Bernie Blew It: He Sold Out Instead of Confronting Clinton
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_blew_it_he_sold_out_instead_of_co
nfronting_clinton_20151016/
Posted on Oct 16, 2015
By Robert Scheer
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to the media after the CNN Democratic
presidential debate Tuesday in Las Vegas. (David Becker / AP)
Bernie blew it. By embracing rather than confronting Hillary Clinton, Sen.
Sanders fell into the trap of sellout mainstream politics, improving his
personal brand as an appealing but ultimately non-threatening advocate for
the downtrodden while studiously avoiding any suggestion that the
smiley-faced woman standing next to him is deeply complicit in Wall Street's
rape of the nation.
In Tuesday's debate he pointedly ignored the Clinton family's role in
deregulating Wall Street, and in doing so he allowed Hillary Clinton to cast
gun regulation as the key issue that divides her from him. Forgotten was
Bill Clinton's selection of Goldman Sachs honcho Robert Rubin to be his
treasury secretary, an appointee who with President Clinton's complicity
presided over the dismantling of New Deal limits on financial greed.
The Clinton family tradition of sucking up to Wall Street is why Hillary and
Bill and the foundation their daughter heads have been rewarded with
millions in lecture fees and donations that are the basis of Hillary's
rags-to-riches fairy tale. When she says she wants every child to have the
opportunity that her grandchild has, that presupposes a father set up in the
hedge fund business by Goldman Sachs chairman and Clinton buddy Lloyd
Blankfein.
Yes, Bernie Sanders has an immensely honorable record of waging the good
fight for struggling Americans. On issues of economic justice, he is second
to none, but that makes his stumble in this debate so depressing. I have
long admired the man, but his failure to directly hold the Democratic
leadership accountable for the bipartisan hollowing out of the American
workforce was disappointing. The destruction of the hardworking, decently
paid middle class was abetted by lousy trade deals like NAFTA and more
recently the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Hillary Clinton called the
"gold standard" until it became politically inconvenient to insist on that
absurdity.
Sanders' eagerness to forgive Clinton for any malfeasance in her email
scandal was the debate's most celebrated but disgraceful moment. Ignoring
her outrageous hypocrisy in endorsing the government's right to read the
personal emails of everyone in the world, including the leaders of Germany
and Brazil, but not her own, Sanders absolved the former secretary of state
of the kinds of security breaches that have put lower-level government
workers in prison. "Let me say this," Sanders declared as he cut into the
applause for Clinton's dismissal of the email controversy as simply partisan
contrivance. "Let me say . something that may not be great politics. But I
think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick
and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails!" Of course it was great
politics, creating a kumbaya moment among the assembled Democrats, with an
appreciative Clinton murmuring, "Thank you. Me, too. Me, too." Suddenly
Sanders had morphed into a Tony Blair complement to the Margaret Thatcher
wannabe standing next to him.
Sanders remains proud of his opposition to the Patriot Act-still supported
by Clinton-which authorized mass surveillance by the National Security
Agency. So why didn't he point out the hypocrisy of a Cabinet member not
trusting the government with her personal emails but feeling perfectly fine
about the most intimate private data of the rest of us being subject to a
vast and secret system of government spying? Spying that Clinton knew all
about, but that was concealed from the American public until it was revealed
by a brave whistleblower whom Clinton wants to imprison.
We learned of the domestic spying, since limited by an act of Congress, only
through the disclosures of Edward Snowden, whose motives and patriotism
Clinton continues to castigate. Repeating her persistent denigration of a
young man who served the needs of a democracy as Clinton so abjectly
betrayed our Constitution, Clinton stated that Snowden must come back and
"face the music." Once again, as she has done repeatedly, Clinton falsely
claimed that Snowden could have sought whistleblower protection when she
should know that such protection is only for government employees, not a
contractor as Snowden was. And she again smeared Snowden for taking refuge
in Russia, as if that was his choice rather than the result of the State
Department stripping his passport while he was in transit at the Moscow
airport.
One should have no expectation that Clinton will be anything but deceitful
in beating the drum for the "impostures of pretended patriotism" that George
Washington warned about in his farewell address. Her hawkishness is
ingrained, and the smug satisfaction she brings to an appraisal of the
wreckage she has encouraged in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria was on
full display during the debate's painfully shallow consideration of foreign
policy choices.
That the former Goldwater Girl is a devotee of peace through bombing is not
news, but her unctuous satisfaction with the results of her warmongering
tenure as secretary of state is a depressing harbinger of worldwide chaos
should she be elected president. And don't lecture me about the future of a
Supreme Court in the hands of someone who would hang Edward Snowden if she
could work it for the polls. Et tu, Bernie?
