Talk about the urinal calling the toilet white.
While the HillYes campaign has been crying foul over the Sanders campaign's “artful smearing” of Hillary — by telling the truth about her nefarious relationships with organizations that bankrupted our economy — behind the scenes her supporters have initiated an outright lie regarding Sanders missing a vote on aid to Flint, MI, in order to appear on SNL.
The thing is, there was no such vote. But hey, when was the last time a Clinton let the truth get in the way of a good smear campaign?
But back to this vote on aid to Flint that Bernie missed.
The actual vote was on the Cloture Motion for S. 2012 - An original bill to provide for the modernization of the energy policy of the United States, and for other purposes.
The Senate Democrats had decided to vote against cloture, and all but 5 of them did so. They were successful in preventing cloture as the vote was 54-Nays to 43-Yeas. Besides Sanders, Rubio and Cruz also missed this cloture vote. Assuming that the three of them had voted on cloture, and had voted with their respective party, the cloture vote would have been 55-Nays to 45-Yeas, and the cloture motion would have still been voted down — IOW, the votes of Cruz, Rubio and Sanders were totally superfluous regarding this cloture motion.
So why did the majority of Democratic senators vote against aid to Flint? Well, actually, they didn't:
Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked action on a comprehensive energy bill that had drawn broad bipartisan support after lawmakers failed to agree on including a $600 million amendment to address the crisis over lead-tainted water in Flint, Mich.
Senators voted twice to end debate on the energy bill, first falling 10 votes short of the 60-vote threshold needed to bring the item to a conclusion, and then falling six votes short. Absent their Flint aid amendment, 38 Democrats, including one of the bill’s chief authors, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, voted against moving forward on the first vote, and 39 Democrats voted no on the second vote.
So it really looks like Bernie missed a vote not on sending $600 million in aid to Flint, but whether the Energy Bill should proceed to a full Senate vote without the $600 million in aid for Flint. As his expected NAY vote was not required to block cloture, why would he leave the NH campaign last Thursday to travel to DC to vote on it? Come on, man! Do you really think that if Bernie had the opportunity to cast the deciding NAY he would not have jetted off to DC, called a press conference, and spoke at length as to how horrible it was for Republicans to ignore the plight of the impoverished, majority-minority community of Flint?
Of course if this had happened instead, then the HillYes’ers would have undoubtedly smeared Bernie for taking advantage of the Flint disaster for political expediency. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
As for the charge that Bernie choose SNL over Flint, the vote was last Thursday, not last Saturday, when Bernie left NH for NYC to appear on SNL.
There is a saying that the best place to hide a lie is between two truths. The Clintons seem to have perverted inverted this proverb by hiding the truth (Bernie missed a cloture vote on the Energy Bill) between two lies (Bernie missed a vote on aid to Flint; and Bernie missed this vote because he went to NYC to appear on SNL).
It is a shame that the casual way with which the Clintons lie has trickled down to infect their supporters. But I guess when you have been battle tested by coming under fire on tarmacs, lying straight-faced becomes second nature… or maybe even first.