Pragmatic Hillary Tops Thundering Bernie
by MICHAEL TOMASKY
Bernie Sanders’s moral thunder sounds impressive on the stump or in a debate, but while Hillary may be outmatched oratorically, her solutions do look more like, well, solutions.
It was never clearer than at Sunday night’s debate, especially during the opening discussion about the Flint water crisis, what the real difference is between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
There are two kinds of political people in this world. First, there are those who see injustice and who hunger chiefly to see the malefactors punished. And second, there are those who hunger mainly to see the injustice corrected. Now obviously, those in the former group want to see the wrongs righted, and those in the latter group wish to see the perpetrators brought to heel. But when you strip away all the layers of the onion and get to the core emotional motivation, most people are first concerned with one or the other.
Sanders is a punish the malefactors type, and Clinton is a fix the problem type. This smacked me in the forehead when they were discussing the fate of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Sanders thundered, as he always does, that Snyder should leave office: “One of the points that I have made is that I believe the governor of this state should understand that his dereliction of duty was irresponsible. He should resign.” Huge applause. Then in his next breath, he expanded the argument out to income inequality, the “proliferation of millionaires and billionaires,” and so on.
Then came Clinton’s turn. She had not joined in the call for Snyder’s scalp, but now she did. But look how quickly she pivoted away: “I agree, the governor should resign, or be recalled … [And I] support the efforts of citizens attempting to achieve that. But that is not enough. We have to focus on what must be done to help the people of Flint.”
So there you have it. The difference was so stark. And it explains a lot.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/07/pragmatic-hillary-tops-thundering-bernie.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon
| 
