Hillary unleashes army of trained, robotic supporters at grassroots level

First, the 2016 campaign brought us rented crowds for Donald Trump that inflated the perceived popularity of the candidate, now we have grassroots supporters of Hillary Clinton pumped full of talking points so that they stay on script.
The Washington Post reports that the Clinton campaign has held training sessions for mayors, state legislators and local politicos in key states to essentially turn them into robotic spouters of pro-Hillary buzzwords when they chat with their neighbors, co-workers or – especially – if they talk to the media.

A Super-PAC backing Clinton has conducted these training sessions in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada as a means of creating a “grassroots echo chamber” for Hillary.

The Post notes that presidential campaigns have for decades fed talking points to surrogates prior to an appearance on national television or an introduction of a candidate on the stump. But the effort to script and train local supporters breaks new ground and reveals the ambitious agenda of Clinton’s web of sanctioned, allied Super-PACs.

Here’s how Philip Rucker of the Post describes the behind-the-scenes training sessions held in New Hampshire as part of the campaign operation known as “Correct the Record:”

“They rehearsed their personal tales of how they met Hillary Rodham Clinton and why they support her for president. They sharpened their defenses of her record as secretary of state. They scripted their arguments for why the Democratic front-runner has been ‘a lifetime champion of income opportunity.’ And they polished their on-camera presentations in a series of mock interviews.

“The objective of the sessions: to nurture a seemingly grass-roots echo chamber of Clinton supporters reading from the same script across the communities that dot New Hampshire, a critical state that holds the nation’s first presidential primary.
“… When, say, a Londonderry (N.H.) Times reporter calls Rockingham County Democratic Committee members for a comment about the candidate, they are likely to parrot Correct the Record’s talking points about Clinton having been a fighter for the middle class — (from) improving rural health care as first lady of Arkansas to raising the minimum wage as a senator from New York.”