Sanders and O’Malley Express Reservations On Troops On Syria While Clinton Flip Flops On Another Issue

Clinton Flip Flop

Barack Obama’s decision to send limited troops into Syria has shown the predictable divisions in the Democratic field. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have expressed strong reservations, while Hillary Clinton has taken only seventeen days to flip flop on her position regarding troops on the ground.

The Washington Post reported on Sanders’ reservations:

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders voiced concerns Friday about President Obama’s decision to dispatch a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, saying through a spokesman that he fears the United States could be drawn into “the quagmire of the Syrian civil war.”

The independent senator from Vermont “believes that the crisis in Syria will be solved diplomatically, not militarily,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement.

Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the White House, was asked about the issue later Friday by an audience member at a town hall in Derry. He said that he agrees with Obama’s overall objective to provide support to groups and countries battling the Islamic State in the region.

But Sanders added: “You have a quagmire in a quagmire. . . . My nightmare is that we get sucked into a never-ending war in that part of the world.”

Stars and Stripes also note his “concern about the United States being drawn into the quagmire of the Syrian civil war which could lead to perpetual warfare in that region.

Martin O’Malley also expressed concerns while campaigning in Iowa. The Souix City Journal reported:

ISIS must be stopped, and the U.S. should support the coalition to defeat the Syria-based Islamic militant group, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley said Friday.

But the Democratic presidential candidate hesitated to support a move that would place U.S. troops on the ground, pointing to past examples of U.S. interference in Middle Eastern affairs.

“We have to stay involved, but we also have to be very, very cautious because it’s hard to point to an example where putting American boots on the ground gave us the desired result in the last 15 years,” O’Malley s

O’Malley’s comments came hours after the White House announced that Democratic President Barack Obama had authorized the deployment of fewer than 50 special operations U.S. troops in the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria.

If elected, O’Malley said he’d like to find ways to cut off ISIS’ finances and stop its propaganda.

Hillary Clinton has previously advocated a no-fly zone in Syria, with Sanders disagreeing. On October 13 at the first Democratic Debate, Hillary Clinton said, “We don’t want American troops on the ground in Syria.”  It only took Clinton seventeen days to flip-flop on this position. On October 30 Clinton’s campaign released this statement:

Hillary Rodham Clinton supports the decision by President Barack Obama to deploy a small number of special operations forces to northern Syria to work with local ground forces in the fight against Islamic State militants. Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement that Clinton “sees merit in the targeted use of special operations personnel.’ He added that Clinton also strongly ‘supports ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.’

Clinton’s quick reversal on this issue reinforces the view that her more progressive statements while campaigning for the Democratic nomination provide no guarantee that she will not return to her more conservative views if elected.

Republican candidates also took the expected positions.  Rand Paul opposed sending in ground troops. The Des Moines Register reports:

 Sen. Rand Paul said Saturday he is not ready to “send our sons and daughters back to a war in Iraq,” but is “not completely for doing nothing” to fight the Islamic State.

The Kentucky senator spoke to members of the Jasper County Farm Bureau in Newton before taking a tour of a pipeline farm in Reasnor. Paul touched on a variety of rural issues in front of the small group, but was firm on his stance on Syria following the news that the Obama administration will send 50 special operations soldiers to consult with rebel groups fighting ISIS.

“The fighting on the ground needs to be done by the people who live there,” he said. “The Sunnis will have to rise up and say ‘enough is enough.'”

Paul said while the radical group needs to be fought, it should not be by the United States military. He said he “would help the Kurds fight” but is against putting troops in Syria because the first Iraq War was bad for foreign relations and the national debt.

In contrast, Chris Christie took the more conventional Republican line, stating he believes the military should go “whole hog.”

The New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate addressed the issue during a town hall in response to news that the Obama administration approved up to 50 special operations soldiers to enter Syria and work as military advisers with rebel groups fighting the group known as ISIS.

“For me, this is too little. too late from the president, and if you’re going to involve American troops, you’d better go whole hog,” he said.

The U.S. should deploy boots on the ground only if the strategy of arming U.S. allies in the region fails to defeat ISIS, Christie added.

“I think we have to keep American troops as an option on the table, but to me it is a later option, not a first option, and the president should have been doing all these other things first,” he said.

Quick tip for Chris Christie: Think twice before using terms like “whole hog” as the listener might conjure up a different image when  you say this than  you desire.

Update:  Donald Trump expressed opposition to Obama’s plan, but he hardly expressed an anti-war viewpoint. He opposed limiting to fifty people, telling CNN, “You either do it or you don’t do it. Fifty people. He puts 50 people.” Trump also supports returning ground troops to Iraq.

Clinton Continues To Disagree With Sanders On Expanding Social Security Benefits & More Debunking Of DOMA Revisionism

Bernie Sanders Expand Social Security

There are some interesting items in the report from The Wall Street Journal on Clinton’s recent statements on capital punishment (previously discussed here) as the story extends to other statements made by Clinton in New Hampshire this week. This includes her continuing to oppose proposals from Bernie Sanders and others on the left to expand Social Security benefits, an being open to considering an increase in the retirement age:

Mrs. Clinton also broke from many liberals, including Mr. Sanders, in discussing the future of Social Security. The left wants to expand benefits for most or all recipients. Mrs. Clinton said Wednesday she wants to increase benefits to the poorest, most vulnerable recipients—but she stopped well short of endorsing an across-the-board benefit boost. She also didn’t rule out other benefit cuts…

She also laid out her views on the future of Social Security in more detail than she has in the past, and what she didn’t say was as important as what she did say. Mrs. Clinton spoke of increasing benefits for the poorest retirees, but said nothing about more benefits for others.

“I am concerned about those people on Social Security who are most vulnerable in terms of what their monthly pay out is—that is primarily divorced, widowed, single women who either never worked themselves or worked only a little bit so they have either just their own earnings to depend on, or they have a spouse who was also a low-wage worker,” she said. “The first and most important task, I think, is we make sure that we get the monthly payment for the poorest Social Security recipients up.”

The program faces a long-term funding gap, and for many years, there was a rough consensus that the solution would ultimately involve both tax increases and benefit reductions to bring the program into balance. [Note this is the view of The Wall Street Journal] But many on the left have united to oppose any cuts to benefits and to back across-the-board benefit increases, funding them with tax increases on upper-income workers.

