Hillary says she won’t debate Bernie Sanders again unless he changes his tone.
Say what?
Bernie won’t talk about the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary’s illegal email server, gunrunning to Jihadis in Benghazi, Libya, or how her family’s foundation acquired hundreds of millions of dollars while she was Secretary of State.
What’s left? Just that annoying bit of history in which Hillary filled her Coach bags educating Wall Street millionaires and billionaires with her vast knowledge of trading intricacies ... or just raking in promissory cash from Wall Streeters hedging their bets.
Either way, Bernie has been very effective at earning delegates by reminding the Democratic base that she’s not trustworthy.
Still, Hillary has confidence she will win the nomination with her 30 percent head start in prearranged superdelegates and support from the Democratic National Committee led by her longtime supporter, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Bernie-supporting liberals have called for Schultz to be replaced, both as committee chair and in the House of Representatives.
It’s actually a huge Democratic Party political battle that the national media has ignored. Schultz’s challenger is a Bernie Sanders proxy pitching Big Left Wing Money and Big Left Wing Power versus liberal angst.
With Hillary donating millions to the committee to support down-ticket races, there’s little chance Schultz loses her chair. She’ll likely keep her House seat as well, considering the big money, big Florida machine and big name Democrats like President Obama endorsing her.
Meanwhile, Hillary appears to be testing her strategy as the Democratic Party nominee.
If Trump is the Republican nominee, he’s going to use debates to drill Hillary on her unseemly profiteering from her stint as Secretary of State. He’ll spotlight such scandals as arranging for Russia to control 20 percent of all U.S. uranium production as Uranium One dumped over $2 million into her foundation account (Russia also immediately gave Bill Clinton half a million for a “speech”). Add to that the $30 million given by the Clinton’s Canadian mining billionaire friend, Frank Guistra, who reportedly orchestrated all of this.
He’ll point out her policies, which brought Libya nothing but violent turmoil, the “Russian Reset Button” policy that allowed Putin to invade Crimea, negotiating with terrorists and supporting the Iran deal.
Trump will hammer Hillary on her aiding and abetting husband Bill’s abuse of women throughout his years as a governor and president.
This can’t happen face-to-face if there are no debates, so how can Hillary avoid debates?
She is now setting the precedent.
As CNN reports, Hillary’s chief strategist, Joel Benenson, repeatedly dodged questions from Kate Bolduan regarding Bernie Sanders’ call for scheduling a debate just ahead of the New York primary on April 19th.
Then, he tried to turn the pressure back on Sanders.
“She’s done well in the debates. The debates have been very good,” Benenson said. “But Sen. Sanders doesn’t get to decide when we debate, particularly when he’s running a negative campaign against us. Let’s see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we’ll talk about debates.”
Tone? Negative?
Sanders has not run a negative campaign. Sure, he has reminded voters of Hillary’s Wall Street profiteering, but that’s simply factual.
So, what obviously happened here is Hillary’s strategy team has decided to call Sander’s criticism of Hillary’s behavior “negative,” setting the precedent for evading debates with the Republican nominee who will certainly use the podium to remind Americans that she is, indeed, being investigated by the FBI in addition to her many other scandals.
The Republican nominee’s articulation of Hillary’s scandalous history would be a “negative” to Hillary, giving her an excuse to feign outraged victimhood and refuse to debate.
Now we wait and see if such a tactic passes public scrutiny ... and perhaps a focus group.
Rick Jensen is Delaware’s award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL