Hillary Clinton Will Never Let Bernie Sanders Live Down This Vote

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/gun+control/search.html?page=1&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=128038661">Joe Belanger </a>/Shutterstock

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Three weeks removed from the Iowa caucuses, with Bernie Sanders nipping at Hillary Clinton’s heels in the polls, the Clinton campaign is reminding Democrats of the Vermont senator’s most problematic vote in Congress.

In 2005, Sanders, then in the House of Representatives, voted for a bill—backed by the National Rifle Association—to provide legal immunity to gun manufacturers if their guns were used to commit crimes. Then-Sens. Clinton and Barack Obama, by contrast, voted against the bill.

Over the last few months, as mass shootings from Charleston to Roseburg to San Bernardino have rocked the country, and under increasing criticism by Clinton, Sanders has tried to neutralize the gun issue and even walk back his support for that vote. On a Friday conference call, Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told reporters, “I would say that there’s about zero daylight between the president and Sen. Bernie Sanders.”

So the Clinton campaign set up a conference call of its own.

“Democrats have a real choice, because standing up to the gun lobby is a real difference between Senator Sanders and Hillary Clinton,” John Podesta, a senior Clinton adviser, told reporters on the Friday afternoon call. Podesta highlighted Sanders’ vote for immunity for gun manufacturers, calling his record very different from both Obama’s and Clinton’s. He issued a challenge to Sanders to “commit today to support legislation to overturn the sweeping immunity provision he voted to confer upon the gun industry.”

The Clinton campaign’s latest broadside against Sanders on guns comes one day after President Obama raised the issue of immunity for gun manufacturers in a New York Times op-ed and promised not to support any candidate—including Democrats—”who does not support common-sense gun reform.”

Sanders has come under repeated fire from Clinton for his 2005 vote and others on guns. In response, he has said he would revisit the legislation but has declined to say that he regrets the vote. “I hope you know that Senator Sanders has said he’d be willing to take another look at that legislation,” Sanders’ spokesman, Michael Briggs, told Politico. This week, Sanders backed Obama’s executive actions on guns, including one to expand background checks to more gun sales.

Still, the senator’s gun record is a clear blemish on his near-sterling progressive record. Don’t expect the Clinton campaign to let voters forget that.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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