John Podesta. (Photo: Center for American Progress)
Wednesday’s debate was the first debate after a surprising loss for Hillary Clinton in Michigan, and the former secretary of state was particularly critical of Bernie Sanders on the debate stage in Miami.
But many of the attacks she launched are either only partially true, or outright lies.
And if she keeps up this tactic of trying to smear Sanders’ voting record to portray him as a friend of conservative causes, it may have serious consequences for the general election.
See more news and opinion from Thom Hartmann at Truthout here.
Back in January, Clinton claimed that Sanders voted for the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, or CFMA, and I wrote that it was the most disingenuous attack from Clinton yet.
That’s because Sanders had voted against the CFMA originally, but bit the bullet and voted for the CFMA when it was shoved into an omnibus spending bill at the last minute and everybody in Congress except Ron Paul and three others voted for it.
She made that attack back before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and the claim that Sanders voted for the CFMA and contributed to the financial crisis seemed to simply fade away.
Then, during the March 6 democratic debate in Flint Michigan, Clinton tried to cast Sanders as an enemy of the US auto-industry.
Except that Sanders strongly supported the auto bailout, what he opposed was the larger $700 billion bailout to prop up Wall Street and the Big Banks.
Politifact rated her claim as only “Half-True,” and The Washington Post and The New York Times both published articles describing how Clinton is intentionally deceiving voters with this claim.
As Amber Phillips over at The Washington Post wrote after the debate in Flint, “It seems like she’s willing to take the gamble that fact-checkers may call her out for her tactic Sunday, but that voters won’t.”
The Washington Post published that before Tuesday’s Michigan primary, when Sanders won an historic upset over…