Bernie Sanders did not create Hillary's integrity questions

[ibegurpard]

She doused herself in gasoline and lit that match herself (in reference to the not--so-clever Krugman arson metaphor). Millions of people like me were resigned to the notion that she was going to be the nominee when it became clear that Elizabeth Warren wasn't going to step up to the plate. I've ALWAYS loved Bernie and that combined with my dislike for Hillary Clinton (which has nothing to do with the "vast rightwing conspiracy" scabdals) meant that I was going to support him as long as he was in it. The Clinton campaign has only further reinforced the negative impressions I had of her from the beginning. Bernie getting into the race was simply providing an alternative for people to whom politics not tied to the monetary quid pro quo plaguing our current system is THE issue. All of the goals that Hillary Clinton and her supporters disingenuously suggest that we share will never be achieved with this roadblock in the way.

[Armstead]

1. Exactly -- If Bernie never existed,she would still be as distrusted as she is

And a lot of people would still be angry and frustrated with the corrupt system she -- and others in the elite ConservaDem movement -- fostered over the years.

[ibegurpard]

3. political animals resigned to her candidacy

But supporting Bernie were always likely to vote for her in the end. But she never had the disaffected voters in the first place. And her campaign AGAINST liberal ideals like single payer healthcare has turned off even many political diehards.
Her RECORD is why I supported Obama instead of her in 08. Figured I may as well give the blank slate a chance. He turned out to be exactly the sort of 3rd way politician I expected from her.

[Skwmom]

2. You can't serve two masters and national resources are limited.

Once the big money backers, cronies and family members get done feeding at the pubic trough there are ONLY crumbs left for the people (though even in delivering those crumbs there is often the aforementioned making big money in the process).

[JaneyVee]

4. Karl Rove and the rightwing machine has...

But Bernie is aiding it.

[karynnj]

8. Karl Rove and many before him on the right led early charges, but

Hillary Clinton's own tendency to stonewall - then and now - helped the right wing by doing things they could label as cover up.

As to HRC's polling on trustwothiness, all you have to do is look at the time series on her favorability to see it was not Bernie Sanders who made people think she was untrustworthy.

Here is a link to HRC's polling on a site that aggregates polls - http://pollingreport.com/hrc.htm This link has many series, the longer ones are more interesting. What they show is that the high favorability numbers started to trend downward long before May 2015 when Bernie entered the race. In many series, it seems clear that she was hit when the email story came out. However, the decline started before that - maybe due to the terrible interviews when her book came out - ranging from speaking of being dead broke when they left the WH to her Goldberg interview where she made clear that she strongly disagreed with Obama on foreign policy and that she would have been more hawkish on Syria.

Buried at that link, there is a CNN series of polls from that link (from May 29-31, 2015 - they are sorted by date) shows a series where those saying she was honest and trust worthy was 56% in early March 2014 (right before people learned of the email), to 50% in March 2015 to 42% in May, 2015. Bernie entered the race in May 2015, so he is unlikely to have impacted any of these observations.

My own opinion looking at this is that the declines shown in these series were not caused by Sanders and I do not think they were caused by the right. If you look, her numbers when she left as SoS, were very high - in spite of any Benghazi nonsense. Where they really started to slip was with her book and interviews and then more so, with the email and her reactions.

As to Bernie, may be it was that he acted because he saw she was more vulnerable than the Democratic PTB did.

[ibegurpard]

9. Her untrustworthiness

(Which is increasing) is because of campaign rhetoric thst does not match her actual record.

[Autumn]

32. Hillary's problems are of her own making.

[eridani]

34. Because Karl Rove loves single payer health care? Please provide link n/t

[Depaysement]

5. Rec

Good post. I feel the same way.

[ms liberty]

6. I agree. n/t

[peace13]

7. Hill's integrity has been defined for me a good long time ago!

2008 when she threw everything she could at Obama, that pretty much wrapped it up for me.

[MisterP]

10. "unforced errors" is the poli sci phrase--remember "English only"? that's just the wavelength

everyone's on, from the lowliest foot-soldier to the Woman Herself: any opposition is from a cabal of the bedonged threatened by a strong female, and therefore all criticisms comes from the same fount

so when Greenpeace accosted her it was Bernie, Bernie, Bernie: and the longer all this goes on, the closer the trendlines get, the more she's going to be seething that, as an impeccable liberal and the liberals' best hope, these ingrates are still going after her

[ibegurpard]

13. That's certainly part of it.

And the perception of her being untrustworthy has gelled (again she's running against her own recird). So when she starts hurling accusations of "liar" against people pointing out her MANY inconsistencies it's just laughable and reinforces the negative impression people have of her. She and the party may have been able to bamboozle enough Democrats into thinking she's our only hope but if she IS our nominee our only hope is a complete Republican meltdown. And then we're left with yet another third-way politician in the White House selling off public goods and services to the highest bidder .

