Dear Family,
You may or may not know this, but I have been totally immersed in the Bernie Sanders campaign for the past several months. I’ve donated a lot of money, gone to campaign meetings, held phonebanking gatherings, and advocated to anyone who would listen ad nauseam. I have also been obsessively researching Sanders, Clinton, electoral politics, and delegate math for hundreds of hours. I’ve watched every debate of both parties and most media appearances of the democratic candidates. I’ve never believed in anything so much and it has indeed become almost my single purpose over the past few months.
Having looked at the demographics and the delegate math, I’ve come to the conclusion that as goes NY, so goes the nomination. Currently, Clinton has a large lead in polls in NY and will likely win the state and the nomination. If Sanders pulls an upset in NY, it signals that he will also do well in the other states in the region that have upcoming elections, and will go on to win California handily.
I’m sure some of you are voting for Clinton and that’s fine, but given that I have invested so much into this, I ask you to take a few hours and read my (very long) case for why it’s so important that we elect Bernie Sanders. Every factual claim that I make is supported with links to the source of the information, and a lot of this stuff is not being well covered by the network news. I’ve put a lot of time into this, just in the hopes of swaying a few votes, the votes of my people. Please take the time to watch the videos, read the articles, and consider my argument and if you find it convincing please forward it to other voters you know who might be swayed.
The Democratic primary has exposed a major generational divide with those my age and younger overwhelmingly supporting Sanders and those 50 and over overwhelmingly supporting Clinton. While I would agree that generally speaking older people are wiser, in this case, I have to say that the kids are the ones who are getting it right and the older generation should not blow our only opportunity to turn this country around. The kids are the ones who have to live with the future that this election decides. The economy of today’s middle class would be unrecognizable to the older generation that grew up at a time when single income families, home-ownership, and solid well paying jobs were available to the majority of people with college degrees or a good trade. Climate change is going to massively impact the lives of Tam, Abby, Trevor, and Dante’s generation.
We are at a truly momentous crossroads in US history. For the first time in my lifetime, we have a viable candidate that wants to clean up the corruption and restore a sense of justice to this country. Bernie Sanders is a truly extraordinary politician in that he has representing the people with unimpeachable integrity and unrelenting selfless service. His wife is awesome, he lives a middle class lifestyle in a normal home, he was a very effective congressman/Senator, is totally loved by the people that he has represented, doesn’t have a single skeleton in his closet, and has never sought to use his position to his own personal benefit. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has used her political position to enrich herself personally to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, lives in several giant mansions, hobnobs with billionaires, did absolutely nothing in the Senate but position herself for the presidency, is sponsored by the worst of the bad actors in business, and has a long history riddled with dishonesty, all of which I will support below.
We used to have great presidents in this country, that had big visions and big plans, and course corrected the direction of our country. In the last few decades we’ve gotten used to presidents who play small and whittle away at things here and there while basically allowing moneyed interests to control the agenda. We need another FDR, not another Bill Clinton. For the first time in my lifetime, we have that chance. I picked up my values from my family who taught me about justice, who read from Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech every Passover, who instilled in me liberal Jewish values and told me to be a mensch. Bernie Sanders is the only mensch I know in politics.www.facebook.com/...
It would be such a shame if this once in a lifetime opportunity was thwarted because the older generation that once stood up for liberal values wanted to play it safe and not rock the boat. The future is at stake, which is why I’m asking the older generation to consider voting Bernie for your children and grandchildren.
I’ve broken my case for Sanders down to the following topics:
1. Playing the Game vs. Changing the Game
2. Campaign Finance and Sell-Out Politics
3. Electability
4. Honesty
5. Accomplishments in Congress
6. LGBT Issues
7. Israel and AIPAC
8. Interventionist vs. International Foreign Policy
9. First Woman President vs. First Lifelong Liberal, 70-something, Secular, Brooklyn Jew.
It may seem like I am attacking Clinton, but I’m just pointing out facts about what she’s done and what Sanders has done and connecting the dots here and there. Every claim I make is supported by a link to a source. Click on those links to watch the videos of Hillary and Bernie in action and the articles about their deeds.
1. Playing the Game vs. Changing the Game
There is no question that Hillary Clinton is a very talented politician. She is highly intelligent, incredibly capable, tough as nails, and full of experience. She has a vast network of big money donors and has the entire Democratic Party establishment lined up behind her. But, we are at a juncture in American history where the economy has gotten so bad, inequality so gross, middle-class so shrunken, and global environmental calamity so imminent, and for once, a politician not seeking not to win the game as it is, but to change the game itself, actually has a decent chance of winning.
