There has been a lot of debate about the recent Bernie ad that criticized Democrats who think you can take donations from Wall St. and then regulate them.
As Greg Sargent noted this is more than just an attack on Hillary, it's an attack on the entire Democratic party. After all, most Democrats take bank donations but also believe in regulating them.
"If this Democratic establishment is being defined by virtue of having taken money from Wall Street, it would of course include Barack Obama and probably a fair number of Democratic Senators who passed the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform bill. And the Sanders campaign probably is talking about all of those people. The Sanders argument is that nothing we’ve seen during the Obama years — and nothing we’ve heard proposed from the Hillary Clinton campaign — comes close to the sort of far-reaching, deep structural changes to the economy that will be required to seriously combat the soaring inequality and wage stagnation of the moment. The Sanders argument is also that such profound change cannot happen as long as the political establishment is beholden to Wall Street by its contributions."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/14/bernie-sanders-isnt-just-targeting-hillary-clinton-hes-targeting-the-whole-democratic-establishment/
But last night on Chris Hayes, we saw that this puts the Bernie camp in a bind. Hillary Clinton has been making this very point-that Bernie is also repudiating President Obama''s legacy on financial reform as well.
But here's the big problem: Bernie doesn't want to admit this for a second. Last night Hayes got Bernie's campaign manager, Richard Weaver, to admit two things:
1. President Obama was an effective President and he effectively fought for Wall St. reform.
2. President Obama took a lot of financial donations in 2008.
But the whole thrust of the Bernie campaign, and certainly of that ad, is that 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive.
Weaver had no real answer to this other than to lamely reply 'President Obama is not on the ballot in 2016. We're running against Hillary Clinton.'
As Greg Sargent noted this is more than just an attack on Hillary, it's an attack on the entire Democratic party. After all, most Democrats take bank donations but also believe in regulating them.
"If this Democratic establishment is being defined by virtue of having taken money from Wall Street, it would of course include Barack Obama and probably a fair number of Democratic Senators who passed the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform bill. And the Sanders campaign probably is talking about all of those people. The Sanders argument is that nothing we’ve seen during the Obama years — and nothing we’ve heard proposed from the Hillary Clinton campaign — comes close to the sort of far-reaching, deep structural changes to the economy that will be required to seriously combat the soaring inequality and wage stagnation of the moment. The Sanders argument is also that such profound change cannot happen as long as the political establishment is beholden to Wall Street by its contributions."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/14/bernie-sanders-isnt-just-targeting-hillary-clinton-hes-targeting-the-whole-democratic-establishment/
But last night on Chris Hayes, we saw that this puts the Bernie camp in a bind. Hillary Clinton has been making this very point-that Bernie is also repudiating President Obama''s legacy on financial reform as well.
But here's the big problem: Bernie doesn't want to admit this for a second. Last night Hayes got Bernie's campaign manager, Richard Weaver, to admit two things:
1. President Obama was an effective President and he effectively fought for Wall St. reform.
2. President Obama took a lot of financial donations in 2008.
But the whole thrust of the Bernie campaign, and certainly of that ad, is that 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive.
Weaver had no real answer to this other than to lamely reply 'President Obama is not on the ballot in 2016. We're running against Hillary Clinton.'
A lot of wrongheaded attacks have come against Hillary the last few days. Bernie and his supporters are apocalyptic that she is actually criticizing St. Bernie. Doesn't she realize that you don't question his piety?
"This is not a battle of ideas; it’s an investment in cynicism. And it's hard to avoid a few ugly conclusions. Clinton has not learned from the mistakes of 2008. She does not understand the Democratic Party's base. She does not respect the activists and intellectuals who have fought to establish the party's economic policy agenda over the past 50 years. And she thinks voters in early primary states are dumb enough to fall for obvious dishonesty, just because they already like her."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-is-botching-this_569808a9e4b0778f46f8b31b
No big surprise here. Huffington Post has been in the tank for Bernie from day one.
But I don't see how this is cynical.
Look, this is politics. Chris Hayes himself admitted on his show that this is a substantive criticism from team Hillary. They have a right to simply ask Bernie to release his health care plan.
Simply saying you believe in Medicare for All does not cut it.
