THE CLAIM
Hillary Clinton closed her arguments in Thursday night debate by saying:
"But here's the point I want to make tonight. I am not a single- issue candidate, and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country."
She went on:
“Yes, does Wall Street and big financial interests, along with drug companies, insurance companies, big oil, all of it, have too much influence? You're right.
But if we were to stop that tomorrow, we would still have the indifference, the negligence that we saw in Flint. We would still have racism holding people back. We would still have sexism preventing women from getting equal pay. We would still have LGBT people who get married on Saturday and get fired on Monday. And we would still have governors like Scott Walker and others trying to rip out the heart of the middle class by making it impossible to organize and stand up for better wages and working conditions.”
Clinton's whole closing riff on "the point I want to make tonight" actually started in a couple of sentences prior to the point she wanted to make. Those preceding sentences were:
‘You know, we -- we agree that we've got to get unaccountable money out of politics. We agree that Wall Street should never be allowed to wreck Main Street again.”
Hillary claimed she and Bernie do NOT differ on the point of Bernie's whole campaign, but she wants to do so much more and sees so much more that needs to be done.
This was not just her closing argument. She started it out the same way IN HER OPENING STATEMENT:
“We both agree that we have to get unaccountable money out of our political system and that we have to do much more to ensure that Wall Street never wrecks main street again.
But I want to go further. I want to tackle those barriers that stand in the way of too many Americans right now. African-Americans who face discrimination in the job market, education, housing, and the criminal justice system.tem.
(And she continues with a long list of things she wants to do).
ANALYSIS
This is the core claim of her campaign.
She wants to do so much more than Bernie, and besides, she agrees with his "single" issue.
It's why, she argues, we should choose her over Bernie. So we should examine her words carefully.
First, note that she and Bernie DO NOT agree on the "single issue" she charges that is all he cares about.
Bernie does NOT just want to get "unaccountable money" out of our political system. He does NOT say the special interests have "too much influence".
He says they (billionaires and their special interests) want it all, and that they have all the influence when it comes to policy making while regular voters have none. I posted earlier on Kos about the academic research that proves big donors so dominate policy making that the average person has zero discernible influence on it. That diary and links are here: www.dailykos.com/...
Hillary's term "unaccountable money" is very precise. She would only roll back things to the way they were before the Citizen's United decision opened the door to unlimited and completely hidden political money. That means she accepts the PACs and lobbyists and big donor money, and by inevitable attachment as proven in the earlier diary, THEIR DOMINATING INFLUENCE as long as the money comes in with names attached to it.
Bernie wants to get BIG money, huge donations, large donor and big corporate lobby money, which completely obviates voter preferences, as well as unaccountable or dark money, out of the system. That's why he refuses to take donations over $2,700 dollars and relishes the fact his donations average $27 bucks.
It's BIG MONEY that is wrecking our democracy. Not DARK MONEY.
Big money is like the Super Delegates voting power. I saw a calculation (sorry haven’t been able to track it down yet) that roughly 10,000 regular primary/caucus votes were needed to equal 1 super delegate vote. That means that effectively each super delegate has 10,000 times the voting influence as regular voters, or conversely, you and I have 1/10,000th of the power of a super delegate.
The academic study I referenced above shows that lobbyists and special interests have even greater power than the Super Delegates. If you believe in one person, one vote, as the key to democracy, the whole super delegate system stinks to high heaven. But as bad as that is, our lobbying system is worse and has even more distorting power.
Second, Bernie wants to reduce the size of firms that are so big they imperil the entire US and global economic system, now, before trouble arises again.
Hillary does not. In fact, she explicitly opposes breaking up the too big to fail banks before they fail again. She says Dodd-Frank already gives the president that power in case of an emergency (that is, when they fail again).
But what that means is that she wants to wait until Wall Street wrecks the economy again, and then use that power only to break up the firms that supposedly were the guilty parties.
However, we all know that not a single bank executive went to jail, despite billions of dollars in fines being paid for engaging in proven fraud. That is, we have a smoking gun of admitting a crime took place, but no one did it.
It just happened.
The only way to avoid having businesses engage in completely reckless, unaccountable "too big to jail, too big to fail" behavior is to break them up BEFORE they wreck Main Street again.
