Democrats in brawl? Not.
The pundit rumors of Democratic candidate brawls and meltdowns last week were wildly exaggerated.
Yes, Hillary Clinton said Bernie Sanders “didn’t do his homework” on breaking up big banks, and yes, a piqued Sanders said Clinton is “not qualified” to sit in the Oval Office because of her initial support of the Iraq War. (He later walked that back.)
But if this was a brawl, what on earth have the Republicans been having? Virtually everyone on the GOP ballot has called the others liars and worse for months. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz went after each others’ wives in a twitter smackdown. And to hear them tell it, the only folks more satanic than their opponents might be the media. Shame on us for reporting what they say and do, after all.
But winks aside, it was a bit disheartening Thursday and Friday to see and hear Clinton and Sanders take a few steps down the spiraling stairs to the nasty GOP mud pit.
Until then, Democrats hadn’t had to see that kind of foolishness within our ranks.
Hopefully, we won’t have to again.
Sanders himself on Friday acknowledged as much when asked by Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” if he had overreacted to Clinton’s “homework” comment.
“Here’s the truth: I’ve known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I respect Hillary Clinton. We were colleagues in the Senate,” he answered. “And on her worst day, she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates.”
“She’s qualified?” Guthrie pressed.
“Of course,” Sanders said.
Now, that was some critical-thinking homework.
Democrats talk, not punch
Another wonderful political party and candidate contrast came Thursday when Bill Clinton, campaigning for Hillary in Philadelphia, was interrupted by Black Lives Matter activists.
Had it been a Trump rally, of course, The Donald would have been bellowing into the mic, “Throw him out.” Or, “Go ahead and punch him. I’d like to myself.” Or any one of the many bullying remarks Trump is now famous for.
Clinton, instead, detoured from his prepared talk and engaged them. He went back and forth with the protesters for nearly 10 minutes and never called for their removal.
“I like protesters, but the ones that won’t let you answer are afraid of the truth,” he said to cheers.
Clinton noted his wife’s huge vote margins with African-Americans in Democratic primaries earlier this year.
Faced with a protester holding a sign condemning her use of the term “super predators” in 1996, he said, “I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African-American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn’t. You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.”
It was tricky. Both Clintons have said several times in the past year that hindsight has shown them their support for the 1994 crime bill the former president signed into law led to some people – especially blacks – going to jail for too long in ways that cannot now be justified. But their support now for reversing that policy and others like it has not been enough to quell the anger of some in the Black Lives Matter movement.
The next day in Erie, Pa., Bill Clinton issued an almost-apology for verbally pushing back at the protesters.
“Now I like and believe in protests. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t ’cause I engaged in some when I was a kid,” he told a crowd on the campus of Penn State Behrend. “But I never thought I should drown anybody else out. And I confess, maybe it’s just a sign of old age but it bothers me now when that happens.”
“So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost want to apologize for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country,” the former president continued.
Americans need to be able to have conversations with people they disagree with and keep an open mind, he said, adding he believed the two protesters who interrupted him failed to do that. But he also realized he did, too.
“I rather vigorously defended my wife, as I am wont to do, and I realized, finally, I was talking past [the protester] the way she was talking past me. We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other again,” he said.
Yes, we do.