The debates have exposed differences in Clinton and Sanders’ positions on key issues. Sanders wants free pubic college, a new Glass–Steagall Act to regulate the banks, and single-payer healthcare, whereas Clinton wants a work-study program for debt-free college, and prefers strengthening Dodd-Frank’s financial regulations and the Affordable Care Act. By invoking her experience in “getting things done” versus Sanders’s “idealism,” Clinton conveys that pragmatism is inherent in her platform; that she stands to the right of Sanders because her positions have a better chance of being enacted. But in fact, Clinton disagrees with Sanders’s major positions on principle first, and thus stands to the right of most Americans. Worse, her principles are unsound, inane, or petty, and often taken straight from the far right.
Clinton has at least two reasons to oppose single-payer healthcare. One is that since she claims single-payer would constitute a slight tax increase on the middle class, she will not allow herself to consider it. Here, Clinton is the perfect anti-pragmatist, making up her own arbitrary rules to obstruct sensible policy, and retain the U.S.’s position as the most inefficient health care state in the world (How pleased is Grover Norquist!). Never mind that the “tax increase” would be a semantic one for most Americans, since most will save thousands on health insurance and medical bills while paying a few hundred dollars more in taxes. Second, Clinton also opposes single-payer because of the fiction that it could not pass unless Obamacare were first unilaterally abolished. This notion is a demonstrable fabrication, contradicted by a basic understanding of legislative procedure. It is embarrassing that Chelsea Clinton first peddled it; shameful that Hillary would advance the lie. Continue reading