[MisterP]

25. also there's the righteousness of being a constantly-assailed torchbearer of the furthest

left politics can go at the moment; the more she's attacked by Republicans, therefore, the further left she's being (when in fact if two parties are indistinguishable all they have is vitriol and even violence)

so the combination of righteousness and persecution means she can only dig the hole deeper: more secrecy, more smears, more woundedness, more "why is everyone closing ranks against me?!"

the party's been able to run on "we're not the GOP" and some bubbles for two decades, but again the party's dropped by like half during that time: in any other system it'd be as dead as the Honduran Liberals today: she can only win if people don't know anything about her record or ideology, or choke it down and hold their noses if they do--making them complicit

this is a marvel to read http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/hillary-clinton-inside-circle-huma-abedin

[ibegurpard]

28. when the Democrats

Give away taxpayer dollars to for - profit insurance companies, betray labor and the general public on trade policy, advocate foe privatization of education, and champion the surveillance state then no one believes the "at least we're not Republicans" spiel anymore.

[MisterP]

30. "send them BACK!" "kick their ASS and take their GAS!" "drill HERE drill NOW!" "let them DIE!"

[DanTex]

11. No, that was the right-wing. He's only recently started joining the chorus of dishonest smears.

[Sheepshank]

12. Can't discount the constant harping on the same subject by BSers in DU

So many BSers love to find a RW meme and run with it here...maybe they're not all BSers, but they have me convinced a majority are. There is no bar so low that the BS campaign won't stoop to to gain votes and delegates.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

14. What is an honest criticism of Hillary?

We are led to believe we cannot criticize Hillary or else we are idiots who bought into Right wing smears and lies...

Inform us darling!

[DanTex]

15. Saying she takes campaign money from the oil industry is a lie.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

16. I didn't ask that... We all know the truth on that though...

But what is a criticism that BSers have leveled that has been honest. I refuse to believe that every criticism has been a right wing smear. Can you enliven us on a few of the criticisms you feel have been honest?

[DanTex]

17. Sorry, I don't keep a catalog of Hillary criticisms. What I do know is that the latest smear by

Bernie is most definitely dishonest. I wouldn't be surprised if some other criticism he made was honest, but not this one.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

18. Every criticism I've leveled has been called a right wing smear...

Let us ignore ones leveled by BSers; What is one criticism you have of Hillary? No Politician is perfect, not even BS is perfect.

I disagree with his stance on guns, and on his support of forced GMO labeling of food.

[Rebkeh]

19. Exactly nt

[HereSince1628]

20. Quid pro quo politics is called corruption. It's ubiquitous, as years of political news

should have shown everyone.

But fighting the establishment is very hard because the establishment candidate is inevitably backed by the local power clique that functions as the equivalent of superdelegates.

[ibegurpard]

21. it has become so ingrained

In our political system that many of the majority of people who it's harming actually fight the attempts to get rid of it.

[HereSince1628]

22. Born in IL, living closeby, I have to say, corruption in IL should be a national alarm

and yet, few people see it as anything but run of the mill political head-hunting between the major parties.

[ibegurpard]

23. it is THE issue

The one ring that binds them all.

[HereSince1628]

24. Yes, and the precious seems to be in the wrong hands.

[Octafish]

26. Honduras transformed my suspicions into certainty.

Democracy doesn't require people who can make money as much as leaders with integrity.

[hollowdweller]

27. Hillary Clinton has been around a long time.

IMO her problems stem from that.

When Bill was president the country was so much different. The only way he could win was to embrace a lot of the politics of the republican party. Throwing people in jail for drugs, cutting their welfare benefits, free trade, some embrace of trickle down stuff.

He did manage to continue the reset with Russia and actually cut the military back some at a time when it was harder to do.

He got his hand slapped on gays in the military so he sort of went the opposite way on that and some other social issues as the GOP tried to back him into a corner over it to hurt him.

Also with being able to run negative ads and TV being such an important part of winning an election back then he pretty much had to follow policies that at least somewhat sucked up to the big donors so he could have any chance of winning because not only did the GOP have a lot of money to run ads they already had their talk radio propaganda machine, that the dems had no equivalent to.


Fast forward to NOW.

Any problems that the GOP ideas could solve have been solved.

The over application of deregulation, free trade and trickle down have caused a huge financial crisis and fucked the middle class.

The public is tired of war.

We have an increasing tolerance for diversity, the young people are doing WAY worse than their parents, we have tons of people in jail who are not really that much of a threat to society.

The internet and the way news comes out sort of has decreased the influence of TV and talk radio.

But Hillary is either still somewhat running with the center right dem platform, or where she has changed her statements about that platform when she had to embrace it for Bill or her Wall St constituents when she was senator makes it look like she's waffling where maybe she's really just pivoting to what the voters now want like Bill did at the time. But since the dominant paradigm has changed people are having trouble trusting her.

Of course Bernie has been in politics a while too but he just sort of stuck to his positions, unpopular in the past but now popular so he seems more trustworthy. Clinton could be just as trustworthy as Sanders on the important issues it's just that her past somewhat undermines it for some and she is unable to convince people because she is not a great politician like Bill.

[ibegurpard]

29. exactly

As I said before she is running against her own record. And Bill may have been a great politician but he was a disaster for the Democratic Party in terms of credibility on issues that have traditionally been Democratic issues.

[Bill USA]

31. No, but the vast majority of Bernie's minions comments parrot GOP propaganda demonizind HRC

Many Bernie supporters posts are indistinquishable from Rabid Right McCarthyist attacks of HRC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511562196

your's is just one more example of Propaganda parroting nonsense.

[ibegurpard]

33. I guess her own record is right-wing propaganda?

"Who are you going to believe... me or my record?"
SMH...

[eridani]

35. GOP is in favor of single payer? Since when? n/t