Anthony Weiner Making 2016 Look Like The 2008 Clinton Campaign

Sanders Shirts

Anthony Weiner, who at least admits that his wife “works for Hillary” (rather an understatement), tries to undermine the legitimacy of Bernie Sanders’ campaign in a manner reminiscent of the Clinton’s campaign’s attacks on Obama in 2008. Back in 2008, Obama was running too soon, too inexperienced, or too black to be the candidate if you believed the Clinton campaign.

We are bound to see the same sort of crap from the Clinton campaign this year. Previously one Clinton surrogate, Claire McCaskill, claimed that Sanders is too liberal to get elected, ignoring the far more important fact (as I previously posted): Claire McCaskill Is Wrong–Bernie Sanders Is Not Too Liberal, Hillary Clinton Is Too Conservative.

Now Weiner is trying to undermine Sanders with exactly the sort of non-argument which Clintonistas are famous for. It is nothing about his experience or even his views. Weiner questions Sanders seeking the Democratic nomination because he has served in the Senate as an independent.

We now have a primary system in which Democratic voters choose delegates. Fortunately it is up to the voters, and not Clinton-surrogates, to determine the criteria by which we vote. This year many of us voters are more interested in a candidate who upholds Democratic values, not the letter after his name in the past for a Senator who has consistently voted with the Democrats. That is far better than a candidate like Hillary Clinton, who also happens to be a former Republican, who has spent her career undermining Democratic values and trying to turn the Democratic Party into a Republican-lite party. Even the campaign symbol for this former Goldwater Girl is eerily reminiscent of Barry Goldwater’s campaign symbol.

It is far more important to have a candidate who opposed the Iraq war, as opposed to Clinton. Hillary Clinton not only voted to authorize force, but was one of the strongest proponents of the war based upon a false claim of ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. She remained a proponent of increased military intervention as Secretary of State.

We need a candidate who is independent of Wall Street and big business, not only to reverse income inequality, but to act in response to climate change. Clinton has supported off-shore drilling, fracking, refuses to answer questions about the Keystone XL Pipeline, and is far too indebted to the petroleum industry to take any real action on the environment.

When I vote for a candidate, I also want a candidate who supports separation of church and state, as opposed to a candidate such as Clinton who has supported an increased role for religion in government. This was seen when she was in the Senate when she was a member of The Fellowship, being influenced on social issues by religious conservatives such as Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback. Clinton’s affiliation with the religious right was seen in her support for the Workplace Religious Freedom Act , a bill introduced by Rick Santorum and opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union for promoting discrimination and reducing access to health care, along with her promotion of restrictions on video games and her introduction of a bill making flag burning a felony. Her social conservatism is reflected in her views of abortion rights, such as supporting parental notification laws and stigmatizing women who have abortions with the manner in which she calls for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare.” She only recently “evolved” to support gay marriage, while Sanders was supporting it in the 1970’s.

I want a candidate who supports civil liberties, not increased restrictions on individual liberty as Clinton has. Bernie Sanders voted against the Patriot Act while Clinton supported it. Sanders has spoken out against the illegal NSA surveillance while Clinton has remained quiet, and has an overall poor record on civil liberties. Clinton’s failures to archive her email as required when she was Secretary of State and disclose donations to the Clinton Foundation as she had agreed to are just the latest examples of her long-standing hostility towards government transparency.

I’ve spent the last few days in New Hampshire and on Saturday my wife and I wore Bernie Sanders t-shirts. While far from a scientific poll, we heard many favorable comments from people who said they love Bernie. Not a single one mentioned Sanders being an independent as opposed to a Democrat. This is the type of non-argument which only a Clinton supporter would raise.