Though Hillary Clinton drifted closer and closer to socialist Bernie Sanders’ policy positions during the course of the presidential election campaign, Morgan Chalfant of the Washington Free Beacon reports that at least some members of the Clinton camp realized that the Vermont senator isn’t playing with a full deck.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff worried about going “full Sanders” by implying a link between climate change and terrorism in an op-ed penned under the former secretary of state’s name that was never published.
Eleven days after coordinated attacks in Paris killed nearly 130 people and wounded hundreds, Clinton campaign aide Kristina Costa circulated a draft op-ed that opened with a parallel between fighting ISIS and combating climate change.
Costa wanted to get the op-ed placed in the Financial Times during the United Nations climate change talks that took place between November and December of last year, according to an email chain made public by WikiLeaks.
Several aides, however, objected to the op-ed because it too closely linked terrorism to climate change.
Joel Benenson, Hillary Clinton’s senior strategist, said that the beginning paragraphs of the piece were “very off key.”
“I think trying to lead with terrorism and bridging to climate change is a mistake and will ring hollow,” Benenson wrote. “I [believe] right now Americans are quite anxious about the threat of ISIS and this topper is going to risk many writing this as though she’s linking terrorism to climate change.”
“I believe climate change unaddressed will perpetuate resource conflicts in the world, but for a woman who was Secretary of State and who brings real strong bona fides on being tough and aggressive against terrorists, I think this recipe just doesn’t work,” Benenson continued. “If we want to an op-ed on climate, let’s do that and not try to shoehorn terrorist attacks into it.”
“Agree with Joel that mixing climate and terror is a mistake,” wrote Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director.
