Eleanor Clift is a regular panelist on the syndicated talk show, The McLaughlin Group, and writes about politics for Newsweek magazine as well as playing herself in movies from time to time. She gave the 2012 Muncy Journalism and Politics Lecture at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas Sunday afternoon.
She has covered every presidential campaign since 1976. Drawing on that deep well of experience, she predicted a solid win for President Barack Obama and also guessed that the Senate will remain in Democratic hands on Nov. 6.
Clift echoed forecasts made by pollsters of every political hue. She said the race seemed to be a sure thing for the Republicans as the campaign began because of the miserable economy, but that Mitt Romney had not won the people’s trust. Romney’s inability to connect with the public has also spilled over into key senate races, in her opinion.
She also cited Romney’s May remarks at a high-dollar fund raiser in which he said the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income tax consider themselves victims and believe they are entitled to “medical care, food, housing, you name it” and would probably vote for President Obama. It wasn’t his business, he said, to try to win those people over to his side.
At the beginning of the presentation, Clift recalled she was hired out of college as a secretary at Newsweek and wormed her way into reporting. Women’s libbers tried to get her to quit, reportedly because she was “being exploited.”
“But if I quit being exploited, I would have had to go back to just being a secretary,” she said.
That background may explain why she identifies with the 47 percent that Romney writes off.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
