Forced smile, a prelude for misrepresentations to come
I want to like Hillary Clinton. I know she’s smart and hardworking, and I believe she does care about making people’s lives better. I’d like to see her “shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling.” But in the debate on Wednesday, March 9, she was awful.
She attacked Bernie for his supposed failure to support the auto industry and for his supposed standing with right wing militias against immigrants. It was disingenuous and only reinforced the knock on her, that she is dishonest. He is no right-wing nut case, and she can’t position herself to the left of him. He’s a left-wing nut case, and if she wanted to win, she needs to honestly articulate the reason to hew to the center.
Here’s what she should have said:
Bernie, you’re pure as the driven snow of Vermont—or at least as pure as any politician can be. But politics is the art of compromise, and you don’t know how to do it.
If you had been the President in 2008 and pushed for single-payer options, we would have had no health care reform at all and the tens of millions who have obtained health care under the Affordable Care Act would still lack health care. As it is, Obama built a coalition that got the Obamacare through by the very narrowest of margins. Your plan would have been better in all regards but one: it would still be nothing but a plan.
Politics is also about tradeoffs, not absolutes, and you see the tradeoffs no better than you see the need for compromise. Take trade. You oppose NAFTA and the other trade deals because you want to protect our workers from low wage competition. But the evidence is that these trade deals do not impose a net job loss. They cost us some low paying jobs, but they help produce more high paying jobs. Instead of making raw materials, we make cars and plane. And we make them more competitively because we can get the cheap parts from Mexico.
The main problem with the trade deals is that the net gain in wealth is not widely shared; it’s going mostly to the top 1%. But protectionist policies will not address that. What we need is good job retraining, good infrastructure, and a good safety net to help our workers stay afloat in a changing global economy.
And let’s consider as well foreign intervention. You’re right, my vote to invade Iraq was a mistake. Toppling dictators is a risky business, not to be engaged in lightly. But so is allowing dictators to stay in power and to slaughter their own citizens. The Obama administration has been trying your approach in Syria over the past few years, and it isn’t looking very good. Europe is being overrun with refugees, Russia is resurgent in the region, and Assad continues to slaughter his people. A stronger approach might well have prevented this humanitarian and possible political disaster.
Finally, you speak of a political revolution. But revolutions are bloody messes. In revolutions, heads roll. Additionally, revolutions inspire counter-revolutions. You cannot lead a revolution that will bloodlessly transform the United States into Denmark. And if you try, we are likely to find ourselves dealing with a right wing reaction that will bring the likes of Ted Cruz, the Ayatollah of the Christian right, to power.
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This, or something like this, is what I wanted to hear. It would have displayed her understanding of policy and politics. And it would have been honest. If the Democratic Party rejects her honest defense of her centrist policies, then she would go down having fought the good fight, laying the foundation for others to follow.
But she didn’t say that or anything like it. Instead, she just reinforced the idea that she is dishonest. As a result, she may now lose, if not to Bernie then to whoever emerges from the mess that is the Republican Party. And even if she wins because Bernie catches on too late and the Republicans implode, she has shown herself, as she foolishly admitted, to be “no natural politician.” She will provide all the political leadership of Obama, and less.
Our country faces tough political waters. We are pulling apart, and Hillary has shown that she lacks that special gift to call us to our better angels.