The Democratic Party used to be a liberal party, before Bill Clinton moved it so far to the right that it now resembles the pre-Reagan Republican party.en.wikipedia.org/...
Hillary Clinton wants to keep it just how it is and Bernie Sanders wants to reclaim the party for the people. Obama has been a great president in many ways, but when he took office and populated his cabinet with Clintonite economists and Wall St. executives, I knew that economic inequality would get much worse under his watch. I’ve never been so sad to be right about a prediction. The younger generations know that we need a fundamental change in the game, they are the one’s who will live or die with the results, and for them the stakes are too high to vote for more of the same. Here is Bernie Sanders illustrating the emergency state of income inequality that we are facing.www.youtube.com/...
People my age and younger know that it’s no longer likely that you will get a good job, just because you have an advanced degree. That it’s virtually impossible for a middle class person to own a home in much of the country. That there is no longer such a thing as a single-income family for 90% of the population. Wages and salaries have gone way down for all but the top 1 or 2%. Meanwhile, obscene amounts of wealth has collected in the hands of a very few people at the top. Kids are moving back in with their parents after graduate school. People with skilled trades are working for poverty wages. Very few believe that their children will have the same level of opportunity as they have.
I might be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like the older generations rank global warming amongst their biggest concerns. But, scientists say that global warming will cause widespread hunger, war, and destruction by the time the children in our family are senior citizens.www.thenational.ae/...
Fighting global warming will require serious measures that will affect the bottom line of the fossil fuel industry. But, the fossil fuel industry is betting heavily on Hillary Clinton, because they know that she will not hurt their interests.www.greenpeace.org/...
Her weak proposals for addressing climate change reflect that.grist.org/...
She will favor her donors’ short-term financial interests over her constituents long term well-being.
For the younger generations it’s just not an option to continue fighting for miniscule incremental gains in a system that is rigged to benefit those who already have vast wealth and power. The game must be changed. For the benefit of their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, older Americans must be willing to vote for the candidate of fundamental change, not the candidate of the status quo, in this election.
2. Campaign Finance and Sell-Out Politics
At the very core of what’s wrong with American politics, both Democratic and Republican, is the inherit conflict of interest between the politicians’ job to represent the people, but their reliance on money from corporations with contrary interests in order to get and keep their jobs. Any politician will tell you that they have to spend half their time in office dialing for dollars.www.theatlantic.com/...
But what they rarely admit is that big donors expect access and influence in exchange for those donations.www.theguardian.com/...
This is why, even under the Obama Administration, led by a president who has integrity, his only two major legislative achievements, Obamacare and Dodd/Frank, were so watered down by corporate lobbyists who were invited to the table at every stage, to the point that they are far less effective than they should be:
thehill.com/...
www.rollingstone.com/...
The lack of campaign finance reform is why we have corporate friendly appointees in every regulatory agency and why corporate lobbyists whose interests are directly counter to those of the American people are sitting at the table watering down every effort for reform. If it weren’t for dependence on campaign donations from corporate interests, we’d have a robust policy on climate change, we’d have a public option, if not single-payer health care, we’d have strong protections for unions, a much more humane criminal justice system, a higher minimum wage, etc. etc.
Clinton says that she is for campaign finance reform while campaigning, but she relies on major funding by some of the very worst behaving sectors of our economy for, not only her campaigns, but for the Clinton Foundation, and for her personal wealth. Clinton claims that these bad actors get nothing for those donations, but these corporations giving millions of dollars are not stupid. They know they get something for the money and that’s why they do it. They donate to candidates in both parties so that they have access and influence over everyone. The result is demonstrated by a major Princeton University study that shows that it is the will of corporate interests and not the will of the voting public that gets enacted over and over again:www.businessinsider.com/...
You can tell much more about what policies a politician will support by looking at who their top donors are than by looking at their stated platform. And when you look at who has been funding Clinton’s campaigns, aside from Emily’s List, it’s not pretty:www.politifact.com/...
When Clinton’s current campaign is funded by $15 million dollars from Wall St.www.cnbc.com/...
and she was paid tens of millions of dollars in personal income for giving short speeches to the likes of Goldman Sachs:www.businessinsider.com/..., how can we expect her to impose the right balance between unbridled capitalism and regulations that protect ordinary people?
