It was a difficult week in debates for the truth. At the CBS Republican debate in South Carolina (transcript here) there were accusations during the debate of candidates telling lies nineteen times. This doesn’t include any lies which fact checkers  have found. Donald Trump was in the rare position of being the one telling the truth when he pointed out that George W. Bush got us into the Iraq war based upon lies:

“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?” Trump thundered when asked about his call for then-President George W. Bush to be impeached. “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.”

Trump added, “George Bush made the mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty.”

Trump later pointed out that Jeb was wrong about his brother keeping us safe:

“The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe, Marco. That is not safe,” he continued. “The world Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton [didn’t] kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him. And George Bush– by the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn’t listen to the advice of his C.I.A.”

“How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center…excuse me, I lost hundreds of friends!” Trump said as the crowd booed loudly.

On the other hand, I’m not sure how Bill Clinton could be blamed when the Republican Congress obstructed his attempts to fight al Qaeda, and they certainly did not give any credit to the president who did kill bin Laden.

At the PBS Democratic Debate Hillary Clinton recycled some old lies about Sanders, and created some new ones. The full transcript can be found here.

An early point of contention between the candidates was over health care, with Clinton falsely claiming that “before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare.” No, actually Hillarycare was a seriously flawed plan with major differences from Obamacare. Making matters worse, Hillary got Bill to agree to veto any other health care proposals. The Republican counter proposal was far closer to Obamacare, although, not surprisingly, it was friendlier to the insurance industry. Clinton kept us from getting either something close to Obamacare, along with any other Democratic proposal. She was hardly a progressive who gets things done.

Clinton continued to portray Medicare For All as eliminating other plans while ignoring all of its advantages. Although single payer is far less expensive than our current system, Clinton claims we would “actually be worse off than they are right now.” How could we possibly be worse off if we no longer have to pay towards the corporate profits of the health insurance industry, not to mention its huge infrastructure? How could we possibly be worse off than with the current high premiums on the individual market, which still leave us with astronomical deductibles? Clinton talks about this as starting over, but Medicare for All is actually just expansion of a highly successful program.

They next disagreed over expansion of Social Security as Sanders and most progressive Democrats advocate. Slate discussed this further in an article entitle Clinton’s Social Security Plan Is a Little Hazy. And Sanders Called Her Out on It.

Clinton tried to hide the major differences in how their campaigns are funded in claiming, “I’m very proud of the fact that we have more than 750 thousand donors, and the vast majority of them are giving small contributions.” That is probably why I keep getting emails from the Clinton campaign asking for a $1 donation. By asking for $1 they can pad the numbers. The real source of Clinton’s donations can be seen from how the DNC just rolled back their limitations from lobbyists. It is just one more way in which the DNC is acting to help Clinton, and smelling a lot more like the RNC.

Sanders pointed out the difference:

What we are talking about in reality is a corrupt campaign finance system, that’s what we’re talking about. We have to be honest about it. It is undermining American democracy.

When extraordinarily wealthy people make very large contributions to Super PACs, and in many cases in this campaign, Super PACs have raised more money than individual candidates have, OK? We had a decision to make early on, do we do a Super PAC? And, we said no. We don’t represent Wall Street, we don’t represent the billionaire class, so it ends up I’m the only candidate up here of the many candidates who has no Super PAC. But, what we did is we said to the working families of this country, look, we know things are tough, but if you want to help us go beyond establishment politics, and establishment economics, send us something. And, it turns out that up until — and this has blown me away, never in a million years would I have believed that I would be standing here tonight telling you that we have received three and a half million individual contributions from well over a million people.

Now, Secretary Clinton’s Super PAC, as I understand it, received $25 million dollars last reporting period, $15 million dollars from Wall Street. Our average contribution is $27 dollars, I’m very proud of that.

When Clinton tried to dodge the issue, Sanders went on:

SANDERS: The people aren’t dumb. Why in God’s name does Wall Street… (APPLAUSE) But let’s not — but let’s not — let’s not insult — let’s not insult the intelligence of the American people. People aren’t dumb.Why in God’s name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions? I guess just for the fun of it; they want to throw money around.

Why does the pharmaceutical industry make huge campaign contributions? Any connection maybe to the fact that our people pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?

