What I realized watching it again is that I was somewhat successfully bamboozled by Hillary on the social justice issue. She's really good talking about it as a politician. But when you really look at what she said, there was not much there. What she is really good at is showing awareness and empathy. And yes, that's an area where Sanders lags. But while it was effective that she mentioned (for example) Walter Scott and Eric Garner, what did she have to offer?
Here's some of what she said (with bracketed comments inserted by me):
I just think we all need to take a very big collective breath, and ask ourselves, what is happening? And what is motivating the kind of violence we're seeing? And it's particularly troubling when it's from a position of authority, whether it's in a school, or a police officer on the street. But that is not the only place this is happening. It's happening in our streets. {then talked about gang violence}
and
Guns don't have to be the only tools we give our officers to deal with difficult situations. {They're not.} We've got to do a better job, working with people in positions of authority to deal with the run of the mill disciplinary issues or the problems on the street -- {talked about Eric Garner, being killed over selling loose cigarettes}-- we all need to say, wait a minute, time out, let's work on making this fair, reasonable, and peaceful in so far as possible.
As far as I'm aware, I'm not cherry picking the "I feel your pain" parts to the exclusion of policy... there was no real policy. Just this kind of stuff... need to be aware, need to talk about it, need to find better solutions. Well, sure. Any idea what those better solutions might
be?
Her answer was also peppered with things like "This has to end" and "People need to stop and think." It's kinda like telling Wall Street to cut it out. Where are the actual ideas? It all sounded good, but in terms of what she would
do about it, it seems to me that there was no "there" there.
Apart from economic issues, Sanders spoke, for example, about his strong civil rights record in congress, his personal experiences fighting segregation in Chicago, the intent to work on legislation or a constitutional amendment that guarantees voting rights. Hillary was strong at making it personal, but she seemingly could point neither to things she had done nor things she would try to do. Or at least did not take the opportunity here to do so.
Now admittedly, they did not get the same questions, and not being a debate format, neither could pick up from what the other had discussed. So in that sense, it's not a fair comparison of their comments on the topic. But my point is, while on first viewing, I thought HRC was stronger on the issue, when I looked a second time, it seemed more like we got more platitudes from HRC, and more substance from BS. That said, almost nobody is going to watch it twice. If HRC comes across stronger on this issue even if saying less of substance, she still wins.
Getting back to your comment about HRC being good at "broadening the discussion" and my point that often, that is a dodge, it happened again here. Maddow asked about whether it is appropriate to have police in school available to deal with disciplinary actions, and if so, should it be done in
all schools so as not to create another source of discrmination in the criminal justice system. HRC did not directly answer. Maddow--as she does--eventually circled back to try to get her to actually answer the question. Then finally Hilary answered it in part, but quickly pivoted to "a larger issue" which neatly still avoided the most difficult part of the question.
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