Mrs. Clinton said she wouldn’t rule out raising the retirement age for people whose jobs allow them to work later in life, if that were possible, though she said she didn’t favor this.

Sometimes Clinton continues to promote more conservative views. Sometimes Clinton takes a more liberal stand, and then tries to cover up how conservative she had been in the past. There has been a lot of discussion this week backing up Sanders for accusing Clinton of practicing revisionist history to excuse her support for the Defense of Marriage Act. The Washington Post Fact Checker also debunked her statement.

In addition, the above video from 2004 has gone viral in which Clinton called marriage, “not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman.”

I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. I have had occasion in my life to defend marriage, to stand up for marriage, to believe in the hard work and challenge of marriage. So I take umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and a woman, going back into the midst of history as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization, and that its primary, principal role during those millennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society into which they are to become adults.

BuzzFeed  has further debunked Clinton’s claims in an article entitled There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law

Over the past few years, some Democrats — including the Clintons — have offered a new explanation for why they supported the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.

The threat of a federal constitutional amendment, these Democrats have argued, motivated them to support DOMA — a law that defined marriage for federal government purposes as between one man and one woman and said states could refuse to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages from others states.

“We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress,” Bill Clinton told an audience in 2009, “to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states.” Four former senators — including Tom Daschle, who made the claim in 2011 — raised the idea in a Supreme Court brief in 2013. Clinton later cited that brief when, in a Washington Post op-ed, he called for the law he signed to be struck down by the court. Hillary Clinton just last week called her husband’s decision to sign DOMA “a defensive action.”

There is no contemporaneous evidence, however, to support the claim that the Clinton White House considered a possible federal constitutional amendment to be a concern, based on a BuzzFeed News review of the thousands of documents released earlier this year by the Clinton Presidential Library about same-sex couples’ marriage rights and the Defense of Marriage Act. In the documents, which include correspondence from a wide array of White House and Justice Department officials, no one even hints that Bill Clinton’s thinking or actions regarding DOMA were animated by the threat of a federal constitutional amendment.

The claim has faced renewed scrutiny in recent days after Hillary Clinton made an extended argument in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that DOMA was a “line to be drawn” to prevent further action.

“I think what my husband believed — and there was certainly evidence to support it — is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America, and that there had to be some way to stop that,” she told Maddow.

“I was in on some of those discussions, on both ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and on DOMA, where both the president, his advisers, and occasionally I would chime in and talk about, ‘You can’t be serious, you can’t be serious.’ But they were,” Hillary Clinton said. “And so, in a lot of ways, DOMA was a line that was drawn, that was to prevent going further.”

Maddow pressed here, asking, “It was a defensive action?”

“It was a defensive action,” she replied.

In the days since, many longtime LGBT advocates have called the comments inaccurate — and her leading opponent for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, who voted against the legislation as a congressman, criticized her implicitly but sharply, onstage at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa…

Hit & Run summed up the significance of why Clinton has been lying about this (emphasis mine):

But that the Clintons had no reason to lie about this in the first place is what makes the lie so strange and worthy of paying attention to. The Clintons “evolved.” Obama “evolved.” A lot of Democrats and not a small number of Republicans “evolved” on gay marriage. As I said when I wrote about this lie earlier, Clinton seems to be trying to disprove accusations that the Clintons hold positions on the basis of shrewd political calculations and is doing so in a way that’s very obviously politically calculated. Apparently the Clintons have decided that it is important that they are seen as leaders and protectors on gay rights, even though they weren’t back then. The only logical explanation is that Hillary Clinton is really worried about Bernie Sanders. But getting caught out like this only highlights the Clintons’ well-established flaws to primary voters. Ironically enough, it shows that Clinton hasn’t “evolved” when it comes to her reputation for dishonesty. And she can’t blame this one on Trey Gowdy.

Under a Hillary Clinton administration, expect to hear such Orwellian double think along the lines that “Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.” This is likely to occur with regards to both justifications for military interventionism and on domestic policy.

Marijuana And The Death Penalty: Sanders and Clinton Engage In More Significant Off Stage Debate Than The Republicans In Colorado

Bernie Sanders Marijuana

The third Republican debate was widely considered to be a train wreck. It was probably the worst for Jeb Bush as it largely turned into an excuse for pundits to write off his chances to win the Republican nomination. Failing to inspire enthusiastic support is a greater political sin than to fail to show up to one’s job in the Senate (a failing common to candidates running for the presidential nomination of either party). Meanwhile the Democratic candidates have spent the last couple of days disagreeing over issues, including marijuana and the death penalty.

While the Democrats could not actually debate, as this would violate Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s rules, they had a far more interesting disagreement on the issues. Marijuana barely came up at the Republican debate in Colorado, where recreational use has been legalized, but Bernie Sanders did make major news on the issue. He took a position quite different from the pro-drug war views of Hillary Clinton, and far more significant than Martin O’Malley’s position:

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders announced his support Wednesday for removing marijuana from a list of the most dangerous drugs outlawed by the federal government — a move that would free states to legalize it without impediments from Washington…

“Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have criminal records as a result of marijuana use,” Sanders told a live audience of more than 1,700 students, which erupted with applause. “That’s wrong. That has got to change.”

No other presidential candidate has called for marijuana to be completely removed from the schedule of controlled substances regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Long-shot Democratic hopeful Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has said that he would put marijuana on Schedule 2, a less-strict designation. The party’s front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has repeatedly said she wants to see how legalization experiments in Colorado, Washington and other states play out before committing to any changes at the federal level…

His plan would also allow marijuana businesses currently operating in states that have legalized it to use banking services and apply for tax deductions that are currently unavailable to them under federal law.

Sanders previously indicated his interest in legalization of marijuana when appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Sanders’ proposal would put an end to raids by the federal government on medical marijuana facilities where medical marijuana is legal and block the current impediments to research on medical uses of marijuana. Wonkblog also points out that this would restore marijuana to the status which was intended before Richard Nixon interfered. (With Hillary Clinton taking the more Nixonian position here, it is yet another in a long list of similarities between Clinton and Nixon which seem to keep coming up).

