Don't Let the Media Fool You, the Difference Between Hillary and Bernie is Huge!
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Dennis Maley
Right now, there is an important battle taking place that will help
define the course of liberalism and the Democratic Party for a very long
time. If you haven’t really noticed, that’s the way the mainstream
media would like to keep it. Here's why.
Watching the most recent Democratic debates, I have found it very
tiring to see Hillary Clinton laboriously struggle to work a description
of herself as a "progressive“ into as many answers as possible. It
seems like a contrived effort to repeat some focus-group tested talking
point that could help her pivot toward whatever is working for her
opponent, which has seemed to be the defining aspect of her reaction
whenever struggling in a campaign.
In 2008, Clinton seemed like a sure thing. President Obama, then a 45
year-old first-term Senator, wasn’t even on the radar except as a
potential future presidential candidate. Facing criticism from the right
that she wasn’t Commander-in-Chief material, while Obama was being
framed by the right as a left-wing Saul Alinsky radical, Clinton quickly
moved to sell herself as the ultimate moderate. Adopting a
particularly-hawkish worldview, Clinton also reminded voters that she had been a "Goldwater Girl,“ a name given to female volunteers supporting the GOP’s 1964 Presidential candidate.
This was a good move politically and an easy sell, because–despite what
the right wing might tell you–both she and former President Bill
Clinton have a long political history as moderate, centrist Democrats.
In 1992, the couple bragged that they weren’t Michael Dukakis or Jesse Jackson and spoke of a "third-way" in triangulating moderates on both sides
with independents to form a majority coalition. Aided by Ross Perot’s
third-party candidacy, it worked and Bill Clinton went from a long-shot
nominee for the party’s nomination to the becoming the 42nd President of
the United States with only 43 percent of the popular vote.
Bill Clinton also enjoyed one of the most successful presidencies of
the modern era. Throughout his eight years as President, America was
prosperous and safe–far and away the two largest concerns of American
voters. Our foreign policy was based on diplomacy and sanctions that
were backed up by a threat of military force which was judiciously
dispensed as a last resort only when necessary. Fueled by historic
growth in the technology sector, the economy grew and unemployment fell
(the overvaluation of Silicon Valley stocks and the resulting dot.com
bubble wasn’t a result of Clinton’s policies; the way the housing bubble burst resulted from the Fed deliberately depressing interest rates).
As such, Hillary has an effective case to make for herself as a
centrist Democrat with something of a liberal streak, including her
strong record of fighting for women's rights. However, facing an
opponent from the progressive wing of the party who was only supposed to
be a straw man but has instead ignited a grassroots revolution the
Democratic Party has not seen in many decades, Clinton is again
reinventing herself–this time in the exact opposite direction.
Clinton the Progressive?
The idea that the only difference between Sanders and Clinton is her
experience and pragmatism seems ridiculous. No one who is familiar with
the political history of the Democratic Party can argue that there does
not exist a left-wing, progressively-liberal element, or that it has
largely been dissatisfied with the party establishment over the last 30
years, as it has continued to cozy up to corporate special interests,
while distancing itself all but rhetorically from the common working man
with whom its roots are associated.
In 2004 and 2008, Congressman Dennis Kucinich ran for the Democratic
nomination, while representing this contingent. It was somewhat
uncomfortable having Kucinich on the stage in 2008, asking both Obama
and Clinton why, if they were so interested in universal health care,
had they been nowhere to be found when the Congressman was trying to
pass his "Medicare for All" bill–the same sort of system Sanders is
today promoting. It was also uncomfortable for Clinton to have Kucinich,
the only true anti-war candidate in the race, calling her out on her
Iraq War vote the way Sanders does today.
NBC seemed to find it uncomfortable as well. At the time, the company
was owned by General Electric, one of the nation’s most prosperous
defense contractors. They barred Kucinich from the MSNBC debate in Las Vegas, despite him having met the polling
threshold the network had previously announced. The DNC did not come to
his rescue. Frozen out by the mainstream media and marginalized by his
own party, Kucinich’s grassroots campaign floundered and he was soon out
of the race.