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Bernie Blew It: He Sold Out Instead of Confronting Clinton
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_blew_it_he_sold_out_instead_of_co
nfronting_clinton_20151016/
Posted on Oct 16, 2015
By Robert Scheer
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to the media after the CNN Democratic
presidential debate Tuesday in Las Vegas. (David Becker / AP)
Bernie blew it. By embracing rather than confronting Hillary Clinton, Sen.
Sanders fell into the trap of sellout mainstream politics, improving his
personal brand as an appealing but ultimately non-threatening advocate for
the downtrodden while studiously avoiding any suggestion that the
smiley-faced woman standing next to him is deeply complicit in Wall Street's
rape of the nation.
In Tuesday's debate he pointedly ignored the Clinton family's role in
deregulating Wall Street, and in doing so he allowed Hillary Clinton to cast
gun regulation as the key issue that divides her from him. Forgotten was
Bill Clinton's selection of Goldman Sachs honcho Robert Rubin to be his
treasury secretary, an appointee who with President Clinton's complicity
presided over the dismantling of New Deal limits on financial greed.
The Clinton family tradition of sucking up to Wall Street is why Hillary and
Bill and the foundation their daughter heads have been rewarded with
millions in lecture fees and donations that are the basis of Hillary's
rags-to-riches fairy tale. When she says she wants every child to have the
opportunity that her grandchild has, that presupposes a father set up in the
hedge fund business by Goldman Sachs chairman and Clinton buddy Lloyd
Blankfein.
Yes, Bernie Sanders has an immensely honorable record of waging the good
fight for struggling Americans. On issues of economic justice, he is second
to none, but that makes his stumble in this debate so depressing. I have
long admired the man, but his failure to directly hold the Democratic
leadership accountable for the bipartisan hollowing out of the American
workforce was disappointing. The destruction of the hardworking, decently
paid middle class was abetted by lousy trade deals like NAFTA and more
recently the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Hillary Clinton called the
"gold standard" until it became politically inconvenient to insist on that
absurdity.
Sanders' eagerness to forgive Clinton for any malfeasance in her email
scandal was the debate's most celebrated but disgraceful moment. Ignoring
her outrageous hypocrisy in endorsing the government's right to read the
personal emails of everyone in the world, including the leaders of Germany
and Brazil, but not her own, Sanders absolved the former secretary of state
of the kinds of security breaches that have put lower-level government
workers in prison. "Let me say this," Sanders declared as he cut into the
applause for Clinton's dismissal of the email controversy as simply partisan
contrivance. "Let me say . something that may not be great politics. But I
think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick
and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails!" Of course it was great
politics, creating a kumbaya moment among the assembled Democrats, with an
appreciative Clinton murmuring, "Thank you. Me, too. Me, too." Suddenly
Sanders had morphed into a Tony Blair complement to the Margaret Thatcher
wannabe standing next to him.
Sanders remains proud of his opposition to the Patriot Act-still supported
by Clinton-which authorized mass surveillance by the National Security
Agency. So why didn't he point out the hypocrisy of a Cabinet member not
trusting the government with her personal emails but feeling perfectly fine
about the most intimate private data of the rest of us being subject to a
vast and secret system of government spying? Spying that Clinton knew all
about, but that was concealed from the American public until it was revealed
by a brave whistleblower whom Clinton wants to imprison.
We learned of the domestic spying, since limited by an act of Congress, only
through the disclosures of Edward Snowden, whose motives and patriotism
Clinton continues to castigate. Repeating her persistent denigration of a
young man who served the needs of a democracy as Clinton so abjectly
betrayed our Constitution, Clinton stated that Snowden must come back and
"face the music." Once again, as she has done repeatedly, Clinton falsely
claimed that Snowden could have sought whistleblower protection when she
should know that such protection is only for government employees, not a
contractor as Snowden was. And she again smeared Snowden for taking refuge
in Russia, as if that was his choice rather than the result of the State
Department stripping his passport while he was in transit at the Moscow
airport.
One should have no expectation that Clinton will be anything but deceitful
in beating the drum for the "impostures of pretended patriotism" that George
Washington warned about in his farewell address. Her hawkishness is
ingrained, and the smug satisfaction she brings to an appraisal of the
wreckage she has encouraged in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria was on
full display during the debate's painfully shallow consideration of foreign
policy choices.
That the former Goldwater Girl is a devotee of peace through bombing is not
news, but her unctuous satisfaction with the results of her warmongering
tenure as secretary of state is a depressing harbinger of worldwide chaos
should she be elected president. And don't lecture me about the future of a
Supreme Court in the hands of someone who would hang Edward Snowden if she
could work it for the polls. Et tu, Bernie?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_blew_it_he_sold_out_instead_of_co
nfronting_clinton_20151016/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_blew_it_he_sold_out_instead_of_co
nfronting_clinton_20151016/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_blew_it_he_sold_out_instead_of_co
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