Saturday, February 13, 2016

How Clinton frames Sanders as a single issue candidate

I'm watching the debates again and reading articles about them. It's good to see that the DNC has relaxed and allowed more debates. After the PBS debate on February 11thsomeone noticed that Hilary has finally found an argument against Bernie Sanders. Apparently, she's been struggling to find this for a long, long time. Yet, she still doesn't explain why we should vote for her. She wants to build on what progress we've made already, but most people are not content with that. We want something more.

The argument, it seems is that Bernie Sanders is a single issue candidate. Really? Sanders has proposals for health care reform, Wall Street reform, rebuilding our infrastructure, free public education and the list goes one. He's got some great ideas on foreign policy, too. One look at his home page on Congress and his campaign will tell you that he's been a pretty busy guy.

Yes, Sanders talks about Wall Street a lot. In many of his responses in the debates, he brings it up. In his opening statement in the PBS debate, he talked about the corrupt campaign finance system and how the money decides what the country will do. He is telling us that until that changes, nothing else will change. So yeah, if you want to call Sanders a single issue candidate, this is the single most important issue we face right now. No other reforms will come before this one.

This is the point that is very conveniently missed by Hilary. She would like to talk about everything else but campaign finance reform. As if somehow, we'll build on the progress we've made before we can make serious reforms to how our elections are financed. But she knows that is not going to happen. CNN has a story to documented 153 million reasons why a Clinton presidency is not going to see real campaign finance reform. It's hard to argue for reform when you've taken money from so many interests who don't want to see reform.

If Sanders is a single issue candidate, Clinton doesn't express much interest in discussing that issue.

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