As far as bills he co-sponsored, here is a list of those he co-sponsored and here are the ones that became law. Not many of them look very imaginative or world-shaking to me. They tend to be spending bills, renaming federal buildings, and stuff like the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection Act. on which I will refrain from comment.
A lot of them are gold medals for various people, Such-and-Such a Day. He did sponsor the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
I don’t see that he has ever gotten anything about income inequality thru into law, nor anything to do with the tax code or college tuition, or any of the themes of his current campaign.
Politically, I think not enough voters care about or know about non-military foreign policy for the details to really matter. The salient political point is that she got lots of experience with foreign crises (arguably more than any recent Sec. State) and didn’t mismanage any of them.
That said, I suppose the list is something like:
(1) Orchestrated crippling international sanctions on Iran;
(2) Sheparded multiple new free trade agreements in the Americas and Asia (see 4);
(3) Played a big role in the gradual opening up of Burma;
(4) Re-shaped the State Department to be more focused (and funded) on pursuing American soft power (through a dozen different small-to-medium changes).
I think that’s right. It’s hard to be a stand-out legislator. The ones who accomplish it tend not to do so because of legislation they sponsor, but because they are iconoclasts (e.g., McCain) or deal-makers (e.g.,…er… McCain). Sen. Church comes to mind as an example of a legislator famous for his oversight and not his legislation.
It’s certainly true that the experience one gets as Senator + SecState > experience as Senator only. As far as not mismanaging any of them, I think it would be hard to argue that the “reset” with Russia was a success. I’m not sure she could trumpet Libya as much of a success, either.
Taking the accomplishments 1 and 2 (I think 3 and 4 would not be of much interest to Americans):
“Orchestrated” meaning what, exactly? I’m thinking of the role State plays in setting up sanctions as opposed to Congress. Was there some key role she played in working with other countries to coordinate sanctions?
Do you think that’s the kind of thing that’s going to get out the Democratic vote next year? I’m trying to see how she can leverage her SecState experience to help win in the general election (as opposed to Bernie who doesn’t have that edge).
She certainly worked her butt off as SecState and having that kind of international experience is great for a president, but I’d be hard pressed to think that she could make much of a case for having accomplished very much at all. If I were here campaign manager, I’d probably advise her to stick to emphasizing the experience over the accomplishment. But maybe the “crippling sanctions” things has more of her fingerprints on it than I’m aware of.
I think success and failure are not binary when it comes to foreign policy. You can both not succeed and not fail. My point was that there isn’t really anything to point to as a failure. Do many persuadable voters believe there is something obvious that Clinton could have done differently to prevent Ukraine? I’d be surprised to learn that. Contrast that with, say, Secretary Powell and his WMD speech. Or the Bay of Pigs. Or Pinochet.
My understanding is that she played an important role in getting China and Russia on board, but I don’t know that much about it.
No. Again, my operating premise is that no one cares about what she did apart from whether she mismanaged any crises. The whole sell here is just that now she has a shit ton of foreign policy experience. So I doubt they would try to sell free trade. My point was just than an objective measure of her accomplishments should include that—she did a lot for American soft power, of which trade is a big part.
I am supporting Hillary in the primary race (at least as of now), but I also like to think of myself as an honest broker, so:
I don’t think this is actually a fair yardstick to measure a non-centrist legislator by, whether on the left or right. His identity is as someone distinctly more progressive than most in his party, and such a person would not be expected to have a lot of legislative achievements. In a way, seeking to be president makes sense for someone like that, because they have a lot more leverage to put their imprint on the government than they do as one of 100 or 435. Of course, it may make them less electable, but that’s all part of the mix for primary and then general election voters to judge.
Although, again, I’m a Hillary supporter, I think this claim is rather dubious. Many and probably most analysts would say the Hillarycare debacle set *back *the progress toward national health care, rather than laying the groundwork.
If it was supposed to be some big secret that she was Bill’s closest advisor (as I’m sure many other First Ladies have been), he wouldn’t have appointed her to head the health care effort. Nor was this some kind of bait-and-switch after the election: apparently you have forgotten that Bill repeatedly said on the campaign trail in 1992 that if you elected him, you would get “two for the price of one”. So in a way, voters (which is to say a plurality of 43%) *did *elect Hillary as co-president.
The 2010 United Nations sanctions against Iran required a lot of legwork to get all the parties on board. Clinton was apparently essential in getting Russia and China to sign off on strong sanctions when Brazil and Turkey was trying to negotiate a lesser sanction policy (Turkey is one of the biggest importers of Iranian oil). It was somewhat of a surprise that she was able to get Russia and China on board.
He spent most of his time in the House–remember, he was not in the majority–getting amendments to other bills passed, rather than sponsoring bills himself.
Even so, a lot of those amendments were struck down in reconciliation with Senate versions. But he wasn’t doing nothing.
She doesn’t. Nor does anyone ask her about it. Because again, a First Lady has no legal power. She is not elected to make policy or govern. So she can’t explicitly say that she did things as First Lady, because anything she would have done beyond an informal role would be illegal.
