Sanders supporters hate her for many of the same reasons Republicans do.
Philadelphia — Perhaps the country isn’t as divided as television commentators fear. Every fourth or fifth sign at Tuesday’s Black Lives Matter/Bernie or Bust rally in downtown Philadelphia would leave a conservative Republican nodding in agreement.
Start with “Passing the crown is an English tradition!” (Ignore the guy beside her wearing a hammer-and-sickle T-shirt.) Bill Clinton’s running mate was the party’s nominee in 2000, his wife was the next-nominee-in-waiting until the night of the Iowa caucuses in 2008, and then she became the heir apparent once Obama took the oath in 2009. Ask Jeb Bush how receptive Americans are to the idea of political dynasties.
“Hillary for Prison 2016.” Remember when, “LOCK HER UP!” was an extreme, incendiary, frightening mantra unique to the cretins on the Republican convention floor?
“White Lies Matter.” Right now, a lot of Republicans are wishing they’d thought of this. When conservatives think of Hillary’s lies, they probably remember Lewinsky and the “vast right-wing conspiracy” or Benghazi and the YouTube video or her insistence that she never had any classified information in her private e-mails. Liberals are more likely to fume that she poses as a progressive when she needs their support and then turns centrist or corporatist as soon as it’s politically convenient.
“The only way to convey authenticity is to be more authentic,” said Norman Solomon, national coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network, in a Wednesday-morning press conference. He pointed to Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe’s comment Tuesday that Clinton would reverse course once elected and support the TPP trade deal, a prediction that McAuliffe quickly retracted. “Terry McAuliffe has more than a passing acquaintance with Hillary Clinton, and now he’s doubling down. This is very corrosive.”
“We kind of already knew it,” said Karen Bernal, a Sanders delegate from California, about McAuliffe’s prediction that Clinton will change course. “[But] it’s like the DNC e-mails: It’s always good to get it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Her lies have come big and small, throughout her career, often on topics quite distant from national policy. She claimed she was turned down by the U.S. Marines. She said her 10,000 percent profit in trading cattle futures was completely on the up-and-up. She moved to New York and insisted she had always been a Yankees fan. She claimed to have dodged sniper fire on a foreign trip in the Balkans. She pledged to campaign in a carbon-neutral way and then shuttled around on large private jets.
Would Republicans agree with Sanders fans that Clinton represents an oligarchy? She certainly walks among those of great privilege, collecting $325,000 per speech from tech companies, Wall Street banks, and university administrators. Her daughter earned $600,000 a year for part-time, widely derided work at NBC News.
One of Clinton’s amazing gifts is her relentless ability to see herself as everything she isn’t. She doesn’t think she’s rich; she told us that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House. She doesn’t think she’s part of the establishment, because she’s a woman:
Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment. And I’ve got to tell you that it is really quite amusing to me.
Her campaign touts her as the most experienced and prepared candidate ever to run for president, yet it’s hard to name a single serious, lasting accomplishment she could call her own. So many Americans across the ideological spectrum see such naked calculation in her every move that she almost literally can’t help herself politically.
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump can bridge the wide ideological gap to successfully woo Sanders supporters. But if he is able to, it will be because many voters across the political spectrum share a revulsion for Clinton that goes well beyond her policy stances.
— Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent for National Review.