Marijuana was originally placed on Schedule 1 as a temporary measure in 1970 while a government-convened panel of experts figured out how to handle it from a legal standpoint. Two years later, the panel recommended complete decriminalization of small amounts of the drug: “the Commission recommends … [that the] possession of marijuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marijuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration, no longer be an offense.”

But President Richard Nixon ignored his own commission’s findings and kept marijuana on Schedule 1, saying “we need, and I use the word ‘all out war,’ on all fronts” when it came to weed.

Sanders and Clinton also disagreed on the death penalty this week:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stood by his long-standing opposition to the death penalty on Thursday, calling for an end to the policy during a Senate speech on criminal justice.

“When we talk about criminal justice reform, I believe it is time for the United States of America to join almost every other Western, industrialized country on Earth in saying no to the death penalty,” Sanders said during his speech on the Senate floor. “We are all shocked and disgusted by some of the horrific murders that we see in this country, seemingly every week. And that is precisely why we should abolish the death penalty. At a time of rampant violence and murder, the state should not be part of that process.”

Sanders’ remarks come one day after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is also running for president, came out against ending capital punishment, adding that she believes the use of the death penalty should be “very limited and rare.”

…The Vermont senator has publicly opposed the death penalty for his entire tenure in Congress. In 1991, his first year as a member of the House of Representatives, Sanders spoke out against the policy during debate on the Violent Crime Prevention Act of 1991, which sought to expand the death penalty.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another primary rival of Clinton and Sanders, is also opposed to the death penalty. In 2013, he signed a bill abolishing the practice in Maryland.

According to a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year, 61 percent of Americans are in favor of the death penalty in murder convictions, while 37 percent are not.

Of course. Hillary Clinton remains guided by the polls as opposed to principle. In calling for the death penalty to be rare, it is interesting that she uses the same word she uses for what should come of abortion, a position which has long frustrated many abortion rights activists for the manner in which it stigmatizes women who choose to have an abortion, and it provides cover for the religious right’s battle to restrict access to abortion.

The Democrats were disagreeing over real issues, while the Republicans were engaged in distortions of the facts and bashing of the mainstream media. Among the Republican lies debunked, PolitiFact classified Chris Christie’s claim that Bernie Sanders is “going to raise your taxes to 90 percent” as “pants on fire.”

Bernie Sanders’ Top Campaign Aides Discuss How “Bernie is in it to win it”

Sanders Jefferson Jackson

John Heilemann wrote about interviews with Berny Sanders’ top campaign aides on the next phase of the campaign. The campaign started out strong, exceeding expectations, but Hillary Clinton has had a good month in October. It is no longer enough to bring in large crowds at campaign events. Sanders must, like Barack Obama eight years ago, show Democrats why they should vote for Bernie Sanders and not Hillary Clinton.

In a series of interviews last weekend in Iowa and since, Sanders’s lieutenants provided me with a wide-ranging and at times detailed account of their strategy for the three-month sprint to the first two must-win contests. That strategy is premised on the notion that their campaign has shifted into a new gear, moving from what Weaver calls “the introductory phase” into “the persuasion phase.” This new phase will be more aggressive, hard-edged, and focused on driving home contrasts between Sanders and Clinton. In other words, it will be more negative. Just how nasty things will get remains one of two central questions that will define the battle ahead. The other is whether Sanders, with his deep aversion to negative campaigning, is willing and able to do what is required to take down Clinton without tarnishing his brand as a different kind of politician.

It’s worth recalling that a similar set of questions confronted Barack Obama eight years ago. In using the J-J as a pivot point, Sanders was mimicking Obama, who famously did the same thing in November 2007 with a speech that eviscerated the then-front-runner (“Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won’t do”) without ever uttering the word “Clinton.”

Conflict between Sanders and Clinton escalated when Clinton resorted to her usual brand of dishonest politics, both distorting Sanders’ record on gun control and falsely accusing him of making a sexist attack. Sanders responded by contrasting his positions on the issues with those of Clinton. Sanders finally realized the mistake he made in the first debate, failing to confront Clinton when she was wrong on the issues, and allowing her to get away with smooth sounding but fallacious statements.

“We had to fire a shot across their bow, because they were going to start to have their way with us,” Devine told me. “I pushed [Sanders] hard to do what he did to let them know, if they’re going to do this stuff that two of the 12,000 votes he cast in Congress about guns are the definitive votes of the election—and oh, by the way, she is yelling because she’s a woman. If they are going to start going down that road, we are not going to take it. And it is going to be about a lot of issues where she’s gone from one place to another. We did five of them [at the J-J] and we could do 15 more.”

In the days since the J-J, Sanders has gingerly, awkwardly, but distinctly tiptoed further into the realm of explicit contrast. In a CNN interview the next morning, Sanders called out Clinton by name in the context of financial regulation. On Charlie Rose on Monday, he did so again. (“Who is going to take on the corporate interests and Wall Street and try to create a government that works for all the people in this country rather than a small number of billionaires? That’s the issue. And if people think Hillary Clinton is that candidate, go for it.”) And then on The Rachel Maddow Show, he again criticized her over her revisionist history regarding the Defense of Marriage Act.

I discussed Clinton’s dishonesty regarding her support for the Defense of Marriage Act earlier in the week and The Washington Post Fact Checker gave her Four Pinocchios for her false claims.

Devine and Weaver both claim they would rather not see Sanders take on Clinton more harshly than this. “If we can make it about his message and his record versus her message and her record, we can beat her,” Devine says. “We’d much rather win that way, because if we beat her and she collapses and we’re standing there, the whole institutional establishment party could rise up against us. That is a real possibility. Bernie’s OK inside the Senate and the Congress. But once we extend beyond that to people who don’t know who he is, it’s very scary. We’ve got the whole socialist thing and all this other stuff hanging around. So we’ll have to deal with a rear-guard action against him that will almost be like being in a second primary. So it’s much better for us if we win by not attacking her frontally—and we can argue that in fact we’re the ones that can benefit the party in terms of turn-out of the electorate.”

But Devine and Weaver are well aware that they may—indeed, given the Clintonian precedents, are likely to—have no choice but go full frontal. “On policy, we’re driving the agenda, and we’re happy to be in that position,” Weaver says. “But I think they will to a large extent drive the tone. She’s the quote-unquote front-runner, and really started going after Bernie of late. They obviously are not as confident about this race as apparently the punditry is.”

Devine agrees. “How hard we fight back and how far we push it is very much dependent on them,” he says.

“So if they go hard negative,” I ask, “you guys will…?”

“Let them get run over by a Mack truck,” he says.

Having worked for Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry, Devine is as seasoned a strategist at the presidential level any that exists in the Democratic Party. As such, he is an avid consumer of opposition research. Though he insists that Sanders will never go after Clinton on personal issues, her private e-mail system, or other direct questions of character—“It’s just not Bernie,” he says—he is already familiar with the array of issues that Sanders might soon deploy against her.

At the top of that list her support of the USA Patriot Act, which Sanders has repeatedly opposed. The Sanders camp has also been combing the record of Clinton’s statements in support of the now-notorious 1994 crime bill. Her remarks back then about the evils of urban gangs filled with “super-predators” with “no conscience, no empathy” are unlikely to endear her to the Black Lives Matter movement and other foes of mass incarceration because of its racially disparate impact.

They also realize that Sanders must engage in more conventional debate preparation, which he refused to do prior to the first debate:

Devine is rather less sanguine about Sanders’s preparation and performance. “We did 15 hours of prep total—that was our debate prep,” he says. “We needed 150.”

But Devine argues that Clinton’s performance in the first debate was overrated—and suggested that Sanders, if he prepares thoroughly, could be well-positioned to thrive in the next one. “Voters give you so much latitude to counterpunch it’s unbelievable,” he says. “All she has to do is open the door to him. And she opened so many doors that last debate that he didn’t walk though. If she’s going to sit there and say, ‘I went to Wall Street and told them to cut it out,’ I mean, come on! She had a great debate, but against a great debater she would have been killed.”

For Sanders, the debate in Des Moines and the subsequent two—in New Hampshire in December and South Carolina in January—are destined to be huge moments. But equally if not more important will be the air war. For many months, Clinton has been spending millions of dollars on TV advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders has yet to run a single spot.

Sanders plans to start advertising. He is also hiring a pollster, although unlike Clinton, polls will not be used to determine which positions Sanders will take at any given moment. They note that Sanders is in a comparable situation to Obama eight years ago. As I have pointed out several times, this news report from December 2007 described how Clinton had a huge lead over Obama. In December 2003, Howard Dean was pulling away in the polls. Eventual winner John Kerry was in sixth place with only 4 percent, even trailing Al Sharpton. Iowa and New Hampshire  voters do not decide until the last minute, and the race will be decided by the voters, not the pundits.

To those who say that even if Sanders wins both the Hawkeye and Granite States, Clinton’s strength with African-American and Hispanic voters will provide her with an impregnable firewall as the nomination contest moves to larger states, Devine offers an elaborate scoff:

“I don’t think they fully appreciate the magnitude of how voters are impacted by what happens in those early states. The negative narrative that will come around her. The positive narrative that will accompany him. The big qualitative difference beyond that that we enjoy that, for example, Gary Hart did not, is the fund-raising system we’ve put in place. If we have early success in Iowa and New Hampshire, a few days after we could bring in $40 or $50 million cash, new money, out of this thing that we built. And then they’re all tapped out. They’re trying to squeeze for dough. Because the thing will have been close in Iowa and New Hampshire. They’ve already placed a purchase of $14 million in television buys in just Iowa and New Hampshire, and I think they’ll be at $20 or $25 million by then because they’ll feel so much pressure to win, they’ll just be dumping millions into this thing. We’ll come out of that with a huge flush of cash like Obama did and then we will start to move systematically in the states that follow with massive media buys. And unless the Clintons are willing to give up $20 or $30 million of their own money, they’re just not going to be able to compete with us in cash. The dynamic of that campaign is something I don’t think they fully appreciate.

“You know, Bernie because of his life story has the potential to appeal to African-Americans. I know he hasn’t been there, he hasn’t really done it, but the truth is we come in with 10,000 points on TV about his life and his story and his programs. You know, living wage, health insurance for all, free college from kids, testimonials from African-Americans, interesting African-American leaders who have been for him. We start to reassure people about his connection to them. And we don’t have to win 50 percent of the African-American vote in South Carolina to win. Probably only need to win 30 percent. So we start to put that thing together, I think we can move this very quickly towards him and the dynamic of the campaign is going to overwhelm any pre-existing advantage…and then proportional representation kicks in, which is a great advantage to anybody who gets ahead. Ask Obama, ask Jimmy Carter in 1980, the same thing happened there—you get ahead, you can’t lose.”

It might be a challenge for his campaign staffers  to get Bernie Sanders to engage in traditional debate preparation and be more critical of his opponent, but the  article ended by pointing out that, “for all his idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, and stark differences with Clinton, shares one thing with the front-runner. In the words of Weaver, ‘Bernie is in it to win it.'”

Why Moderates Support Bernie Sanders

Moderates for Bernie

While the media narrative would simplify  the Democratic race to describing Bernie Sanders as a challenger from the left, he has also received a tremendous amount of support from independents, and from voters in the battleground states where Clinton is weak. The Moderates for Bernie Community is one of the largest pro-Sanders groups on Facebook with over 72,000 following them at the time this is posted. They recently posted this statement regarding why they support Sanders despite being more moderate on economic issues, reposted with their permission:

WHY WE SUPPORT BERNIE SANDERS DESPITE DISAGREEING WITH HIM

How can a moderate support a socialist? Isn’t Bernie Sanders too extreme? Won’t this commie [insert expletive here] destroy the American way of life? We’ve gotten these questions so many times that we thought it would be easier just to write this post.

Let’s start with a radical concept: we don’t have to 100% agree with a candidate to support him. Sure, Bernie and a majority of Americans agree on many, many issues. But not all. We ourselves don’t fully agree with all of Bernie’s proposals, and we suspect that many of the people reading this don’t either. In fact – surprise! – some of the other candidates have some policies we actually like better than Bernie’s. Don’t tattle on us.

Saying we only like some of Bernie’s proposals is not exactly a resounding endorsement. So why do we support him? What got us excited enough to create this Facebook page and deal with the endless barrage of Internet trolls day after day? And why should you care, especially if you disagree with Bernie even more than we do? Fortunately, there is something that 90+% of us do agree on, the one issue above all others:

Congress sucks.

