A report from Politico has caused quite a stir in the political world this afternoon, quoting unnamed figures close to the Clinton campaign who said Hillary and Bill Clinton are “so dissatisfied with their campaign’s messaging and digital operations they are considering staffing and strategy changes” following a likely defeat in the New Hampshire primary.
In her only national interview before Granite State Democrats head to the polls tomorrow, Clinton sat down with Rachel Maddow, who asked about the scuttlebutt.
MADDOW: Politico dot com, just this afternoon, just published something that says that there’s changes in the works, and there’s always these sort of campaign gossip stories but they say they are citing a half dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation. … Are you planning some sort of shakeup like that?CLINTON: Yeah somebody showed that to me. I have no idea what they’re talking about or who they are talking to. We’re going to take stock but it’s going to be the campaign that I’ve got. I’m very confident in the people that I have. I’m very committed to them; they’re committed to doing the best we can. We’re going to take stock, what works, what doesn’t work. We’re moving into a different phase of the campaign. We’re moving into a more diverse electorate. We’re moving into different geographic areas. So, of course it would be malpractice not to say, “OK, what worked? What can we do better? What do we have to do new and different that we have to pull out?”
So, given these comments, it would seem the kind of shake-up Politico described is unlikely, though some changes in direction are probably in store.
We’ll have much more from today’s interview on tonight’s show, 9 pm ET.
Update: John Podesta, chair for Hillary Clinton for America, added on Twitter this afternoon, “There is zero truth to what you may be reading. It’s wrong. Hillary stands behind her team, period.”
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."