WASHINGTON — Being labeled ‘unelectable’ was Donald Trump’s strength, according to campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
“I’ve been a loud voice for years — particularly within the Republican party — the danger of these three words: ‘He can win … The fiction of electability,” said Conway at the 18th annual American Democracy Conference in Washington.
She says the ‘electable’ label has hurt past GOP Presidential candidates.
“Then you get a little soft,” she said. “You’re not gritty. You’re not becoming inventive and ingenious and scrappy and entrepreneurial.”
The first woman to direct a winning presidential campaign gave her candidate plenty of credit, but reserved some for the people behind the scenes.
“It really didn’t matter what people said. What mattered is that we did have a ground game,” she said. “You simply can’t become the president of the United States without one.”
Conway says the campaign’s main theme, ‘Make American Great Again,’ did very well. But a message uttered by Trump late in the campaign — “What have you got to lose?” — did better than expected.
“Donald Trump predominantly delivered that message in places where Republicans have found it uncomfortable to go,” said Conway. “He was very willing to go there — into Flint, Michigan, into black churches, go to Baton Rouge. It turns out ‘what do you have to lose?’ is a message that actually resonated beyond the place where he was on a given day. That’s something that even struck us as unexpected.”
Conway also mentioned some post-Election Day revelations like the ‘undercover voter.’
“The undercover Trump voter was very real,” she said. “People who don’t seem like a Trump voter — who on paper had voted for President Obama twice, who had voted for Democrats in Congress — it was real. And it was not because they were shy or they were embarrassed to say they were voting for Donald Trump. It (was) because they really won’t want to lose friendships and family members and collegiality in the workplace by admitting it.”
Conway says those ‘undercover voters’ come up to her now and say they just wanted to try something different.
Conway was asked how she could justify working for Trump considering the accusations of sexual assault that dogged Trump during the campaign. She responded by citing Hillary Clinton’s unenthusiastic support among women and her huge gender gap with men.
“She should have gotten 60 percent or 62 percent of the female vote, and she did not,” Conway said.
Clinton won 56 percent of the female vote nationwide.
Conway said the questioner was “trying to be personally mean” by asking her that question.
“For you to use sexual assaults to try to make news here, I think, is unfortunate. It also doesn’t matter because Donald Trump promised to be the President of all Americans.”
