BERNIE MOPPED THE FLOOR WITH HILLARY in last night’s little-watched blue-on-blue debate on public access TV, John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post:
She also had a genuinely creepy, Michael-Corleone-in-“Godfather 2” moment when she basically said “we’re both part of the same hypocrisy” after the third man in the debate, Martin O’Malley, criticized her for raising money on Wall Street.
She really doesn’t have a choice but to position herself as the insider’s insider, really, though she could do it more artfully. She talked about how O’Malley had gotten Wall Street donations when he was head of the Democratic Governors Association. “Well,” O’Malley replied, “I’m not getting them now.”
And we know Sanders isn’t. His issue set is simple. The rich should be soaked, health care should be single-payer and banks are screwing you. The reason good things don’t happen, in his view, is that rich people control politics through our campaign-finance system.
He’s not compelled to deliver the coup de grace — which is that Clinton’s career is simply another manifestation of the ailment plaguing America — because it is ragingly obvious.
Instead, he mentioned Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street financial firm, twice — to make the point that both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations had a Goldman Sachs alum as treasury secretary.
And of course Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from the firm, which makes it difficult for her to stage a counterattack on the point.
Well, yes.