Weaver now is back to saying 'Yes it will be out before Iowa; if Senator Sanders says it then it will be.'
This had been what Bernie said earlier this week. Then Weaver suggested on CNN Wednesday that it might not be in before Iowa. Now he's back to saying it will be.
It's always instructive to listen to the Hillary haters. They accuse her of mutually contradictory things. Some say that she is just playing politics in asking to see Bernie's plan. Why not just look at what he proposed in 2013? After all, he's proposed this 11 times in the past
So when she criticizes that, she's criticized for looking at his old plan when he has a new plan. But as he seemingly can't or won't produce that what else can we do to get a handle on what his plan might look like than look at something he has proposed 11 times in the Senate.
By the way that shows the trouble with Bernie in a nutshell: he has pushed the same bill 11 times and gotten nowhere with it. It's like the GOPers abolishing Obamacare hundreds of times. At the end you can only conclude this is about ideological symbolism.
Here's what folks like at the Huffington Post obscure. This is not an abstract debate on whether or not we should have single payer or not.
Obviously in the big picture the goal is universal healthcare. But this is unlikely to happen overnight. So there will be no 'revolution' and yet Bernie keeps claiming that there will be.
One of the things I really admire about Hillary is she has no use for merely abstract and symbolic debates. We can debate abstractions all day but this doesn't make them real.
Her argument is not abstract but concrete. How do we in fact implement the liberal Democratic agenda?
Her hubby was out making this point in Iowa the other day:
Bill Clinton: Democrats need a candidate who can implement their ideas."
“Because of her determination,” he explained. “I like people who don’t quit.”
There’s no quit in her, President Clinton told the crowd as he delivered an oral biography of his wife.
“She’s the single best change-maker I’ve ever met. Not a change-talker,” he said.
The next president needs to be someone to calm down the American people, “put Humpty Dumpty back together,” he said.
Republicans aren’t the enemy “and the other Democrats certainly are not,” Clinton said. In fact, the Democratic candidates have a lot of economic ideas in common
“But you’ve got to pick the person most likely to do it,” Clinton said. “Whatever your ideas are, you’ve got to implement them.”
http://globegazette.com/news/iowa/bill-clinton-democrats-need-a-candidate-who-can-implement-their/article_05369fcd-c629-50ed-8151-2f4f111b210a.html
This is the big difference. Bernie is the change-talker. He wins that going away. She is the change-maker.
If you doubt this just compare how many bills she actually got passed in the Senate compared with Bernie
The real question for Democrats in 2016: do we consolidate and build on the President's accomplishments? Or do we rip it all apart and start over again?
Another way to think about it is think about the goal of Democrats as being a 50 floor skyscraper. In Obama's years we got 15 good floors.
What comes next? Do we build more floors on top of it or do we simply say it's not good enough as we want 50 floors and vow to take a bulldozer to the building and then vow to build a 50 floor skyscraper on the rubble?
"This is not a battle of ideas; it’s an investment in cynicism. And it's hard to avoid a few ugly conclusions. Clinton has not learned from the mistakes of 2008. She does not understand the Democratic Party's base. She does not respect the activists and intellectuals who have fought to establish the party's economic policy agenda over the past 50 years. And she thinks voters in early primary states are dumb enough to fall for obvious dishonesty, just because they already like her."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-is-botching-this_569808a9e4b0778f46f8b31b
No big surprise here. Huffington Post has been in the tank for Bernie from day one.
But I don't see how this is cynical.
Look, this is politics. Chris Hayes himself admitted on his show that this is a substantive criticism from team Hillary. They have a right to simply ask Bernie to release his health care plan.
Simply saying you believe in Medicare for All does not cut it.
Weaver now is back to saying 'Yes it will be out before Iowa; if Senator Sanders says it then it will be.'
This had been what Bernie said earlier this week. Then Weaver suggested on CNN Wednesday that it might not be in before Iowa. Now he's back to saying it will be.
It's always instructive to listen to the Hillary haters. They accuse her of mutually contradictory things. Some say that she is just playing politics in asking to see Bernie's plan. Why not just look at what he proposed in 2013? After all, he's proposed this 11 times in the past
So when she criticizes that, she's criticized for looking at his old plan when he has a new plan. But as he seemingly can't or won't produce that what else can we do to get a handle on what his plan might look like than look at something he has proposed 11 times in the Senate.
