I’ll make this short and to the point.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign against Hillary Clinton has always boiled down to one thing that Bernie himself has suggested but has not said openly: she is a corporate whore.
Last night during a rally in Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan, a surrogate for Bernie spoke to the large crowd and finally said what Bernie has been implying all along. Dr. Paul Song, a radiation oncologist and health care activist—who, by the way, is very, very wealthy and lives in a 4,300-square-foot house in Santa Monica—said the following:
Medicare-for-all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us.
I don’t give a damn whether Dr. Song apologized or not. I don’t really give a damn whether Bernie Sanders comes out, eventually, and says he rejects Dr. Song’s choice of
words. What Sanders has been saying for months now has been nothing but a polite way of calling
Hillary Clinton a “corporate Democratic whore.” If you follow the “Bernie or Bust” campaign, or read the comment section of nearly any story about the Democratic race, you will find that many of Bernie’s Hillary-hating followers have been calling her a whore or worse. They get Bernie’s implied message.
And now, in front of an estimated 27,000 people at a Bernie rally, a surrogate for Sanders finally came clean, finally said out loud what the anti-Democratic Party presidential candidate has been insinuating. And such honesty ought to wake up real Democrats everywhere. They should stop flirting with a man who couldn’t care less about the Democratic Party.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
henrygmorgan
/ April 14, 2016Duane: Even my arch-conservative brother is drinking the Kool Aid. He wrote me this week to say that of the four candidates, only one is not a pathological liar, Sanders. He says that this doesn’t mean necessarily that he would vote for Bernie, but what choice did he have? My very good friend, a retired Navy Captain pilot said that he would rather vote for Jane Fonda than Hillary, a reference that any veteran will understand. This is a man who voted for Ross Perot the last time he found himself with no other acceptable candidate. And my sister tells me that this may be the first time she has just stayed home on election day. None of my Republican friends are happy with their choices, although it may be that I have a select group of Republican friends.
This situation must be driving the pollsters crazy, to the point that there is no poll whose results are not suspect. And now we have one Democrat calling another a whore. Could Donald Trump, at his most vulgarian, top that? I wonder sometimes if I don’t begin to sound like an old man bitching about everything. And then I remember “Keep clean for Gene” before I follow my sister’s lead. Bud
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R. Duane Graham
/ April 15, 2016Bud,
Sorry to hear about your brother. And your good friend and sister.
You know, as I think about it, that 2008 election was the only time I have voted for a presidential candidate without reservations of some kind. When I was voting for Republicans, I always had some reluctance (albeit because they weren’t conservative enough!), and when I voted for my first Democrat, John Kerry, I had a few problems with him (like that Iraq war vote). Bottom line is that there are no candidates out there who perfectly fit my expectations most of the time. I like to think of it all this way: voting for a presidential candidate is really a vote for a legion of appointees that will actually run the executive branch for four years. And that is why I can overlook a policy difference here or a temperament difference there. I try to look at the big picture of a government run by people who I tend to agree with much more than the other side.
That is one of the reasons why this “whore” nonsense upset me so much. It took Sanders until the next morning to even address it. And then he did it via Twitter. His campaign said he didn’t know about the remark until the next morning. Why didn’t he? He had staff there who heard it. Weren’t they shocked? Didn’t it bother them? And shouldn’t they have told him, when he went on stage much later, to address it then and denounce it in front of the people who heard it? This incident tells me a lot about the kind of people Bernie has picked to be around him and those he might pick to run the government. I don’t like his campaign manager, whom I have seen countless times on television questioning Clinton’s character. And I don’t like his communications director who does the same damn thing. And I’m starting not to like Bernie’s abrasive, seemingly humorless personality.
Worst of all, I’m starting to believe that when he loses this campaign, his support for Hillary, if it comes, will come in such a way that he doesn’t do her much good. In fact, I hate to say this, but I fear he will, ever so subtly, undermine her. I hope I’m wrong about that. I hope he sucks it up and hits the trail and brings his enthusiastic supporters with him. But, as of right now, I just can’t see that happening. There is something about this phenomenon that seems much different from the Hillary-Obama race in 2008.
Duane
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melk39
/ April 14, 2016Nasty bit of business there. Endemic of the sexism that still sadly is found in all levels of our society and as we see here all across the political spectrum. Lets don’t forget how Axelrod and his buddies used it against her in 08. This time though I think the country has moved enough on the issue of gender that I think attacks like this actually work to her advantage and people, at least lots of people, see it for what it is. Especially when enough of us point it out when it happens like you did here. Nice catch.
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R. Duane Graham
/ April 15, 2016There is a lot of sexism still with us. It’s really amazing. A very prominent liberal tweeted last night that Hillary should stop “shouting.” Huh? Did he even hear Bernie Sanders yelling and see his constant waving of his arm? She, and other female politicians, are, even here in the 21st century, held to different standards. Even, I’m ashamed to say, by people who ought to know better.
