The paper said in the headline of its endorsement that Clinton’s plans to “give working- and middle-class Americans a fighting chance at rising incomes are far superior to Bernie Sanders.”
{mosads}The editorial noted that at 8:30 a.m. on the first Friday of every month, the government updates the state of the working and middle classes with measurements of jobs in America. And it said that although President Obama “acknowledges that the American people have a ways to go, he vastly understates the depth of their slump.”
“Despite the addition of an overly impressive-sounding 14 million jobs and a halving of the unemployment rate over the past six years, American businesses are generating far fewer positions than needed,” the editorial says.
The 2008 “global financial meltdown … supercharged trends that continue to degrade the standards of living, worsen income inequality and narrow the paths to better.”
The next president, it continued, must help the economy in favor “of the many while also extending an extra helping hand to ease burdens that have grown too heavy for some.”
“On April 19, New York Democrats will have unusual say over the party’s nominee,” the editorial said.
“They have in Clinton a superprepared warrior realist. They have in opponent Bernie Sanders a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality. By choosing Clinton, Empire State Dems would powerfully signal that the party has gotten real about achieving long-sought goals.”
The editorial touts Clinton’s knowledge, saying she knows what’s wrong with the country and understands how to fix the economy. It also says she has the “strength and shrewdness” to take on the politics of achieving an “ambitious Democratic agenda.”
The editorial goes on to slam Sanders, saying he is “utterly unprepared” for the White House. That may be an allusion to the
recent spat between Clinton and Sanders over who is ready to be president. Sanders last week told a crowd in Philadelphia that Clinton called him unqualified, a charge he then
fired back at her.
The editorial walks through Sanders’s policies, noting that while the burden of his plan for raising taxes would fall mostly on the wealthy, it would also hammer middle-income earners. The piece says his calls for free public education for all are unrealistic and calls him out for his position on gun rights.
“Clinton’s proposals are shaped for the world in which we live, not the world in which we might wish to live. By any stretch of the imagination — except that of Sanders — they stand as the highflying progressive wish list of a results-driven candidate,” the editorial says.
“Head to head exclusively on those terms — which are the fundamental terms of their debate — the former First Lady, senator and secretary of state promises to be a true Democratic champion.”
