Clinton, Trump Campaign Strategists Tussle at Harvard Conference

CAMBRIDGE, MA — The mission was to write the "first draft of history" in a spirit of reconciliation and of academic inquiry. The players were the dueling forces behind the 2016 presidential election campaign. The result was precisely as acrimonious, shallow and mutually destructive as one would expect in the aftermath of the most contentious election in recent memory.

Here is what history will reflect, according to participants in the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics roundtable discussion Thursday night.

From The New York Times:

Emotions were still raw at the campaign post-mortem... particularly over the influence of Stephen K. Bannon, who left Breitbart News — which he has called a “platform” for the white nationalist alt-right — to help run Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Bannon will serve as a senior aide to Mr. Trump. David Bossie, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign manager, called Mr. Bannon a “brilliant strategist.” That provoked the Clinton campaign’s director of communications, Jennifer Palmieri, to respond, “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am more proud to have lost.”

In The Washington Post:

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, fumed: “Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?”
“You did, Kellyanne. You did,” interjected Palmieri, who choked up at various points of the session.
“Do you think you could have just had a decent message for white, working-class voters?” Conway asked. “How about, it’s Hillary Clinton, she doesn’t connect with people? How about, they have nothing in common with her? How about, she doesn’t have an economic message?”
Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist, piled on: “There were dog whistles sent out to people. . . . Look at your rallies. He delivered it.”
At which point, Conway accused Clinton’s team of being sore losers. “Guys, I can tell you are angry, but wow,” she said. “Hashtag he’s your president. How’s that? Will you ever accept the election results? Will you tell your protesters that he’s their president, too?”

All this although Bannon himself was absent from the event. Previously listed as attending, he apparently later declined the invitation.

That didn't stop protesters, who took to the rainy Cambridge streets in droves Wednesday night, protesting the university for, organizers said, "even allowing this to take place." They claimed that by inviting Bannon, the university was providing a "platform" for misogynist, white supremacist, Islamophobic and other views associated with his Breitbart site.

Harvard IOP has provided audio from this and other segments of its 2016 Campaign Decision Makers Conference, which you can listen to here.

Photo of Kellyanne Conway by Gage Skidmore, Flickr/Creative Commons