Why I Am Leaning Towards Clinton, Rather Than Sanders, in the Democratic Primary Election
Many of my friends are really rooting for Bernie, and I totally get it. I, too, am attracted to what Mr. Sanders is saying, particularly regarding this country’s economic troubles. Some are so enamored of Bernie (or eager to convince others to vote for him) that they describe him almost as a Savior figure, as if he is so different from anything that has come before, that he would be bound to change this country for the better if he were elected. And they rail against the opposition, not just against the Republicans, but even liberal Democrats, especially Bernie’s presumed archenemy, Hillary Clinton. But I have not yet gone over to the Bernside. I haven’t hopped onto the Bernwagon. And here’s why:
Before I even consider a candidate for President, I first make a list of all the things that I want to see the next President accomplish. That list, by the way, is not a comprehensive wish list that will turn America into my personal utopia. It simply consists of all the things that I believe one good President reasonably can expect to accomplish in two terms. (I say two terms, because a President needs two terms in order to do these things, which means I would never vote for someone who I didn’t think could win twice.) Then I compare the candidates to that list, and I ask myself, who is most likely able to set a successful national agenda, build coalitions, and convince Congress to pass legislation to achieve these goals?
For this next presidential cycle, I made a list consisting of the following items in a Presidential agenda:
I think this is a reasonable hope list to expect from our next President—not too much, not too little. Now the question is: who do I think is best able and most likely to achieve them?
Race. For many years, both Clinton and Sanders have been advocates of racial equality in America. The difference between them, however, is that Sanders views systemic racism chiefly through an economic lens, while Clinton has concentrated on political, social, and legal injustices. According to a recent Gallup poll, Clinton’s favorability rating among African Americans is 68%, while that of Sanders is 23%. Why might that be? Sanders said that he would have more African American support, if African Americans understood the issues better. “You should not be basing your politics based on your color. What you should be basing your politics on is, how is your family doing?” Clinton was the first of the two to express support publicly for the Black Lives Matter movement. "This (movement) is fueled in large measure by young people and it is a particular development in the civil rights movement that deserves our support," she said. "By that I mean, there are some who say, 'Well racism is a result of economic inequality.' I don't believe that." While Clinton has been pushing for reformation of the criminal justice system and protection of voting rights for some time, Sanders’ platform up until last month offered solutions for racism focused on providing college for lower-income students, youth employment programs, and affordable child care. While these are good causes, his ignoring of certain matters of great concern to African Americans and other minorities, while speaking on the campaign trail, finally resulted in some Black Lives Matter activists storming the stage at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix in late July. He finally stepped up and came up with a preliminary racial justice plan (unveiled August 10, the same day another of his speeches was interrupted by a demonstration, this time in Seattle). The plan basically mimics the one Clinton already had.
When Sanders supporters complained that Clinton also deserved a protest, on August 19, she too was approached by Black Lives Matter, and their lengthy conversation is recorded here. I don’t think any white politician is likely to understand completely all of the problems inherent in the system or take a position completely satisfactory to those suffering the injustices, but Clinton’s remarks do show that she is committed to doing the right thing. “You can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it, who are going to say, ‘Oh, we get it. We get it. We’re going to be nicer.’ OK? That’s not enough, at least in my book. That’s not how I see politics. So, the consciousness raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical. But now all I’m suggesting is, even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives. And that’s what I would love to have your thoughts about, because that’s what I’m trying to figure out how to do…. I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own God-given potential, to live safely without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future.” No politician is perfect, but her words give me heart that she is going to try, really try, to accomplish something here.
Regarding actual plans of action, both Sanders and Clinton are promising to fight against the suppression of voter rights by the Republicans, which (deliberately) has affected minority communities the most. Both Clinton and Sanders are pushing for a demilitarization and re-training of the police and use of body cameras. Both Clinton and Sanders wish to reform the criminal justice system, calling for the elimination or revision of racially-biased, mandatory minimum sentencing. In addition, Clinton is calling for non-prison sentences for low-level, non-violent offenses and for young people. Sanders proposes eliminating prisons for profit, though this is primarily an economic measure. The real difference between them is not so much in the policies, but in where their priorities lie. Based on their histories, Clinton is more likely than Sanders to keep race as a key component of the national agenda. He, I am sure, holds similar sentiments to Clinton on race, but his passion seems, to me, to be lacking somewhat. His sight is set on the battle between rich and poor more than anything else. This gives her a bit of an edge over him on race in my book.
