I remember, during the Presidential Election Campaign of 1996, how the media loved to photo capture the crowds that attended President Clinton’s campaign stops. Contrast that with how they portrayed Bob Dole. The media frequently showed videos of him in small towns, with small crowds approaching him and his campaign bus.
The media’s emphasizing large crowds extended to Hillary Clinton. She brought in the crowds, and her speech brought in the money. She made more money in a single speech than what many people earned in an entire year.
In the Presidential Election Campaign of 2016, once again the media loved to camera capture the crowds attending Hillary’s campaign events. Then candidate Donald Trump had to make a request, in the middle of one of his speeches, for camera personnel to pan the crowds.
Predictably, they zeroed in on him instead.
After the Presidential Election of 2016, Hillary appeared to be in a struggle to remain relevant. Even with Bill Clinton at her side. But even members of her own party had been calling for her, or both of them, to step aside and let new leadership take the reins.
It has gotten to the point to where they appear to have problems drawing crowd numbers that they used to be able to bring in. Those selling tickets on the Clinton’s behalf, and who host Hillary Clinton’s speeches, are now losing out on earnings. Now, was the mainstream media as honest about their audiences as they were about Bob Dole’s?
Where they were willing to show Bob Dole and small crowds, attempts are made to diminish the appearance of small crowds at Bill and Hillary’s events. With not enough people purchasing tickets to see her speeches, those attempting to sell tickets to her speech events needed to rely more on other selling venues. They also considered discounts and cutting the prices to the tickets for the attendance.
From Fox News:
Among the deals: Tickets to an April 11 talk at the Beacon Theatre in New York — normally priced $287 — are going for $145 on Monday. Tickets to an April 12 Detroit talk, originally listed for $220.70, are going for $95. And tickets in Philadelphia for an April 12 talk have been reduced from $208.20 to $85.
And from the Washington Times:
And things kept getting worse. Ticket prices for their event in Texas plunged to just $6. Seems no one is interested in hearing them tell “stories and inspiring anecdotes that shaped their historic careers in public service, while also discussing issues of the day and looking toward the future,” which a press release promised.
Maureen Dowd attended one of the speeches in an arena. Curtains separated the empty half of the arena from the half containing the audience. However, this half was not completely filled with customers. So, action was taken to isolate the empty seats. She paid $177.00 while pre-booking this event; however, had she waited to the day of the event she could potentially have purchased the same ticket for under $10.00.
You can read more of her observations of this event in her New York Times article:
I’m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it’s a depressing sight. It’s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits.
You guys are already familiar with many of the reasons to why Hillary Clinton has gone from a high-priced cash cow to someone that struggles to get the kind of audiences that she used to get.
It goes beyond that. The Democratic Party has new stars. Also, the party has shifted further to the left as evidenced by the political leanings of the last president, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others.
Not only is Hillary Clinton suffering from apparently becoming less relevant as a “sought-after” speaker, she is also suffering from the changes in demographics to include changes in attitude of the Millennials. And, of course, she is suffering from the culmination of decisions that she consistently made, and of actions that she consistently took, in the past.
Thanks to AW1Ed for the first link that lead to the generation of this post.
