Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Hillary Clinton Shifts to Far-Left as She Claims Party's Nomination

This is interesting.

Back in the 1990s, the Clintons claimed to be centrist "New Democrats" opportunistically, so they could win. Inside there's always been an Alinskyite Marxist collectivist waiting to break out.

At the Wall Street Journal, "How Hillary Clinton Shifted Leftward":
When she stood before New York Democrats and launched her first campaign for office 16 years ago, Hillary Clinton was unabashed about her centrist credentials.

“I’m a New Democrat,” the first lady said in announcing her Senate bid. Her husband worked for a decade to move the party away from its liberal roots and win over independent voters. Now Mrs. Clinton touted that third-way philosophy, too.

“I don’t believe government is the source of all our problems, or the solution to them,” she said.

Today, a transformed Mrs. Clinton campaigns again, this time for president. On a swath of domestic issues, dragged along by a rapidly changing party and a surprisingly tough primary opponent in Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton has moved to the left, sometimes reversing her positions and in other cases changing her tone in significant ways.

Mrs. Clinton has undone her longtime opposition to gay marriage. She apologized for her 2002 vote authorizing an invasion of Iraq. She backed off support for charter schools. She called for an end to the “era of mass incarceration,” a rebuke of her husband’s 1994 crime bill.

Under intense pressure from Mr. Sanders, she came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that as secretary of state she said she was inclined to approve. She opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asian free-trade agreement she had predicted would be the “gold standard,” but that was opposed by labor unions, most Democrats and Mr. Sanders.

And on Social Security, Mrs. Clinton all but abandoned her longtime interest in a bipartisan compromise aimed at extending the program’s solvency and adopted liberal promises not to cut benefits.

On Tuesday, eight years after Mrs. Clinton conceded the 2008 contest, she celebrated victory in her quest for her party’s presidential nomination, a historic achievement making her the first woman to run on a major party ticket. Primary voters cast ballots on Tuesday in California and five other states. Mrs. Clinton went over the top a day earlier with commitments from party leaders who are convention delegates, according to an Associated Press tally.

Now Mrs. Clinton is set to face Republican Donald Trump this fall, and being seen as more liberal may not help in wooing crucial independents and working-class voters. Further, her changing views may feed a perception among some voters that she is untrustworthy, as it did among many Sanders supporters.

“I don’t feel she’s genuine, to be honest,” said Bill Losch, 63 years old, of Las Vegas, a Sanders delegate. “She’ll do whatever she needs to do to be elected.”

Democrats in and out of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign say her shifting positions reflect new facts and show her willingness to adapt while sticking to core principles...
More.

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