Guns. For most of his political career, Sanders usually has opposed stricter regulation on guns. He was supported in his run for Congress in 1990 by the N.R.A., who viewed him as an ally, or at least the lesser of two evils. In 1993, Sanders and Clinton were on opposite sides of the Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers. Fortunately, the bill passed, but while Clinton as first lady outspokenly supported it, Sanders voted against it in the Senate. He did support an assault weapons ban in 1994, but also voted in support of bills allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and blocking funding for any foreign aid organization that registered or taxed American guns. In 2005, he voted in support of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a Republican piece of legislation, promoted by the N.R.A., to shield gun dealers and manufacturers from criminal liability. After Sandy Hook, he told an interviewer: “If you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen.” Since his run for the Democratic Primary, he is back peddling on his earlier positions somewhat, but I fear that, as President, he would do little to fight the Republicans on this issue. Clinton, on the other hand, has consistently and unequivocally pushed for more common sense regulation on guns. She, in my view, would be far more likely than Sanders to get new gun control measures passed by Congress while she is President.
Immigration. While Sanders is in favor of giving the undocumented workers already in this country a path to citizenship, he is very much against the idea of allowing additional workers to come into the U.S. In a recent interview with Vox, he said, “I frankly do not believe that we should be bringing in significant numbers of unskilled workers to compete with kids,” Sanders said. “I want to see these kids get jobs.” When asked about keeping the border open, he replied: “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... It would make everybody in America poorer — you're doing away with the concept of a nation state.” I believe the Bern is wrong on this issue. Open borders is not right wing. Republicans generally want to limit, not expand, entryway into the United States. More importantly, studies have shown that immigrants help boost American wages, and they are more likely than citizens to be self-employed. Like Sanders, Clinton also is an advocate of giving undocumented immigrants an easier path to citizenship, but in addition, she has for some time been in favor of a guest worker program and has an open border stance. She sits to the left of Sanders on this issue, and this is one position I believe she has right. If there is a move during the next Presidency to reform immigration, Sanders will likely nix any attempt to allow guest workers into the country; Clinton will encourage it. With the above in consideration, it is understandable that Sanders declined to put a number on how many Syrian refugees we should accept into the country. Clinton stated we should be taking in as many as 65,000.
Gender. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research recently released a report that revealed the following:
I believe our next president needs to be invested in eliminating the disparities between men and women in this country in order to achieve (perhaps not within the next Presidency, but at least in our generation) full gender equality. Now, both Sanders and Clinton are on the right side of this issue, but which of the two do you think would have more of a stake in this? Clinton has been at the forefront of the women’s rights movement for decades. She consistently has supported other women in their respective runs for office. There is no better way to break a glass ceiling than to have a woman break the ultimate glass ceiling: the Presidency of the United States. Women are greatly outnumbered by men in public offices. In our society still, women are often not taken seriously, and women in politics have a tough time fighting those stereotypes. If they try to take credit for something, they are just seeking validation. If they are assertive or strong, they are bitches. There are still a significant number of people today who believe that a woman is incapable of being a good President. “Women are too emotional. We can’t trust them to make sober, important decisions that affect the entire country.” Donald Trump, the most popular of the Republican candidates, is the most sexist candidate in the race. He recently said that women who love their husbands are incapable of keeping national secrets. Check out this video of a man calling out “iron my shirt!” to Hillary Clinton during a speech. What really irks me is when I see Clinton being portrayed by the Republicans as a habitual liar (because, after all, women are liars), when men frequently lie in politics and often just get a wink or a nudge, and people move on. And then I hear liberals repeating these same Republican arguments about her, so that they can prop up Bernie, and that annoys me even more. What has she lied about? Benghazi? Investigation turned up nothing. Whitewater? Same thing. Emails? She broke no rules. Do you know the Republicans compile lists of all Hillary’s lies, and most of them are either fabricated (yeah, lies about lies) or laughably trivial. But they feed this belief that women are more prone to lie than men. Where are the lists of all the lies each male politician has made? How would those lists stack up compared to hers? Clinton is a human being with the same faults we all have, but they like to put her lies in the spotlight because a lying woman fits right into gender stereotypes. They also love to portray her as a shrew—another sexist tactic. Did you hear the one about how she threw a lamp at Bill in a fit of rage at the White House? Another emotionally unstable woman. Please don’t misunderstand me. I know she has told some lies. I know she has lost her temper. JUST LIKE ALL OF US. What does that prove? It only amounts to something if she is notably worse than everyone else is, and I don’t see evidence that she is. I would LOVE to see a woman go up against Trump and put him in his place. In my opinion, it is not the time for another old white man to be put in the White House, no matter how good he may be. It’s time for a woman to run this country, so that she may demonstrate what she can do. This would deal a heavy blow to sexism (not eliminate it, of course, but definitely hurt it).