So, Hillary's claim she and Bernie agree on his "single issue" is just wrong. They don't agree at all.
What about all those other issues Bernie, she implies, are neglecting in his focus on getting big money out of politics?
Well first, big money and lobbyists completely offset the average voter's influence on policy. That means if the next president does not get big money out of policy making, all those things Hillary listed will not get addressed or will not get fixed according to the wishes of the average voter.
That is Bernie’s fundamental point.
The system is so fixed right now that all that nice long list of things Hillary wants to do will not get fixed or not even addressed if it affects billionaire and big lobbyists’ interests. They will kill it in its tracks or distort it into benefitting them more than us, and leave us regular taxpayers with the bill.
Like Obamacare, despite majority support for a single payer system and Obama's own support of it, we will end up with a messy compromise that mainly benefits one or more big corporate interests (ACA benefitted big pharma and insurance firms for example).
Bernie is focused on the foundational cause of almost all our systemic problems.
But, the rest of her charge doesn't hold up either.
Bernie is not a one issue candidate.
There's an Alternet article here: www.alternet.org/... that lists just a few of the many accomplishments Bernie has made in his decades of legislative work.
If you look through that list, a selective list that doesn't list everything by any means that Sanders has done, it addresses issue after issue that Clinton brought up.
CONCLUSION
In sum, Bernie and Hillary do NOT agree on the single biggest issue destroying our democracy. Bernie has NOT neglected all those issues Hillary wants to address if she becomes president. He has done a great deal, down in the trenches, for decades.
In a fair assessment, Bernie is the most electively and legislatively experienced candidate we Democrats have put forward, not Hillary.
Hillary has a great deal of experience in politics, but not in elective positions. She ran two successful election campaigns for Senate, and that's it. She helped her husband campaign for President and she ran in 2008, unsuccessfully. Her election campaigning record in terms of wins and losses for herself is not that good.
Bernie was mayor of a city and reelected to that position, a Representative in the House for decades who faced elections every two years, and a Senator chairing Senate committees who has run more than once, and won.
Hillary has served 8 years as an elected Senator. All other positions she has held have been appointed ones.
Bernie has won every election he has contested but one, back in the beginning of his career.
Bernie knows in his bones what it takes to fight and win elections, and he knows how to move the needle on issue after issue legislatively, even in the minority and even over opposition.
In terms of getting things done, despite opposition, Bernie's record in the House and Senate far outshines Hillary's accomplishments as an elected representative of the people.
Please note the terms here. An elected representative.
Hillary has done much good and done many things. But there is a relationship between campaigning, being elected, and being re-elected in campaign after campaign that is irreplaceable in terms of experience and outlook on our representative system.
In light of what’s at stake in this election, which is not just the presidency but the balance on the Supreme Court, as well as, I would argue, our democracy itself, we want that kind of electoral and campaigning experience.
In terms of understanding, changing and getting legislation advanced, in spite of opposition, or being in the minority, or even not being a member of a party and standing all alone as an independent, Bernie has by far the better record of legislative accomplishment.
In terms of election experience, Bernie hands down has far more experience than Hillary, having successfully campaigned literally dozens of times for election to her 2 times.
Bernie is not the one-note, idealistic dreamer he is being made out to be. He is a crusader who has long and consistently fought, in and out of the limelight, for both fundamental and incremental change. He has won campaign after campaign.
And when Bernie leaves office, I am very confident he will not be cashing in on it. Indeed, I don't see him stopping his many fights on many issues to benefit us all until they slam the casket down on him.
While I appreciate TeacherKen's thoughtful diaries (see the one posted earlier today and on the Rec list), and his reasons to back Hillary, I have to disagree on several key aspects. I particularly disagree with the main point Hillary is actually campaigning on, and that is the fact she is committed to fundamentally leaving untouched the current system of campaign financing and legislative lobbying that has in effect nullified with big money (not just dark money) the effect of our democratic voting.
Bernie recognizes that THIS is what MUST be changed, or everything else we want to do is just hope without real prospect of change. Changing the system by banning big money and money bestowing lobbyists would be a "revolutionary" restoration of democracy to the United States.
I stand with Bernie Sanders.