Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton agreed Wednesday that identifying as a capitalist probably hurt her chances in the 2016 election, where she defeated a strong challenge from Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the primary.
“You may be the only presidential candidate since World War II that actually had to stand up and say ‘I am a capitalist,’” the interviewer at the Shared Values Leadership Summit noted, “and you did.”
"Did it hurt you?" he asked.
"Probably," Clinton replied.
"It's hard to know," she added, "but if you're in the Iowa caucuses and 41 percent of Democrats are socialists, or self-described socialists, and I'm asked, ‘Are you a capitalist?' And I say, ‘Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability,' you know, that probably gets lost in the ‘Oh my gosh, she's a capitalist.'"
A Des Moines Register poll at the time of the 2016 primary found that 43 percent of Iowa Democrats were self-described socialists.
According to Fortune, Hillary also commented at the summit Wednesday that “the reputation of capitalism is pretty much in tatters for young people.”
“I support hard work, risk-taking, and entrepreneurial energy,” she added, but went on to warn that there is too much power in the current system “toward biggest companies with most influence.”
“They’re disrupting our democracy,” she claimed of these companies.