Bernie Sanders' criticism of President Obama becomes Hillary submissive weapon before a heavily black audience Friday, the Affordable Care Act and for what she suggested was a single-minded focus on economic fairness at the expense of racial justice.
One day after the two squared off at a debate that emphasized issues relating to race and gender, Mrs. Clinton made clear that she intends to run in this state’s primary by effectively seeking Mr. Obama’s third term — and claiming Mr. Sanders would be a threat to the first black president’s accomplishments.
“He has called the president weak, a disappointment. He tried to get some attention to attract a candidate to actually run against the president when he was running for re-election,” Mrs. Clinton told a gymnasium full of voters near the campus of a historically black college here.
It was a reprisal of her offensive at Thursday night’s debate, but she escalated her assault further, portraying Mr. Sanders as an impediment to the health care law so associated with Mr. Obama that, she noted, it bears his name.
(Senator Bernie Sanders after a campaign event Friday in St. Paul. Mrs. Clinton says he has called President Obama “weak.”
Credit
Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
“He does not support the way I do building on the progress the president has made, and that includes building on the Affordable Care Act,” she said of her opponent, receiving a loud ovation when she mentioned Mr. Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment. It is African-Americans, she added to more applause, who “have made the most advances and gains” thanks to the health law.
Mrs. Clinton’s assault was an indication of how aggressively she intends to run against Mr. Sanders, who routed her by 22 percentage points in the New Hampshire primary this week. Separately, the “super PAC” supporting her, Priorities USA, said it would begin running ads that Mrs. Clinton is the true heir to Mr. Obama’s legacy when it comes to helping blacks.
The electorate in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Feb. 27 is expected to be at least half black, a constituency that reveres Mr. Obama and was crucial in his defeat of Mrs. Clinton in the 2008 Democratic contest here.
Mrs. Clinton still enjoys a substantial advantage over Mr. Sanders among African-Americans in polls, but her campaign is plainly concerned about his making inroads with such voters. Her campaign has conducted focus groups of African-American voters, an aide said, which revealed that many of them associate attacks on the health law as no different from attacks on Mr. Obama himself.
Mr. Sanders voted for the legislation, but has called for going further and enacting universal, government-run health care for all Americans.
“Clearly, after Iowa and New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign is getting very nervous and is becoming increasingly negative and desperate,” said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders. “The simple truth is that there are very few in Congress who have a stronger civil rights record than Senator Sanders.”
Mrs. Clinton’s strategy appears to be to wage a multipronged set of attacks on Mr. Sanders as the battle moves to South Carolina and the rest of the South.
Provoking old memories of politicians bearing false hope, she suggested that Mr. Sanders was setting voters up for a letdown with his ambitious proposals.
“I want you to understand: I will not promise you something that I cannot deliver,” she said. “I will not make promises I know I cannot keep. We don’t need any more of that.”
More broadly, Mrs. Clinton is effectively seeking to turn Mr. Sanders’s grounding in class-based politics into a liability, suggesting that he is insufficiently focused on the immediate problems of black voters whose quality of life will not be lifted by curbing Wall Street excesses or reforming the campaign finance system.
“I’m not a single-issue candidate, and this is not a single-issue country,” she said to applause. “If we enacted our toughest plans to rein in Wall Street and shadow banking and all the other abuses we are concerned about, I’d worry we’d still have lead in the water in Flint and we’d still have deteriorating schools here in South Carolina.”
Mrs. Clinton’s remarks came in a poor, rural region of South Carolina that drew national attention when a 2005 documentary called “Corridor of Shame” was filmed here about its dilapidated schools.
Mrs. Clinton noted to the audience that she has a history here: She visited the county Denmark is in when she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund in the early 1970s and came to the South to investigate the treatment of juvenile offenders who were imprisoned with adult criminals.
Despite the fact that Mrs. Clinton has led in most South Carolina polls, Priorities USA is leaving nothing to chance there. The group announced on Friday that it would spend $500,000 on its radio ads in the state, its largest advertising campaign to date on her behalf.
“We need a president who will build on all that President Obama has done,” say the narrators of the ad, which will air in South Carolina communities with large black populations. “President Obama trusted Hillary Clinton to be America’s secretary of state. And we know Hillary Clinton has the vision and courage to help build an economy to support our communities.”
The new push from Priorities USA could leave Mrs. Clinton open to more criticism from Mr. Sanders, who has lamented her reliance on big donors as a sign that she is not independent.
Source : The New York Times
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