When Clinton’s current campaign is funded by $3.25 million from the fossil fuel industry, how can we expect her to do what’s necessary to prevent global warming?:news.vice.com/...
When Clinton’s current campaign is funded by lobbyists and bundlers representing the private prison industry and big PHARMA, how can we expect her to reform the criminal justice system or lower health care costs?dailycaller.com/...
When Hillary embraces the support of a super PAC raising tens of millions of dollars in dark money to support her candidacy, how can we ever expect any meaningful campaign finance reform from her?www.nytimes.com/...
But for the first time in history, we have a candidate that is not beholden in the least to any of these big money interests. The only big donors he has are labor unions. Bernie Sanders hasn’t accepted one penny from corporate interests. In Bernie’s parlance, THIS IS YUUUUGE!!! His campaign is funded by over 5 million donations averaging $27, as he is so proud of saying on the campaign trail.www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to elect a president who is beholden to and is a champion of the people, not the oligarchy.
Meanwhile, even sleazebag Donald Trump got favors from Clinton for his contributions to both her and her husband’s campaigns:www.politifact.com/...
time.com/...
Another shady example: When Bill Clinton left office did he pardon any of the thousands of non-violent low-level drug offenders who were serving outrageously long sentences due to his crime bill (which Hillary campaigned for)?www.thenation.com/...
No. Instead, he pardoned billionaire white-collar raqueteer Marc Rich, who in turn funded the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s campaign for the Senate which she used as a springboard to the presidency.www.latimes.com/...
I trust Sanders to do the bidding of the people. I don’t trust Hillary Clinton to do the same.
3. Electability
No matter who the Democratic candidate is, it is absolutely crucial that we prevent the Republicans from winning the White House. The top two Republican candidates are downright scary, but even scarier to me is if a brokered Republican convention resulted in one of the relatively potty-trained Republican like John Kasich, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio etc. winning the nomination. Polls show that any one of those candidates will beat Hillary Clinton by wide margins. This election, Supreme Court is at stake, as well as all the usual issues that Democrats are so much better on. We must nominate the most electable candidate for the general election, and despite the media’s incessant promotion of the Clinton electability narrative, all data points to the opposite. Bernie does way better than Hillary against all of the Republican candidates. Bernie has good favorability ratings, is perceived as honest, inspires a huge population of first-time voters, and does extremely well with Independents and even some Republicans, whereas Hillary has terrible favorability ratings, does terrible with Independents, is perceived as dishonest, and only inspires Republicans who will come out in droves to vote against her. Here is the data to back up these claims:
A. Head to Head Polling
There have now been over 50 consecutive national polls that have all shown Bernie outperforming Hillary when matched against the Republican field. There has not been a single national poll that has shown Hillary doing better than Bernie. Some argue that these polls don’t matter, but of course they do. These are the voters indicating who they would vote for. This is the only empirical data we have.
Realclearpolitics.com is a site that compiles poll data and averages the polls to come up with metadata about electoral outcomes. In each of my links that I post, you can see the recent polls that are figured into the average at the top and if you scroll down you can see months worth of polls that all say the same thing - Bernie is the stronger candidate.
I strongly believe that Hillary would mop up the floor with Donald Trump, so if he is the Republican candidate, the electability argument is largely moot. Still, on average Sanders does 6.3 points better than Clinton in national polls against Trump. Here are the links:
Clinton v. Trump:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Sanders v. Trump:
www.realclearpolitics.com/...
More scary to me is the fact that many polls show Ted Cruz tying and even beating Clinton whereas Bernie beats Cruz in every poll. On average, Sanders does 5.5 points better than Clinton against Cruz.
Clinton v. Cruz:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Sanders v. Cruz:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Even scarier is the possibility that a “moderate” Republican like Kasich emerges from the convention with the nomination. Kasich is the most formidable Republican candidate. He automatically wins the crucial swing state of Ohio (his home state), no matter who the Democratic nominee is and does very well nationally and in other swing states. He destroys Clinton in head to head match ups and could be a threat even to Sanders. On average, Sanders does 7.5 points better than Clinton against Kasich, who beats Clinton in every single poll conducted this year.
Clinton v. Kasich:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Sanders v. Kasich:
www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Why does Sanders do so well in the general, when Clinton is beating him in the primary? The answer is Independent voters, favorability ratings, perception of honesty, and base motivation.
