It won’t be so easy for Hillary to convince minority and younger white voters, who soundly rejected her in New Hampshire this week, that somehow she represents real change and progressive ideals.
But they believe that still about Barack Obama, and this is where Sanders has left her an opening.
Because for the past few weeks, if you’ve been paying attention, Sanders has subtly extended his indictment of his party’s timid status quo right to the door of the White House. I don’t know what Obama said to Sanders when the two of them
sat down to talk in January, but whatever it was, it left Sanders in an uncharitable mood.
Since then, he has said (in a string of angry tweets, no less) that real progressives can’t be for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He has said real progressives can’t take money from Wall Street. Having apparently appointed himself Political Philosophy Czar, Sanders has said you can’t call yourself both a moderate and a progressive at the same time.
Sanders has brushed aside the health care law that is Obama’s signature achievement (and his most politically costly), calling for a single-payer system and castigating pharmaceutical companies as if “Obamacare” had never existed.
In other words, while he praises Obama in debates, Sanders is saying, unmistakably, that Obama hasn’t been a progressive president and doesn’t embody systemic change. And that’s the cause — rather than her own long résumé — that Clinton, having played a pivotal role in the administration, should champion if she wants to get between Sanders and the voters she needs.