Whether you believe the Democrats or the Republicans are primarily responsible for the catastrophic dysfunction currently plaguing Washington, hopefully we can agree that it has to stop. A political pragmatist like Hillary Clinton or an experienced negotiator like Donald Trump might be able to temporarily restore functionality (and sanity) during their administrations. However, a permanent solution requires permanent institutional change. The person by far most likely to make that happen is Bernie Sanders.

Here’s why:

1. CAMPAIGN FINANCE: The first step is to separate money from politics by switching to publicly financed elections. Bernie has advocated for that for years. And who do you trust more to make this happen: a populist with an average donation of ~$30 or a corporate-sponsored, Super PAC-backed politician-for-hire?

2. CHARACTER: Bernie is the “un-politician politician.” He has had more consistency over his multi-decade career than any other candidate. And he has Trump’s candor without Trump’s crassness. Frankly, it’s refreshing. But more than that, it guarantees that Bernie’s stated desire to reform Washington is a sincere goal rather than a mere ploy to acquire votes.

3. CLASS: Clinton calls Republicans her enemy. Trump has called just about everyone his enemy. Sanders has no enemies… beyond the ruling class. Instead he sees only partners and potential partners. The destructive denigration that’s all too common in politics – and that prohibits future collaboration — is beneath him. More importantly, Bernie has gone further than any other candidate to reach all Americans, not just his base. Indeed, he spat on the modern political paradigm when his spoke at an Evangelical university. Only those willing to journey into “enemy territory” have any hope of bridging our divides enough to enact real change.

4. CREDIBILITY: Some particularly entrenched or dogmatic politicians will not cooperate no matter what…unless their careers depend on it. And politicians’ job security depends on their constituents. That’s why politicians take it so seriously when they receive 100s of letters from their voters in support of an initiative. Bernie, who has had by far the largest rallies and largest social media presence, seems like the candidate most likely to leverage this potent weapon against Washington.

(Note: Obama had similar mass market penetration during his elections, but for some reason he somewhat disengaged from the people once elected. Bernie has vowed not to repeat that mistake.)

5. COMPETENCE: Simply put, Bernie has had more legislative success at the national level than any other candidate. In addition, his tenure as mayor of Burlington, VT places him within the top echelon of candidates in terms of executive credentials; his dramatic rejuvenation of Burlington has served as example for many once-struggling cities throughout the country.

So yes, President Bernie Sanders will destroy the American way of life—at least the part of it where politicians use dysfunction and chicanery to stay in power. Many candidates have claimed to be able to fix Washington, but Bernie is the first in a long time who might actually do it.

Let’s realize that a working government is better than a broken government, even if we don’t agree with all of its policies. Once that happens, the decision becomes clear: Bernie Sanders is the right choice, the sensible choice, the only choice.

Press & Bloggers Show Sanders Was Right In Accusing Clinton Of Practicing Revisionist History On DOMA

The Clintons have never been very supportive of social liberalism, and now that the liberal views they often showed little regard for during Bill’s presidency have become mainstream in the Democratic Party (and much of the country), Hillary is trying to rewrite history. Bernie Sanders pointed this out at the Jefferson Jackson dinner last weekend. His statement is being backed up by the press, bloggers, and people on Twitter who remember the truth.

The Washington Blade wrote:

Sen. Bernard Sanders isn’t the only one taking Hillary Clinton to task over her recent assertion that the Defense of Marriage Act was a “defensive” measure to prevent worse discrimination against LGBT people.

A number of gay rights activists took to Twitter to say Clinton engaged in historic revisionism during her appearance Friday on “The Rachel Maddow Show” when she said DOMA was a means to stop the enactment of a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage entirely. Many of those activists also tempered their objections by saying Clinton is generally doing right on LGBT rights during her campaign…

The notion DOMA was passed to stop passage of a Federal Marriage Amendment has been disputed by Hillary Clinton supporter and former Human Rights Campaign chief Elizabeth Birch, who wrote an op-ed saying “there was no real threat” of a constitutional measure in 1996.

Bloomberg Politics also sees this as revisionist history:

Bill Clinton’s aides and confidants admitted to the New York Times in 2013 that he knew DOMA was wrong and discriminatory toward gays and lesbians. His former press secretary Mike McCurry said: “His posture was quite frankly driven by the political realities of an election year in 1996.” Democratic consultant and Clinton ally Hilary Rosen added: “In my conversations with him, he was personally embarrassed and remorseful.”

Neither said it was a strategic move to prevent something worse. And indeed, that might have been difficult. The Federal Marriage Amendment wasn’t introduced until 2002. It didn’t become part of the Republican Party platform until 2004…

Prominent figures in the LGBT community, meanwhile, rejected Clinton’s recollection of history.

“Hillary’s version of DADT and DOMA is so wrong. The only ‘defensive posture’ was for their personal politics not LGBT,” activist David Mixner said on Twitter. He added: “The LGBT community should NEVER allow any politician to revise our noble and courageous history for political purposes.”

Radio host and HuffPost Gay Voices editor-at-large Michelangelo Signorile called Hillary Clinton’s version “revisionism” and said on Twitter that it was “simply not true that DOMA was signed to stop something worse.” He continued, “Hillary doesn’t need to re-write Bill history to make her better. She’s fine, has promised a lot.”

Bill Clinton even resorted to using ads opposing gay marriage when running for reelection. While Hillary’s positions do sound much better today, we cannot count on positions she has taken for political expediency to persist if the next poll or focus group suggests she should take a different position.

AmericaBlog also showed that this is not the first time the Clintons have resorted to this type of historical revisionism, along with noting that, “Sanders is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act in the Senate, and has opposed anti-gay discrimination laws going back to his campaigns for mayor in the 1970s.” Last month PolitiFact ruled that a statement from Chuck Todd was true that Bernie Sanders was “there” on same sex marriage twenty years ago.

Hillary Clinton’s conservative social views, seen in her membership in religious right organization, The Fellowship (also known as The Family) while in the Senate, makes many liberals wary of trusting her on social issues (along with economic issues, civil liberties, and foreign policy). The American Humanist Association has noted how much she is like the Republicans in pandering to religion:

American Humanist Organization Religious Pandering

They also noted that Bernie Sanders has expressed views in line with theirs:

American Humanist Organization Sanders Humanism

It comes down to a difference in their philosophies which as led Sanders to take the correct fork in the road, while Clinton has so often been wrong, whenever there have been big decisions during their careers. We need a president who makes the right choices at the time, not one who will admit her mistakes and change her views years down the road.

