The Guardian: Sanders outshone Clinton on foreign policy at the debate. But who watched?

[Omaha Steve]

The senator from Vermont managed to draw clear distinctions with the Democratic front-runner. It still might not be enough when the voting starts

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/20/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-debate-foreign-policy?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+A&utm_term=145061&subid=9262078&CMP=ema_565a

By Lucia Graves

For months Bernie Sanders has tried and failed – and sometimes not even tried – to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. On Saturday, he finally found his line in the sand.

The key distinction is this: in Syria, Clinton favors a focus on toppling Bashar al-Assad while simultaneously combating Isis. Sanders says overthrowing Isis must come first, and he also criticized her plans to go after Assad, calling her a “fan of regime change”.

Previously Sanders had struggled to draw a substantive contrast between Hillary and himself beyond her vote to go to war with Iraq years ago. The monotonal attack made it look like he had no real foreign policy platform to speak of; finally, he has one.

He didn’t back down from his attacks on her vote on Iraq at Saturday night’s debate, but rather drew out its meaning, using it as a lens for the differing ways he and she see foreign policy.

FULL story at link.

[redstateblues]

1. Better late than never

Unfortunately the knock on Bernie that he is weak on foreign policy is baked into his image. He should have known when he jumped into the race that he would need to articulate positions on foreign policy from the get go. His economic message does not carry over into foreign policy.

[JackInGreen]

2. The only thing

"Baked in" to bernie is honesty, just like they sprinkled hill with warmonger before they popped her in.

[JaneyVee]

3. Foreign policy: Vote for Libya and Syria, then deny it.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Vote for war

Then evolve.

[JaneyVee]

5. Like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Somalia.

[thesquanderer]

6. Sanders doesn't claim to be a pacifist.

He has voted for numerous military actions.

But whenever there was the opportunity for BS and HRC to weigh in on such a matter, AFAIK, Hillary was for everything that Bernie supported, but Bernie was not for everything that Hillary supported. She supports all the military stuff he supports, but ALSO supports more that he did/does not support.