Clinton goes to war to capture Sanders voters
Hillary Clinton had a message yesterday for recalcitrant supporters of Bernie Sanders who are threatening to abandon the all-but-certain Democratic nominee in November: A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for war.
In a powerhouse speech that showcased Clinton’s unquestionable grasp on the intricacies of our foreign entanglements, Trump was the target, but wayward Democrats were the audience.
Clinton did not deign to mention the sinking Sanders, but his supporters’ concerns about her could not have been far from her mind. There is no higher priority for Democrats now than to unify the party by bringing Sanders supporters into the fold.
With reliable GOP voters starting to fall in line behind Trump, Clinton can’t afford to go into the general election without cobbling the Obama coalition back together.
The starkest distinctions between Clinton and Sanders are on income inequality and Wall Street largesse. But on those key domestic issues, there is nothing that Clinton herself could say to ease the apprehension of Bernie’s backers. They just won’t listen to her.
She seems to be betting she will have a better chance of breaking through on foreign policy. For good reason, Sanders has largely avoided a foreign policy debate during his prolonged tangle with the former secretary of state.
Like then-U.S. Sen. Obama before him, Sanders has hammered Clinton on her vote for the war in Iraq. To the peaceniks on Team Bernie, Hillary’s bad judgment helped get us into an intractable war.
But Clinton may finally shake off the bad vote that has haunted her during both of her presidential campaigns by making the race between her and Trump a choice between war and peace.
She mentioned war 13 times in yesterday’s speech. She mentioned ground war, trade war, nuclear war, civil war, war crimes and theaters of war. She had all of the wars covered.
She speculated that Trump’s allergy to complexity and paucity of global understanding could lead to war. Or, maybe Trump might launch an attack “just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”
More than just by inference, Clinton flat-out declared that nuclear war is among several “distinct possibilities with Donald Trump in charge.”
For the Bernie or Bust crowd, yesterday’s speech offered a cold November ultimatum: Vote against Clinton for supporting a past war, or vote against someone whose ignorance and temper will surely start another one.