By the way that shows the trouble with Bernie in a nutshell: he has pushed the same bill 11 times and gotten nowhere with it. It's like the GOPers abolishing Obamacare hundreds of times. At the end you can only conclude this is about ideological symbolism.
Here's what folks like at the Huffington Post obscure. This is not an abstract debate on whether or not we should have single payer or not.
Obviously in the big picture the goal is universal healthcare. But this is unlikely to happen overnight. So there will be no 'revolution' and yet Bernie keeps claiming that there will be.
One of the things I really admire about Hillary is she has no use for merely abstract and symbolic debates. We can debate abstractions all day but this doesn't make them real.
Her argument is not abstract but concrete. How do we in fact implement the liberal Democratic agenda?
Her hubby was out making this point in Iowa the other day:
Bill Clinton: Democrats need a candidate who can implement their ideas."
“Because of her determination,” he explained. “I like people who don’t quit.”
There’s no quit in her, President Clinton told the crowd as he delivered an oral biography of his wife.
“She’s the single best change-maker I’ve ever met. Not a change-talker,” he said.
The next president needs to be someone to calm down the American people, “put Humpty Dumpty back together,” he said.
Republicans aren’t the enemy “and the other Democrats certainly are not,” Clinton said. In fact, the Democratic candidates have a lot of economic ideas in common
“But you’ve got to pick the person most likely to do it,” Clinton said. “Whatever your ideas are, you’ve got to implement them.”
http://globegazette.com/news/iowa/bill-clinton-democrats-need-a-candidate-who-can-implement-their/article_05369fcd-c629-50ed-8151-2f4f111b210a.html
This is the big difference. Bernie is the change-talker. He wins that going away. She is the change-maker.
If you doubt this just compare how many bills she actually got passed in the Senate compared with Bernie
The real question for Democrats in 2016: do we consolidate and build on the President's accomplishments? Or do we rip it all apart and start over again?
Another way to think about it is think about the goal of Democrats as being a 50 floor skyscraper. In Obama's years we got 15 good floors.
What comes next? Do we build more floors on top of it or do we simply say it's not good enough as we want 50 floors and vow to take a bulldozer to the building and then vow to build a 50 floor skyscraper on the rubble?
I disagree with Bill that "the republicans aren't the enemy".
ReplyDeleteOne difference between Bernies Medicare for all bill which he has unsuccessfully pushed 11 times and the republicans numerous unsuccessful Obamacare repeals is that Bernie IS offering an alternative that is quite simple and already in place. The republicans have no plan and don't even want one frankly..... they don't believe in "central planning".
I am actually quite sympathetic to the idea that we won't have true reform of the economic system until Wall St banks are neutered for a while. That will either come when someone in govt just stands up to them (unlikely) or when our financial system collapses under the weight of its own internal inconsistencies it insists on operating under. By that I mean that our financial system, with the Fed at the reigns, insists on operating under ideas such as our govt needing to borrow from the fed or its citizens in order to spend..... which lead to increased taxes on workers, lower taxes on "job creators", shrinking disposable incomes for average Joes, higher levels of personal debt, lower retirement security for most and more and more concentration of wealth. Monetarism and RBC are the scourge of our societies at present ( monetarists are just RBCers who don't fear inflation and see it everywhere).
I think Bill's point is that it's one thing to say you're going to do Medicare for All but how do you get there in a divided political system?
ReplyDeleteACA is at least a starting point that can be improved on. Social Security started out with only 5 percent of Americans eligible.
So I agree with Hillary that it's about reform not revolution. But if you really want revolution Bernie is not the man to do it: he failed to build his own Democratic Socialist party.
Pretending he's a Democrat now is fooling no one.
Even Ralph Nader calls him the 'Lone Ranger'-building coalitions is not his thing
ReplyDeleteOne thing Greg. My comparison of Bernie with the GOP voting to repeal ACA was not that I equate the two on a policy, content basis.
ReplyDeleteJust that both the GOP's endless repeals and Bernie's single payer bills are both quoxotic actions doomed to fail politically but offer the satisfaction of ideological symbolism
Thank you for information.
ReplyDeleteWhole House Flooring