With Bernie Sanders’ overwhelming victory on Western Tuesday and likely victory in the Wisconsin Primary, Hillary Clinton is doing what she can to stop his momentum and prevent more crushing defeats in the future. One way that her campaign is trying to do this is by not agreeing to debate in New York, Hillary Clinton’s adopted home state and Bernie Sanders’ actual home state. In an interview on CNN, Joel Benenson, a pollster for the Clinton campaign, asserted, “Sen. Sanders doesn’t get to decide when we debate, particularly when he’s running a negative campaign against us. Let’s see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we’ll talk about debates.”
To think that Bernie Sanders is running a negative campaign against Hillary Clinton is completely absurd. The chief strategist for the Sanders campaign, Tad Devine, has indicated, “We aren't anywhere near what a personal, nasty campaign looks like," and clarified, "we've never mentioned [Clinton] in an ad." I completely agree with Devine’s statement. In two ads, Sanders merely attacks the corruption of the government through campaign contributions, speaking fees, etc., and identifies that there are two visions for fixing economic inequality, both of which state factual information and indirectly address Hillary Clinton in the process. Is it Bernie Sanders’ fault that Hillary Clinton has been tied to a corrupt campaign finance system, has collected thousands of dollars in speaking fees, and has a much different plan for dealing with economic inequality in America? I do not think so. These things are a result of Clinton’s decisions, yet her campaign has the audacity to make a claim that Sanders is running a “negative campaign” for telling the truth.
Bernie Sanders isn’t even revealing the whole truth. He has not once called Clinton out for the e-mail scandal and FBI investigation that she is involved with; Sanders has only emphasized that he will not speak about them and that people are “tired of hearing about your damn e-mails”. The truth is that many people in both parties are concerned about the investigation and a possible indictment, but Sanders has refrained from attacking Clinton on this issue. If the Clinton campaign thinks that Bernie Sanders’ tone is negative, then she must now know what the GOP has to say about her. If she, by any chance, wins the nomination (and I sure hope that she doesn’t) then she must be prepared to tackle the GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, whose tone is exponentially more negative, sexist, racist, etc.
The people of New York, and frankly all American citizens, deserve the opportunity to watch the two Democratic candidates talk about the issues and decide for themselves the candidate for whom they are going to vote. To deny these people this opportunity, seemingly on the grounds of cowardice, is shameful, especially when the denier has previously stated, “You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere.” Furthermore, to say that more debates will be negotiated only when Sanders returns to the tone “he was going to set early on,” (aka when Clinton was winning most of the primaries) is both condescending and patronizing. Bernie Sanders would most likely be called a sexist if he criticized Clinton on her tone. Nevertheless, social media has called out Clinton with hashtags like #tonedownforwhat or #tonedeaf. It seems like another one of Clinton’s dirty tactics has failed.
