Johnathan Chait tweets: “So Clinton’s plan as president is to lure Republicans into compromise by getting them drunk?”
Washington Free Beacon Feb. 24, 2016:
Hillary Clinton can be quite the boozehound, a new SuperCut shows.
The former secretary of state can often be seen fortifying herself with glasses of wine, as well as sterner stuff, at the high-dollar fundraisers, state dinners, receptions, and campaign events that she frequents.
Clinton loves giving toasts, possibly because toasts end with drinking. She seemed particularly taken with the Georgian custom for toasting, which involves lots of drinking, during an official visit to that country.
“The ritual for Georgian toasts is well known. I understand that one toasts everyone,” Clinton told her hosts at a village wine house outside Batumi, Georgia, her heavy tongue placing special emphasis on the last word.
Those close to Clinton confirm that she is a hard drinker.
Patti Solis Doyle, a close confidante, told The Huffington Post that Clinton likes to “hang out and drink and gossip.” Doyle said that Clinton likes to drink wine—which typically has higher alcohol content than beer—and vodka, a neutral spirit favored by Russian communists and club-going Millennials for its deadliness and drinkability.
Clinton told voters last year that her go-to beverage is the vodka martini, a simple cocktail of vodka (40 percent ABV) and vermouth (18 percent ABV) that is served chilled to take the bite off all the alcohol in it.
New York Times reporter Amy Chozick, who follows Clinton closely, told ABC News that she was surprised by the extent of Clinton’s drinking when she began covering her.
“She likes to drink,” Chozick said. “We were on the campaign trail in 2008 and the press thought she was just taking shots to pander to voters in Pennsylvania. Um, no.”
As her 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination fell apart, Clinton began drinking in public more often. Clinton tossed back a shot of Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey, at an April campaign stop at Bronko’s Restaurant and Lounge in Indiana. She also crushed a beer at a press huddle aboard her private jet, gushing that it was her “favorite press avail of all time” and confiding, with maudlin authenticity, that it had “been a long year.”
While Clinton was defeated by Barack Obama in 2008, one enterprising supporter knew just how to buck up her spirits in time for 2016. Phyllis Feder, a long-time Clinton donor and owner of the New York-based Clinton Vineyards, rebottled a Seyval Blanc wine called Victory White in 2013 “to encourage Hillary to run in 2016.”
By contrast, Donald Trump doesn’t drink.
