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Vermont's Times Argus newspaper endorses Clinton.
Yesterday. Excerpts:
Bernie Sanders appears poised for a runaway victory in the Vermont presidential primary on Tuesday, an extraordinary outcome in an extraordinary year during which he has mounted a serious and substantive challenge to the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. This paper, nevertheless, endorses Clinton for president.
This endorsement rests on Clinton’s breadth of experience and her proven commitment to those many issues where she shares a progressive outlook with Sanders. The very notion of political experience has taken on a negative connotation in this surprising year because voters associate it with compromise and corruption. But outsider status, which Sanders has always enjoyed, does not automatically confer wisdom or ability. Clinton’s experience as a hard-working, policy-oriented senator and a secretary of state who restored the good name of the United States weighs heavily in her favor.
...The contest between Clinton and Sanders has been framed as a choice between pragmatism and idealism, between incrementalism and boldness. Framing it that way oversells what Sanders offers. Fighting for health care reform, as Clinton has done for a quarter century, has been an exercise in idealism. It has been a long, difficult fight against powerful entrenched interests. The Clinton administration didn’t succeed in the 1990s. The Obama administration has made significant progress, and Clinton is right to underscore the importance of that victory.
It’s easy to hold out the promise of grand solutions. On Sanders’ part these would include a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system and free college for everybody. These are lofty and worthy goals; Medicare-for-all was Ted Kennedy’s idea. But Clinton is willing to be square with the American people in acknowledging that getting to those goals would be a step-by-step process, requiring the kind of painstaking work she did as a senator.
....As the leader of a movement he has been a great success. As president of all the people, he is not the best choice. It is argued by frustrated progressives that President Barack Obama was too willing to compromise and so he didn’t achieve all he could have done. But Obama has been president not just of Vermont and Cambridge and Berkeley. He has been president of South Carolina and Kentucky and Alabama. It was never going to be easy, and it is unclear whether a more ideologically extreme approach on his part would have achieved more. As it is, his methods have made him, perhaps, the most effective president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s foreign policy experience is a plus, though not without failures of judgment. We do not need a foreign policy neophyte in office in this dangerous time.
This endorsement rests on Clinton’s breadth of experience and her proven commitment to those many issues where she shares a progressive outlook with Sanders. The very notion of political experience has taken on a negative connotation in this surprising year because voters associate it with compromise and corruption. But outsider status, which Sanders has always enjoyed, does not automatically confer wisdom or ability. Clinton’s experience as a hard-working, policy-oriented senator and a secretary of state who restored the good name of the United States weighs heavily in her favor.
...The contest between Clinton and Sanders has been framed as a choice between pragmatism and idealism, between incrementalism and boldness. Framing it that way oversells what Sanders offers. Fighting for health care reform, as Clinton has done for a quarter century, has been an exercise in idealism. It has been a long, difficult fight against powerful entrenched interests. The Clinton administration didn’t succeed in the 1990s. The Obama administration has made significant progress, and Clinton is right to underscore the importance of that victory.
It’s easy to hold out the promise of grand solutions. On Sanders’ part these would include a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system and free college for everybody. These are lofty and worthy goals; Medicare-for-all was Ted Kennedy’s idea. But Clinton is willing to be square with the American people in acknowledging that getting to those goals would be a step-by-step process, requiring the kind of painstaking work she did as a senator.
....As the leader of a movement he has been a great success. As president of all the people, he is not the best choice. It is argued by frustrated progressives that President Barack Obama was too willing to compromise and so he didn’t achieve all he could have done. But Obama has been president not just of Vermont and Cambridge and Berkeley. He has been president of South Carolina and Kentucky and Alabama. It was never going to be easy, and it is unclear whether a more ideologically extreme approach on his part would have achieved more. As it is, his methods have made him, perhaps, the most effective president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s foreign policy experience is a plus, though not without failures of judgment. We do not need a foreign policy neophyte in office in this dangerous time.
21 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Beautiful endorsement for Hillary! 
