Hillary Clinton on Political Pinball — Tilt!

— Interesting comparing Clinton’s 2016 tactics to some of the tactics now being used in the 2020 race.

Michael Weddle
5 min readDec 16, 2019

[This article was originally published as a Facebook Note on February 12, 2016.]

Anybody sick of the Clinton slant yet? Here is how the Clinton Tilt Machine has dealt with Bernie Sanders.

Ten Failed Strategies Against Bernie Sanders:

1) Completely ignore Bernie Sanders, peg him as a fringe candidate. That didn’t work!

2) Accentuate how strong Clinton is nationally, especially among African-American voters, and present the image she is the inevitable nominee. This worked for a while.

3) Adopt Bernie’s positions because his positions were taking hold with the electorate — classic Karl Rove strategy! This worked a little bit and likely is what enabled Clinton to tie Sanders in Iowa.

4) Make the false claim that Republicans are assisting the Bernie Sanders campaign. This is remarkable given that most polling shows Sanders would defeat all of the Republicans and Clinton would not. Also, the RNC chair said Sanders would be the tougher opponent and even though Ann Coulter warned Republicans should go light attacking Hillary because they don’t want to face Sanders. Meanwhile, in Iowa, Karl Rove’s political action committee ran an anti-Hillary ad. And each of the candidates in the debates strongly attacked Sanders. Anyone finding it interesting that the ones attacking Clinton are also the ones who are using her bad name to raise money? Rove’s preferred candidates proved inept, but he knew he’d need money for the long haul, so he launched an anti-Clinton tv commercial to use as a fund-raiser. Fact is, GOPwingers do not want to face the growing movement of Bernie Sanders. All polls show that Trump won’t hold water against Sanders!

5) Diminish the Sanders strength in NH by claiming Bernie had a home field advantage. Well, Clinton once held a 30-point summer lead over Sanders. Where was the home field advantage then? This was nothing but a lie implanted into the consciousness of the electorate.

6) Make it appear as though Sanders is weak on foreign policy and trumpet that she is therefore the best commander-in-chief. Make no mistake about it. Hillary Clinton is a hawk and she’s been tied into the whole system of world oligarchy dominion and she supports the military-industrial-complex’s want to spread weaponry all over the world. Yes, under Obama’s guidance, boots on the ground war was averted but this had little to do with her. In fact, she made things more dangerous by bungling Libya — the no-fly zone, among other things key of which was having no after-government strategy for Libya once Gaddafi was overthrown — this enabled ISIS to gain strength in Libya. Also, Clinton supported the military coup of a democratically-elected government in Honduras (google Honduras!).

7) Continue to make the false claim Clinton is like Obama and she deserves to carry forward Obama’s legacy. This won’t work as Hillary Clinton is no Barrack Obama! To justify her Wall Street contributions, Clinton attempts to tie Obama to Wall Street also. Well, yes, Obama had some connection to Wall Street. But youv’e got to ask why. When the Republican Congress refused to govern, Obama then needed Wall Street to help provide steam for the US economy. Not the ideal way to govern, but it did help America recover from the economic disaster of Bush-Cheney.

8) Accuse Sanders of running the “most negative campaign in US history.” This is a classic page taken out of the Karl Rove/Roger Ailes playbook. FoxNews comes on the scene and accuses all other media of being “liberal” media. The media’s never been liberal. Some journalists are, but editors, publishers and owners are not — only six media conglomerates control 90 percent of all media in America. America’s media is not “liberal.” And would someone kindly inform Clinton that the Sanders campaign is not “negative.” Were Bernie negative he’d be highlighting the allegations against Clinton of federal crimes, official misconduct, and corruption. Fact is, Bernie’s stayed clean in this race!

9) In order to pander South Carolina’s black electorate, the Clinton campaign is now trying to present the image that Bernie was not there for the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s. It’s all image, folks. Bernie has an arrest record for his work fighting for Civil Rights in the ‘60s.

10) Make the outlandish claim Sanders is taking political action committee money because he has union support and that in the past senatorial campaigns Sanders has raised money from Wall Street. First, any Democrat criticizing another Democrat for having support of unions should not be a Democrat. Secondly, Sanders did send out fundraising letters to support senatorial campaigns for Democrats. But he used the same principle he’s using now for fundraising — he sent out letters requesting small donations to elect senate Democrats! He wasn’t communicating with Wall Street, as Clinton’s surrogates have alleged.

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Michael Weddle
Michael Weddle

Written by Michael Weddle

Founder of Boston’s Climate Change Band; former NH State Representative; Created Internet’s 1st Anti-War Debate; Supporter of Bernie Sanders & Standing Rock!

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