1) Nancy Reagan and AIDS

On Friday, Clinton told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell the following:

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about H.I.V./AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan – in particular, Mrs. Reagan – we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it. And, you know, that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective low-key advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this, too.’”

This is a highly problematic misrepresentation of the role the Reagans played in the horrific and painful experiences of millions of Americans in the ‘80s. People quite literally died because Nancy and Ronald Reagan refused to speak, let alone do anything, about this emergency.

As Dan Savage writes:

I'm literally shaking as I try to write this. There are no words for the pain Clinton's remarks have dredged up. I'm supposed to be writing a column—it's way overdue—but all I can think about are all of my dead friends and lovers, lovely guys who might still be with us if Nancy and Ronald Reagan had started a national conversation about HIV/AIDS. Or done something about it. Millions of men and women all around the world were condemned to death as a direct result of the hateful silence of the Reagan White House. Millions more will die.

And not only did the Reagans refuse to speak about AIDS or push for any research (until much later), Reagan’s White House was actually laughing at this horrendous disease: here’s how Reagan Press Secretary Larry Speakes responded to questions about the AIDS epidemic in 1982—

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases? MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS? Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it? MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.) Q: No, I don't. MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question. Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President— MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.) Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke? MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester. Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry? MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any— Q: Nobody knows? MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester. Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping— MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Clinton either is ignorant of the struggle for gay rights, or she is misrepresenting an administration she knows actually did nothing.

With Bill Clinton’s reported 1999 comments on Clinton’s uncomfortableness with gay people and their rights—

“You know I’ve had much more contact in my life with gay people than Hillary has... I think she’s really a little put off by some of this stuff... Hillary, emotionally speaking, still finds the issue [gay rights] harder to swallow than I do. And that it could be difficult for her in New York politics, how far she’ll be asked to go.”

—and Clinton’s admitted opposition to gay marriage in 2002 (in an interview with Chris Matthews) and 2004 (in a speech)—

it sounds like it’s the former.

When you’re running for the Democratic nomination for the President of the United States, you cannot remain ignorant of these issues — especially when your opponent has never said anything of the sort, voted against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA (which Clinton supported), defended gay soldiers on the floor of the House in 1995, supported Burlington’s first Gay Pride Parade all the way back in 1983, and wrote a letter even earlier, in the 1970s, calling for the abolition of all laws concerning sexual orientation and homosexuality.

Furthermore, Clinton’s apologies — that she “misspoke” and that she “made a mistake, plain and simple” — fall shockingly short.

By simply saying she “made a mistake” and “misspoke,” Clinton implies that she actually knows the Reagans didn’t do anything to stem this murderous wave of disease, and she just goofed in trying to talk about it.

Ignorance is not a death knell, depending on how you respond to it. Clinton did not respond well.

Clinton had no idea what the Reagans’ position on this catastrophic issue was, and actually thought Nancy Reagan was a subtle activist for the cause — this is ignorance, not a mistake.

Her apology should reflect that.

2) Bernie Sanders and ‘90s Health Care Reform

On Saturday, Clinton said the following at a St. Louis campaign event:

“And I always get a little chuckle when I hear my opponent talking about doing it [health care reform]. Well, I don't know where he was when I was trying to get health care in '93 and '94, standing up the insurance companies, standing up against the drug companies."

Only problem?

In the ‘90s, Sanders appeared at a health care reform event with Clinton — in which she thanked him for his work and help on the issue.

www.c-span.org/…

Furthermore, Clinton wrote Sanders a letter additionally thanking him for his work on universal health care.

“To Bernie Sanders, with thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans and best wishes.”

“Thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans,” she wrote.

Furthermore again, Sanders actually arranged a meeting with single-payer researchers and Clinton in 1993. Not only was he around at the time, but he was trying to persuade Clinton to reach further and push harder in her own plans.

Here’s how that rather shocking exchange reportedly went down:

In February, Sanders requested a meeting with Hillary, “to bring in two Harvard Medical School physicians who have written on the Canadian system,” according to the records of the administration’s task force. Those physicians were Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, leading advocates for single-payer health care. They got their meeting at the White House that month, and the two doctors laid out the case for single-payer to the first lady. “She said, ‘You make a convincing case, but is there any force on the face of the earth that could counter the hundreds of millions of the dollars the insurance industry would spend fighting that?’” recalled Himmelstein. “And I said, “How about the president of the United States actually leading the American people?’ And she said, ‘Tell me something real.’ ” Sanders was undeterred by this dismissal of single-payer’s political viability. In March, he was at it again, inviting the first lady up to Vermont as the state considered overhauling its own health care policies. In June, Clinton did go up to Vermont – to address a Democratic Governors Association meeting hosted by the state’s then-Gov. Howard Dean in the quaint village of Woodstock – and she brought Sanders and Sen. Pat Leahy with her.

If this account is true, not only did Sanders fight and push for better health care than Clinton did, Clinton actually said she didn’t believe the American people would follow a bold, strong leader pushing for a better standard of living for them and their children, or even that the President of the U.S., or the First Lady, should try.

Sound familiar?

It’s exactly the issue playing out between Sanders and Clinton in this primary season:

It’s unrealistic to rally the American people to actually fight for their own best interests, says Clinton.

The American people will rise up and follow a truth-teller, if only the Democratic establishment stops fighting the true liberals and progressives, says Sanders.

Who do you want to vote for? The guy who thinks we should fight for real health care for all? Or the candidate who thinks the president shouldn’t lead the American people to a better world?

The only thing that makes universal health care, tuition free public colleges and universities, and all the other basic stuff Sanders is proposing impossible — IS US.

Stand up and fight for your rights, for your own sake!! You’re already paying for it! Don’t let those tax dollars get sucked to war and corporate welfare anymore!

And lastly, for all Clinton’s talk about “standing up to the insurance companies,” it sure looks like she thought there wasn’t a “force on the face of the earth” that could do anything to stop them.

How’s that for being a champion of the people?

3) Bernie Sanders and the Clean Power Plan

At Thursday’s Democratic debate, Clinton said this about Bernie and green energy:

"The Clean Power Plan is something that Sen. Sanders has said he would delay implementing, which makes absolutely no sense.”

PolitiFact rated the statement “False,” because it is.

As the organization reports:

...Sanders himself did not say he would delay implementation. In reality, he wants a more ambitious plan (and has released one) and has supported Obama’s plan from the get-go.

And the guy whose reporting her campaign cited as proof of this wrongful attack has written an article debunking her statement: Sanders is not going to delay the implementation of anything that will increase green energy — he’s the one who’s been speaking about climate change the most in this campaign.

Dishonest poppycock.

4) Bernie Sanders on Immigration

In the Thursday debate, Clinton said that Sanders has and would “stand with the Republicans” on immigration, accusing Sanders of the following:

When you got to the Senate in 2007, one of the first things you did was vote against Ted Kennedy's immigration reform.

The second statement is true — but the first is wholly false.

As The Washington Post writes:

Sanders had specific concerns about the bill that Clinton failed to mention, and he opposed the bill from the left, which doesn't square with Clinton's argument that in Congress he would be liable to "stand with the Republicans" on immigration. What's more, in 2013, he voted for the immigration reform package, including the guest-worker program.

Sanders has and continues to support immigration reform. To try and say otherwise is, again, simply dishonest.

5) Bernie Sanders and the Auto Bailout

At the March 6th debate, Clinton said this of Sanders and the auto bailout:

“I voted to save the auto industry. He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a pretty big difference."

This is another dishonest manipulation, rather than a flat-out lie: Sanders supported the auto bailout, but not the Wall Street bailout.

To suggest that Sanders voted against the auto industry is false: Sanders, as even Clinton noted, voted FOR the bailout, but when it got wrapped up in a bailout for Wall Street, Sanders did vote against it.

