OPINION:
Hillary Clinton is widely rumored to receive the endorsement of rival Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders as soon as Tuesday.
But it didn’t come without sacrifice — oh, no. Mrs. Clinton had to leave her “pragmatic progressivism” at the door, to adopt Mr. Sanders’ democratic-socialist ideals. Her socialist makeover is complete.
In her latest capitulation to win over Mr. Sanders’ supporters, Mrs. Clinton backed the creation of the “public option,” within Obamacare, and to allow people to enroll in Medicare at age 55. She accepted Mr. Sanders calls to abolish the death penalty, his team’s cries for a $15 hourly federal minimum wage indexed to inflation, promised to increase spending on community health centers, and has said she’d make public college education free.
Wow. She’s sprinted to his socialist platform — which she once called too “pie in the sky” to be enacted — wholeheartedly (or so we’re supposed to believe).
It did look like the one tiny victory for Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic Party’s platform was “milder language that didn’t explicitly reject” the 12-nation trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. After-all, she supported it before she was against it.
So how far left as Mrs. Clinton gone to try to hold on to this nomination?
Well, she’s proposed expanding Social Security in terms of adding pre-retirees and giving it to people who took some time off during work, guaranteeing 12 weeks of medical leave, adding $5,000 a year in subsidies for families enrolled in Obamacare to make their co-pays and deductibles more affordable, and has promised universal pre-K. The platform also adopted amendment on criminal justice reform which calls for the Department of Justice to investigate all shootings involving police officers.
Before all these additional promises, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign pledges were estimated to cost well over $1 trillion, with less-than-clear methods to pay for the entitlements. Mr. Sanders’ reforms were estimated to cost $18 trillion.
After the platform meeting, Mr. Sanders praised how much Mrs. Clinton’s team gave.
“We have made enormous strides,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement Sunday. “Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process — many for the first time — we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”
But not all were convinced of Mrs. Clinton’s authenticity in actually pushing through these measures.
“It’s hard to trust her words,” Cornel West, an academic and supporter of Mr. Sanders, told The Washington Post. “Will she really follow through?”
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