Sanders Responds to Bill Clinton TEA Party comment
Bernie Sanders responded to the slight Bill Clinton took against his very enthusiastic supporters, when he equated them to the TEA Party. He was dignified in his response.
Recently Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been accusing Bernie Sanders and his campaign of going negative. The accusation is but a smoke screen to give their campaign carte blanche to throw the kitchen sink at Bernie Sanders in order to appear justified in doing so.
A few days ago Bill Clinton said the following.
“It is not altogether mysterious that there are a lot of people who say, ‘Well the Republican Party rewarded the TEA Party. Just tell people what they want to hear. Move them to the right and we will be rewarded’,” said Bill Clinton. “Except they did not get anything done. That is going on now in our party. If you don’t deal with the fact that we are politically polarized and we keep rewarding people who tell us things that they know they can’t do because it pushes our hot buttons ,we can’t go forward together.”
There is so much wrong with those statements. Bill Clinton is channeling his DLC days. One must remember that, that was the genesis of the left giving away the gains of the New Deal and the Great Society. The statement that the TEA Party accomplished nothing is patently false. The TEA Party was used by the plutocracy to vote against their own interests to scuttle policies and to maintain policies that continued the pilfering of the middle-class. Absent the TEA Party actions, President Obama would have passed many more of middle-class centric policies anathema to the Right. So it is fool hearted to state that the TEA Party was unsuccessful. They accomplished much.
Bernie Sanders was magnanimous.
“I think it is unfortunate and I think that some of the things that president Clinton has been saying are unfortunate,” said Bernie Sanders. “He is trying to do his best to get his wife to win the nomination and become president. I understand that. My wife is doing her best to get me to become president. But we should not be making silly remarks.”
I wish Bernie Sanders had added that while the TEA Party disruption worked against the middle-class, his perceived disruption of the establishment is in fact a must to ensure middle-class gains.