February 19, 2016
The biggest falsehood of
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is to call Bernie Sanders a “single-issue”
candidate, since he has actually addressed many issues. But Michael Winship
says there’s some truth in the charge because Sanders has identified Big
Money as the root of many problems – and that is true.
By Michael Winship
Maybe it’s that
50,000-year-old, Neanderthal DNA scientists say a lot of us possess, but
this feels like the most brutal, vicious and mendacious political year since
the days when politicians traded jugs of corn whiskey for votes, fought duels,
and flagellated
opponents to near death with canes.
In last Saturday night’s
Republican debate, the words “lie,” “lying” and “liar” were fired off by the
candidates against each other like volleys in a paintball tournament. On the
other hand, statements that were, in fact, true were greeted with booing.
Booing.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential debate
sponsored by CNN.
In one of his rare,
stopped-watch-is-right-twice-a-day moments, Donald Trump said, “Obviously the
war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right? George Bush made a mistake, we
can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty.” Who could argue with that? Boos.
Trump continued, “They lied.
They said there were weapons of mass destruction – there were none. And they
knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” More and
louder boos.
Jeb Bush protested and Trump
threw in, “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign,
remember that. That’s not keeping us safe.” The boos turned into roars of
anger.
Even debate moderator John
Dickerson came under attack. Just hours after Antonin Scalia’s death had been
revealed, Ted Cruz claimed, “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming
Supreme Court justices in an election year.” Dickerson corrected him, pointing
out that Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed 28 years ago in an election
year, 1988. The GOP crowd booed as if Dickerson had just announced that the
national anthem was being changed to “Midnight at the Oasis.”
Have we so lost touch that the
truth no longer sets us free but inspires braying derision? Have so-called
“reality television,” and social media plagued with trolling and conspiracy
theories so melted our brains that when facts get in the way of whatever
nonsense we prefer to believe, we bellow like wounded beasts?
In comparison, two nights
earlier, the Democratic debate co-sponsored by the PBS NewsHour was more Downton
Abbey than Duck Dynasty. (Truth: While different members of the Duck Dynasty
clan actually have endorsed Trump and Cruz, the aristocrats at Downton are
still debating primogeniture
and the three-field
system.)
Although tempers flared
between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and the discussion of Henry
Kissinger’s role in U.S. diplomatic history veered toward Cloud Cuckooland,
about as heated as it got was the moment Sanders told Clinton she had leveled
“a low blow” when she accused him of not loving Barack Obama and his
administration as much as she does.
“Last I heard we lived in a
democratic society.” Sanders replied. “Last I heard, a United States senator
had the right to disagree with the president, including a president who has
done such an extraordinary job.” Not much was made of the derision Hillary and
Bill Clinton cast toward Barack Obama during the 2008 primary campaign.
But the major falsehood of the
evening happened at the very end of the debate in Hillary Clinton’s closing
remarks. “You know,” she began, “we agree that we’ve got to get unaccountable
money out of politics. We agree that Wall Street should never be allowed to
wreck Main Street again.” So far, so good.
“But here’s the point I want
to make tonight,” she continued. “I am not a single-issue candidate,” she
declared, “and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country.” She was
accusing Sanders of ignoring all the other troubles facing America at home and
abroad by fixating on Wall Street and money in politics.
Having tried it out on the
debate stage, this has become Secretary Clinton’s campaign theme ever since;
that Sanders’ vision is too tunnel-like for him to be president. But note first
that she focuses that argument on Sanders’ desire to punish the financial
industry while almost completely ignoring his position on the corrosive
influence of money on all aspects of politics and government. Maybe because she
is the beneficiary of so much of it.
In
Nevada last Saturday she asked, “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow,
would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination
against the L.G.B.T. community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to
immigrants overnight?”
And
in Harlem on Tuesday she declared, “I am absolutely committed to ensuring
that no bank is too big to fail, and no executive too powerful to jail. But
Flint reminds us, my friends, there’s a lot more going on in our country that
we should be concerned about.”
To which Sanders replied, as
he told reporters last weekend, “The American people understand that we are
the only major nation on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care for all
people. The American people understand that we have got to aggressively deal
with climate change, in order to give our children and our grandchildren a
planet that is healthy and habitable. The idea in terms of education that we
must make public colleges and universities tuition free. We have got to raise
the minimum wage to a living wage. It’s not one issue.”
But in a way, it is, and
Sanders sort of sells himself short when he argues too much in the other
direction. For in fact, until the door is slammed shut on money in politics and
until the banks are pummeled into line, most of our other problems aren’t going
away any time soon. What’s more, everything stems from one bigger issue
that affects and overwhelms all else.
First, let’s run through some
of the aforementioned problems. Flint? Environmental and institutional racism
to be sure, but perpetrated by the administration of Rick Snyder, a rich
Republican governor, his election funded by his plutocrat pals, committed to
cutting back government as he raised taxes on the poor and slashed corporate
taxes by $1.7 billion a year.
“The tragedy in Flint was a
choice,” United
Steelworkers President Leo Gerard recently wrote at In These Times
magazine. “This was a values decision about what was important. Giving a break
to big business was the top priority for venture capitalist Snyder. Operating a
shoddy government, over-taxing pensioners and poisoning Flint’s children was
the result.”
Nor is real, significant
progress going to be made on climate change until we do something about the $31.8 million given to
candidates by energy and natural resource interests in 2015-16. (Top recipients:
Ted Cruz, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.)
The notions of free college
tuition (which Clinton opposes) and a living wage are fiercely fought against
by lobbyists overseeing millions in campaign contributions. The growth of
Hillary Clinton’s opposition to Medicare-for-all seems correlated to the cash
donations received — David Sirota at International Business Times reports,
“Clinton has vacuumed in roughly $13.2 million from sources in the health
sector, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics. That includes $11.2 million from the sector when Clinton was a
senator and $2 million from health industry sources during her 2016
presidential campaign.”
Even when discussing
institutional racism, as happened on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC talk show Monday night,
Clinton spokesperson Karen Finney started talking about “housing and redlining
and access to capital” – all things that are part of the stranglehold on
financing for people of color perpetrated by the very financial institutions
Bernie Sanders has pledged to punish.
Ultimately, deep down, no
matter the candidate, the fact is there is only one true issue here in these
United States. As a banker says in The Mark and the Void, Paul Murray’s recent
novel, “What’s the one reliable area of growth in the twenty-first century?
Inequality.”
Now let the booing commence.
Michael Winship is the Emmy
Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a
former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him
on Twitter at @MichaelWinship.
[This story first appeared at http://billmoyers.com/story/maybe-it-is-a-single-issue-election/]
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