Hillary Clinton’s Democratic opponents in Tuesday night’s presidential debate are set to cast her as a relative newcomer to progressive policy positions.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders played up his “consistency” Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying he’s been in sync with the party’s electorate on issues like trade and income inequality much longer than the former secretary of state.
“So people will have to contrast my consistency and my willingness to stand up to Wall Street and corporations, big corporations, with the secretary,” Sanders said.
And Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, played up his record on issues like gun control and immigration on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying that “it’s about the doing, not the saying.”
“I’m going to lay out the vision … but also, 15 years of executive experience, which I alone will have on that stage, of actually accomplishing progressive things,” he said. “It’s not about the words, it’s about the actions.”
Sanders specifically criticized Clinton for taking positions against President Barack Obama’s administration on two issues — construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership — on which he and other liberals have long fought the White House.
Clinton last month said she’d grown tired of waiting on the State Department to finish its review of the Keystone pipeline. And she said after the Obama administration’s trade negotiators finalized the 12-country Pacific Rim deal, which she’d hailed as the “gold standard” of trade agreements while serving as America’s top diplomat, has fallen short of her expectations.
Drawing an implicit contrast with Clinton, Sanders highlighted his positions from the outset of debates over those issues.
“From day one, I opposed the Keystone Pipeline because I believe that if you’re serious about climate change, you don’t encourage the excavation and transportation of very dirty oil. That was my view from day one,” he said.
He also pointed to his votes against free the North America Free Trade Agreement, normalized trade relations with China and more.
“I believe that our trade policies going way back when … I think they have been a disaster for the American worker,” he said.