And we thought the Obamabots were brainless drones.
Via WaPo:
One day in May, operatives from a Washington-based super PAC gathered New Hampshire mayors, state representatives and local politicos at St. Anselm College for a day of training.
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 hosts the nation’s first presidential primary.
The super PAC, called Correct the Record, convened similar talking-point tutorials and media-training classes in May and June in three other early voting states — Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada — as well as sessions earlier this spring in California.
Presidential campaigns have for decades fed talking points to surrogates who appear on national television or introduce candidates on the stump. But the effort to script and train local supporters is unusually ambitious and illustrates the extent to which the Clinton campaign and its web of sanctioned, allied super PACs are leaving nothing to chance. […]
But asking local supporters to use talking points could undermine the organic nature of grass-roots political interactions. No longer can a journalist call up a state representative in Iowa and expect to hear his or her personal, unvarnished take on Clinton — nor can a Rotary Club member watch a fellow small-business owner talk about Clinton at their monthly luncheon — without suspecting he or she is reading from a script.
The super PAC’s effort also comes as Clinton struggles on the campaign trail to appear accessible and genuine. Some Democrats have long believed Clinton sounds too scripted on the stump, especially compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her insurgent primary rival whose authenticity and liberal message are drawing thousands of Democrats to his rallies.