Despite her notorious reputation for cautiously sticking to talking points, including reading from prepared scripts in cahoots with friendly interviewers, Secretary Hillary Clinton recently spoke off the cuff to New York magazine about ideological diversity and third-party voters. When asked about MSNBC hiring Pulitzer Prize winners George Will and Bret Stephens as token conservative voices to their overwhelmingly liberal team of contributors, Clinton called the move an engagement in “false equivalency,” and further responded:

Why … would … you … do … that?  Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people.  So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision.

While the Democratic Party claims being the inclusive “big tent," its de facto leader does no favors by glibly insulting millions of voters with sweeping generalizations.  From strongly inferring all African-American young men are “superpredators” (roughly 11 million), to labeling half of President Donald Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” (31.5 million), to threatening to put all coal miners out of work (roughly 170,000), and now calling all third-party voters “crazy” (8.3 million), Clinton has singlehandedly alienated over 50 million voters from the Democratic Party.

This is bad news for an already shrinking “big tent” desperately in need of new constituents. According to Gallup, 39 percent of Americans identified as a Democrat in November 2008, falling to 33 percent in November 2012, then plummeting further to 30 percent in November 2016. During the same period, Americans who identify as Independent increased from 35 to 38 percent to 40 percent.

Clinton’s politically isolating tone is a far cry from young Hillary Rodham, president of both the Wellesley College Young Republicans Club and the Wellesley College Young Republicans Club and proud "Goldwater Girl" of uber-conservative Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, who once asked her pastor, "Can one be a mind conservative and a heart liberal?" Self-describing herself as an "agnostic intellectual liberal" but "an emotional conservative," young Rodham certainly sounds like an intelligent individual seeking a third party, listening to all sides of debate to determine where she fits on the political spectrum.

Does today’s Hillary Clinton really consider young Hillary Rodham crazy? We can assume not, considering Clinton publicized her conservative past as recently as the 2016 election, a tactic to win over traditional Republicans wary of Trump's conservative bona fides.  Moreover, Clinton was giddy about token Democrats appearing on conservative Fox News as recently as 2009, so she seems to have valued diverse political discussion somewhat recently.

What is crazy is Clinton's inference that all 8.3 million third-party voters have no desire to listen to a conservative point of view. In other words, Clinton suggests all third-party voters would have voted for her in a two-way race with Trump. This is a ridiculous notion, as the data proves. According to CNN, Trump would have bested Clinton 19 to 16 percent among third-party voters in a theoretical two-way race, with 65 percent refusing to vote. The New York Times arrived at a similar result: 21 to 16 percent in favor of Trump, with 63 percent staying home. The Times also concluded Trump bested Clinton 26 percent to 11 percent among late-deciding voters who previously leaned third party.

In hindsight, it should be no surprise how poorly Clinton fared among voters open to a third-party candidate. The Democratic Party issued an all-out assault on third-party politics throughout her campaign. Vice-President Al Gore, historically not a fan of Clinton, half-heartedly joined the campaign trail to speak of the “harsh reality” of having “two principal choices.” President Barack Obama unabashedly proclaimed a third-party vote “a personal insult” to his legacy, and nonsensically threatened his constituents such a vote was “a vote for Donald Trump.”

Based on the final third-party vote totals, the Democratic Party’s attempted attack was clearly a miserable failure. The numbers are staggering. Compared to the 2012 election, Libertarian Governor Gary Johnson's vote total increased from 1.3 million to 4.5 million, the Green Party’s Doctor Jill Stein from 469,000 to 1.5 million, and all third-party candidates combined from 2.4 million to 8.3 million.

Even write-in votes grew exponentially, from 285,000 votes in 2012 to an astounding 1.13 million in 2016.  In Wisconsin, where Clinton lost to Trump by just 22,748 votes, there were over 36,000 write-in votes, which exceeds the total write-in votes from 1976 through 2012 combined. In Nevada, where Trump lost to Clinton by just 27,202 votes, "None of These Candidates" garnered 28,863 votes, a fivefold increase from 2012.

The repudiation of two-party politics, including the Democratic Party and Clinton herself, is undeniable. Considering Clinton was defeated by the most unfavorable candidate in modern presidential history, common sense should necessitate a thorough self-examination of why millions of third-party voters refused to vote Democratic. But despite the obvious data, Clinton and the Democratic Party continue to dismiss and marginalize the third-party “crazies.” Such an undemocratic philosophy harmed Clinton's 2016 campaign, and may prove the downfall of the Democratic Party in the years to come.

Evan Boudreau is a consultant and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Daily Caller. Evan detests social media but can be emailed here.