On Sunday’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper was talking to his panel about the enthusiasm gap between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton among liberals. Tapper asked Van Jones: “ Van, when she was a senator, correct me if I'm wrong, she was a fairly moderate Democrat. I mean she wasn't this progressive firebrand?” Jones agreed: “And neither was the Democratic Party, a party of firebrands.”
Correct me if I’m wrong? When confronted on Sunday afternoon by a friend on Twitter about Hillary’s actual liberal voting record in the Senate, Tapper retracted the remark on Twitter:
A friend challenges my assertion during @CNNSotu that @HillaryClinton as a senator was a moderate. He has a point: http://t.co/Mjgq5dbgyQ
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 5, 2015
And here's a similar take from @dailykos -- http://t.co/kDecVQuBkN -- good food for thought, thanks folks
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 5, 2015
The Five Thirty Eight blog brought the reality of Hillary's voting record and public statements:
Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate. According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton.
Clinton also has a history of very liberal public statements. Clinton rates as a “hard core liberal” per the OnTheIssues.org scale. She is as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than Bernie Sanders. And while Obama is also a “hard core liberal,” Clinton again was rated as more liberal than Obama.
So much for CNN's screen graphic putting "progressive" in quotation marks. The American Conservative Union tallied Hillary’s lifetime rating as 8.13 percent conservative, just two points higher than socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and two points lower than Senator Obama.
Political analysts like to imagine there are bases in each party that have to capture, as if liberals and conservatives don’t blur into several camps. Among liberals, couldn’t you be an economic “populist” and a pro-amnesty “racial justice” advocate? See how Jones answered Tapper:
JONES: What's happened is the party has changed. You now have three legs of the party. She represents more of the mainstream, more of the moderate, more of the pro-business. She's trying to get away from that a little bit because that part of our party is not very strong.
The two other wings, the economic populist wing represented by Bernie Sanders, represented by Elizabeth Warren. But nobody right now has gotten this third which is this racial justice wing that the black lives matter, the young dreamers talking about immigration.
PS: Tapper also brought up New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as a potential member of the Cabinet under President Bernie Sanders:
TAPPER: Would it be impertinent if I pressed you just to give me a name or two, Krugman, Stiglitz? is there anybody that comes to mind?
SANDERS: Well, both -- Krugman does a great job. Stiglitz does a great job. Robert Reich, used to be secretary of labor under the Clinton administration, I think is doing a fantastic job. But it's a little bit too early, I must say, to be appointing a Cabinet. Let me get elected first.