B. Independent voters
Independents are a huge and growing voting block that largely determines the outcome of elections. In the last 10 elections, the candidate that lost the Independent vote, has won the election only twice:www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In poll after poll, Clinton does terrible with Independents and Sanders does extremely well with Independents. To verify this, you have click on the links on the realclearpolitics site to look at the actual poll data in each of the national polls, where they break down the responses by party. In every poll, Sanders does 20-30 points better with Independents than Clinton. Again, this is YUUUUGE! He also does surprisingly well for a Democratic candidate with Republicans, whereas Clinton gets almost none of their votes.
Anecdotally, while I’ve been phonebanking for Bernie, I talk to a lot of Republicans who are considering voting Democratic for the first time ever this year, because of Trump. However, they tell me that the only person they dislike more than Trump is Clinton, whom they perceive as very dishonest. They almost always have positive and respectful words for Sanders, whom they perceive as honest and full of integrity, even though they disagree with his ideology.
C. Favorability Ratings
If Clinton were to win the presidency, she would be the least popular US president on day one in recent history. Her favorability ratings are in the tank. She is despised by Republicans and Independents and even Democrats are not too thrilled with her. Only Trump does worse. Sanders has positive favorability ratings. He is well liked and perceived as an honest, consistent, and well-meaning public servant.
Clinton’s average favorability is negative 13.2:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
Candidates with favorability ratings that low do not win elections.
Sanders’ average favorability is positive 7.4 (drastically lowered by one FOX News outlier, which is the only poll that has him in the negatives), the only candidate in either party, besides Kasich, who has a positive favorability rating:www.realclearpolitics.com/...
D. Honesty
I’ve dedicated a whole section on actual honesty below, but this paragraph is about perceived honesty. Suffice it to say that Clinton is perceived as very dishonest by the general electorate, whereas Sanders is perceived as very honest. To verify this, you have to go into the poll data on the links from the realclearpolitics site. You’ll see that the gap in perceived honesty between Clinton and Sanders is YUGE amongst Republicans, Independents, and even Democrats. There are many articles about this. To read them, just google: “Clinton Sanders Polls Honesty.” Perceived dishonesty is the main reason voters dislike Clinton and approve of Sanders.
E. Base Motivation
All across the country there are millions of voters who are so disgusted with the corruption of establishment politics that they just don’t turn out to vote. For once, these people have a true champion of honest liberal politics that they can believe in. First time voters are coming out in droves for Sanders. In 2008, Obama’s historic candidacy brought out record turnout that dwarfed any previous Democratic primary turnout. Yet, in the states that Sanders has won in the primary, he has exceeded Obama’s record 2008 numbers in several states. In the states that Clinton has won, she has not come close to 2008 numbers in a single state. Sanders voters have so far set a new turnout record in Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, Maine, Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, and Idaho. But, the big story is Michigan, where Sanders pulled an upset win over Clinton. In Michigan, Democratic turnout was more than DOUBLE the already record numbers from 2008. Here’s an article on the subject that doesn’t include the most recent states where Sanders won in landslides:www.sandiegouniontribune.com/... That’s record turnout for Sanders in 9 of the 14 states that he has won and low turnout in all 18 of the states that Clinton has won. Like 2008 with Obama, he brings in the new voters, she does not.
Unfortunately, the polls show that the same infrequent and new voters are not planning to come out and vote for Clinton, should she win the nomination. A full third of Sanders voters say they would not vote for Clinton, whereas almost all Clinton voters say they would vote for Sanders:www.wsj.com/...
Hopefully this will change as the general election approaches, but it doesn’t bode well for Clinton.
So, all the actual data suggests that Sanders is a much stronger general election candidate than Clinton, yet the mainstream media is constantly trumpeting the opposite narrative, and the effect is that most polled Democratic primary voters believe Clinton is the most likely candidate to beat the Republicans. They are wrong.
F. Campaigning Against the Odds.
Hillary Clinton has had every built in advantage over Bernie Sanders in this race. She is well known throughout the country, whereas few had heard of Sanders before this election cycle. She had already run a national primary campaign in every state in 2008, whereas Sanders had to cobble together a campaign infrastructure on the go. She has a vast network of big money donors and a Super-PAC and began the campaign with a huge war chest, whereas Sanders has had to rely on small money contributions that he’s picked up along the way. Clinton was endorsed by nearly every establishment politician before the primary campaign even began. The Democratic National Committee, led by despicable Clinton acolyte Debbie Wasserman Shultz, has done everything in its power to rig the primary in favor of Clinton:usuncut.com/...
