Hillary Clinton Is Using GOP Fear Tactics Against Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Plan
The Vermont senator should welcome these attacks.
By Jim Newell
Welcome to the campaign trail, Chelsea Clinton. Got anything on your mind? “Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” she said in New Hampshire on Tuesday. “I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era—before we had the Affordable Care Act—that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”
The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign is in serious danger of losing both Iowa and New Hampshire, and this dire—though by no means fatal—situation is reflected in its new, aggressive posture toward her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Her attacks are largely coming on two fronts: Sanders’ dicey history on certain gun control votes and his support for single-payer health care. While her criticisms of the former come from the left, her assault on the latter comes from the right, and it hones directly on a long-sought policy idea treasured by Democratic voters. The arguments her campaign is using against single-payer health care are earning plenty of griping from progressives, who see this as proof that Clinton will only play nice with them until the precise second that turning on them becomes politically advantageous.
So why does the Clinton campaign now consider attacking single payer so politically advantageous? In short, it’s the not-unfounded belief that once voters—even Democrats—hear more about what the implementation of single payer would entail, they’ll get cold feet. Though the Sanders campaign might roll its eyes at the misleading nature of Clinton’s attacks, it should treat this as an opportunity to have that debate, since it needs to be had, and won, when it eventually is brought up against the Republicans who will make the exact scare arguments that Clinton is making now.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/hillary_clinton_is_using_gop_fear_tactics_against_bernie_sanders_health.html
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