Hillary Clinton Meets With the Influencers Who Will Deliver Her the Youth Vote
On Tuesday, Variety reports, Hillary Clinton attended a town hall event in Hollywood with a group of digital content creators, influencers, and YouTube personalities as part of her effort to charm younger voters, many of whom voted for her rival Bernie Sanders in the primary.
Clinton’s schedule Tuesday also included a fundraiser at Sean Parker’s house and a $33,400 per couple dinner benefiting the Hillary Victory Fund.
According to People, the town hall discussion, which was curated by BeautyCon, included YouTubers like Jordyn Woods, Whitney White, and someone called Swoozie. White, a YouTuber, asked Clinton how she intends to earn back the trust of African-American voters leery of her early ‘90s “superpredator” comments and her advocacy for the proliferation of the modern carceral state.
“What are your concrete plans to win back the trust of Black America?” White asked, as quoted by People. “As you know, and respectfully, have been involved in systematically racism is a real problem.”
“I certainly understand and even agree with what you said about the perpetuation of systemic racism,” Clinton said. “I have spoken out about that. I have addressed it. I also was very honored to receive a huge percentage of the vote of the African-Americans in the primary and I am grateful for that because so many people know of my history. I don’t always talk about it, so I’m not surprised that younger people don’t.” She added: “I am more than open to an receptive to dealing with the systemic problems that are in root of injustice, disunity, and inequality in our country.”
Later, everyone took a selfie.
“This could be better than the Oscars,” Clinton said, hiply. “We have to send it to Ellen and tell her what we’ve done here!”
The CEO of BeautyCon, Moj Mahdara, told Variety that the issues influencers care about are probably different than those other voting blocks are concerned with.
“The way those issues are experienced are just changed now,” she said. “For us it is so visceral. You see it on Instagram and social media….This is an audience that understands their life to be an ‘on-demand’ experience, so I think politics has not necessarily caught up to this generation in the sense that politics is not ‘on demand.’ You see it takes many many years to pass laws in the legislature, but this audience is just coming to terms with what our government looks and feels like.”
She thought that Clinton did well in addressing some of the issues. “I think they were learning from her, but I think she was also learning from them.”
One can only hope.