A few months back, in an early debate, Bernie Sanders graciously said he was “sick and tired” of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s “damn” email scandal. But in the upcoming debate, this Sunday before the Michigan primary on Tuesday, he should raise the issue. He should do so not to stoke the controversy over the procedural legality of running a private server. Rather, he should focus on the content of the emails.
Sanders should ask Clinton about her relentless advocacy of free-trade treaties, and in particular about one 2011 email (to which David Sirota and Sarah Berger called attention in a piece last week) where she wrote, in pushing for the now ratified free-trade agreement with Colombia: “at the rate we were going, Columbian [sic] workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan.”
The effect of Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and Hillary Clinton’s Colombian Free Trade Agreement has been devastating to Michigan and most of the rest of the country, and accounts for the appeal of Donald Trump.
As to the “better rights” Colombian workers have, vis-á-vis Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, here’s what that looks like:
Considering that Clinton said in that email that Colombian “workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan,” here’s the question Sanders should ask her: Did she mean that she hoped to raise Colombia up to US standards, or lower the United States’ to Colombia’s?
Greg GrandinTwitterGreg Grandin, a Nation editorial board member, is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University and author of The End of the Myth, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.