Now of course we know she played a large role in the Clinton administration, and headed the health care effort. But she had no statutory responsibilities, nothing to be held accountable for. She was basically a David Axelrod or Karl Rove. An advisor responsible for nothing but giving advice. She did not oversee any agencies, she did not issue orders to anyone, she made zero decisions. Or maybe she did. But she can’t say she did, because then she’d be admitting to a crime.
Let’s review:
“Can he, as someone on the extreme, get anything actually done?”
“Well, he’s been amazingly productive in Congress”
“Um no, he did a lot of do-nothing and didn’t ever get much into law. His impact was minimal”
“Well yeah but that’s because he’s on the extreme and anyway no one does anything there.”
As to the last “Well yeah …” -
Lots of other Congresscritters do lots and some of them have been not completely on center. Especially if they’ve been in the Congress for a long time. This link already has been given.
Note Barbara Boxer, pretty much as far left on ideology score as Sanders, with 525 passed laws. Orrin Hatch is a bit to the Right even for the GOP and is number one with 724. 24 years has seen a fair number of Congresses, lots of chances to get things done and others have. Please note Democrats controlled the House for 25% of the time he was in it and the Senate for about half the time he was in it (and controlled the House too). Heck [=28"]Inhofe](Search Bills in Congress - GovTrack.us[) has sponsored 11 bills that have become law including some that are not bad.
But the main thing is the huge number of bills Sanders has sponsored or cosponsored was pointed out as if it was some sign of how good he was at being a Congresscritter and sorry but no: the metric that matters to judge efficacy in Congress is not how manner battles you’ve fought but how many meaningful victories you have won.
Don Quixote would not make a good President.
Now I do not argue that efficacy as a Congresscritter is the skill needed to be President, but arguing that he has it in spades and that he has accomplished lots is not supported by the facts.
He knows how Congress works. That’s a plus. Good on VA issues. That’s a plus. I grant those.
Your reading comprehension is lacking. And maybe you have a problem with clicking the links I cited.
It was actually like “He is towards the top compared to his peers in Congress for many tangible, quantifiable things. Especially impressive considering he’s principled and very much to the left.”
“That’s still not good enough!”
“Blame Congress as a whole. The majority party proudly does nothing; Bernie’s record shows he’s trying and does have some successes against all odds.”
Bernie has been as active and has accomplished as much if not more than GOP candidates such as Rand Paul and he has a better voting record than all of them and they have the benefit of being the majority party.
How come nobody derisively questions what they accomplished in Congress while they had far more advantages than Sanders?
I don’t think she needs to. It’s pretty obvious when her husband is a two-term president. So unlike in '92, no one would expect that Bill might just choose china patterns and do some sort of anodyne charity work. And Bill coming as part of the package will be one of her advantages, for sure.
Honestly, I think the bulk of the disgruntlement over it working the other way around in the '90s is sexist. But you can’t keep whinging that “no one elected her” when Bill made no secret about what people would be getting.
"… The result is a campaign built on populist issues like income inequality that appears to be drawing even more rank-and-file support than Mr. Obama did in 2008, when he used a network of smaller donors to win the White House.
“About a quarter of Mr. Obama’s donors over the course of that campaign gave a total of $200 or less, according to a study by the Campaign Finance Institute. While direct comparisons are difficult at this early stage in the 2016 race, Mr. Sanders’s small-dollar support appears significantly higher than Mr. Obama’s in 2008, and more than any other candidate this cycle.”
Ordinarily I recommend never reading the comments sections on news sites because they’re vicious and ugly, but read the comments too. Yeah, yeah, I know you’ll dismiss it as a “bombed” article so you can placate yourselves. But it’s the New York Times, for Og’s sake, you think no Hillary supporters read it?
"There are lessons for Hillary Clinton in the social media and grassroots-driven surge for the Sanders campaign that **political insiders and the mainstream media continue to vastly underestimate. …
**
The Sanders presidential campaign, more than any other campaign in either party, has drawn large crowds and huge support from small donors. The reason is that Mr. Sanders battles against a system that is widely considered corrupt and rigged in favor of those with the most money, and his grassroots supporters mobilize around social media, which is a revolutionary and democratizing influence on American politics and media.
"In several columns, I have quoted Jenny Q. Ta, a vanguard social media entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the social Net-WORTHING platform sqeeqee.com, who suggests that social media in the 2016 campaign will be as powerful and transforming as television was during the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960.
"Ms. Ta is absolutely right. American politics today is at a stage similar to the middle of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, when the debates had already begun but political elites had not yet recognized the power of television in 1960, in the same way and for the same reasons they still do not recognize the power of social media in 2016.
"Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in 2016 who has fully embraced and taken advantage of the political and media revolution that remains largely unnoticed and underestimated by insider politicians and the mainstream media. …
“Those in the old guard of politics and old media who said that many losing campaigns have drawn large crowds were then surprised by the magnitude of small donor support for Mr. Sanders—as they will be surprised again when citizens in Iowa and other states caucus. …”
Even if he said it, she still can’t do his job. She can’t sit in at NSA meetings, she can’t give orders to the federal bureaucracy, she can’t even demand information from anyone.
Dick Morris and Karl Rove and David Axelrod have just as much White House experience as Hillary Clinton. Which is why the media should make her elaborate on her “experience”.