In 2000, Ralph Nader had won support from much of the progressive
Democratic wing in his independent run. Nader, who had a much more
liberal and progressive agenda than moderate Democratic nominee Al Gore,
was later blamed by the Democratic establishment (which had tried to
dissuade his supporters by arguing that a vote for Nader was a vote for
George W. Bush) for costing Gore the election. They placed little blame
on Gore for his bland, centrist campaign that targeted independents
rather than energizing the party’s base, resulting in a failure to carry
even his own state and a widespread defection of Democrats, including
the quarter of a million in Florida who voted for George W. Bush (as
opposed to less than 100,000 who voted for Nader).
This narrative is emblematic of the way the Democratic establishment
and candidates like Clinton have viewed this contingent of its party,
who they always seem to make very little effort to appease other than
through campaign rhetoric. Democrats, fixated on the ever elusive
middle-of-the-road voter, seem to thumb their nose to the grassroots of
the party, as if to say: Take who we give you. What choice do you have? Are you going to vote for the Republican?
This dynamic isn’t unique to Democrats. Over the same time period that
they were moving away from the party’s core values, a neo-conservative
movement was causing a huge rift in the Republican Party. Fiscal
conservatives in the mold of William F. Buckley were having a hard time
with Republicans who thought nothing of running huge deficits or cutting
taxes without balancing the cuts with reductions in spending, while
spending blindly on nation-building and other forms of costly military
adventurism. This frustration expressed itself in the surprising success
of another septuagenarian, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who played the
Dennis Kucinich role in that party’s 2008 and 2012 primaries–to the
similar disdain of the Republican establishment.
It’s long been said that Republicans fear their base, while Democrats loathe theirs,
and the efforts of the Republican Party to appease its far-right Tea
Party element, while Democrats have showed no corresponding efforts on
their side might suggest there is truth to that statement. Only now it’s
young Democrats and frustrated long-ignored veteran progressives who
are saying they have had enough–and laughing (or fuming) at Clinton’s
comments about her own ideology and record.
It’s possible that Clinton doesn’t really understand this dynamic and
really thinks that she’s a "progressive with a plan," as she likes to
repeat time and again. A lot of people, especially public figures who
are surrounded by loyal subjects and fawning admirers, become immune
over time to the perception that exists outside of their bubble. In
politics especially, it seems easy for those inside the machine to
convince themselves that to effect change, you need to play the game, get inside the institutions and inch things along a little at a time.
That’s a common strategy and not one without merit. There have
certainly been a lot of impactful activists on both the left and the
right, who’ve made poor legislators and leaders simply because they were
ready and willing to die on every hill.
Clinton often paints Sanders with this brush, suggesting, in a very nuanced way, that his ideas might sound good but would never work and aren’t even worth trying. This plays to the
idea that there’s not really a difference between the two candidates
ideologically, only in Clinton’s superior experience and understanding
of political realities. I would argue, however, that part of Sanders’
appeal, especially to young voters, is that people are tired of being
told that good ideas simply cannot work because those asking to be in
charge are incapable of breaking the gridlock. If this primary cycle has
shown us anything, it’s that on both sides of the aisle, voters are
receptive to the idea that our challenges have become so great that we
can no longer afford the elites telling us to tame our expectations
while they inch things along.
Many Democrats, independents and even moderate Republicans see
Sanders as the sort of change agent that can disrupt the Washington
status quo. He has a long history of being one of the most
independent-minded voices in Washington. As the Senator pointed out in a
recent debate, there have been many years where he has shrewdly managed
to attach the most amendments to successful legislation of anyone in
Congress, patiently bringing about small victories that have added up to
an impressive record. That’s not a die-on-every-hill ideologue, but
rather a loud activist who has nonetheless inched things along more
successfully than his establishment candidates–including Clinton.
Who's Got the Experience; Who's Got the Progressive Record?
For all the talk of her experience, it is
Sanders who has spent 33 years as a mayor, Congressman and U.S. Senator.
He has served on and chaired a number of key committees and has been a
central figure in holding the Democratic establishment accountable to
the progressive wing during the few times it’s been accomplished.
Meanwhile, Clinton has eight years in the Senate, where she had few
meaningful accomplishments, plus four years as Secretary of State, a
term in which she’s had, at best, mixed reviews.
