Former NAACP leader: Clinton ‘looking a lot like Mitt Romney did last time’

Civil rights leader Ben Jealous early Wednesday compared Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign to Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful White House bid in 2012.

“She’s looking a lot like Mitt Romney did last time around,” he told host Chris Jansing on MSNBC’s “The Place for Politics 2016.”

Jealous said the former secretary of State is an “establishment candidate who looks like she should be the president and it’s her turn.”

{mosads}“Frankly, she has to earn it,” the former NAACP president added. “I don’t want to see the black vote taken for granted. I don’t want to see any vote taken for granted. We need a party that is fired up and focused.”

Jealous argued that the Democratic establishment is coalescing around Clinton too quickly as the best hope for defeating GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in November.

“People don’t want to take Trump seriously,” he said. “I want to remind them about [former Govs.] Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California or [former President] Ronald Reagan back in the day.”

“You see a lot of people fleeing our party right now and supporting Donald Trump right now. The way to beat him by a wide margin right now is to embrace the one populist we have, and that’s Bernie Sanders.”

Jealous, who has endorsed the Vermont senator’s presidential campaign, also dismissed critics who charge that Sanders underperformed against Clinton on Super Tuesday.

“Black voters in the South have a long history of supporting the Clinton family,” he said.

“As you shift out west, you see those numbers start to change,” Jealous added. “What you are seeing is a movement building against the most powerful dynasty in American politics.

“As we build and we get stronger, you’ll see us get more support [for Sanders] from black and brown voters. Our secret weapon is young voters, who come to us in droves.”

Clinton won seven states on Super Tuesday in the biggest day of the Democratic presidential primary so far. Sanders emerged victorious in four battles, claiming his home state of Vermont as well as Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

The self-described democratic socialist suffered a disappointing setback in Massachusetts, however, showing Clinton can resonate with voters in New England.