the nomination but treated it as a foregone conclusion.