Sanders also has a lifelong record as an activist who has been on the
frontlines of progressively-liberal issues. While Clinton was
campaigning for Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act,
Sanders was marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and getting arrested
during a sit-in protesting segregated housing at the University of
Chicago. It’s worth noting that Goldwater wasn’t merely a Republican,
but the GOP candidate who repulsed progressives more than perhaps any other in history, including Nixon in 1974 and
George W. Bush in 2004. For context, King himself said, "We see
dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign." Liberal Senator
J. William Fulbright said, "Goldwater Republicanism is the closest
thing in American politics to an equivalent of Russian Stalinism."
California Gov. Pat Brown said that Goldwater’s acceptance speech "had
the stench of fascism" and that "All we needed to hear was 'Heil
Hitler.'"
Needless to say, Sanders was an ardent detractor of Goldwater. However,
this is far from being the only matter of distinction between he and
Clinton. Sanders has always been an steadfast supporter of workers’
rights, including unions and the ability to collectively bargain with
employers. For more than a decade, Sanders has been railing against
Walmart and the idea that the largest and most profitable corporation in
the world was being subsidized by taxpayers in the form of social
services like Medicaid and food stamps for its poorly paid employees,
while 5 of the top 10 richest people in a nation of 400 million had
received their wealth as heirs to the company’s founder.
Clinton on the other hand, spent six years on Walmart’s Board of
Directors, while her husband was the sitting Governor of Arkansas.
During that time, the board of the notoriously anti-union company had
plenty of conversation about keeping unions out of their company, led by
fellow board member John "Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking
parasites" Tate, who was personally selected by founder Sam Walton to be
his anti-union guy. Records show that Clinton did not take up the union
cause and remained largely silent when the issue was raised. I will note that the same records also show
that she was a strong voice for women in the workplace, pushing the
company to look at its lack of females in management and executive
positions, though to no statistical effect. She also pushed the company
on reducing its environmental footprint.
I think this too is instructive. It shows Clinton as the moderate
liberal, willing to take a nice paycheck from a company like Walmart (a
company that she and Bill held $100,000 in stock in at the time) for
sitting on its board of directors, and rationalizing the fact that she
was able to be a voice for women in the company who had until that time
been unrepresented (Clinton ended up on the board because Walton’s wife
had pressured him to finally put a woman on it). Most moderate Democrats
and Independents certainly wouldn’t see a problem with this.
Progressive liberals, however, might, and they certainly can’t see
Sanders taking a check from Walmart and sitting quietly while organized
labor was discredited even if he got to push for greener stores or
other left-leaning issues. It doesn’t make one right and the other
wrong, but it shows the difference that the Clintons are fighting so
hard to discredit. For more on the origins of the divide between the
candidate, it’s helpful to look at Clinton’s Democratic conversion and
its timing related to the party’s major shift that began right about the
time she was coming of age, politically.
Clinton's Political Transformation and the Rise of Neo-Liberals
When Clinton was a freshman at Wellesley College in 1968, she became a
member of the school’s Young Republicans chapter. In her personal
narrative, she describes 1968 and the assassination of Martin Luther
King, who she’d met briefly through a youth pastor at her Methodist
Church as a teenager, as an ideological turning point. This is supported by accounts of those close to her who described her as a moderating
force on a college campus during the onset of a sort of cultural
revolution. She opposed the Vietnam war, and soon she was volunteering
for Senator Eugene McCarthy, the liberal anti-war icon who sought the
Democratic nomination in 1968 (losing to Hubert Humphrey).
Clinton was part of a new wave of young white-collar Democrats who,
turned off by the racist elements of the anti-civil rights crowd and
opposition to the war, helped buoy the party against the loss of
southern Democrats who opposed integration. That era signaled the
beginning of a shift away from the blue collar union workers that had
been the party’s bread and butter and toward neo-liberalism–and probably
best explains the differences between Sanders and Clinton, who, let me
remind you are only separated by six years in age and, as such, were
contemporaries during that time.
