By GLENN THRUSH
The Democratic race is a tangle of contradiction, paradox and pungent little ironies.
Take Hillary Clinton. Here’s a prohibitive frontrunner with an allegedly bottomless reservoir of Wall Street cash who is being outspent by a guy who once professed his admiration for Fidel Castro.
Bernie Sanders, he of the orgiastic 10,000 college-kid rally, has collected a million-plus votes less than the ostensibly yawn-inducing Clinton. Sanders is a creature of momentum and hope whose path is getting narrower all the time, and at Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Anti-Establishment more or less conceded he can’t win without wooing establishmentarian superdelegates.
Their latest collision – at the Univision/CNN debate in Miami on Wednesday – was fittingly feisty and characteristically inconclusive. Clinton – disciplined, in denial, or a little bit of both – pretended that her back-breaking Michigan loss never happened – and Sanders made it out to be the most resounding upset since Truman beat Dewey.
“I won one of the contests and lost another close one,” said Clinton, speaking of her big win in Mississippi. “I was pleased I got 100,000 more votes last night than my opponent and more delegates.”
Sanders said Michigan was momentous, as “one of the greatest political upsets in history.”
Nobody won, nobody lost, and everybody’s hunkering down for a marathon that will last at least until April.
Here are five takeaways.
1. Slick Bernie. It’s time to look past the sartorial sloth to see the political steel in Bernard (no middle name) Sanders. There is no more disciplined candidate in the 2016 field than the 74-year-old Vermont senator – none — and a quick scan of the transcripts of recent debates reveals his metronomic recitation of succinct anti-Clinton attack phrases repeated over and over and over with deadly, aw-shucks efficiency.
Number one on the list – his call for her to release transcripts of her paid Wall Street speeches. This is his March 6th version, which was virtually identical to his Wednesday night spiel. “Secretary Clinton wanted everyone else to release it. Well, I’m your Democratic opponent, I release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You got it.”
Sanders’ message discipline allows him to engage in politically expedient character attacks that are the staple of standard-issue negative campaigning – while portraying himself as a class warrior impelled only by principle. Paradoxically, Sanders’ biggest “mistake” of the campaign – saying the American people don’t “give a damn” about Clinton’s email server – has turned out to be one of his canniest moves: The fact that he turned down a free shot at the first debate has given him a permission structure to hammer her relentlessly subsequently. Oh, and the server issue gets mentioned plenty without his help – on Wednesday night moderator Jorge Ramos asked Clinton if she’d drop out if she gets indicted.
2. Scattershot Hillary. The New York Times editorial board thinks that Hillary Clinton is being a big meanie to Bernie Sanders, and that’s why she lost Michigan. “Even with a double-digit lead before the primary, she failed to avoid the type of negative tactics that could damage her in the long haul,” the board wrote. “If she hopes to unify Democrats as the nominee, trying to tarnish Mr. Sanders as she did in Michigan this week is not the way to go. Mrs. Clinton’s falsely parsing Mr. Sanders’s Senate vote on a 2008 recession-related bailout bill as abandoning the auto industry rescue hurt her credibility.”
Her camp says the charge is perfectly fair because Sanders voted against the only bailout bill that had a chance. Whatever. Every political professional knows that Clinton must attack Sanders to win – to defend herself against his (indirect) characterization of her as a bought-and-sold establishment hack. And no editorial board has asked him to cease his attacks on her for the sake of greater party comity and human dignity.
That said, Clinton’s recent onslaught against Sanders has an unfocused, over-the-top quality that doesn’t paint a coherent negative portrait of the man standing across the stage. It’s not a problem of excessive nastiness – it’s a question of passing the oppo-dump sniff test. The Bernie Sanders Clinton described on Wednesday night is a guy who once supported the Minuteman anti-immigrant movement, is a tool of the Koch Brothers, a reactionary in Fidel-Castro khakis who is happily helping Republicans dismantle Obamacare. He’s none of those things, actually.
There is a potentially effective and focused attack on Sanders obscured in the thicket of Clinton exaggeration: Sanders, the argument goes, is just too pure to actually govern, and he prefers casting a perfect no to crafting an imperfect-but-valuable compromise. As one Clinton adviser recently put it to me: “She’s easy to attack because she’s done so much… You can’t attack Bernie ‘cause he hasn’t done a goddamned thing.”
It’s not the sexiest message – the “progressive who can get things done” argument she makes at the start of every debate – but it’s the one that most fits her candidacy and most authentically exposes Sanders’ weaknesses.
3. Clinton’s best line of the campaign. Self-deprecation is not Clinton’s default – she’s simply too proud a person – but she’s recently been adding a powerful (if painfully obvious) admission to her speeches and interviews. “I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed, like my husband or President Obama.”
Or Bernie Sanders.
4. Sanders fought Clinton to a draw on immigration. So far, Clinton has enjoyed a small but significant advantage among Hispanic voters (despite a disputed entrance poll that showed him winning Latinos in Nevada), echoing her strong showing with Latinos in 2008.
But Sanders isn’t conceding anything this time, despite polls showing him trailing badly in Florida. He challenged her record on immigration Wednesday, mocking her slow disavowal of an Obama administration policy that has resulted in the deportation of hundreds of Central American children. And she returned fire, accusing him of supporting legislation as a House member a decade ago that led to mass deportations, a bill she claimed was backed by Minutemen vigilante groups in Arizona.
It got under Sanders’ skin: “No, I do not support vigilantes, and that is a horrific statement and an unfair statement to make,” he said, adding: “I will match my record against yours any day of the week.”
5. Jorge Ramos cares very much about Clinton’s damn emails. Say what you want about Univision’s most famous newsman – who was infamously carried bodily from a Trump press conference for speaking out of turn — he’s an equal opportunity pest. To the dismay of the groaning, booing audience in Miami, Ramos twice pressed Clinton on the fallout from her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
The first time, he asked Clinton if she had imposed a double-standard on her Foggy Bottom employees, demanding they use government servers while she switched over to a “homebrew” set-up. She parried that one easily, rolling out her usual retort that her actions were identical to those of her predecessors, including Colin Powell.
A few minutes later, Ramos returned to the subject with a vengeance.
“If you get indicted, will you drop out?” he asked her, craning forward – as if to dodge the cascade of disapproval welling up behind him in the crowd.
Clinton guffawed, then smiled. “Oh, for goodness—that is not going to happen. I’m not even answering that question.”
