On Tuesday’s broadcast of CBS’s “Late Show,” former President Bill Clinton said that “sometimes, Democrats read polls too much and only want to talk about the stuff that people agree with us on and not that they disagree with us on. The Republicans read the polls and try to attack us on where we’re strongest.” And “you have to make the argument. You can’t pretend like you’re scared to make it or that anybody that’s got reservations about your position is three bricks shy of a full load.”
Clinton said, “[W]e just have to keep showing up for work every day and analyzing why people blamed us for the cost of living problems that were very real, and still are for many people, but have crippled every big nation in the world, every big economy. And we were actually doing better than a lot of them. … I didn’t deny it. I think that, sometimes, Democrats read polls too much and only want to talk about the stuff that people agree with us on and not that they disagree with us on. The Republicans read the polls and try to attack us on where we’re strongest. And I think we should just talk about these cost-of-living issues. I spent an enormous amount of time when I was out there in these little rural areas saying, here’s what happened to the price of food, here’s what happened to housing, and you know gasoline prices are going down because we produce more energy of all kinds than any other country in the world and they want us to stop producing solar and wind and we can’t replace it all with oil and coal and gas. We can’t. So, the practical and the ideological and what’s good for our children’s future are kind of merging. But you have to make the argument. You can’t pretend like you’re scared to make it or that anybody that’s got reservations about your position is three bricks shy of a full load. In other words, you’ve got to treat people as if they are looking for answers and give them what your answers are.”
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