Hillary Clinton subtly charged Bernie Sanders with only offering voters with slogans and rhetoric, not concrete plans, on Tuesday night in Cedar Falls.
After laying out her plans on college affordability, clean energy and taxes, Clinton said that she puts her plans on her website and cites how she is going to pay for each plan to prove to voters that she isn’t offering empty promises.
“I do want you to know that I am not just shouting slogans, I am not just engaging in rhetoric,” Clinton said. “I have thought this through, I have a plan.”
“I want you to understand because I don’t think you can get what we need done in this election nor in the presidency unless you level with people. You tell them what you can do and then you let them then respond to it,” she added.
The refrain was a shot against Sanders, who Clinton aides and advisers believe is promising pie-in-the-sky plans that he wouldn’t be able to deliver on if he gets to the White House.
Although Clinton does post many of her plans on the White House and her campaign has detailed how he plans to pay for them, so, too, has Sanders.
His campaign has released a host of plans, including his plan to overhaul the health care system. Sanders and his aides have also released how their candidate will pay for his plans.
“We will raise taxes, yes we will,” Sanders told CNN on Monday night, a nod to his plan to raise taxes on both wealthy and middle class families for pay for his single payer plan.
The Clinton knock is also reminiscent of a charge she made against Sanders after the first Democratic debate in October, when the former secretary of state said Sanders’ accusation that she was “shouting” about gun control was actually a sexist comment.
“I’m not shouting,” Clinton said on the trail. “It’s just that when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.”
Clinton has vacillated between calling out Sanders by name and subtly hitting him in the run up to Monday’s Iowa caucuses. The former first lady has avoided hitting Sanders directly for much of the week, however, instead choosing to tout herself and her policies and only subtly knock the senator who is challenging her in Iowa and New Hampshire.