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Jim Wheeler
/ April 14, 2016Incendiary language is characteristic of ideology, which as mentioned in commentary on this blog recently, is what the Sanders campaign is about. Ideology is like religion in that it brooks no compromise. The Communists of the Soviet 1917 revolution was ideology gone wild. The GOP ideology is the same, bible-based bigotry currently making the rounds of state legislatures. For all it’s bad press, I’ll take politics over ideology every time.
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R. Duane Graham
/ April 15, 2016Me, too, Jim. Me too.
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Anonymous
/ April 14, 2016Former President Jimmy Carter was quoted as saying, “Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nomination for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and representatives.” This is not a rogue socialist, this is a real Democrat. The Huffington Post reported yesterday that 2/3 of US corporations paid no income tax from 2007-2012. The same applies to the 1% that run this country. The middle class has declined to its lowest level in history and you seem shocked that many are finally saying, Enough! I don’t think you can say President Carter is just pandering, but you might.
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R. Duane Graham
/ April 15, 2016I’m not shocked that many are saying “enough!” I’m shocked that at a Sanders rally a supporter, speaking from the stage, essentially called Hillary Clinton a whore. And I’m even more shocked that it took Sanders until the next morning to even mention it on his Twitter feed. His campaign said he didn’t know about it until then. Why not? Where were his staffers who did hear it? Why didn’t it bother them enough to tell him about it so he could clear the air in front of all those who heard the remarks? Then, as I think more about it, I shouldn’t be shocked about any of this. He has been calling her, in much more polite terms, the same thing for months now.
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King Beauregard
/ April 14, 2016I think it’s worth posting a reminder of what corporate donations do (as far as I can tell).
What the donors are hoping to get: as much control over the candidate as possible.
What the donors are actually getting:
1) Access to the politician. Did you ever try to call your Congressman and talk to somebody about a bill? There are certainly no guarantees that the Congressman’s staff, much less the Congressman, will call you back. But if you’ve donated money, you’re likely to get a call back, and an opportunity to plead your case.
2) Your cause will factor into the politician’s judgment. Will a given Congressman care about the impact of HR 4081 on the Amalgamated Guild of Elvis Impersonators? Maybe, maybe not … but if the Guild has donated a chunk of money, the impact on them will almost certainly enter into the Congressman’s thinking. It may not be a deciding factor, but it will be A factor to be weighed along with a dozen others.
3) And the big one: with some politicians, receiving money means doing the bidding of the donor. That happens less than Sanders likes to pretend. To be sure, successful politicians on the take are likely to be good at covering their tracks, but even so it’s up to Sanders to demonstrate that Hillary is actually on the take. Given her stances, which, while not actively hostile to Wall Street, are nevertheless typically aimed at reining in their excesses, I don’t think Sanders can make a legitimate case that Hillary is bought and sold. Which is why he trades in smears, insinuation, and implication.
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Anonymous
/ April 14, 2016If you believe your comment regarding corporate donations to be true, I have some oceanfront property in Joplin that you might wish to purchase. As for me, I choose to believe our 39th President of these United States. There is no higher ranking Democrat in this blog and like Bernie, he calls it as he sees it. He is beholding to no corporation, so a swing and a miss on your regal effort to deflect his statement.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/us-corporations-14-trillion-hidden-tax-havens-oxfam
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R. Duane Graham
/ April 15, 2016About as good a summary of the situation as I have seen. Thanks.
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melk39
/ April 14, 2016King, you make solid points but I think this is one of those cases that, fairly or not, Hillary is going to have to convince folks that she is going to be less accommodating to Wall Street than Bill was. It was under Bill Clinton after all that the Glass Stegall Act was repealed and Bob Rubin and Larry Summers worked to loosen financial regulations in ways that Republicans of a generation earlier could only fantasize about. Couple that with the cozy relationship she and Bill have had with finance capital since that time, well… Suffice to say she has a credibility gap on this issue. I think she recognizes it very well, but Bernie’s blows on this are effective, any one can see it. It’s like watching a boxer work over the midsection. No blood but points are being scored. That’s why I think she ought to use this New York primary as an opportunity to give a major speech right on the steps of the NYSE and lay out an aggressive policy regarding Wall Street to protect the economy. I mean just yesterday there was a headline story that five Wall Street banks that are too big to fail failed the living will test. That’s a gift right there for her to make the commitment that this will be unacceptable under her administration. People would notice and it would take a lot of the wind out of Bernie’s sails.
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King Beauregard
/ April 14, 2016You raise an interesting question: exactly what will it take for Hillary to convince people? Because she’s already put forth plans that appear to be more viable and more effective than Bernie’s.
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King Beauregard
/ April 14, 2016Presented for no other reason than levity: Bernie does NOT like sharing his food.
(This is fake of course, but pretty well done.)
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Anonymous
/ April 14, 2016For levity as well:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCqFzWxSCi39LnW1JKFR3efg
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