Bill Clinton says GOP will find ‘some new way to scare the living daylights out of swing voters’
by Zach Schonfeld - 09/18/22 12:54 PM ET
Former President Clinton on Sunday said Democrats could maintain control of Congress, but Republicans will “just scare people” in the lead up to the midterms.
“We could hold both these houses,” Clinton said during an appearance on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
“But we have to say the right things, and we have to note the Republicans always close well,” the former president continued. “Why? Because they find some new way to scare the living daylights out of swing voters about something.”
During Clinton’s second term in the White House, Democrats picked up five seats in the House, the first time a sitting president’s party gained seats in the midterms in decades.
This year, Democrats are attempting to maintain their razor-thin majorities in both chambers, even as President Biden’s approval ratings tick slightly up over the last week.
Clinton said the breakpoint in American politics today is “not much different” than when he was in office, but he acknowledged the parties have become more polarized in recent years.
“It’s just that there’s so many fewer because as the parties have gone more ideological and clear and somehow psychically intolerant, they pull more and more of people toward the extremes,” he said on CNN. “But there’s still some people hanging on there who are really trying to think and trying to understand what’s going on.”
Clinton told Zakaria the world is facing a battle against divisive populism, comparing the concession speech given by his wife, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election to former President Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020.
The former president warned of what he expects Republicans to make in their closing argument leading up to the midterm elections, now less than two months away.
“That’s what they did in 2021 — where they made critical race theory sound worse than smallpox,” Clinton said. “And it wasn’t being taught in any public schools in America. But they didn’t care. They just scare people.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/3648616-bill-clinton-says-gop-will-find-some-new-way-to-scare-the-living-daylights-out-of-swing-voters/
