September 28, 2016 | No Comments
Millennial voters may have flocked to Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign promise of political revolution, but he “bombed” his interview with theSkimm, according to a founder of the newsletter aimed at young women.
TheSkimm, a morning email that breaks down the news in a conversational tone and now counts some 4 million subscribers, targets women in their 20s and 30s.
Speaking with POLITICO Playbook’s Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman on a panel at Twitter’s Washington office on Wednesday morning, theSkimm’s co-founders, Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, discussed how they invited all 18 presidential primary candidates to do a job-interview style conversation to run in the newsletter.
Looking to court millennial voters, 13 accepted, including Sanders. Perhaps surprisingly, in the newsletter’s text-only format, the Vermont senator failed to come across well to theSkimm’s readers, Zakin said. Instead, they thought he was rude.
“Bernie Sanders bombed with our audience,” Zakin said. “He was himself, where he … had this humor. He was totally himself, and it didn’t read well. Our audience thought he was really rude to us.”
“That was not good for him,” she added. “I think he lost a lot of votes with our audience.”
And who did the best in theSkimm, according to Zakin? Lincoln Chafee and George Pataki.
“I loved [the interviews]. They did the best on Twitter. Our audience loved what they had to say,” she said. “Obviously they didn’t make it very far; obviously the mainstream media didn’t give them a lot of attention. But our audience responded to those two by far the best.”
Eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Zakin said, was “very aware” of theSkimm’s demographic and “why it was important to talk to them.” Weisberg said Clinton’s interview made it clear that she knew what she was talking about, but came out “dense,” so it probably didn’t change many opinions.
The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, didn’t sit down with theSkimm. He declined the invitation, Zakin said.