Doris Kearns Goodwin: Trump’s ‘Story’ Connected More with Many People Than Clinton’s Did

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin thinks that one of the big reasons Donald Trump won is because of the “story” he told.

She spoke with David Axelrod about the storytelling abilities of politicians and how that affects people’s perceptions of them. Axelrod said that Hillary Clinton may be a good storyteller, but not so “publicly.”

Goodwin observed that Clinton was telling a “more complicated story” and it just lacked “the simplicity of a story that Donald Trump’s did”:

“Donald Trump told a story, whether true or not, that people felt was real. You know, that he was going to make America Great Again, that something had happened to this country, and that the people who had lost their jobs and their income and their dignity––he would make it better. And that kind of story somehow reached out to a certain part of America. And even if Hillary’s plans and her programs might have touched those people more deeply, the connection emotionally between her and those people seemed to have been lost.”

Axelrod added that he thinks the Clinton camp’s message led to many Americans not being part of their story, which helped add to Trump’s message about forgotten Americans.

You can check out the full interview here, courtesy of CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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