Sanders and Clinton Fight Over Who’s More Liberal

In a display that really says everything about how thoroughly the left is destroying the country, Hillary Clinton fought viciously Thursday night to rebuff the notion that she’s not as liberal as her socialist rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sure, they are using the word “progressive” instead of liberal, but that’s just what liberals do with the English language. In a few years, when Americans learn to see “progressive” with the same negative connotations, they’ll start using some other term. “Crazy,” perhaps.

This, Clinton should well understand, is not a battle she can win. In fact, it’s hard to see why she’s even trying. If there’s one thing that Sanders is going to win on every time, it’s which one of them is further to the left. Clinton is in more or less typical Democrat territory while Sanders is barely even bothering to hide his copy of the Communist Manifesto. Our best hope is that Clinton, in a desperate attempt to win over the socialists, winds up saying something that will make her unelectable in the general.

“Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment,” Sanders said at the MSNBC debate. “I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans.”

Clinton pulled out her unofficial motto, calling herself a “progressive who gets things done.” It’s worth asking why no reporters ever challenge her to name some of those things. Are voters supposed to make the assumption that she was responsible for her husband’s achievements? Or is she favorably comparing her brief tenure in the Senate to Sanders’s long record of service?

In any event, Clinton’s “hey, I’m pretty liberal, too, you guys” protests are not only ineffective, they make her come off as weak and whiny. Certainly, no one should be taking political lessons from Jeb Bush, but he at least had the dignity not to ask voters to believe he was just as conservative as Ted Cruz. When the biggest thing going against Clinton is the question of her honesty, why would she want to play this game?

More than anything, this primary fight between Clinton and Sanders demonstrates very clearly that Hillary is vulnerable. She may be all-but-elected in the mainstream press, but it’s getting easier to imagine a Republican win in November with every passing day. And if she gets crushed in New Hampshire and decides she needs to pivot to the left, she may find that even getting the nomination is harder than anyone would have thought six months ago.