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« Liberal Outrage: November 2015 | Main | Liberal Outrage: January 2016 » Liberal OutrageSanders pushes back on Clinton's attacks from the right In my inbox from Bernie regarding Hillary Clinton attacking him for wanting to raise taxes to pay for a Medicare-for-all system: Under my plan, we will lower the cost of health care for the average family making $50,000 a year by nearly $5,000 a year. It is unfair to say simply how much more a program will cost without letting people know we are doing away with the cost of private insurance and that the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care under a single-payer system than Hillary Clinton's program. Attacking the cost of the plan without acknowledging the bottom-line savings is the way Republicans have attacked this idea for decades. Taking that approach in a Democratic Primary undermines the hard work of so many who have fought to guarantee health care as a right in this country, and it hurts our prospects for achieving that goal in the near future. I hope that it stops. I've already mentioned this before (here, here, and here), but, like Bernie, i was annoyed to see Hillary using this line of attack in the debates. So i like seeing Bernie push back; i hope he'll bring the message beyond just his supporter email list. I think arguments that it wouldn't be feasible to implement Medicare-for-all are fair game, but to just attack it as a tax increase is disingenuous. Another example of Hillary seeming more Republican than Democrat. In the debates Hillary also used the "why should i pay for Donald Trump's kids to go to school" line, which is equally bunk. By fnord12 | December 23, 2015, 12:55 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link By fnord12 | December 23, 2015, 7:21 AM | Comics
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& Ummm... Other? | Link I often find that i like Politifact's articles even while i find their rating system bewildering. For example, when Politifact rated Bernie Sanders' claim about the US being the only major country without a guaranteed right to health care, i found myself nodding along through the various caveats but it sure seemed like the basic claim was True or at least Mostly True, not Half True. And now we have the statement that Clinton used against Sanders in the two most recent debates, where after Sanders criticized Clinton's position on Libya, Clinton said that Sanders voted for it. Both times Sanders got cut off before he could respond, so i'm glad that Politifact looked into it. And again, i read the article, and per the information there, it seems clear to me that Clinton was full of shit, but Politifact rated her claim True. As Politifact notes, "Congress never voted to authorize U.S. military action in Libya", so the reality is that there was no vote on Clinton (and Obama's) action. Sanders did vote in the Senate in favor of a non-binding resolution "strongly condemning the gross and systematic violations of human rights in Libya", but that's hardly the same thing as voting for military action to remove (kill) a dictator. And as Sanders said at the time: All of these quotes come from Politifact, and yet they rate Clinton's statement True. I don't get it. Especially in the context of the debates, where Sanders was criticizing Clinton's inclinations toward "regime change", Clinton's use of this vote seems to me like a cheap gotcha with no real substance to it, and the information in the Politifact article seems to back me up on that. But their rating doesn't. By fnord12 | December 22, 2015, 7:15 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link By fnord12 | December 22, 2015, 7:52 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link A good review of last night's debate here (what, you had something better to do with your last Saturday night before the holidays?). I am very much in agreement about the moderators, who seemed to think that their role was to stifle debate instead of letting it happen. My favorite part was when the moderator interrupted Clinton so that he could formally ask her the question that she was already answering as part of a natural back and forth discussion with Sanders. As for O'Malley, someone should have pulled him off the stage with a hook. By fnord12 | December 20, 2015, 3:42 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link « Liberal Outrage: November 2015 | Main | Liberal Outrage: January 2016 » |