With all due respect to Hillary Clinton, it is an absurd distorting of reality to claim to be both a progressive AND a centrist. Words have meanings, and actions have consequences. When someone claims to be both, it cuts to the heart of their credibility.
To start with, let me be very clear: Hillary Clinton has a mixed history. She has taken many progressive positions in the past, but also many centrist positions, and a more than a few conservative positions too. While it is obviously a matter of opinion how accurate any label can be when considering the full track record of any politician in any party, there are inherently more accurate generalizations that can be made. For instance, just because most of today’s ultra-conservative Republican candidates for President call President Obama “an ultra-liberal” or “socialist”, that doesn’t make it true.
Let’s begin with the things Hillary Clinton CAN be considered a progressive on. She has done some really great work advocating for women’s rights and children throughout her career (after her time helping Barry Goldwater that is). Clinton helped equate LGBT rights with human rights in her time as Secretary of State in Obama’s administration. Her current Wall Street reform plan is fairly progressive, even if it does leave out some critical components. Clinton advocates for raising the minimum wage to $12 per hour. And there’s a pretty decent list of progressive promises on her website (which I guess only she can magically get through a Republican Congress).
So let’s be intellectually and factually honest here and give credit where credit is due: Hillary Clinton does have a track record of standing up for some solid progressive things in the past and has some decent proposals for the future. But that is only half the story, and only selecting some things while ignoring the rest is incredibly dishonest.
There are a great many things that Hillary Clinton is centrist or conservative on as well. For instance, when she was First Spouse during Bill Clinton’s administration, she fully supported such disastrous things as NAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China, ending Glass Steagall after gutting it, destroying the welfare system, harsh crime legislation that led to mass incarceration of minorities, the discriminatory Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the horrific Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act, etc. Now, it could be argued that those things had nothing to do with First Lady Hillary, but those 8 years are regularly cited by her supporters as part of her experience in the White House, so you can’t have it both ways. Either those 8 years count, or they are irrelevant.
Just to extrapolate here for a minute, there is the instance of the bankruptcy revision proposed by the greedy credit card companies in the 90’s that would make it much harder to get out from under crippling debt, especially single mothers. Bill Clinton was for it, but Elizabeth Warren wrote a scathing condemnation of it. Hillary Clinton saw it, had a meeting with Warren, and convinced Bill to veto this legislation. The only problem is that a couple years later Hillary Clinton was elected US Senator from New York, and one of the first bills that came up was this same vampire bill, and she voted for it.
During Hillary Clinton’s time in the US Senate and since, the pattern was once again mixed, but one cannot ignore all of the non-progressive stances she took over the years. Clinton was against LGBT Marriage Equality until 2013.
Clinton was one of the biggest advocates of the corporate-written Trans-Pacific Partnership for years, and has never actually clarified what parts of it she claims to be against or why (and I think we all know it will get passed with only very minor revisions if she becomes POTUS). She has no details on how to address Climate Change, the preeminent environmental issue of human civilization. Clinton has taken far more hawkish stances on overseas military operations than even Obama. She’s been a HUGE friend to Big Ag instead of anti-GMO groups, and even hired a Monsanto lobbyist as her chief financial staffer.
One of the pivotal issues of our time is how millionaires and big corporations have hijacked our system of government. What kind of a progressive would be guilty of taking tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees from the crooks on Wall Street? What progressive would be raking in this many campaign contributions from these crooks (and we all know there are strings attached):
Clinton's top 5 lifetime contributors are Wall Street: www.opensecrets.org/...
Clinton 7th highest recipient of campaign donations from Big Oil (was 5th until this election cycle) www.opensecrets.org/...
Clinton top donor of cash from big Pharmaceutical Corporations www.opensecrets.org/...
How can we honestly expect any type of actual progressive reform from someone with such a history of being funded by the very entities that are at the root of the problem? Bernie Sanders on the other hand gets has 3.5 million individual contributions averaging $27, and this money makes up the majority of his donations.
Wall Street has made Hillary Clinton a millionaire money.cnn.com/...
Since ’01, Clintons collected $35M from financial businesses
www.pbs.org/...
Hillary is in too deep: Why she’ll never be able to extricate herself from Wall Street
www.salon.com/...
Hillary Clinton's Goldman Sachs Problem. She talks populism, but hobnobs with Wall Street. www.motherjones.com/...
Wall Street isn't worried about Hillary Clinton's plan money.cnn.com/...
Clinton's Wall St "Reform" leaves out asset management firms, like BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, which control a staggering $30 trillion in global wealth theintercept.com/...
Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush Still Favorites of Wall Street Banks
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Hillary Says It’s OK That She Takes Wall Street Money Because of Women and 9/11 www.slate.com/...
Hillary was raking in Wall St. cash long before 9/11 -- Citigroup was her top source of money in 2000 www.washingtonexaminer.com/...
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi points out Hillary gets it wrong on Wall Street www.rollingstone.com/...
Clinton represented Wall Street, thinks she can just tell them to “cut it out” during foreclosure crisis www.youtube.com/...
Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe. She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street—but she’s deflecting responsibility from old friends and donors in the industry www.thenation.com/...
Hillary Clinton has not ruled out cuts from Social Security, while Bernie Sanders knows we need to expand it. Clinton calls ending the cap on payroll taxes after $118,000 for Social Security a “middle class tax hike”, but what progressive calls someone in the richest 7% “Middle Class”? Middle Class means middle, not in the top 7% or higher.
Clinton is opposed to a universal Single Payer system that would guarantee every family has access to a doctor. Right now big health insurance giants and pharmaceutical corporations are raking in tremendous profits by profiteering off our health care. That system requires a revolution to end, as health care is a human right.
Clinton wants to settle for a $12 minimum wage, which is far below a living wage. Bernie Sanders wants to fight for $15.
Clinton opposes free tuition for public colleges and technical universities because a fraction of a percentage of rich kids could get it too. Instead, Clinton proposes a complicated system prone to rigging and cutting, the way Pell Grants have been slashed over the years until student debt became the leading personal debt in America.
Clinton does not oppose fracking, more drilling, or a carbon tax. Hillary Clinton's Biggest Campaign Bundlers Are Fossil Fuel Lobbyists www.huffingtonpost.com/… and Pro KXL banks in Canada paid Clinton $1.6 million for speeches just before she launched campaign www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Clinton does not support industrial, medical, or recreational marijuana, because you know, the prohibition is working so well, especially for minorities who have incarceration rates far higher for small cannabis violations. Of course, until recently the incarceration complex was a very big donor to Clinton’s campaigns too.
Clinton supports Net Neutrality, but also supports invasions of our digital privacy from things like the “Patriot” Act.
Clinton supported a border fence and harsh border zone policies that dehumanize undocumented migrants and tread on our civil liberties.
Clinton’s criminal justice reforms are by far the weakest of any of the Demcoratic candidates.
Clinton claims to support the separation of church and state, but religion is a far too regular part of her speeches.
This list could go on and on, but the point is that Hillary Clinton has taken more centrist positions than progressive ones over the course of her career in politics. She has also taken outright right wing positions an alarming number of times. Don’t get me wrong, Bernie doesn’t have a perfect track record on progressivism either, but I’ll take 97% over 35% any day of the week.
When it comes to how one is defined, Clinton can’t have it both ways. She is either a progressive or a centrist (or center-right). The last 30 years have demonstrated a pattern of clear centrism, and to suggest otherwise is just being deceitful.