This is only a “pretty big difference,” in the sense that Sanders didn’t support the middle class bailing out the massive financial institutions that crashed our economy, while Clinton did.

6) Hillary Clinton’s Emails and Her Sec. of State Predecessors

At the Univison/Washington Post debate, here’s what Clinton said about her emails:

“It wasn’t the best choice. I made a mistake. It was not prohibited. It was not in any way disallowed, and as I’ve said and now has come out, my predecessors did the same thing, and many other people in the government."

As Politifact reports:

This is a misleading claim chiefly because only one prior secretary of state regularly used email, Colin Powell. Powell did use a personal email address for government business, however he did not use a private server kept at his home, as Clinton did.

No Sec. of State has ever set up a private server at his or her home — and very few have even used emails. Her statement is, yet again, misleading.

Furthermore, Clinton likely DID know that it was frowned upon, because her office sent out a memo under her name saying the following:

Avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts.

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Clinton has also wrongly attacked Sanders on his universal health care proposal and indirectly accused him of being sexist when Sanders said we, as a country, need to stop “shouting at each other” over gun control — “I’ve been told to stop shouting about guns,” Clinton said at a rally in Virginia on Friday, a line she repeated Saturday during her remarks at the J-J dinner. “Actually I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman talks, some people think it’s shouting.”

Hillary Clinton consistently manipulates and distorts the truth to her advantage.

I don’t understand why anyone would vote for someone who is so repeatedly dishonest and disingenuous, let alone someone who openly says Americans can’t get, in return for their tax dollars, adequate health care and good schooling and paid family/medical leave, because the political system is just too flawed.

I want the candidate who’s calling on Americans to stand up and fight for their democracy — not the one who’s asking them to be patient while she goes into the corrupt Congress and somehow attempts to barter with the Republicans she calls enemy.

People are suffering, people are oppressed, people are struggling NOW.

We need change.

We need Bernie Sanders — a leader who will fight for us, instead of throwing his hands up and saying, “Well, gee, change is just too hard, but by the way I’m still going to somehow get comprehensive immigration reform and criminal justice reform done all by myself, when Obama couldn’t.”

She’s simultaneously running on a bold platform (increasingly so), while also saying that Sanders’ ideas are TOO bold.

I wish people would question her on HOW she plans to get anything done in this Congress without the political revolution, the standing up of the American people, that Sanders is calling for — and, by the way, the political revolution that Sanders is starting, because, despite what people say, Sanders has broken turnout records in Colorado (made in 2008), Kansas, and Michigan.

And he won the most votes EVER in a New Hampshire presidential primary, Republican or Democrat.

(Let alone the fact that he’s broken donation records and rally records).

Meanwhile, Clinton’s wins have largely relied on dismal voter turnout:

On Super Tuesday,

In all of the states that Clinton won, Democratic turnout was drastically lower this year than in 2008. Aside from Massachusetts, where Clinton won by 1 percent [the closest race of the day] with voter turnout just 4.29 percent lower in 2016 than in 2008, all of Clinton’s wins relied on anywhere between 20 percent and 50 percent fewer Democratic voters going to the polls in those respective states. Democratic turnout as a whole was 32 percent lower on Super Tuesday 2016 when compared to 8 years ago.

She’s not rallying the American people — Bernie Sanders is.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN DEMOCRACY!

RISE UP AND DEMAND CHANGE!

LET US CONTINUE TO MAKE HISTORY!

Let a new age of prosperity and peace FOR ALL commence!

Come on, my people! You DESERVE education and health care and a living wage and paid family/medical leave and A DECENT STANDARD OF LIVING!

For crying out loud, don’t let this chance slip by!

LET’S GO!

And don’t be confused: even if Sanders doesn’t win, the political revolution will NOT end. This isn’t Sanders’ revolution, this is OURS. This is Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Fight For $15, this is US.

But it’d be a helluva lot easier with a champion of the people in the WH!

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!