Neo-liberalism really began taking hold during the Carter administration. Despite his
progressive environmental and foreign policy records, President Carter’s
efforts to deregulate airlines, commercial transportation and railroads
signaled a shift away from their place as public/corporate
infrastructure and toward becoming more solely the domain of private
enterprise, while cutting the legs out from under the airline, trucking and railroad unions. This was the start of an intellectual premise that the
way to cope with an increasingly competitive global economy was to focus
on making things cheaper and more profitable, even though it would come
at the expense of the high-paying labor jobs that had created and
supported an American middle class for almost half a century. This is
also the essential argument between the ideologies of Clinton and
Sanders.
As President, Bill Clinton continued the neo-liberal approach. NAFTA,
similar trade deals and the deregulation of investment banking pushed
forward the idea that we could make things cheaper and more profitable,
while not addressing the loss of living-wage jobs with anything more
than rhetoric about retooling our labor force and capturing the markets
by being on the cutting edge of clean, sustainable technology-based
industries by investing heavily in education. Imagining that we could do
that while following a bipartisan belief (if not rhetorical agreement)
that the trickle-down effect of low taxes, either worked or was
politically impossible to avoid, proved pie in the sky.
The economic ideology didn’t really change under Bush (especially with
regard to trade) except that he doubled down on spending and turned a
surplus into an enormous deficit, adding trillions to the debt. Thus
began the fomenting of his party’s revolt against the neo-conservative
movement that began with Reagan and intensified under both Bushes. In
2008, it looked like Clinton would be the default candidate of the
neo-liberals, who had long since become the party establishment, until
they saw a better opportunity with a moderate, corporate-friendly fresh
face from the Chicago political machine.
When Hillary Clinton suggested during a recent debate that according to Sanders’ definition, even Obama wouldn’t be a progressive,
it seemed like she really didn’t get the distinction. Obama became
President at the height of the financial crisis. Aided by bipartisan
deregulation, the industry had just brought the world economy to the
brink of collapse. If ever there had been a chance to rein in Wall
Street and wrangle the Democratic Party away from its long-favored Sugar
Daddy and back toward the working class, President Obama had it. But
that’s not who Obama is and progressives–like Sanders–weren’t surprised
when he left Wall Street and the banks off the hook with little more
than weak tea in the way of reforms. As Clinton noted, President Obama
has taken more money from Wall Street than any candidate ... ever.
Why? One can only guess, but there’s good evidence that Democrats like
Clinton, Obama and the vast majority of those in Congress simply believe
that neo-liberalism is not only the most electable path for their party
but the best path for America. They helped engineer a movement away
from manufacturing, transportation, unions, public works projects to
address our crumbling infrastructure and toward cheap goods from abroad. Meanwhile, more of the nation’s GDP became concentrated in the relatively
small financial services sector and non-white collar workers were
relegated largely to a non-unionized, low-paying service sector.
Consider this: total compensation in the financial sector (including
profits, wages, salary and bonuses) hit an all-time high in 2013 at
around 9 percent of GDP. How does this happen? For starters, the cost of
matching investors with savings to borrowers who need money, which is
called intermediation, has nearly doubled in the past three decades,
while enjoying the same information technology advancements that has
almost universally drastically decreased the cost of doing business in
every industry. Why is Wall Street unique in this inefficiency? Because
it's designed to be that way. By claiming an exorbitant amount of the
economic growth it facilitates, the industry diverts much of the wealth
from real growth to itself. The rules are set up in its favor, and the
politicians it keeps in power are not eager to bite the hand that feeds
them.
That’s where Clinton’s Wall Street ties become an issue. Like Obama in
2008, she is the preferred neo-liberal candidate of Wall Street. Despite
all of her tough talks on how she gave them an earful during speeches
for which she was routinely paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per
hour for (she won’t release the transcripts that were taken in order to
prove that she chastised her audience), the fact is, she cashed their
checks–again something it is impossible to imagine Bernie Sanders doing.
Here we see another key difference between the wings of the party.
The moderate, fashionably-educated, corporate-class liberals who took
over the party in the 1970s all seem to have one thing in common: their
own personal bottom lines look a lot more like the hedge fund managers
they rail against than the teachers, truck drivers, firemen and nurses
they rely on to get and stay in office come voting time. Clinton likes
to brag that while many Presidents leave office with wealth, she and
Bill left in debt. This may be true, but despite nothing but government
jobs and paid speeches bringing in income in the decade and a half
since, they’ve amassed a fortune that has been valued somewhere between
$75-150 million! This gives pause to progressives who wonder where their
sympathies really lie, and points to a new tactic of the economic
elites when they deal with those who may become a problem once in an
institution of power: make them rich.
