2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWhen Bernie Sanders, Conventional Politician, Called for Still More Mass Incarceration :tsk: It’s
Last edited Sat Apr 16, 2016, 08:28 AM - Edit history (1)
Let the #vettingbernie continue!! Past time!
dLeeMar@dleemar
When Bernie Sanders, Conventional Pol, Calls For Even More Mass Incarceration #ImWithHer http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/12/when-bernie-sanders-conventional-politician-called-for-still-more-mass-incarceration.html #p2#vettingBernie
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/12/when-bernie-sanders-conventional-politician-called-for-still-more-mass-incarceration.html
Brian Snyder/Reuters
Michael Tomasky
HYPOCRISY WATCH
04.12.16 12:00 AM ET
When Bernie Sanders, Conventional Politician, Called for Still More Mass Incarceration
Its past time for the Vermont pol to start explaining himself.
Could Bernie Sanders be starting to look ever so slightly like just another pol? Not to his besotted legions, of course. For them, nothing can tarnish the great man. But for other voters, the past week may mark a turning point in the way hes perceived.
I have three events in mind. First was the Hillary-is-not-qualified business. Yeah, he walked it back fast, but not before he grossly mischaracterized what Clinton had said on Morning Joe and then went out and raised money off of his own mischaracterization! Far be it from me to suggest that the righteous one ever reads a poll, but I bet he does, and I bet his were showing that the controversy was killing him.
Second was the Vatican dust-up. What really happened there, who knows. But if your behavior leads two Vatican officials to start cat-scratching each other on the record, you have not won the morning. Given that hes apparently not meeting with the Pope, .................
But third and biggest by far is Sanderss continuing hypocrisy regarding the 1994 crime bill. Hypocrisy is a strong word. Is it fair? Well, hes been going around for months criticizing both Clintons on the bill. But of course, as we know, he voted for it. And as we learned Sunday from Clinton surrogate John Podesta on ABC, Sanders boasted as recently as 2006 that he was tough on crime because he supported the 94 bill.
Say what you want to say about the bill. It was really bad in many respects. It did help contribute to mass incarceration, especially of young black men. These arguments werent secrets at the time. Many people made them. In the House, about one-third of Democrats voted against the bill, most of them liberal or African-American (or both) critics of the bill on exactly these grounds. So Congressman Sanders was sitting on the House floor, or in the Democratic cloakroom, being exposed to these arguments, and he still voted for it.
He says it was because of the provisions that cracked down on violence against women. Fine; laudable, even. But if he gets credit for the good parts, dont Bill and Hillary get that credit, too?
The story gets worse for Sanders. Over the weekend, an excerpt of remarks Congressman Sanders had inserted into the Congressional Record in 1995 started making the rounds. A debate was raging at the time about the crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparities (black people were more often arrested on crack charges, for which the sentencing guidelines were much harsher). The U.S. Sentencing Commission had recommended to Congress that it eliminate the disparity (PDF). It meant that Congress should do so by lowering the guidelines for crack so that theyd be equal to those for powder. Most Democrats, of course, supported this change.
Sanders? Well, he wanted to eliminate the disparitybut by raising the powder guidelines to those for crack! Here are the salient sentences, from the Record of Oct. 18, 1995, tweeted over the weekend by James E. Carter IV, President Carters grandson:
This Congressman thinks that drugs are a scourge on America, and I strongly believe we must fight cocaine use in any form. We should be addressing the fairness issue by raising the punishment for powder cocaine, not lowering the sentence for crack offenses. I am deeply disturbed that this was not given as an option today.
Well, Ill give him this much. The Sanders option would have eliminated the disparity. But it would have done so by throwing millions more people behind bars for years, ruining that many more lives, black, white, and otherwise. Its totally at odds with Sanderss rhetoric, which I agree with by the way, about how we need to give young people from difficult circumstances more opportunity. Bernie wanted to give young people from all circumstances less opportunity. He may never have used the word superpredators, but he sure seems to have believed in their existence.
Why was Sanders such a law-and-order type? Its hard to know, since of course he never talks about it and now says just the opposite, with all that imperious moral thunder that some find bewitching and others bothersome or bewildering. But this excellent Yahoo! News piece from early February lays the record out. He even voted against a bill in 1995 that would have established separate drug courts and taken steps to demilitarize police departments, preventing them from using any money in the act in question (which failed) for the purchase of Army-style tanks or aircraft.
Its hard to imagine that crime was raging across the state from Burlington to Brattleboro. Maybe it was, by Vermont standards. Or maybe he just believed it was. But if he did believe it, he ought to just say so and explain why...................
oasis
(49,387 posts)Some will be very disappointed.
sadoldgirl
(3,431 posts)Clinton's propaganda machine?
Forget it!
riversedge
(70,220 posts)cprise
(8,445 posts)Its too bad their sense of Bernie's history stops there, over 20 years ago.
Meanwhile -- Hillary continues to defend the entirety of the Crime Bill to this very day.
TM99
(8,352 posts)that continues to ignore the reality of these bills. All were compilation bills that had good and bad aspects to them. Had he voted against VAWA or funding for police officers injured in the line of duty, he would be attacked for that.
Triangulate your legislation and even good pols have damned if you do and damned if you don't voting positions.
Thank the Gods that Hillary Clinton can vote for the Iraq War without having to wrestle with such issues. It was cut and dry. She did and that was that.
And of course this is from David "a little bit slutty and a little bit nutty" Brock.
riversedge
(70,220 posts)TM99
(8,352 posts)That is your pathetic excuse for every rat-fuck from Brock.
I am not sad. I am quite happy that your corporate princess won't be president no matter whether Sanders wins the primary or not.