The media establishment has treated the Sanders campaign as a joke from the beginning and has provided far more favorable coverage to Clinton:
www.alternet.org/...
inthesetimes.com/...
Yet, Sanders has proven to be a tireless and relentless campaigner, doing several public events and media appearances a day and has countered all of Clinton’s institutional advantages by simply being so right and so true in his message. His ability to bring out new voters will help Democrats up and down the ballot, where Republicans have been able to dominate and enact their regressive agenda. This is the guy we want fighting for the Democrats in the general election.
4. Honesty
I wrote above about how Clinton is perceived by the general electorate to be dishonest and Sanders is perceived to be honest. This section is not about perception (which is driven by the media), but about the actual character trait of honesty. I’m not going to dignify the countless Republican faux scandals that Clinton has had to endure (Whitewater, Bengazi, Emails, etc.). No doubt that bullshit is responsible for a lot of the perception that Clinton is dishonest. I don’t care about any of that, except for the fact that it could affect the outcome of the election. What I do care about very much are the numerous outright lies that Hillary Clinton has told to the American public and the shameful way she has distorted the voting records of both Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders during her campaigns against them. I care about how she opposed gay marriage and supported DOMA until very recently, yet pretends to have been a champion of gay rights. I care about how she advocated for both the Keystone Pipeline and the Trans Pacific Partnership and now pretends she opposes them. I care about the outright lies about her opponents that she continually tells during the debates and on the campaign trail. This is not a person who I trust or someone with the character that I want to see in a president. Here’s the back up for my statements:
A. Dishonest Campaigning
In 2008, I was a big Obama supporter. I was frustrated that in debate after debate and speech after speech, Clinton was spreading falsehoods about Obama. If she was the better candidate, why couldn’t she win on the merits and why did she have to resort to distorting the record of her opponents?
Here’s a good article about how Clinton used distortions and appeals to racism in her campaign against Obama:www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Hillary’s distortions of Obama’s record in 2008 and her attempts to tie him to bogus faux scandals the likes of which she herself had been a victim of for decades led Obama to charge that she would “say anything to get elected.”:weblogs.baltimoresun.com/...
Now she is up to the same old tricks against Bernie Sanders. Here’s Politifact pointing out that she has been lying in the debates about Bernie’s record with the Clean Power Plan.www.politifact.com/...
Here’s a Washington Post piece on five deceitful things Clinton said about Sanders in the recent debate:www.washingtonpost.com/...
Recently in St. Louis, Clinton touted her work on health care and said, “And I always get a little chuckle when I hear my opponent talking about doing it [health care reform]. Well, I don't know where he was when I was trying to get health care in '93 and '94, standing up to the insurance companies, standing up against the drug companies."
It was immediately pointed out that Sanders actually worked with Hillary Clinton on health care at the time, that she wrote to him to praise him for his work, and that he was literally standing right behind her when she promoted her health care plan at Dartmouth in 1993:www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So, why would we want a president that is willing to engage in these kinds of deceitful tactics to attack fellow Democrats? She has every advantage in this race, why can’t she win fairly?
B. Lying to the American People.
One example: For some reason, during the 2008 campaign, Clinton decided to invent an incident where she claimed to have had to run from sniper fire. When she got caught, she told several more lies to try to get out of it and was caught lying again and again. Please watch this video of Hillary Clinton lying to the American people over and over, but ignore the juvenile caption and the weird fart thing at the end:
www.facebook.com/...
If we value honesty in politicians, how can we elect a president that lies so habitually?
C. Positions of Convenience
As I’ll detail in a separate section below, Clinton was one of the last politicians to come out in favor of same-sex marriage, was actively opposed to it for a long time, and reversed her position only when it was convenient for her political career.
Because they are not popular with Democrats, Clinton is currently claiming to have opposed both the TPP and the Keystone Pipeline, when in fact she was a major advocate of both of those proposals:
www.cnn.com/...
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
She did the same on NAFTA during the 2008 campaign:www.politifact.com/...
Why should we believe any of her primary campaign policy positions, when they are belied by her record?
D. Contrast Bernie Sanders
Above, you see the reasons why even Democrats perceive Hillary Clinton as dishonest. But, there is one candidate in this race who actually has a lifetime of advocating for the same positions with almost robotic consistency:www.youtube.com/...
