Well, certainly, but I’m not HRC’s advocate; you are.
Well, Presidents can get behind a legislative initiative. I know Bill did when they repealed Glass-Steagall (and yes, I know Hillary isn’t Bill, so we’ll see).
The retaliation has far outpaced the attacks, to be blunt. That’s retaliation that invites retaliation, especially when it incurs “collateral damage” in countries with which you’re not at war, and so it becomes a gift that keeps on giving. After 15 years of retaliation, not all of it particularly well aimed (Iraq most notoriously), all of it responsible for far greater casualties than the terrorists have ever managed, blaming the continuation of hostilities on terrorists is not particularly believable. Probably wiser to deal with it as it really is: criminal behaviour more than adequately covered by existing laws. Doing otherwise lends legitimacy to the Oh-so-scary Terrorists (and creates new terrorists). Unless creating new terrorists is the point of the exercise?
As for the rest, those were initiatives that happened on Bill’s watch for which Bill was fully on board (except for the War on Drugs - he inherited that, but I didn’t see any move to abate it). Now, as I said, I’m well aware that Hillary isn’t Bill, so we shall see.
I’m not American. Sanders is roughly equivalent to a Canadian liberal - left side of the Liberal Party, maybe, or moderate NDP. That’s not that surprising for a Vermonter. (Oh Hell, I hear Bill “the Spaceman” Lee is running for Governor on a platform of merging with Québec. I’d be very surprised if he succeeds, but I know where he’s coming from.)
I’m a little to the left of Sanders. You people tend to call my kind of liberal “socialist”. “Social democrat” is probably the better term.
My kind of liberal created the Medicare Act up here 50 years ago, so that now, after paying my taxes for a few decades, I can have my prostate cancer treated without leaving me on the street. There’s a lot of my kind of liberal up here: we’ll happily pay those taxes for single payer, and you’ll prise our health system out of our cold, dead hands.
My kind of liberal created the banking regulations that fended off the worst effects of the 2008 recession - we tend to curse our banking oligopoly, but there are certain things they just may not do, and those things, done by large American banks, led to a worldwide recession. We got off the lightest. (And that, btw, is why I bring up Glass-Steagall specifically. The knock-on effects of the toxic mortgages and toxic derivatives ended up having a disproportionate effect on “the little guy”. Very little has been done to deal with the causes, so the probability of yet another occurrence is quite high.)
Oh Hell, my kind of liberal backed LGBT equality a long time ago. Our LGBT community were the ones who fought and got the laws changed so many years ago, but they had a lot more backing up here than we’ve seen on your side of the border until recently (and you’ve still got large problems in a number of regions with the issue).
So, you want to point Phil Ochs at me? Be my guest. Your country was heading in the same direction as us in the '60s. Hell, even Nixon’s policies in the '70s were more liberal than what you’ve got now (much as it pains me to say it). What happened?
