Fair enough retort. I mean, I don’t actually believe that Bernie is not “pro-choice enough”, but his gruff and dismissive manner got the better of him yesterday and he left the opening for a quick jab.
It probably is. But its not just the practicality of reaching out to Sanders voters that is motivating her “going soft” on Bernie for the past few weeks.
Its because any attacks she levels against Sanders is played up in the press with precisely that angle. Every pundit will chime in that she needs to stop, because she really needs those voters in the fall…queue the pearl clutching.
Meanwhile, every attack that Sanders levels is treated as smart politics for an underdog who is scrapping for a win.
Its not a sexist double standard, but more of a 'horse race" and anti-Clinton double standard.
Personally, I think she let up on him far too early. And she never went after him all that hard to start with. That’s a problem of sucking all the air of the room before the nomination process even started. With a more crowded field of competitive candidates, Sanders would have fallen to the wide side months ago. But Hillary had to have someone left in the race or be accused of going through a coronation. And Sanders was the most viable someone…because an O’Malley, for example, was too dependent upon actual Democrats, and Hillary already has those locked up.
One of the issues with this, is Sanders has not been vetted before the American public. And would be spectacularly exposed in a General.
There was nothing out of context about it. He wants to hoist Clinton by her speeches to bankers, she can hoist him by his single minded focus on unrealistic plans to magically boost wages and preposterous claims that he alone— without helping get other Democrats elected, for examle— can “fix” all economic problems. Reproductive rights has not been a priority of his, and he casts women’s organization who support Clinton into the same barrel as Goldman Sachs. He has no friggin’ idea of the threat Republican rule poses to the rest of us who do not live in the great homogeneously populated state of Vermont.
True haha. He does get a little bit “noun verb Wall Street”, but to be fair to him on that point, it’s part of what we love about him and Warren too. It’s certainly a foible that’s not helping him in this campaign though. In part, that’s why I want him back in the Senate, so he and Warren can tag-team Wall Street, the banks and the rest of the oligarchy.
What I hate about primary politics is that it forces candidates who in reality are largely in agreement on most issues to accentuate and emphasize and inflate the relatively smaller areas of disagreement, which are generally about differing strategies and tactics about how to achieve broader goals that both support.
I don’t have any doubt that Sanders fully supports reproductive rights, and I think the allegations by some that he’s indifferent or even hostile to the concerns of African Americans don’t reflect his real attitudes. Similarly, I think the notion that Clinton will be a slavish whore to Wall Street’s interests and will fight any and all meaningful attempts to regulate the financial and banking industries are silly, as I do the assertion that she’s a bloodthirsty neocon who can’t wait to start bombing whoever she wants in the Middle East. But the realities of the primary process inevitably lead to overheated rhetoric by partisans of both sides, and sometimes by the candidates themselves.
Yes…but she has to be extremely careful about attacking him for the right. Like just don’t do it extremely careful. Bernie has been painting her as republican lite since the very beginning, without actually saying those words. That’s the reason for his constantly bringing up Goldman Sachs and the vote on Iraq.
If she attacks him, for example, for his coziness with communist dictators like Castro and Ortega, he gets to just sit back and laugh and accuse her of engaging in McCarthism of the right wing 1950s. And that just reinforces the framing he is attempting to do.
If we had had a Schweitzer, or a stronger version of Webb or Chaffee (both of who were incredibly weak candidates that had no business in the race, IMO) to the right of Hillary, they would have been able to do those attacks. But we didn’t, so here we are.
Are any of you people employed?
Are any of you people employed?
Yes, I own a graphic design firm and am currently in my busy season working 70-80 hour weeks. How about you?
Yes, thanks to Obama’s excellent economic policies I am employed and at a great job that gives me time to dicker around on the internet all day. How about you? How do you have so much time to troll, Unfading?
I totally agree. She shouldn’t attack him from the right. My point is the fact that she’s been treating him with kid gloves makes his supporters think that this guy is pure as the driven snow and teflon when I think the opposite is true. She should attack him from his left on guns, which it appears they have started to do this morning.
