Bill Clinton says in KC that Hillary will stand up for average Americans

Reason makes for a quicker path to progress than radicalism, former president Bill Clinton told a midday Kansas City crowd Friday.

Few people, he said, devote themselves more to the hard and grinding politics that can improve the lives of everyday Americans than Hillary Clinton.

“I think she ought to be president because she is the best change-maker,” Clinton said of his wife. “Too many people in too many places have been left out. … She will change that.”

Her primary foe, Sen. Bernie Sanders, pushes ideas that reach beyond what’s likely ever to happen, Bill Clinton said. That, he argued, could block the way to achievable reforms — things that might keep more students in school, more workers on the job and more profits on U.S. soil.

Clinton pointed to differences between his wife and Sanders on health insurance proposals. Sanders wants to shift to a Medicare-for-all model that would put a single agency in charge of health insurance. Sanders argues that’s the best way to make health coverage universal and to eliminate insurance companies as a middleman.

Hillary Clinton attacks that as a political misstep, one that could reopen the hard-fought political gains of the Affordable Care Act that are so treasured by Democrats. Bill Clinton reinforced her theme that Sanders’ approach would put the Affordable Care Act in jeopardy. Better, he said, to move incrementally to expand the legislation until it covers all Americans.

“It’s a lot easier to go from 90 to 100 than it is to go from zero to 100,” Bill Clinton told a crowd of about 300 people at the Kansas City Carpenters Union Training Facility.

The man now campaigning for “first dude,” as one of those introducing him put it, was in Kansas City just a few days before Tuesday’s Missouri primary.

Hillary Clinton holds a commanding delegate lead in the race to win the party’s nomination at its summer convention in Philadelphia. But she lost the Michigan primary to Sanders on Tuesday, and he ran away with the Kansas caucus last week.

This story was originally published March 11, 2016 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Bill Clinton says in KC that Hillary will stand up for average Americans."