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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sanders is great at assigning blame for a lot of things, but he hasn't really done much about them and his proposals are sanctimonious ideals that ignore political feasibility.

If you define feminism as yelling about injustice while criticizing everyone who tries to work out practical remedies, then I guess he is a feminist. I don't think that is the way most feminists would define feminism, though. [/quote]

I think that most feminists would define feminism as: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Sanders fits that definition. Clinton does not because of the damage she has done to women by advocating for welfare reform, NAFTA and TPP. Global trade agreements have hurt women disproportionately. Welfare reform has had dire effects on women. These are not just "mistakes." The Clintons have done a lot of harm. [/quote]

You have a Twitter-level understanding of public policy - cherry-picking and exaggerating two issues completely out of context.

You are way overstating the effects of welfare reform, absurdly assigning blame for it to Hillary, and ignoring everything else she has done. Even on your ridiculous terms, the 1996 welfare reform was a compromise on one benefit that enabled the Clinton Administration to take the Republicans to the cleaners on a much broader social program agenda. Creating CHIP, expanding Medicaid, expanding WIC, increasing EITC, increasing minimum wage - they got that stuff through a Republican Congress.

Mother Jones: 
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/02/heres-why-bernie-sanders-doesnt-say-much-about-welfare-reform
.[i]..maybe welfare reform has turned out not to be an especially big deal. After all, by 1996 the old AFDC program accounted for ...a tiny fraction of the total welfare budget—and the difference in spending between AFDC and the TANF program that took its place is even more minuscule. The truth is that it's barely noticeable compared to increases in social welfare spending during the 90s from changes to CHIP, EITC, the minimum wage, and so forth.

...Instead, we need to look at spending per person in poverty. This gives us a better idea of how policy has responded to poverty over the past few decades.

There are two obvious takeaways from this. First, overall spending on social welfare programs has increased by 3x since 1980. That's pretty substantial. Second, if the 1996 welfare reform act had any effect on this steady rise in spending, you'd need a chart the size of my house to make it out. [/i]

[/quote]

I have not blamed Hillary Clinton alone for welfare reform. I have said that a true feminist could not and would not have campaigned for it as she did.

I am surprised to see you defending welfare reform. I guess that explains why some people on this thread are supporters of Clinton. The negative effects of welfare reform on women and children (disproportionately black and Latino) have been proven in study after study.

"Indeed, data shows a sharp spike in families living in extreme poverty these days. Sociologists Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer report that, in 2011, about 20 percent of poor households with children—about 1.46 million households—were surviving on $2 or less per person per day in a given month. The authors report: “The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform.” Extreme poverty is most pronounced for black families, who experienced a 183 percent increase during this period, compared with 132 percent for Latinos and 110 percent for whites.

Put simply: In the aftermath of welfare reform, people most in need—disproportionately families of color—fall through the shredded public safety net, making it increasingly difficult to escape poverty."

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-it-matters-that-hillary-clinton-championed-welfare-reform/[/quote]

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