Video Of Bernie Sanders At Democratic Jefferson Jackson Dinner

I previously discussed Bernie Sanders’ speech at the Jefferson Jackson dinner. The video has now been posted above.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who; Sherlock; Age of Ultron; Jessica Jones; The Flash; Arrow; Supergirl; Back To The Future (Bernie Sanders Meets Doc Brown); Gilmore Girls; Maureen O’Hara

Doctor Who The Woman Who Lived

The Woman Who Lived works as a stand alone episode of Doctor Who which did not really need to fall directly after last week’s episode, The Girl Who Died. Maise Williams’ character is seen eight hundred years later. It was strange that she remembered the Doctor and Clara and not her own name or village. She also had a colder attitude which can be seen in this exchange:

The Doctor: Anyone is that village would have died for you
Ashildr: Well, they’re all dead and here I am. I guess it all worked out

The show described the problems with immortality, and Ashildr’s frustration: “I have waited longer than I should ever have lived. I have lost more than I can even remember. Please Doctor, just get me out of this. I want more than this. I deserve more than this.”

While her life span was increased her memory was not so she had to resort to her journals, tearing out the pages of things she wanted to forget. She did keep the pages about her children dying of the plague, as a reminder to never have children again.

The Doctor did not take her with her, but did tell her , “I travelled with another immortal once. Captain Jack Harkness.” Will she ever meet up with Captain Jack (John Borrowman)? Plus Sam Swift may or may not also be immortal.

Nerdist reports that Maise Williams will return to Doctor Who:

Over the weekend, at London’s MCM Comic-Con, “Face the Raven” writer Sarah Dollard confirmed that Ashildr/Me would be back for her episode. During “The Woman Who Lived,” we find out that the character decided to be there for the people the Doctor leaves following his swoop-in/swoop-out style of day-saving. “Someone has to look out for the people you abandon, who better than me? I’ll be the patron saint of the Doctor’s leftovers,” she told him. She also says, “While you’re busy protecting this world, I’ll get busy protecting it from you.” When the Doctor expresses that he thinks he’s very glad he saved her life, she replies, rather ominously, “I think everyone will be.”

This could make her an interesting recurring character, and provides job security should she be killed off on Game of Thrones.  She is present in the background of a picture at Clara’s school shown at the end of the episode. I’ll accept the coincidence that she is present in the first picture that Clara showed him after this encounter, but what about all the companions prior to Clara? While that probably cannot be shown on screen, she could be an interesting addition to books or fan fiction. With Jenna Coleman reportedly leaving after this season, possibly Maise Williams will play a part.

The above trailer announces that the long-awaited Victorian version of Sherlock will air on January 1 in both the UK and the Unites States and will be named The Abominable Bride.

I’m going to post this link without reading the article. I haven’t looked at the deleted scenes on the Blu Ray of Avengers: Age of Ultron yet, and will do so before reading this, but Den of Geek has a detailed description for those who might want to read about them without viewing.

After a bunch of teasers, Netflix has released a full trailer for Jessica Jones (video above).

I avoid watching Amazon pilots until a series is about to be released in full, but I am really looking forward to The Man In The High Castle. Reviews of the pilot have been fantastic. Now Amazon is going to make the first two episodes available, even to non-prime members, here  from 12am Pacific on Friday, October 23rd until 11:59pm Pacific on Sunday, October 25th. The first two episodes will remain available to Prime members, with full release on November 20. While I already had an Amazon Prime membership for the free shipping, with streaming becoming a huge player, I now consider Amazon Prime, Hulu (commercial free subscription), and Netflix all essential (with HBO Go and comparable services from the other pay cable networks  also available due to cable subscriptions). Many evenings I do not go beyond my Roku box for watching television.

This raised another thought. When traveling I prefer either a Roku box, or my Roku stick to travel more lightly, as it has all the streaming services I use set up conveniently. It includes Amazon Prime, while some competing devices do not. I also do have both a Google Chromecast and an Amazon Fire Stick. (This comes in handy when staying in friends’ condos in Florida which have televisions in the bedroom and living room).  I have also found the Amazon Fire Stick essential when traveling to hotels which require a sign on to use their WiFi. Only the Amazon Fire Stick can handle this without resorting to making a hot spot with a travel router.

Danielle Panabaker of The Flash was on The Talk (video above). She discussed her transformation to the villain, Killer Frost.

All of the DC comic based shows have been off to a good start this season. Arrow, which just brought back Sara Lance to lead into Legends of Tomorrow, is much stronger this season, including a much bigger big bad. The flash backs are also more interesting with the return to the island. Plus someone will die in six months. Supergirl officially starts this upcoming week. The pilot, which has been available for months, was excellent and those who like The Flash and Arrow should also like this show. Over at Fox, Gotham has turned much darker, and is showing more potential than in the first season.

Also notable in the past week, You’re The Worst, while it has not been as  good as the first season, has had many excellent moments. This included the revelation of  what is wrong with Gretchen last week.

Hulu has renewed Casual for a second season. I highly recommend that show. I have not watched The Whispers, but I note that ABC has canceled it. CBS has ordered a full season pick up of Limitless. It is a lighter but entertaining show with a genre element.

Bernie Sanders Back To The Future

I previously posted the video of Bernie Sanders on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week. Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) was also a guest, along with Michael J. Fox,  for an opening skit for the date he came into the future in Back To The Future 2. Bernie Sanders posted the picture along with this caption on his web page:

“Tell me, future boy, who’s President of the United States in 2017?”
Bernie Sanders.
“Bernie Sanders?! From Vermont?”

So this our destiny. I think this is a fixed point in time which cannot be changed.  The skit with Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox is below:

Speaking of time travel, Simon Berry has provided some information following the  Continuum finale. I will hold off a little longer to discuss the finale a second time to allow more time to see if further material of interest becomes available.

