Bernie Sanders on Saturday implied that Hillary Clinton took poll-tested positions based on political expedience as he used a milestone event in the Iowa Democratic caucus race to paint himself as a more authentic and faithful fighter for liberal values.
Sanders jabbed Clinton on her Senate vote to authorize the Iraq War in 2002 and her recently declared opposition to a vast pan-Pacific trade pact she championed as secretary of state, drawing deafening cheers from thousands of his supporters.
“I promise you tonight as your president, I will govern based on principle. not poll numbers,” Sanders said at the Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines, 100 days before the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
“I pledge to you that every day I will fight for the public interest, not the corporate interests. I will not abandon any segment of American society — whether you’re gay or black or Latino or poor or working class — just because it is politically expedient at a given time,” he said.
Sanders said he was the best Democrat to build a countrywide coalition because he could operate in small groups or before large crowds — a reference to the big events he has held in the campaign in sports stadiums that have dwarfed Clinton’s gatherings.
Without mentioning Clinton by name, Sanders drew sharp contrasts with the former first lady that were not lost on any of the Democrats in the crowd.
He implicitly used Clinton’s Senate vote on Iraq to stir new worries about her hawkishness that helped dent her 2008 campaign for president.
“It gives me no joy to tell you that much of what I predicted about Iraq turned out to be right,” Sanders said. “That was a tough vote. I came to that fork in the road, and I took the right road even if if was not popular at that time.”
He also appeared to take aim at Clinton on same-sex marriage after she said on MSNBC on Friday that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman and passed during her husband’s administration was in fact an attempt to establish a bulwark against conservatives who wanted to roll back gay rights.
“Today, some are trying to rewrite history by saying they voted for one anti-gay law to stop something worse. That’s not the case,” Sanders said, half an hour or so before Clinton was due to give her own speech.
Sanders then hammered Clinton’s delay in coming out against the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline designed to bring oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico that environmentalists say will worsen climate change.
“If you agree with me about the urgent need to address climate change, then you would know immediately what to do about the Keystone pipeline. It was not a complicated issue,” Sanders said.
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Sanders said the deal had never been the “gold standard” of trade pacts, as Clinton had predicted when she ran President Barack Obama’s State Department.
“I did not support it yesterday. I do not support it today. And I will not support it tomorrow,” Sanders said.