Well done – that’s it in a nutshell.
I would agree. On actual policy matters,in the grand scheme of things, there isn’t much daylight between them.
The one policy issue I have found both to be rather disappointing is with regards to the environment. That is an issue that both pretty much treat the way Bernie spoke yesterday. “Yeah, yeah…climate change bad…can we both get back to the more important matters?” Its barely been touched in any of the debates, and is sorely lacking from both of the stump speeches.
Bless his heart, I really thought O"Malley would get more leverage out of that, as he had actually spoke with some passion and had some actual plans to address environmental problems. But he got zero interest and both Sanders and Clinton largely ignored him when he brought it up in the debates.
His words were not out of context any more that his “we’ll see” remarks when asked about raising money for the rest of the democratic slate.
Sorry bro – but this isn’t even the kind of hardball fire that would be aimed at your campaign by the GOP if they thought you really had a chance.
UFG? You have to admit, the greeenster was far more accomplished then the current crop of blue-iconed lamers.
Clinton has rightly pointed out that what Trump said about abortion was what the entire Republican Party and the “pro-life” movement is all about, and Bernie should have been pointing out the same thing: the absolute hypocrisy of a group of people saying they didn’t believe in what Trump was saying, when they wholeheartedly agree with EVERYTHING he was saying before Le Donald decided he had stepped in a major pile of dogshit. But during his interview Sanders made it seem as if he thought that Trump’s abortion comments were just another way of getting media attention, and criticized Trump and the media for that reason, instead of roasting Trump’s raisin-sized balls for his stupid and dangerous comments.
Sanders can talk all he wants about income inequality and about Wall Street, but it isn’t the only issue that affects people. It’s just like people who say climate change, which I think is an extraordinarily important issue, is the most paramount issue right now, when a person who can’t get an abortion, or a gay person who is having his rights stripped, or a minority person who is being prevented from casting their vote, the idea of some Miami condos drowning underwater doesn’t seem of very pressing importance.
I think Bernie may have spent a little too many years in his little ivory throne in Vermont. He apparently had forgotten that running a presidential campaign is POLITICS, and if he thinks this attack about abortion is below the belt, wait until they start going after him on his votes for gun control and other things. As someone else said in one of the comments, the Clinton campaign has been fairly soft on Sanders up until now, but I think they are beginning to realize that the number of Sanders supporters who say they will never vote for her is very small, considering the alternative on the Republican side (Susan Sarandon and her Glorious Revolution notwithstanding). I keep thinking of how the Obama campaign wore kid gloves against Palin because they thought they might offend women voters, even the Democratic ones, but the PUMA movement was hot air, and I think that when it comes right down to it, the majority of Sanders supporters (and Clinton supporters, too) know that, if their candidate loses the primary, they will have to vote for Clinton (or Sanders), since they are too intelligent to forget the lessons of what political purity brought us in 2000, and it sure as hell wasn’t a glorious progressive revolution.
ridiculous liar. you know exactly what he meant and you are choosing to twist it.
Retired.
Nope.
Bernie crapped in his own mess kit, and now it’s lunch time.
Eat hearty!
What Bernie meant was that even though Trump has given us a good chance to call out the anti-choice forces he ,Bernie, had better things to do with his television time.
Actions speak louder than words.
I don’t mind this from Warren, or from Sanders as a Senator. Having a pet cause is the job of a Legislator. As President, you have to have more than one issue. You have to run the whole country. You can still have things you focus on; President Obama and health care reform, for example. But while Obamacare may have gotten a lot of ink, it was never the only thing the President was working on, and it wasn’t the only focus of his campaign.
It really shows how myopic Sanders comes across as a candidate. He’s still running like someone who got into the race to raise and issue and expected to be knocked out by Super Tuesday. Now that a significant chunk of voters have rallied to his banner, he’s not sure what to do with them. He didn’t expect to still be here, and so he just keeps hammering away at his narrow issue portfolio, occasionally glancing at his watch, tapping his foot, and waiting for Hilary to sew this thing up so he can go back to Vermont.