How to dress an Inauthentic Attack
Hillary now attacks Bernie in not supporting an Auto Industry Bailout because he voted against an omnibus bill to bail out the banking industry to which they attached an auto bail out package that had earlier failed. Bernie had voted for the single issue auto bail out bill which shows with 100% proof that he was for the bail out of the auto industry.
Obviously since he voted against the omnibus bill, his decision was the cost of voting for the bank bill was too great to vote for it even though it contained something he supported.
This is the truth and the political fact. Hilary's attack on this issue is totally inauthentic and hypocritical. To see this all you have to do is turn it against Hillary and look at votes with mixed goals and just pick the compromise as the reason for her vote.
Example (and NO this is not what I believe): Using inauthentic argument, you could claim that Hillary is against women's health and is anti abortion because she voted multiple times for an anti abortion measure put up by republicans called the Hyde Amendment which is attached to all or almost all budget bills related to federal health issues.
Hillary voted multiple times (each budget) for bills containing the Hyde Amendment. She supports the ACA which contains the Hyde Amendment restrictions.
Now the truth, of course she is against the Hyde Amendment. I think this is one issue she has been pretty solid on her whole life. However, if you wanted to use the same political logic as Hillary, she did vote for omnibus bills that contained the Hyde Amendment so that would make her against women's health and abortion.
The truth again. Politicians are faced with this dilemma all the time and its a bad feature of politics as a power game and a game involving horse trading and triangulation rather than pure votes on issues . The politicians horse trade bills with good and bad features attached features either to drive politicians away from a bill they are for or to gain a reluctant vote for a bill that would otherwise not be supported by a politician. Congressmen do this all the time. Their records are rife with votes for and against issues in omnibus and linked bills that create problems for them if their votes are later mischaracterized. Hillary knows this and is being inauthentic. The only way to really know a position is looking at single issue votes or votes where the bill is single focused.
The only consistent feature is that Hillary knows this and is being inauthentic in this attack.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But it helps to be able to document your stand.
Yes, Sanders voted for the crime bill, but you can see video of his floor speeches at the time where he praised what he liked about it (i.e. Violence Against Women Act), but also video where he complained about what he didn't like about it (as the debate questioner quoted back to him, "Back in 1994, here's what you warned, we are dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, mystery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence"
. Meanwhile, Clinton's floor speeches of the time talked about super predators who must be brought to heel. So it is much harder for her to make the case that she didn't support the more onerous parts of the bill.
Similarly, you can read/view what Sanders said at the time, and see clearly that Sanders supported the auto bailout, but not the wall street bailout. AFAIK, Hillary never spoke against the Wall Street bailout, which would have made her vote an easier win-win from her perspective.
Meanwhile, in a previous debate, Hillary took Bernie to task for voting for the deregulation of derivates, which was part of an omnibus bill, and where the Bill Clinton administration had taken an active part in adding that deregulation to that bill.
Most bills have a balance of good and bad that have to be weighed. Sometimes we'll like the choices they made, other times we may not. But I don't see a difference in what latitude is being granted to different candidates, beyond the situations where one can more easily document what their exact positions were.