Although he has been in the notoriously dirty political arena for decades, where almost every politician finds a way to personally enrich themselves, Sanders has a net worth of half a million:moneynation.com/...
Meanwhile, the Clintons have made 110 million dollars parlaying their political clout into big money for themselves:fortune.com/... This is what corruption looks like.
Despite the Clinton campaign’s best efforts, there is simply no dirt that can be dug up about Bernie Sanders. The man has been a tireless, consistent, and honest public servant for his entire life, truly rare among politicians. He has shown a realness and a degree of compassion that I have never seen before in a politician. He is a mensch, through and through.
5. Accomplishments in Congress
A constant refrain from the Clinton campaign is that she “gets it done” and that Sanders is too extreme and not capable of working with Democrats and Republicans in congress. But, Clinton and Sanders’ actual records in congress tell quite the opposite story.
Hillary Clinton represented NY in the Senate for 8 years. But, is there a New Yorker out there that can name a single thing that she accomplished during that time? I guarantee that you can’t because, in fact, she did not pass a single meaningful piece of legislation during her entire tenure in the Senate. She passed a total of three bills in her entire congressional career: one to rename a portion of a highway for Tim Russert, one to rename a post office, and one to declare a historic monument.dailycaller.com/...
When she was representing NY in congress, was she “getting it done” or was she just positioning herself to run for the presidency?
Contrast Sanders, who also only passed 3 of his bills, but those three bills included major substantive legislative victories, such as a bipartisan bill to reform the Veteran’s Administration. Contrary to the media narrative Sanders worked with Republicans and Democrats and was absolutely essential to the passage of this legislation.www.theatlantic.com/...
But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Because, unlike Clinton who claims to “get it done” while actually getting nothing done, Sanders got tons of meaningful legislation passed through the amendment process, which earned him the title of The Amendment King in congress. Check out this article for a sample of the long list of major, substantive, progressive legislative policies that Sanders enacted:www.alternet.org/...
Bernie is cast in the media as an unrealistic dreamer, but in addition to his pragmatic congressional career, he was a very innovative mayor of Burlington Vermont, and got a lot of tangible results:www.thenation.com/...
And, even after decades of political activity, with plenty of opportunity for dirty laundry to be aired, if there were any, Bernie is so popular in Vermont that he received 86% of the primary vote, depriving Clinton of even a single delegate in that state.
So, while Clinton goes around mouthing the words, it is actually Sanders and not Clinton who has a long track record of working with other politicians to “get it done” and it’s he, not her, who can be trusted to do so as President. You may find some of his positions to be pie-in-the-sky or unrealistic, but Sanders has shown that he knows how to negotiate and enact policy changes and he understands the most basic rule of negotiation – if you start from a compromised position to begin with, when you actually do have to compromise, you don’t end up with much.
5. LGBT Issues
Fighting for LGBT rights is not just the right thing to do, it is a personal issue for our family, and I would expect that everyone in our family cares very much about where the candidates have been on these issues. While Clinton wins all the big endorsements and portrays herself as a defender of LGBT rights, she is actually a very latecomer to positions that Bernie Sanders has held for a very long time.
Clinton’s Record
In 1996, Congress passed, Bill Clinton signed, and Hillary Clinton defended, the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as a sacred bond between one man and one woman.www.washingtonpost.com/...
In 1999, Bill Clinton had this to say about his wife’s position on LGBT issues: “You know I’ve had much more contact in my life with gay people than Hillary has... I think she’s really a little put off by some of this stuff... Hillary, emotionally speaking, still finds the issue [gay rights] harder to swallow than I do. And that it could be difficult for her in New York politics, how far she’ll be asked to go.”www.buzzfeed.com/...
In 2002, Hillary Clinton was an active opponent of gay marriage:www.youtube.com/...
In 2004, at a time when Republicans like Dick Cheney were already on the record for gay marriage, Hillary was giving speeches opposing it:www.youtube.com/...
In 2008, both Clinton and Obama campaigned for civil unions, not gay marriage, and maintained that position throughout the 2012 election campaign.
It was not until 2013, that Hillary Clinton first found it politically convenient to come out in favor of gay marriage:
www.politifact.com/...
