Politics

Claire McCaskill Comes Out Swinging Against Progressives In Post-Debate Recap

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MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill said that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has “written a lot of bills that never went anywhere” during a post-debate recap Tuesday evening.

The former Missouri Democratic senator hit back at some of the Democratic candidates’ talking points Tuesday after the debate. She commented on Sanders’ moment when he stated he “wrote the damn bill” after Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan told him that he didn’t know what benefits Medicare-for-all would provide.

Sanders’ comment resulted in cheers from the crowd, but McCaskill shut it down while talking on MSNBC’s “Decision 2020: Post-Debate Analysis.”

“And by the way, he’s written a lot of bills that never went anywhere,” McCaskill said in response to the discussion.

Ouch! MSNBC contributor and former senator Claire McCaskill on Bernie Sanders “I wrote the damn bill” moment in #DemDebate.

“He wrote a lot of bills that never went anywhere.” ???????? pic.twitter.com/HwIRtTVGJD

— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) July 31, 2019

McCaskill also commented on the “free stuff” that Democrats have promised to American’s if elected President in 2020. MSNBC anchor Brian Williams asked, “What happens when you walk into those communities and say ‘Great news, you’re all going to get green jobs, we’ll need the keys to your F-150s because we’re going all-electric’?”

“It would not be good,” McCaskill replied. “And I think what Tim Ryan is trying to express is a bucket of cold water, which is reality about where America is. America is generally not as far along the left line as Bernie and Elizabeth.”

“Free stuff from the government does not play well in the Midwest.”

Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ National Press Secretary, accused McCaskill of using “racial dog whistles” in her post-debate analysis. Gray wrote that she hopes “that’s not what’s happening here” in a tweet Monday morning.

“Free stuff doesn’t play in the Midwest” sounds an awful lot like the racial dog whistles about “hard working whites” vs “handouts” for POCs and I really hope that’s not what’s happening here. https://t.co/jxB0xWrWNq

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) July 31, 2019

Progressive candidates like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have been supportive of “Medicare-for-all,” a move which they say would include illegal immigrants. Other candidates, such as Ryan, have posited more moderate views on the subject.

“Now, in this discussion already tonight, we’ve talked about taking private health insurance away from union members in the industrial Midwest, we’ve talked about decriminalizing the border, and we’ve talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care,” Ryan said during Tuesday’s debate.

“I quite frankly don’t think that that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.”