Political and Media Elites Benefit from Preserving the Status Quo
Profound wealth has a way of tempering radical ideas on the way things
should be, especially when you’re benefiting so much from the status
quo. Millionaires like Clinton and Obama are aided in this area by a
corporate media that displays a similar dynamic. The entrenched
conflicts of interest that exist among the global conglomerates who own
not only the news networks but many other interests that benefit from
the status quo have created a stunningly-similar class of Powerball rich
"journalists" who often shape the debate in a way that is extremely
favorable for the status quo.
Consider the seven-year $105 million deal ABC gave former Clinton staffer George George Stephanopoulos–an unheard
of amount for a bottom-tier host, that is similar to the compensation
of anchors like Brian Williams or Today Show host Matt Lauer, both of whom had a much better ratings history.
Shortly after signing the deal, Stephanopoulos was found to have given generously to the controversial Clinton Foundation, a fact he did not disclose
while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of the book Clinton Cash,
which alleges that donations to the foundation influenced some of
Hillary’s actions while Secretary of State. Stephanopoulos said it was
enough that the foundation’s donations are public record, as though
audiences are supposed to track down every donation a so-called
journalist makes each time they view their work.
Of course, Stephanopoulos shouldn’t be expected to know this, because
despite having been put into the top 1 percent of American income
earners through his compensation for work in news media, he’s not a
journalist. In fact, he wasn’t even able to handle White House press
briefings and was replaced before even being named Press Secretary after
bumbling several briefings during the first six months Bill was in
office. The foundation misstep wasn’t Stephanopoulos’ first Clinton
scandal either. Two years after helping Bill Clinton get elected to his
first term, Stephanopoulos was discovered to have been given a sweetheart loan of nearly a million dollars for a mixed-use investment property from a banker that had ties to the Clintons.
Yet despite Stephanopoulos’ close ties to the Clinton family, ABC still
allows him to interview Hillary and it wasn’t until the foundation
scandal that he had to drop out as a moderator of ABC’s Republican
debate, an event in which he caused an uproar among Republicans in 2008 by asking front-runner Mitt Romney an obscure question about
contraception that seemed designed to be planted in an effort to catch
what could have been a soundbite for a Hillary Clinton commercial were
she to have won the Democratic nomination. Watch any of the interviews
for Hillary’s many appearances on This Week and ask yourself who seems to be directing the conversation, the guest
or the host, or whether the Clintons get the same grilling as Sanders
or Republican guests.
Stephanopoulos isn’t alone. The so-called liberal media is loaded
with shills and hacks who have passed through the Democratic
establishment in recent years, made a ton of money doing very little,
and now serve up softballs for neo-liberal Democrat elites. Consider the
spin-job MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell put on their post
town-hall coverage a few weeks back. Matthews, a former speechwriter for
President Carter and staffer for former House Speaker Tip O'Neill,
acted as if Clinton had clinched the nomination, while Andrea Mitchell,
who’d been brutal on Sanders in NBC’s debate, piled on. Of course,
Mitchell never mentions that she’s married to Alan "I blew up the
economy" Greenspan, or that she might have a conflict of interest
considering the regular dressing down the former Fed chair used to get from Sanders when he’d come before Congress.
Stephanopoulos, Matthews, Mitchell and Greenspan have all built
fortunes in the eight figures through their loyal service and close
ties to the kingmakers in the establishment who have worked hard to preserve the
status quo. The idea that they are impartial journalists is as laughable
as the idea that the Clintons are progressive liberals like Bernie
Sanders. Again, this is not to say they are bad people, or possess the
wrong world view, or that Sanders’ is correct. But the idea that Clinton
vs. Sanders is not a battle among two diametrically-opposed factions of
a big tent party that will have vast consequences for Democratic voters
isn’t only untrue, it is utterly absurd–no matter what the mainstream
media tells you.
Dennis
Maley is a featured columnist for The Bradenton Times. His column
appears each Thursday and Sunday. Dennis' debut novel, A Long Road Home,
was released in July, 2015. Click here to order your copy.
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