Why does the fossil fuel industry pay — spend huge amounts of money on campaign contributions? Any connection to the fact that not one Republican candidate for president thinks and agrees with the scientific community that climate change is real and that we have got to transform our energy system?

Factcheck.org also pointed out Clinton’s dishonesty in claiming that Sanders “took about $200,000 from Wall Street firms” through the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. While Sanders did receive money from the DSCC, which hardly sounds like a crime, Factcheck.org pointed out that a relatively small percentage of the DSCC’s contributions came from Wall Street.

Sanders attacked Clinton regarding her views on regime change, including in Iraq and Libya. Clinton repeated her previous tactic of lying about Sanders’ record in bringing up resolutions he voted for which had nothing to do with overthrowing other governments by force in Iraq and Libya as Clinton advocated. As I discussed after the third debate, Politico fact-checked this and pointed out the resolution Clinton referred to was a nonbinding resolution “calling on Qaddafi to desist from further violence, recognize the Libyan people’s demand for democratic change, [and] resign his position.” This is far different from the promotion of the removal of Qaddafi by force which Clinton orchestrated, leading to catastrophic results. Similarly, the resolution regarding Iraq which Clinton keeps mentioning was to promote the move towards democracy in Iraq. Sanders supported economic sanctions and did not support the invasion of Iraq as Clinton did.

Clinton bragged about Obama hiring her to be Secretary of State but his was far more for political reasons than an endorsement of her judgment. Throughout her four years as Secretary of State, Clinton’s neoconservative advice was generally rejected (other for in Libya, where the policy was a failure). Clinton’s defense of her foreign policy views became even more bizarre when she embraced Henry Kissinger. As Sanders responded:

Where the secretary and I have a very profound difference, in the last debate — and I believe in her book — very good book, by the way — in her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.

I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger.

Clinton once again tried to make herself look like a great supporter of Barack Obama and make Sanders look like a constant critic. She falsely claimed that Sanders wrote “a forward for a book that basically argued voters should have buyers’ remorse when it comes to President Obama’s leadership and legacy.” This refers to the book Buyer’s Remorse–How Obama Let Progressives Down by Bill Press. The book begins with:

I speak as a proud liberal.

I speak as a strong supporter of President Obama.

From there it does criticize Obama for letting progressives down, discussing both the positives and negatives of the Obama administration. Sanders does not have a forward (at least on my copy of the book) but there is a brief blurb on the back cover from Sanders:

Bill Press makes the case why, long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen. Read this book.

Hardly the sort of near-treason which Clinton suggests. The next blurb on the back cover is from Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under her husband. Reich also recently wrote that, “Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.”

Clinton was also wrong when she said Sanders was “calling several times that he should have a primary opponent” in 2012, grossly exaggerated anything which Sanders did say on the subject. She totally ignored how she opposed Obama before she supported him. This not only includes th2 2008 primary battle, which included her campaign spreading the Reverend Wright smears, and other dirty tricks. Clinton was quite hostile towards Obama’s foreign policy views after she left office as Secretary of State, and was running against Obama’s policies earlier in the current campaign. She will turn on Obama’s legacy again should she find it politically expedient.

Clinton concluded in her closing remarks yet another smear, which Sanders could not respond to, that he was a single issue candidate. In this post alone there are multiple issues which separate them such as on the role of money in politics, their views on Medicare for All, Social Security reform, disagreement over embracing the legacy of Henry Kissinger, Clinton’s support for regime change in Libya as well as Iraq. Other issues which Sanders is running on also came up which I have not included here, such as ending the drug war and reforming marijuana laws. There are also many other differences on other issues which were not raised during the debate, such as substantial differences over climate change and on social/cultural issues.

While Sanders certainly concentrates on limited issues during the campaign for political reasons, he has demonstrated many reasons to support him on a variety of issues. In contrast, Clinton’s bright yellow jacket seemed to receive more attention than anything she had to say at the debate. Clinton’s problem is that she lacks any real message at all, failing to provide voters a reason to support her. Even many of those who do support her are acknowledging this problem.

Updated to include the Republican debate from a post  at Liberal Values

Update. An expanded post on the Republican Debate has been posted at Liberal Values: Accusations Of Lying Dominate Republican Debate