The Big Money Question at the Sanders-Clinton Debate

he threw in a line that is the nub of her defense and, in many ways, of her entire campaign: “I know this game. I’m going to stop this game.”

.. One difficulty for Clinton is that many of the voters who are drawn to Sanders—and to Donald Trump—do not believe that you can simply look at voting records and public pronouncements and understand what is going on in Washington, or in America generally. They have questions about what donors want, and may not see such inquiries as outrageous, like Clinton does. She is walking a fine line by arguing that money has a baleful influence in politics generally but has left her, personally, unaffected—Clintonian exceptionalism.

Hillary asked to release transcripts of Wall Street paid speeches

But Thursday night also opened up a new, unexpected front for Clinton on the paid speeches she gave to Wall Street after she left office. After struggling on Wednesday to answer why she took $675,000 for three speeches to Goldman Sachs, she was asked on Thursday to release transcripts of all her paid speeches to large corporations. It’s a question that clearly caught her off guard, and one her campaign will now be forced to address.

.. Sanders didn’t say it directly – but he didn’t back down, either, even as Clinton shouted over him. “Let’s talk about why, in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated,” he said. “Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions? Well, some people might think, yeah, that had some influence.” “There is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system,” Sanders continued. “And in my view, it is undermining American democracy, and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors, and not the working families of this country!”

Hillary’s Sincerity Problem

For instance, whenever she’s asked an awkward question she laughs so artificially it makes my dogs bark at the TV screen. When asked if she “wiped” her server, she responded, “Like with a cloth or something?” No doubt she thought this was a clever retort, but the retort landed squarely in the land between sincerity and humor known as failed sarcasm. Almost all of her “jokes” and a lot of her “sincerity” land there because the only feeling she’s really in touch with is resentment at having to answer to all the little people. Bill Clinton could have sold the line about being “broke” coming out of the White House because Bill can fake sincerity the way a prostitute can fake enjoyment; he knows exactly what it’s supposed to sound like.

.. Anyway, back to Bernie and Brecht. My problem with Sanders is that he’s ultimately a coward. He talks a great game about being dedicated to a “political revolution,” but he is utterly unwilling to employ the means required to achieve the ends desired. For instance, Sanders is happy to denounce the political system as corrupt, but refuses — save by innuendo — to connect the corruption of the political system to the corruption of House Clinton.

.. It’s not artful and not a smear. At least by the standard of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton is incredibly corrupt. The Clinton Foundation alone is a violation of everything Sanders stands for. It’s one giant access-selling enterprise masquerading as a charity.

.. The Clintons rented out the Lincoln bedroom, sold pardons — including to a shadowy fugitive billionaire! Talk about catering to the “billionaire class” — and drained so much money from foreign donors (some of it laundered through a Buddhist temple) that 94 people either fled the country, refused to testify, or pled the Fifth.

.. Bernie Sanders has to believe Hillary Clinton is part of the problem. But he won’t say so, save to prattle on about Clinton’s super PACs and speaking fees. That’s amateur-hour stuff. It’s academic-seminar-level griping, not revolution-fomenting. He wants to talk about the system, but he won’t do what is minimally required to change it. And right now, the first step on that long road is steamrolling Hillary Clinton. It’s like saying you want to do whatever it takes to fight malaria, but refusing to say much about the huge, sprawling, and fetid marshlands in the middle of downtown. The Clintons are swamp creatures, taking what they need and leaving in their retromingent wake the stench of corruption.

.. If he honestly believes the stakes are what he says they are, then surely it’s worth getting a little dirty. It’s not like the Clintons aren’t willing to get dirty.

.. Gaslighting is when you violate all sorts of norms of decent behavior and pretend that the people who notice or care are the weird ones. Hillary Clinton’s crimes are a thousand times worse than the accidental outing of Valerie Plame.