Following criticism of Hillary Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy remarks published Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders said in an interview on Monday that Clinton shouldn’t be presumed as the Democratic nominee for president since the U.S. political process isn’t one in which “we anoint people.”
Sanders also hinted at his possible willingness to challenge her for the Democratic nomination for president.
Sanders spoke in an interview with ABC’s Jeff Zeleny a day after The Atlantic published an interview with Clinton in which she slammed Obama’s foreign policy, saying “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” Sanders indicated his respect for the former Secretary of State, while at the same time cautioning against assuming that she will be the Democratic nominee before she’s even announced her candidacy.
“She has accomplished a lot of positive things in her career, but I’m not quite sure that the political process is one in which we anoint people,” he said.
“What is her agenda? I don’t know, you don’t know. She hasn’t said,” Sanders pointed out.
While the Vermont senator repeated the fact that he does not “wake up every morning with a burning desire to be president of the United States,” he also reiterated his commitment to fight for political and economic equality as the U.S. shifts toward a form of society he fundamentally disagrees with: “an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaire families control not only the economy of this country, but because of this disastrous supreme court decision Citizens United, they control the political life of this country.”
“I will do everything I can to prevent that from happening,” Sanders said.
In The Atlantic interview, while Clinton said the organizing principle that sets her apart from Obama’s is “peace, progress and prosperity,” she also trumpeted her interventionist foreign policy doctrine, saying that not supporting Syrian rebels early into the Syrian war was a foreign policy “failure” that led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq, among other comments . Since those remarks were published she has come under fire from both left-leaning progressives and more centrist Democrats, with many saying her pro-war views do little to distinguish her from her Republican pro-war counterparts.
“She basically seems to be taking positions that are very similar to the vision of America’s role in the world that [in 2008] Democrats rejected,” said Michael Cohen, a fellow with the progressive Century Foundation.
The often pro-Democratic Party MoveOn.org released a statement from Ilya Sheyman, Executive Director of the organization’s Political Action Committee, who said:
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