Yesterday, I watched MSNBC ignore Bernie Sanders' statements that Hillary Clinton was once again telling lies. The subject was the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA as it is known in Washington. This is a law that was passed in the 1990's and signed by Bill Clinton. DOMA allowed individual states to ignore marriages performed in other states if those marriages did not conform to the laws of the state in question. In other words, DOMA let any state without gay marriage ignore such unions performed elsewhere. In the last two weeks, Hillary has been saying that DOMA was passed in order to prevent something that would have been worse: a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Sanders' response has been rather simple; he told the truth. There was no move in the 1990's that had any chance of success to get a constitutional amendment on gay marriage. DOMA was a move by the federal government to try to prevent the spread of gay marriage. Sanders' voted against DOMA as a congressman. Hillary supported DOMA and her husband signed it into law. As Sanders put it, what Hillary Clinton said about DOMA was nothing more than a lie.
So what was the reaction on MSNBC to Sanders' pointing out the truth? I saw a long discussion about whether or not twenty year old events had any place in a political campaign. The panel concluded that the campaign ought to be about the future, not the past.
I got the impression that the pundits on MSNBC actually meant what they said on this issue. It never fails to amaze me just how distorted a view of reality some of these liberal media people have. Sanders' point had little to do with what had happened twenty years ago. Sanders' point was that Hillary was dishonest. For the umpteenth time in this campaign, Hillary was caught saying something that she knew to be untrue. What was different was that for the first time Bernie Sanders was calling her out for telling lies. The MSNBC gurus didn't even bother to consider Hillary's dishonesty.
To be fair, there must be a constituency among the gay community that will care who voted for DOMA and who opposed it 20 years ago. That is a tiny group of voters, however. There is an enormous group of Americans who want an honest president, though. Bernie got the distorted treatment that resulted from the "let's protect Hillary" standard that the liberal media has now adopted.
So what was the reaction on MSNBC to Sanders' pointing out the truth? I saw a long discussion about whether or not twenty year old events had any place in a political campaign. The panel concluded that the campaign ought to be about the future, not the past.
I got the impression that the pundits on MSNBC actually meant what they said on this issue. It never fails to amaze me just how distorted a view of reality some of these liberal media people have. Sanders' point had little to do with what had happened twenty years ago. Sanders' point was that Hillary was dishonest. For the umpteenth time in this campaign, Hillary was caught saying something that she knew to be untrue. What was different was that for the first time Bernie Sanders was calling her out for telling lies. The MSNBC gurus didn't even bother to consider Hillary's dishonesty.
To be fair, there must be a constituency among the gay community that will care who voted for DOMA and who opposed it 20 years ago. That is a tiny group of voters, however. There is an enormous group of Americans who want an honest president, though. Bernie got the distorted treatment that resulted from the "let's protect Hillary" standard that the liberal media has now adopted.
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