Gilmore Girls revival

Plus we have something else from the past to look forward to. Netflix is planning a revival of Gilmore Girls. The current plans are for four episodes, ninety minutes each, which take place in real time, eight years after the finale. We will finally see the final four words planned for the show by Amy Sherman Palladino.  While not finalized, Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop and Scott Patterson, along with many of Rory’s suitors, are expected to appear. Edward Herrmann obviously will not appear but perhaps the funeral for Richard Gilmore, taking place after the actor actually died, could be a good point at which to reunite the other characters. The series ended with Rory Gilmore covering Barack Obama’s campaign in Iowa. Might she now be covering  Bernie Sanders?

This will not be the only case of Lauren Graham being united with a star from a previous show. She will reunite with Mae Whitman of Parenthood in an adaption of the The Royal We, a book on the courthouse of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Maureen O’Hara died at age 95. From The New York Times:

Maureen O’Hara, the spirited Irish-born actress who played strong-willed, tempestuous beauties opposite all manner of adventurers in escapist movies of the 1940s and ’50s, died on Saturday at her home in Boise, Idaho. She was 95…

Ms. O’Hara was called the Queen of Technicolor, because when that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendor better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion. One critic praised her in an otherwise negative review of the 1950 film “Comanche Territory” with the sentiment “Framed in Technicolor, Miss O’Hara somehow seems more significant than a setting sun.” Even the creators of the process claimed her as its best advertisement.

Yet many of the films that made the young Ms. O’Hara a star were in black and white. They included her first Hollywood movie, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939), in which she played the haunted Gypsy girl Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo; the Oscar-winning “How Green Was My Valley” (1941), in which she was memorable as a Welsh mining family’s beautiful daughter who marries the wrong man; “This Land Is Mine” (1943), a war drama in which she was directed by Jean Renoir; and “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947), the holiday classic in which she played a cynical, modern Macy’s executive who tries to prevent her daughter from believing in Santa Claus…

Hillary Clinton Resorts To Dirty Politics & Bernie Sanders Responds By Showing Differences On The Issues

Sanders Jefferson Jackson

Hillary Clinton has had a very good month, especially with Joe Biden deciding not to run, which is starting to solidify her support among the Democratic mainstream. Therefore it is puzzling that she would decide to take the low road in the campaign, playing the sex card much like she played the race card against Barack Obama eight years ago. She not only continued her campaign strategy of distorting Sanders’ record on gun control, but twisted a statement to falsely accuse him of sexism. While some of  Clinton’s supporters have frequently accused anyone who disagrees with Clinton’s views, or objects to her low ethical standards, of sexism, as far as I am aware this is the first time Hillary Clinton has stooped this low during this campaign.

During the recent Democratic debate, Sanders repeated a line he frequently uses in  his stump speech, criticizing the shouting from both sides on the issue. Democrats who are seen as opposing the private ownership of guns under any circumstance do not have the credibility which Sanders has, having supported both sensible gun control and the rights of hunters to own guns, to bridge this issue. When talking about shouting on the issue, Sanders is talking about all parties. Clinton twisted this in her response: “I’m not shouting. It’s just that when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.”

Clinton is foolish to play dirty in the campaign when she has the lead as she already faced a challenge, should she go on to win the nomination, to get those independents who support Sanders but do not normally vote Democratic to turn out to vote for her in the general election. This will only make it harder. It is also foolish for Clinton to dwell on a single issue to make a bogus case of being more consistently liberal than Sanders when she has spent much of her career triangulating and undermining liberal principles.

Bernie Sanders responded to Clinton by bringing up just a small number of the many issues where Clinton has not been consistently liberal at the Democratic Jefferson-Jackson dinner. While he has mentioned some of these in the past, he was much more forceful in showing the differences between himself and Clinton, as I suggested he should do after the first debate. Sanders raised Clinton’s inconsistent views on trade, the Keystone XL Pipeline, campaign finance reform, the Iraq war, and gay rights. NBC News reported:

Without mentioning her by name, Sanders fired off a series of back-to-back jabs clearly aimed at the weakest parts of Clinton’s resume as he portrayed himself as the true progressive in the race who “will govern based on principle not poll numbers.”

His section of supporters roared at this key party event, which has a history of dislodging frontrunners — including Clinton in 2008 — in the state that holds the nation’s first nominating contest.

On the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Clinton recently opposed, Sanders said he was there first.

“I did not support it yesterday. I do not support it today. And I will not support it tomorrow,” he said. “It is not now, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.”

Clinton once called the TPP the “gold standard” of trade deals as she helped negotiate it as President Obama’s secretary of state.

On the Keystone XL pipeline, which Clinton seemed to favor as secretary of state but recently opposed, Sanders said he was there first too.

“If you agree with me about the urgent need to address the issue of climate change, then you would know immediately what to do about the Keystone pipeline. Honestly, it wasn’t that complicated,” he said. “To me, that was a no-brainer and that is why I have opposed the Keystone Pipeline from the beginning.”

On the Iraq War vote, where Clinton now says her “yes” vote was a mistake, Sanders said he was there first as well. “Let me tell you that I listened to what Bush had to say, to what Cheney had to say, to what Rumsfeld had to say. I didn’t believe them and I voted no,” he said.

And on the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law signed by Bill Clinton that banned the federal government from recognizing gay marriages — which Hillary Clinton now opposes — Sanders said he was there first once again.

“Today, some are trying to rewrite history by saying they voted for one anti-gay law to stop something worse. Let us be clear. That’s just not true,” he said. “There was a small minority opposed to discriminating against our gay brothers and sisters. Not everybody held that position in 1996.”

Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Friday that her husband supported DOMA as a “defensive action,” since something worse would have been passed in its stead.

On every issue, Sanders said he faced a “fork in the road.”

“I am proud to tell you when I came to that fork in the road I took the right road even though it was not the popular road at the time,” he said.

And one of his biggest applause lines, ostensibly on campaign finance, was also a veiled shot at Clinton. “I am the only Democratic candidate for president who does not have a Super PAC and we are going to prove them wrong,” he said. Clinton has two super PACs.

Sanders sought to position himself as the rightful heir to Obama, who stunned observers at this very event in 2007 by delivering an inspiring speech that drew clear contrasts with Clinton.

“Eight years ago the experts talked about how another Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, couldn’t win. How he was unelectable. Well Iowa, I think we’re going to prove the pundits wrong again. I believe we will make history,” he said.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

In order to prove the pundits wrong, make history, and to win, Bernie Sanders will need to continue to draw a contrast between himself and Hillary Clinton on the issues, showing Democratic voters that he, and not Clinton, better represents Democratic values. Of course the Democratic Party is a big tent and Clinton’s generally center-right positions will appeal to many of those who vote in Democratic primaries. To win Sanders will also need to turn the independent support he is achieving into primary votes.