Climate Change. This is an area where Sanders and Clinton are basically the same. I only list it here to address all of the issues I raised above. Neither of them have released their full plans for environmental action, but they both want to reduce carbon emissions. Both are against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Clinton plans to install more than half a billion solar panels across the country by the end of her first term. Within ten years of her taking office, she hopes to have every home in American powered by renewable energy. Clinton is a little more pro-science than Sanders, as she hasn’t fallen into the pseudoscientific pitfall of believing GMOs are somehow dangerous, whereas he has. I think he takes the position on climate change, not so much because he is a science advocate, but because it is anti-big corporations.
Economy. This is the one area you would think Sanders has the edge over Clinton. He definitely seems more passionate about it. Sanders has 13 points in his economic plan, Clinton a 25 point plan. They are not very different. If you want to compare the two, check out the links. Both candidates want to provide jobs in infrastructure, raise the minimum wage, close tax loopholes for corporations, and provide funds for students to go to college. There are a few interesting differences. Sanders want to make healthcare universal in a single payer system. Clinton supports Obamacare. While I agree with Sanders that single-payer is the best way to go, I don’t think it will or can happen during the next presidency. So the point is moot to me. Sanders is for increasing taxes on the wealthy, whereas Clinton is for reducing taxes on the middle class and poor. Same idea, but I think the latter is a better strategy, as it will be easier to convince Republicans to vote for a tax reduction than a tax hike. Sanders is against free trade and recommends reversing our current trade agreements and policies. Clinton is generally in favor of free trade but with qualifications. I favor her position on this. Free trade is good, not bad, for our economy.
So these are my chief reasons for favoring Clinton slightly over Sanders. She is more passionate and committed to issues of race and gender, she is more liberal on immigration and gun control, and I like her economic views a teensy bit more. Before I go, let me address a few arguments I have heard in favor of Sanders over Clinton.
Reasons for voting for Bernie (that I don’t care a lick about)
Some people are urging liberals to vote for Bernie because he believed in a good cause first (before Hillary did). So, for example, it is pointed out that Bernie was an advocate for gay marriage before Hillary was. My question to that is: how will this make a difference between a Sanders and Clinton presidency? If the answer is, “not very much at all,” then I don’t see a reason for giving it much consideration when I vote for the next President, lest I fall into hipsterism (“hey, I liked that band before you did, so I must love the band more!) Anyway, if anyone has followed Hillary at all on LGBTQ issues from the 1990s until the present, that person would realize that she has been an advocate for equal rights all along the way. The only change she has made was in 2013, when she finally accepted the term “marriage”—before that it was “civil unions” with all the rights of marriage, just like President Obama advocated. The only difference is that Obama said he was for gay marriage (in the late 1990s), then he said he was for civil unions but not marriage (in the 2000s), and then he changed his mind again (in 2012). Hillary just gradually moved more to the left, continuing in the same direction as she had always been going. She recently said, “You know, somebody is always first…. Somebody’s always out front and thank goodness they are. But that doesn’t mean that those who joined later in being publicly supportive or even privately accepting that there needs to be change are any less committed.” You may be surprised to hear that Sanders was closer to Clinton on this issue than Sanders' supporters have been saying. In 2000, when Vermont's supreme court ruled that the state's ban on same-sex unions violated Vermont's constitution and ordered the legislature to either allow same sex marriages or civil unions for same sex couples, Sanders supported the decision for a civil unions law, and he would not say, when asked, that he was for gay marriage. Moreover, in 2009, when Vermont was pushing for same sex marriage, Sanders never stepped forward to urge Vermont's governor to sign the bill, and, in fact, remained aloof from the whole process. His position on marriage equality clearly evolved over time.
