WASHINGTON — Because of the poor economy, President Obama could have a hard time securing the youth vote that helped carry him to victory four years ago, former President Bill Clinton said yesterday.
In 2008, Obama “won an enormous victory among people under 30,” Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “But they are disproportionately likely now to be unemployed or stuck in part-time jobs, to be frustrated.
“I think for all kinds of reasons, they’re unlikely to vote in large numbers for Governor [Mitt] Romney, but will they vote?”
Clinton, however, strongly defended Obama, saying that the tanked economy could not have been “fully healed” in one term. He also slammed Romney’s payment of 14.1 percent on his latest tax returns, in which indicated earning $13.7 million, as not helping the economic recovery.
“I don’t think we can get out of this hole we’re in if people at that income level only pay 13, 14 percent,” Clinton , a Democrat, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Clinton also said he does not know whether his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, will run for president in 2016.
He noted “she’s tired” after also serving as first lady and senator.
“So I think we ought to give her a chance to organize her life and decide what she wants to do, I just don’t know,” Clinton said.
“She’s an extraordinarily able person. I’ve never met anybody I thought was a better public servant.”Meanwhile, at the kickoff of the Clinton Global Initiative at the Sheraton in Midtown, the former president pressed Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke to open up stores in troubled parts of the world — including Libya.
The CGI is an annual meeting of world leaders in business and politics,