Just recently, Clinton praised Nancy Reagan for being a pioneer in AIDS awareness, when in fact the Reagans’ unwillingness to address the issue caused prolonged suffering and unnecessary death for thousands of people.www.nytimes.com/...
I knew this. If Hillary Clinton was really the champion of LGBT rights that she claims to be, she would have known this.
Bernie’s Record
Meanwhile Bernie has a long track record of supporting the LGBT community. He didn’t wait until it was popular, he did it because it was right.
Here’s Bernie in the early 70s as a candidate for the Governor of Vermont publishing a letter calling for, among other things, the abolition of all laws that regulate homosexuality:www.alternet.org/... (He was also way ahead of the game in that letter calling for an end to the Drug War that the Clintons would escalate two decades later).
In 1983, as Mayor of Burlington Vermont, while Clinton was squeamish about all things gay, Sanders signed a Gay Pride Day proclamation.www.politifact.com/...
Here is Sanders in 1995, heroically taking a Republican congressman to task for saying something about “homos in the military.” Please watch this incredible video.www.youtube.com/...
Although, Sanders was not a vocal proponent of same-sex marriage until 2009 (4 years before Clinton) and had admittedly given some evasive answers on the topic, he has opposed every effort to restrict same-sex marriage that he came across in his political career.
He was in the minority, not taking the easy vote, when he voted against the Clinton era Defense of Marriage Act and Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell compromise. He also voted against a law that would have banned same sex adoption in 1999.www.queerty.com/...
So, there is no question which candidate has been on the right side of those issues and it is not Hillary Clinton. In today’s political climate, it’s easy and even a requirement for a Democratic candidate to support same-sex marriage, but I want a president who will support things because they are right, not because they are easy or popular. Where will Hillary Clinton be on the tough LGBT issues of the future? Will she stand up for what’s right even when it’s unpopular. History answers that question in the negative.
6. Israel and AIPAC
My family supports Israel, but we also recognize that hawkish factions in Israel are committing human rights violations and building settlements that are not in the interest of peace in that region of the world. Oftentimes, the United States has been an enabler to Israeli hardliners, providing cover so that they don’t have to take responsible steps to make peace. Cowardly American politicians have refused to defy the hardliners in Israel because of the outsized influence that AIPAC has over electoral politics. Very few politicians, and certainly not Hillary Clinton, have had the courage to stand up to AIPAC, and so peace in the Middle East is not even on the horizon. Recently, all the candidates of both parties went to AIPAC to pander to them, kiss their ring, and make hawkish noises about Israel. One candidate, the one who seeks to be the first Jewish president, refused to pay patronage. Instead he taped his message and it is a message that is aligned with the just values that I learned from my family and Jewish community, not the values of AIPAC. Contrast Hillary Clinton’s speech to AIPAC, which sounded almost exactly like Donald Trump’s speech. Her position is cowardly and calculated for politics, not peace. Bernie’s is honest, courageous, and right. Just watch the two speeches and tell me who you want in control of our nation’s Israel policy.
Here is Clinton pandering to AIPAC:www.youtube.com/...
Here is Sanders sending an honorable message to AIPAC:www.youtube.com/...
7. Interventionist vs. International Military and Foreign Policy
When Clinton was running against Barack Obama, she ridiculed him for being willing to talk to countries like Iran and Cuba.www.nbcnews.com/...
Thankfully, Obama won or we would not have the nuclear disarmament deal with Iran or the opening of relationships with Cuba, both of which were achieved after Clinton left the office of Secretary of State.
Clinton is proud of her friendship with Henry Kissinger whose interventions overthrowing democratically elected leaders around the world and replacing them with puppet dictators friendly to American business interests has caused so much pain, violence, and animosity towards the US internationally.www.motherjones.com/...
Clinton has continually advocated for military intervention and regime change in other countries throughout her political career.www.tikkun.org/...
In the 2008 campaign, her foreign policy platform resembled that of the Bush Administration Neocons more than that of Barack Obama, leading one of my favorite comedians to joke that Clinton is “a Wolfowitz in Sheepowitz clothing.”
On the other hand, Sanders has always favored peace and international cooperation, actively opposing the Vietnam War and famously leading the opposition to the Iraq War in congress. Watch this video where he predicts exactly what would happen if we invaded Iraq:www.youtube.com/... Hopefully, you all know that Clinton voted for that war as well as Bush’s atrocious Patriot Act, which Bernie opposed.
