Discussion for article #245932
She nailed it. Her closing argument was excellent. This is Senator Sanders primary deficit - he’s a one issue candidate and this is a complicated multi-issue country.
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" Touche "Single-issue-ism = fair criticism of Sanders.
I was disappointed that she didn’t agree with Sanders that the campaign finance system is corrupt.
Overall, both did great tonight. She seems more prepared to serve as president though.
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This is totally unfair! Sanders has lots of issues!
— Millionaires and billionaires
— Break up the big banks
— Tax the 1%
— Business of Wall Street is fraud
— Corrupt money in politics
…oh, wait.
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I thought Hillary crafted the difference between she and Bernie. I especially liked how she talked about poor White America…which they are often omitted in the debates. She needs to keep that conversation going…
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Bernie is primarily interested in domestic issues. Foreign policy issues aren’t as important except for trade. The yellow horde isn’t going to hit the beach in California. Cost of healthcare at 18% of GDP, cost of higher education, etc. are more important by far than diddling around in foreign countries
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Just to be fair, she did. “We agree we’ve got to get unaccountable money out of politics,” Clinton said.
Now I wonder: Sanders’ singular issue is economic fairness/justice. And the problem with that is …?
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That’s basically the argument that you can’t chew gun and walk at the same time.
Nor is it a luxury any President has.
Two problems. He doesn’t reveal any specifics for how to address them…He has a Desired State Vision and a Current State Assessment…but he can’t fill in the road map for how to get to the vision. That’s a problem.
Secondly, those aren’t the only two issue confronting the White House. Its a big complicated, multi faceted country and an even bigger, more complicated and more faceted world.
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“Singular issue” is pretty close to “single issue” – doncha think?
The bigger problem is that Sanders promises too much. I don’t see him having the skills to get any of those things done. Even if he won, his coattails wouldn’t pull the Senate into the Dem column. She’d do a better job of building on Obama’s progress while strengthening the party.
(Thanks for the correx on “unaccountable money.” She still hasn’t shown me that she “feels” that particularly issue that way Bernie does.)
Senator Sanders reaps the good with the bad for his campaign when the primary focus is a “revolution” in the wealth, influence and educational opportunities of middle and lower class Americans. The good is that he has drawn support from the younger Democratic voters and many of those who disapproved of Pres. Obama’s persistence with attempts at bipartisanship with the Republicans in Congress. The price for Sanders is that he cannot avoid manifesting the clear critique that Obama has not been a very successful president, even though he wouldn’t remotely consider Obama a failure such as W. Bush was. Clinton is running to take the country evolutionary steps further along the trail that Obama has blazed, whereas Sanders is promising to blaze a different trail altogether. I have no idea whether evolution or revolution will prevail this election.
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The evolution vs revolution theory is a decent one. The problem is that the revolution basically consists of one man running for one office. Which is not how revolutions works. He is standing alone out there. Even other progressives, like say Alan Grayson who is running in the Florida Senate primary is at odds with the core of Sander’s campaign. The man runs a hedge fund for goodness sakes.
And if you run down the list of races for this fall…it becomes very clear that Sanders revolution simply doesn’t exist beyond his campaign.
Meanwhile, on the evolution side, Hillary has the vast majority of backing from the sitting Democratic congresspeople, governors and state legislatures, unions, progressive special interest groups and yes…even money from Wall Street.
The evolution is much more likely, dare I say poised, to happen. The revolution is a pipe dream.
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Meh…this touches on the argument she should make but fails to really make it. Too vague and squishy. Facts and positions or gtfo.
It has to be an inside job. You have to play by the rules of the game as they exist in order to win and wield the position and power to change them.
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Thank you for your thoughtful and cogent response to the first comment I have made on TPM after years of reading here. I think Obama’s current approval rating being around double what W. Bush left office with might indicate that Clinton’s campaign is wise to run on continuing his legacy. This strategy worked well for Vice President Bush campaigning on Reagan’s similar level of voter approval to Obama’s.
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I think Bernie should stare into the camera and make the viewing audience understand how lucky they are. For those who make $10/hr, $25,000/yr or $100,000/yr, they are getting 2 hours of Clinton’s time which generally costs $450,000. She is the establishment and plays the public for the suckers they are.
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As it was always going to be difficult for her to do when her campaign is a beneficiary of unaccountable money through the superpacs that support her.
By compromising herself by accepting such money, her words will never resonate as authentically as Bernie’s on this issue.
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This is weird and I didn’t find it a particularly cogent line of attack since Sanders is not a single issue candidate.
Sure he stresses money in politics being his most important issue, because it undeniably is, given the way money in politics detrimentally affects any attempts to pass legislation on every other issue. But if you listen to Bernie, it’s obviously not his only issue. But it must be dealt with to have a chance at reforming all the other domestic issues that need addressing which he talks about plenty.
The problem I see is that most voters are single issue voters. Not saying they only care about one issue, but that there’s usually one issue they find far more important that they’re voting for a candidate on. That’s no different than Sanders finding money in politics the most important issue. He’ll talk plenty about other issues like income inequality, but it still works back to getting money out of the political process so congress would have a chance in hell of being able to tax the rich and not be incentivized in awarding subsidies and tax breaks to corporations and wealthy that fund them.
The problem with Hillary when she says she’s not a single issue candidate it makes it sound like she doesn’t really care that much about the issue of money in politics and really doesn’t recognize why people see it as so important and corrupting our system. This is backed up by what she actually says on the subject, since if you listen to her carefully, you’ll notice that she’s specific about her problem being with the dark money. Not surprising that she doesn’t have a problem with the legit money from Goldman Sachs and others that are funding her campaign.
Sanders wants all the money gone.
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Here is the thing. Eliminating Big Money is a single issue. But it is the issue that permeates everything in politics. If you think that anything productive gets done without cleaning out the stable you are incredibly naive and foolish. And I know that Clinton “knows how to get things done”. In this environment, that is exactly what I’m afraid of, that she “knows how to get things done”. If you don’t fix the money thing, nothing, and I mean nothing gets done. Look at the mess we are in now, It’s the money.
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Anyone who asserts Sanders is a “one issue” candidate just simply isn’t paying attention. Health care, education, jobs, infrastructure, climate change, foreign escapades, Social Security, banking reform, tax fairness…the list goes on and on…
The Sanders platform is every bit as multi-faceted as Clinton’s, and in fact was the driving force for some of Clinton’s planks.
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