On Voting Records: Nuance on Top of Nuance

More and more voters have become concerned with Hillary Clinton’s record when compared to the seemingly perfect voting record of Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders in particular has referenced time-and-time again Clinton’s friendliness to Wall Street. If this wasn’t enough, the internet has become swarmed with video evidence of Hillary supporting seemingly staunch republican social programs at one time accepted under Bill Clinton.

One of the easiest methods of researching voting behavior is using the database at VoteSmart.org. You can search by issue for key bills elected officials vote on. Click here for Bernie Sanders’ voting record, and here for Hillary Clinton’s voting record. In the charts below I listed major policies both democratic nominees supported or fought but certainly did not read and report on every bill (nor did I even get close to covering every topic). Many of the links below will open a separate page where you can read more about the policies each candidate supported or fought against.

I think it’s important to not compare apples and oranges. Hillary Clinton has served as both the first lady of the United States and as the Senator of New York. For the purposes of comparing purely real political implications we will just cover the different stances both candidates have taken while in Congress.

There are three big topics that have been debated between the two candidates, Clinton’s reliability on LGBT rights, Bernie’s pacifism on foreign issues, and Clinton’s voting on economic issues – specifically campaign finance reform.

LGBT Rights

The internet has made it clear that Hillary Clinton has been shown making discriminatory claims about gay marriage for the state of New York before. Yet, her voting record has been far different for the most part.

Both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell were supported under President Bill Clinton, and endorsed by Hillary Clinton. Later on Bill Clinton would be honest in his mistake supporting those bills.

Yet, Bernie voted against both DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In comparison, Hillary turned around and voted pro LGBT on three major bills two of which supported marriage rights and one on including sexual identity discrimination as a hate crime.

The key difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is that Bernie has a longer record supporting gay rights, and has more experience legislating for gay rights. Many of Sanders fights have been during Bill Clinton’s time in office when “gays in the military” was a more topical debate.

Bernie Sanders has a record of supporting gay rights in many bills requiring the Department of Defense to report on the status of LGBT military members, provide equal treatment for them, and allow them to be open on their sexuality while serving.

Adding to this, Bernie Sanders has been very fair-handed with religion in the United States, always ruling in favor of separation but not infringement upon religion. Hillary Clinton has no major votes on the topic of religion, on science however both candidates have supported scientific progression (both having strong support for stem cell research) – Bernie in all of these areas has a far larger track record of support.

Military/Foreign Issues

Military issues is another area that Clinton has received flak for. Hillary has not denied that fact that she supported the Iraq war, whereas Bernie has been proud to have not have supported it.

Clinton has relatively little little legislative experience (7 votes) compared to Bernie Sanders (over 50 major issues).This doesn’t mean that Bernie is “more liberal” or has
voted “better” than Clinton it just means that he has had more experience.

From the seven key pieces of legislation Clinton has reported on, she has shown herself diplomatic: in one case voting in favor of a civilian and military nuclear agreement with India. Bernie has the same record but with far more examples of diplomacy. Bernie has supported Cuban relations, China trade relations, limited operations in Yugoslavia, and even repairing the Bosnian crisis. Yet, interestingly enough, Bernie did not support the same bill Hillary supported on nuclear matters in India – likely because of the trade of nuclear technology (regardless of civilian usage or not).

So is Bernie more of a pacifist than Hillary? While Bernie is certainly more “dovish” he has rejected cries of pacifism since the first Democrat Party debate.

Economy

Clinton has frequently been accused of supporting big banks, resisting hard campaign finance reform, and being soft on social programs. Yet, in many of these areas there is more nuance before she began running for president.

Unfortunately we don’t know much about Clinton’s record with big banks from her time in the Senate. Given her softness on the issue during the presidential debate (the infamous 9-11 line) on topics like Wall Street endorsements and “too big to fail banks” we could only speculate how strongly she would oppose corporate America.

On campaign finance reform things become even more nuanced. She has voted in favor of many reforms on how interest groups donate to campaigns and how that information becomes publicly accessible. In 2001 she even co-sponsored a bill that would require broadcasting companies to require their lowest rate for political advertisements and the bill would raise the cap for small campaign contributions.

Finally, on social programs, Clinton voted to keep the “death”/estate tax on millionaires, and reinforce many social programs. Yet, as is the theme here, Sanders has voted on far more issues and has contributed more votes on programs like SNAP (food stamps) and even women’s rights (he voted in favor of four different paycheck fairness acts).

Overall

In a recent democratic debate Hillary Clinton said the following responding to Anderson Cooper’s question “will you say anything to get elected?”

I have been very consistent over the course of my entire life. I have always fought for the same values and principles. – HRC

Based upon this answer to the longevity of her ideology her statement is not true. Yet, if we look at Clinton’s senate voting record compared it to Senator Sanders there are some differences at the margins. Mainly, three takeaways can be found:

1. Bernie Sanders has stood longer on principles than Clinton, and has more experience fighting for a variety of causes unlike Clinton.
2. There is some nuance because Clinton does have plenty of positive votes on many key issues including campaign financing issues.
3. In some areas Clinton is unclear or fails to support liberal principles (immigration).

There is a dichotomy that is present. It ultimately comes down to this: either you value experience and the long track record of supporting important issues (Sanders) or you don’t mind candidates changing their minds and having less to go on involving major issues of the day (Clinton). Given Sanders impressive ability to fight for today’s causes years ago, it’s hard to see how you could not applaud the man.