Winning the party nomination and the general election requires candidates walk a fine line. Hillary Clinton has proved she’ll “do whatever she needs to do, say whatever needs to be said and fight for whatever constituency is most useful at the moment.” The New York Times,
Nobody had figured this out until, brilliantly, Hillary Clinton. She is campaigning on a series of positions that she transparently does not believe in. She’ll say what she needs to say now to become Bernie Sanders in a pantsuit (wait, Bernie Sanders already wears a pantsuit!). Then, nomination in hand and White House won, she will, it appears, transparently flip back and embrace whatever other positions she doesn’t believe in that will help her succeed in her new role.
In other words, one of the causes of polarized gridlock and political dysfunction is that we have too many politicians with ideological convictions. Clinton seems to be eliding this problem.
Her most impressive elision concerns trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership…
As CNN pointed out, she’s praised the deal 45 separate times, at one point calling it “the gold standard in trade agreements.” This was not only a substantive flip-flop. It was so naked it amounted to a bold and clarion statement of faith on behalf of flip-flopping itself. It suggested a whole style of campaigning and method of governing based on the principle of unprincipledness.
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