Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and former Democratic National Committee chairman, said Wednesday that “this was not the time” defeated Democratic nominee HIllary Clinton should have run for president.
“Hillary Clinton, this was not the time she should’ve run for president,” Rendell said on the “Rich Zeoli Show” on 1210 WPHT Philadelphia radio. “Probably 2008 would’ve been a better time for her to run for president. But it’s just right time, right place. And again, you’ve got to give Donald Trump a ton of credit.”
Clinton did run for president in 2008 and lost to Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.
Asked by host Rich Zeoli why Clinton had the support of the establishment of the Democratic party during this year’s primary, Rendell replied it was because of her emotional ties with those in the party.
“Because she was someone who had friends that were longtime friends and associates of the party and there’s a great feeling,” he said. “There’s an emotional tie between a lot of Democrats around the country and Hillary Clinton. But you know, that doesn’t mean that she was the right candidate for a general election.”
He continued, “And it would be interesting to think of how Bernie Sanders would’ve done. Bernie Sanders would’ve lost a few Republicans who voted for Hillary because of some of his economic views but he would’ve fought Donald pretty hard for those disaffected, angry, and frustrated workers.”
Earlier in the interview, Rendell praised President-elect Donald Trump as a “great campaigner” and for turning out voters that Mitt Romney did not in 2012.
“We can say all we want about Donald Trump and a lot of us have said negative things,” he said. “Myself included. But boy he turned out to be a great campaigner. He understood what people were feeling better than anybody else in the race and he hit it right on the head and just got people out to vote who almost never voted before.”
Rendell also said in the interview that Clinton’s loss in Pennsylvania was not a result of a lack of resources put into the state, criticizing the campaign’s strategy in two other usually Democratic states that Trump won.
“Unlike Wisconsin and Michigan, where I think the Clinton campaign didn’t put enough resources in and spend enough time, certainly the resources were put in here and the time was spent here and the campaign on the ground was terrific,” he said.
Rendell further criticized some Pennsylvania voters, male and female, who he said were reluctant to elect women to prominent positions, saying that it was one of the reasons Clinton was the wrong presidential candidate.