Many of  his supporters are young voters who do not traditionally turn out in hight numbers. Sanders just might change this with positions which attract the young, including  his more left-libertarian views on social/cultural issues, including legalization of marijuana, along with his proposal to make public college education free. His support for expanding Social Security also represents a policy difference with Hillary Clinton which could help Sanders make inroads at the other end of the age range.

Sanders repeated his criticism of Clinton on CNN Sunday Morning, this time mentioning Clinton by name:

“I have consistently been a critic of what is going on on Wall Street, the greed, the recklessness, the illegal behavior. I helped lead the effort to — against the deregulation of Wall Street. I believe that we should bring back Glass-Steagall legislation so that you do not have the absurd situation of commercial banks and investment banks and large insurance companies being together,” Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“You do not have six financial institutions having assets equivalent to 60 percent of the GDP,” he continued. “With all the economic and political power that these banks have, I think you’ve got to break them up. That has always — that has been my view for a very, very long time. That is not Hillary Clinton’s view.”

ABC News began their report of the Jefferson-Jackson dinner which an example which seems to represent the philosophical difference between Clinton and Sanders supporters:

On one half of the space, the Clinton fans looked organized and polished. They wore matching, glow-in-the-dark, blue t-shirts that read, “I’m fighting for her.” They held battery-operated foam lights that shone brightly when the lights dimmed and doubled as noise-makers.

Sanders’ fans had glow sticks, too, the kind that glow after being snapped. While many of his fans wore Bernie 2016 t-shirts, they were mismatched and different colors. His section also included several homemade signs.

I think this says a lot about the types of people who support Sanders as opposed to Clinton. Most importantly, Democratic voters need to keep in mind that, to paraphrase Sanders, when there has been a fork in the road on policy, throughout their careers Sanders has taken the right fork while Clinton has made the wrong decision. We need a president who makes the right choices at the time, not one who will admit her mistakes and change her views years down the road.

Update: Video posted here.

Update II: Press & Bloggers Show Sanders Was Right In Accusing Clinton Of Practicing Revisionist History On DOMA

Bernie Sanders’ Views On Secularism & The Drug War Present An Important Alternative To Hillary Clinton’s Conservative Views

The prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee represents a nightmare to those on the left who desire to see action on the concentration of wealth among the ultra-wealthy, those who prefer peace over perpetual war, those who support civil liberties, and those who are liberal on social/cultural issues. If Bernie Sanders had his way, he would only be speaking about the first issue during this campaign. He is learning that he cannot be a single-issue candidate and must broaden his appeal (as I discussed after his performance in the first Democratic debate). Bernie Sanders has frequently championed economic issues, has often spoken out on Clinton’s pro-war stance, and has now become a more reluctant culture warrior and hero to secularists in this campaign.

Sanders appeared much more comfortable in this position when appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week. To the shock of conservatives, and delight of secularists, Sanders downplayed the role of religion. Kimmel asked, “You say you’re culturally Jewish — you don’t feel religious. Do you believe in God, and do you think that’s important to the people of the United States?” Sanders answered:

I am who I am and what I believe in and what my spirituality is about is that we’re all in this together. That I think it is not a good thing to believe that as human beings we can turn our backs on the suffering of other people. This is not Judaism — this is what Pope Francis is talking about — that we cannot worship just billionaires and the making of more and more money. Life is more than that.

While discussing social/cultural issues, Sanders also said he is “not unfavorably disposed to moving towards the legalization of marijuana” when asked by Kimmel. He came out strongly against the drug war in  pointing out, “We have more people in jail today than any other country on Earth.” He also said, “We have large numbers of lives that have been destroyed because of this war on drugs and because people were caught smoking marijuana and so forth. I think we have to end the war on drugs.”

This is quite a contrast to the views of Hillary Clinton, who has been as much a war-monger on the drug war as on foreign policy.

bernie-sanders-jimmy-kimmel

Sanders’ views on religion are in tune with the times in an age when those unaffiliated with organized religion is the fastest growing group. This comes as a welcome alternative in the Democratic race for secularists to the views of Hillary Clinton, used the phrase “God-given potential” three times during the last Democratic debate, and who answered this question from The New York Times Sunday Book Review:

If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?

At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking. I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it. I still find it a source of wisdom, comfort and encouragement.

This led Gawker to write, “However you feel about Hillary Clinton, it is difficult to deny that she is one of the most cold and calculating political figures in all the land.” The Daily Banter also called this “a political calculation” and at the time I thought the same. However, a deeper look into Clinton’s religious views suggests an even scarier interpretation than crass political calculation–this might actually be what she believes. As I previously discussed in April, Clinton’s cultural conservatism and promotion of conservative causes has often been seen in her membership in The Fellowship while in the Senate. From Mother Jones in 2007:

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection…

That’s how it works: The Fellowship isn’t out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward…These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives’ group into what may be Coe’s most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn’t condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn’t back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won’t guard abortion clinics.

Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons’ approach to faith-based initiatives “set the stage for Bush.” Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right…

The libertarian Cato Institute recently observed that Clinton is “adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism.” Clinton suggests as much herself in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, where she writes approvingly of religious groups’ access to schools, lessons in Scripture, and “virtue” making a return to the classroom.

As noted in the above excerpt, 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 opposition to needle exchange programs was a significant difference between Clinton and Obama in the 2008 race.  Her social conservatism is also seen in her weak record on gay rights and on 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” as opposed to uncompromisingly defending the rights of women to control their own bodies.

Bernie Sanders is raising important economic issues in his campaign against Hillary Clinton and her Wall Street ties, but there are many other differences between them which are important in this race.

Updates:

Marijuana And The Death Penalty: Sanders and Clinton Engage In More Significant Off Stage Debate Than The Republicans In Colorado
Press & Bloggers Show Sanders Was Right In Accusing Clinton Of Practicing Revisionist History On DOMA  Plus see two related graphics from the American Humanist Association on panderng to religion by Clinton and Republicans, and Bernie Sanders’ Humanist views.