Another example sometimes given is that, back in 2002, Sanders voted against the war in Iraq and Clinton voted for it. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but no one seems to care that Clinton said she made a mistake. I like that she admits it. So what, we don’t forgive her? Many of us were fooled back then. And does the fact that Sanders voted against the war in Iraq mean that he is a dove? He most certainly is not. He not only voted in favor of most military appropriation bills, including those for Iraq, he voted for airstrikes in Kosovo under Clinton, and for a "pro-troops" resolution under Bush. In 1999, antiwar activists from Vermont showed up at his office to demonstrate their unhappiness with his "selling out," and he had them arrested. The real question here is 'Would Sanders be more reliable in foreign policy decision-making than the former Secretary of State, who has visited many countries and dealt with world leaders?' I don’t think so. Clinton is not a warmonger. So I don’t hold her vote against her.
Another argument I hear is that Clinton is a “shill for big banks.” What they mean is that Clinton has received lots of big donations from banks and other corporations. Therefore she must be doing their bidding. Sanders, on the other hand, gets his biggest donations from unions and lots of small donors. So the argument goes that he is not obligated to big business and Clinton is. She therefore is corrupt. First of all, the sources of donations for both campaigns have now been published for the period through the end of July. Most memes published by the Sanders folks show the entire history of donations for both candidates going back years. In the past, yes, Clinton has received large donations from certain banks, like Citigroup. but for this election cycle, Sanders and Clinton are much closer in the types of donation sources. Plenty of unions and colleges on both sides. Sanders' biggest donor on the list is Google. Among his other top donors are Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Boeing, and Apple. Clinton's top three donors are law firms (not banks). Yes, it is true that Sanders has made most of his money (and a lot of money) through small donations, and that is a great feat for which he should be congratulated. But do large donors automatically create a corrupt politican? Hardly. What really matters is not so much who gives you money, but whether you expect to owe that donor, in some political way. Some people believe that one is automatically obligated to the person from whom a contribution comes, but that is not so. A person is only obligated to a donor if there is an understanding, beforehand, that the donor is to be paid back in some way by the politician to whom the money is being donated. The fact is, there are many rich donors who do not expect anything in return. They simply want to help the candidate that they already like into office. So the question is not whether money has been donated, but rather whether there are strings. President Obama received many large contributions for his campaign. I never heard from the left that he had somehow been bought. And yet, I hear it all the time from the left regarding Hillary Clinton. Why is that? Because Sanders’ supporters figure that if they can bring Hillary down, they can prop Bernie up. This is a tactic that I believe will backfire. Bernie himself does not advocate this kind of posturing, and neither do I. But even more importantly, Hillary is campaigning for campaign finance reform (as is Bernie). She is calling for greater public disclosure of political spending, the establishment of an equal system of small donations for congressional and presidential candidates, and a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending to their shareholders. Hillary has long been a critic of big spending in politics. Clinton and Sanders both want to overturn the Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, when the conservatives on the Court ruled that there would no longer be any spending limits on campaign contributions. Hillary wants limits. Why would she be pushing for reform, if she were benefitting from the current system? She would, in effect, be shooting herself in the foot. So this claim that she is “in the pocket” of large donors is unfounded and simply ridiculous.
Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. I don’t expect that anything I said here is going to persuade an avid Sanders supporter to switch to Clinton. I just want to explain my position, and maybe give some undecided liberals a chance to hear the other side.