Hillary Clinton patronized young supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) Wednesday, telling MSNBC she understood "it's exciting to be, in effect, protesting" by voting for him.
Clinton also said Sunday that she felt "sorry" for Sanders' young supporters who didn't "do their own research." Clinton was incensed last week when a Greenpeace activist suggested she took money from fossil fuel companies, yelling that she was "so sick" of the Sanders campaign telling lies about her.
A day after a decisive loss to Sanders in the Wisconsin primary, liberal Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Clinton a familiar question: Why are young voters feeling the Bern and not saying "I'm With Her" in 2016?
"When you look at the young women and the young people who are all going toward Bernie, how do you attract them and why haven't you been able to so far?" Brzezinski asked. "Because you have been saying--you have had a message that would resonate with them."
"Look, I think it's exciting to be, in effect, protesting," Clinton said. "I remember I did that a long time ago when I was in my 20s, and I totally get the attraction of this. In all the research that I have seen about who is supporting Senator Sanders, a lot of the young people like both of us. They really like me, they admire what I've done, what I stand for, and they really, really like him. So I'm not as worried as the numbers might show about how he has attracted so many young people, because I think that it is important to bring them into the process, and I give him a lot of credit for doing that.
"My argument basically is, look, we are electing a president and a commander-in-chief. We are electing the Democratic Party standard-bearer to go up against whoever the Republicans wind up nominating, and we really need to be sure that we elect someone who can walk into that Oval Office on January 20th, 2017, and start making decisions about people's lives and livelihoods and when folks look at that, i feel very confident both in the nominating process and in the general election."
Exit polls showed Sanders dominated with 81 percent of voters under 30 in Wisconsin.