One Big Way Bernie Sanders Has Already Won
Bernie Sanders earned his first bonafide 2016 victory in New Hampshire Tuesday night. It was a decisive win, too: He beat Hillary Clinton by more than 20 points.
But Sanders’ real triumph Tuesday wasn’t just in the popular vote or the delegate count (13 for Sanders, nine for Clinton, if you’re keeping score) — it was in the speeches he and Clinton gave.
In some ways, Hillary sounded even more like Bernie than Bernie did. She highlighted three of his most recognizable issues — campaign finance reform, breaking up big banks and the high cost of prescription drugs — in her concession speech, claiming them as her own. It was almost as if she was saying to voters: You can have all this, and more, if you elect me. (“More” being either baggage or experience, depending on your viewpoint.)
Bernie hasn’t forced Hillary to the left so much as he’s forced her to address, and embrace, specific issues that are deeply important to him — and clearly to many voters — like lowering the cost of prescription drugs, overturning Citizens United and rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So while he still has a long road ahead of him to win the presidency, in this way, at least, he’s already won.
Prescription Drugs Prices
Here’s Clinton, in her concession speech Tuesday:
“It isn’t right for a grandmother here in New Hampshire or anywhere else to have to choose between paying rent and buying medicine because a prescription drug company increased the price 4,000 percent overnight.”
The high price of prescription drugs is an issue Sanders has championed for years. He’s spoken on the campaign trail and on the Senate floor about driving elderly breast cancer patients across the Canadian border in the Nineties so they could purchase prescription drugs at a fraction of the price. Here’s Sanders after his big win in New Hampshire:
“We should not be paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs at a time — listen to this — when the top three drug companies in this country made $45 billion in profit last year.”
Campaign Finance Reform
Bernie on Tuesday night:
“We can no longer continue to have a campaign finance system in which Wall Street and the billionaire class are able to buy elections.”
Hillary, a few minutes earlier:
“Sen. Sanders and I both want to get secret, unaccountable money out of politics, and let’s remember: Citizens United — one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our country’s history — was actually a case about a right-wing attack on me and my campaign…. You’re not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me.”
Breaking Up the Big Banks
Hillary on Tuesday:
“When I tell you no bank could be too big to fail and no executive too powerful to jail, you can count on it.”
Sanders didn’t break out his familiar line, “If a bank is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist” in his victory speech. But he didn’t have to — anyone who’s watched a Democratic debate or listened to one of his speeches already knows it. Breaking up the big banks, campaign finance reform, the high cost of prescription drugs: these are Bernie’s issues, and he’s forcing Hillary to make them her issues too.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership
Sanders has long been against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In April, before its details had even been revealed, he was railing against the “job-killing trade deal” that was “negotiated in secret,” and using tactical maneuvers to delay it from being heard in the Senate.