I want the candidate who talks about peace and was right about Iraq choosing America’s foreign policy team, not the candidate who admires Kissinger and voted for an unnecessary and disastrous war.
8. Woman or Lifelong Liberal, 70-something, Secular Jew
Having lived my life with all of the socioeconomic privileges that come with being a man, I’m not the best person to speak to whether or not electing a female president is more important than electing an honest, people-funded, steadfast liberal candidate. Instead, I will let today’s modern brand of feminists make those points. Here are some good articles about the candidates by feminist activists:
www.slate.com/...
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
www.theguardian.com/...
www.chicagotribune.com/...
Surely, we are overdue for a female president, but I want it to be a woman that I can be proud of for reasons beyond just her gender. I think Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, and even Michelle Obama would be far better choices for the first female president and I’ve heard that Bernie Sanders intends to choose a female running mate, should he win the nomination.
I’m proud that my mother has advocated for feminism since the early days, during a time when it wasn’t easy or popular to do so. The feminist education that I got during my childhood emphasized the breaking of glass ceilings, equality in the workplace, and Free to Be You and Me. Societal patriarchy has prevented women from equal representation at the highest levels of business and politics and has demeaned those women, like Hillary Clinton, who have broken through. For the feminists of the Free to Be You and Me era, I can imagine how rewarding it would be to see the woman who has endured decades of the most public sexist hostility in politics holding the most powerful political office in the world. Many older women will vote for Hillary Clinton for that reason alone, and I can’t fault them. But, this is no longer the same world as it was when feminists like my mother were trying to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Breaking the highest glass ceiling is not what I’m hearing at the top of the agenda for today’s generation of feminists facing today’s realities in today’s economy.
I’m also very proud of my sister who rose to very high levels of the male-dominated financial sector and who, I’m sure, has many stories to tell about the sexism that still pervades those old boy networks. We have a long way to go to rectify the gender inequalities in politics, business, and every other facet of American life. But, I don’t think the fact of electing a female president is a great solution to that problem, just like I don’t think the election of Obama has done a whole heck of a lot for African-Americans, and I don’t think that electing female heads of state like Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi has done all that much for the plight of women in their respective countries.
Meanwhile, Sanders and Clinton have nearly identical positions on women’s rights issues and Sanders has 100% ratings from the National Organization of Women, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, and many other organizations that fight for the rights of women.votesmart.org/... So, it’s not like the choice is between a woman and Conan the Barbarian.
Although Hillary may indeed be the best advocate for women because she is a woman, she certainly was not an advocate for woman who loved other women, when she went around opposing their right to marry. She was no advocate for women caught up in the criminal justice system when she supported punitive laws that incarcerated non-violent women for lengthy prison terms and took their children away from them:www.theatlantic.com/...
She did not stand up for women when several of them accused her husband of sexual assault and sexual harassment:www.salemnews.com/...
And she is not taking adequate positions on the economic issues that non-millionaire women are struggling with every day.
Hillary Clinton has no lifelong dedication to the liberal principles that I picked up by osmosis from my family. I do believe that these liberal principles were part and parcel with our Reformed Jewish identity, the identity that Bernie Sanders shares. While Bernie, like so many prominent American Jews before him, has always advocated for democratic socialism, Hillary started off as a Republican activist (www.washingtonpost.com/...) married and promoted the political career of a centrist Democrat who moved the Democratic Party to the right and now changes from a “moderate” to a “progressive” like a chameleon depending on whom she’s talking to (www.usnews.com/...)
While a first female president would be of great historic significance and send a great message to the young girls growing up in these times, I think we should hold out for one that will make us proud, not one that has mastered the art of playing the dirty game that male politicians have institutionalized. Meanwhile, a Sanders presidency would be a historical first for many reasons. It would be no small thing to have the first Jewish president. It would be no small thing to have the first secular president. It would be no small thing to have the oldest president ever elected to office. And it would be no small thing to have the first president who didn’t take a penny from the moneyed interests that typically run the game.
So, there you have it. These are the main points that I wanted to make to my family. Although this is already unbearably long, I could go on and on about how Sanders is better on the environment, worker’s rights, job creation, etc. but I’ll leave that for you to research on your own. Vote for Clinton if you must, I’ll have to accept that, but know that I’ll be there to say “I told you so” every time she breaks a campaign promise, sells out our liberal values, or costs the lives of foreign civilians and American soldiers in an unnecessary military intervention. Instead, I hope you’ll make me proud.
