Clinton: Democrats want more perfect union, while GOP divisive

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that he understands voters’ “road rage” but said they should support Democrats’ positive agenda, not what he said is a divisive one offered by Republicans.

“The problem is that resentments, even those that are justified, are a lousy basis for constructing a life, much less constructing a response to the complicated challenges we face today,” he said.

Clinton spoke at the Arkansas Democrats’ 35th annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, the party’s biggest annual fundraising event, at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock. The party plans next year to change the event’s name.

In an hour-long speech, Clinton mentioned Republican nominee Donald Trump by name only twice, including once in a joke about how the best way to get Mexicans to pay for a wall on the southern border was to let Trump borrow the money to build it and install slot machines. But throughout the speech, he criticized Republicans for being divisive with Trump in mind.

“All they care about is ‘them,’” he said. “Now we’ve been through 35 years of ‘thems.’ ‘Them’ the African-Americans. ‘Them’ the Hispanics and especially first-generation immigrants. ‘Them’ the LGBT community. ‘Them,’ all those pushy women. Them, them, them. Now they want one of ‘them’ to be president. At least I do, and I hope you do.”

He said Democrats want to “form a more perfect union,” while Republicans have treated “white working class voters like a cheap date.” At one point, he called former President George W. Bush “the last Republican who doesn’t seem to be afraid of immigrants.”

Clinton said Americans have legitimate reasons to be frustrated, including inequality, which he said is bad economics because consumers need money in order to buy things other people make. He said the biggest driver of that inequality has been companies being run mostly for the benefit of shareholders rather than also for customers, employees and communities.

He said that Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a coded way of telling a certain segment of the population that they would be returned to their former incomes and social standing.

“Our job is to tell those people, we’re not going to give you false hope, but we will give you real hope. … We’ve got to go from resentment to serious responses, from anger to real answers, from divisive politics to inclusive economics,” he said. “And we’ve got to do a better job of explaining to people that we’re in it for them and that anybody that spends all their time trying to keep you mad at somebody else is not really your friend. They want your vote, not a better life for you.”

Clinton praised his wife Hillary Clinton for her work with health care as first lady and for her work as a senator and as secretary of state. When the Clintons’ health care plan failed to pass through Congress, she made a list of changes that could be made, resulting in programs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program and a tax cut for families who adopt, he said. As a senator, she passed bills with support from Republicans and obtained money for health care for first responders to the September 11 attacks. As secretary of state, he said she negotiated a treaty with Russia that reduced the chances of accidental or intentional nuclear war and negotiated sanctions on Iran that included the support of Russia and China.

He called for the United States to undertake an infrastructure program that includes investments in highways, airports, broadband and clean energy. He said Americans should be able to refinance college loans, and he touted Hillary Clinton’s plan to help Americans pay off those loans with three years of community service or convert it to a mortgage-like instrument and refinance.

Clinton said more than once that the United States is the world’s best positioned country, with the world’s youngest, most diverse workforce and the best system for higher education and job training. He said the country is less racist, sexist and homophobic than it was 20 years ago, but, “We just don’t want to be around anybody that disagrees with us anymore.”

Clinton had appeared the day before with Bush as part of their joint Presidential Leadership Scholars program, which provides leadership lessons for class members from across the country. He said the participants say what they liked best is the diversity of ideas.

“Finally I get to spend some time with somebody who doesn’t agree with me on everything who’s not crazy and doesn’t hate my guts,” he said they are telling him.