Last night’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate between Hillary Clin­ton and Bernie Sanders includ­ed a lengthy exchange over an issue of con­cern to Wash­ing­ton State’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship: the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, which mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion fought hard to pro­tect and then to reau­tho­rize after Repub­li­cans shame­ful­ly allowed its char­ter to expire.

The can­di­dates dis­agree over whether the bank is a good idea. Hillary Clin­ton sup­ports it; Bernie Sanders oppos­es it. Each can­di­date spoke to their posi­tion around mid­way through the debate, as we can see from the tran­script (be warned, in the inter­est of offer­ing fuller con­text, this is going to be a lengthy excerpt):

CLINTON: You know, if we’re going to argue about the 1990s instead of talk­ing about the future, which I’d much pre­fer because I think every elec­tion is about the future, and you all deserve to know what we will do to help you have a brighter future — but, if we are going to talk about the 1990s, I think it’s only fair to say that at the end of the 1990s, after two terms of my hus­band’s pres­i­den­cy, the unem­ploy­ment rate in Michi­gan was 4.4 percent.

There had been a net increase of 54,000 man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs. There had been a net increase of 653,000 jobs overall.

And, one of the ways jobs were brought to, and grown here in Michi­gan was through some­thing called the Export-Import Bank which helped a lot of busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small busi­ness­es, be able to export around the world.

Sen­a­tor Sanders oppos­es that. I think we’re in a race for exports. I think Chi­na, Ger­many, every­body else sup­ports their busi­ness­es. Here in Michi­gan there’s been $11 bil­lion dol­lars in recent years used to sup­port exports, pri­mar­i­ly from small businesses.

I favor that, he’s opposed it. I want to do every­thing I can for us to com­pete and win in the glob­al economy…

COOPER: Sen­a­tor Sanders…

CLINTON: … and that’s what I will do as president…

COOPER: I just want to explain to view­ers what the Export- Import Bank is, in case every­body is not quite as wonk­ish as every­body on this stage here. The Export-Import Bank, it’s a fed­er­al agency, it gives loans to com­pa­nies that export Amer­i­can prod­ucts. Sen­a­tor Sanders, you do oppose it. The vast major­i­ty of the bank’s cus­tomers are small busi­ness­es, 176 right here in Michigan.

What do you say to small busi­ness owners.…

SANDERS: I’ll tell you what I say…

COOPER: Who rely on the bank to make their com­pa­ny profitable…

SANDERS: I’ll tell you what I say. Do you know what the oth­er name of the Export-Import Bank is? What it’s called in Wash­ing­ton [D.C.]? It’s called the bank of Boe­ing because Boe­ing itself gets 40 per­cent of the mon­ey dis­charged by the Export-Import Bank.

Sev­en­ty-five per­cent of the funds going from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the Export-Import Bank, goes to large, prof­itable cor­po­ra­tions. Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have shut down in Amer­i­ca, and have gone abroad to exploit poor people.

You know what? I don’t think it’s a great idea for the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er to have to sub­si­dize through cor­po­rate wel­fare prof­itable cor­po­ra­tions who down­size in the Unit­ed States of America.

COOPER: Senator…

SANDERS: Sev­en­ty-Five per­cent of that mon­ey goes to large prof­itable corporations.

COOPER: Sen­a­tor Sanders, you are the only mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus to vote against it. You’re agree­ing with Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz on this, why is he right and the Democ­rats wrong?

SANDERS: Well, let me tell you, I don’t want to break the bad news.

(LAUGHTER)

SANDERS: Democ­rats are not always right. Democ­rats have often sup­port­ed cor­po­rate welfare…

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: Democ­rats have sup­port­ed dis­as­trous trade agree­ments, but on this issue I do not believe in cor­po­rate wel­fare, and in fact, Sec­re­tary Clin­ton may know or not know, but as a mem­ber of the Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, I worked hard and suc­cess­ful­ly to make sure that at least 20 per­cent of the mon­ey went to small busi­ness­es which is where it should go and not to prof­itable cor­po­ra­tions and down­siz­ing in our country.

COOPER: Sec­re­tary Clinton?

CLINTON: When I trav­eled around the world on your behalf as Sec­re­tary of State and went to 112 coun­tries, one thing I saw every­where was how Euro­pean and Asian coun­tries were sup­port­ing their com­pa­nies back in their coun­tries, to be able to make sales and con­tracts in a lot of the rest of the world. In fact, with­out the export-import bank, sup­port­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes — I believe more jobs would be lost here at home and more jobs lit­er­al­ly would be export­ed. Instead of export­ing prod­ucts, we would be export­ing jobs.

I just believe that Sen­a­tor Sanders took that lone­ly posi­tion because most of us who saw the results — I saw it as a sen­a­tor from New York. Your Sen­a­tors saw it here in Michi­gan. They can give you the names of 240 com­pa­nies in Michi­gan that have been helped.

There is a com­pa­ny in Lev­o­nia being helped, there are com­pa­nies all over this state. I know, if we are going to com­pete and win in the glob­al econ­o­my, we can’t let every oth­er coun­try sup­port their com­pa­nies and we take a hands off approach. I will not agree with that.

COOPER: I’m going to let you respond but I just want to push back on this. Sen­a­tor Sanders is cor­rect, the major­i­ty of the mon­ey does go Boe­ing, does go to com­pa­nies like Caterpillar.

Do they need this money?

CLINTON: I will tell you what, Ander­son, after I inves­ti­gat­ed it, I con­clud­ed they did and here’s why. There two big plane man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world, there’s Air­bus and Boe­ing. Air­bus does every­thing it can to get con­tracts to sell planes every­where in the world. We don’t have as quite an aggres­sive out­reach from our government.

I did go in many places around the world to sell Amer­i­can prod­ucts because the alter­na­tives were usu­al­ly Euro­pean, Asian, pri­mar­i­ly Chi­nese prod­ucts. That to me was an unac­cept­able concession.

So yes, Boe­ing and oth­er big com­pa­nies get sup­port just like their com­peti­tors do from the com­pa­nies that they are from in the coun­tries that pro­vide the support.

COOPER: Thank you.

Sen­a­tor Sanders?

SANDERS: Isn’t it trag­ic that the large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions mak­ing bil­lions of dol­lars a year, shut­ting down in Amer­i­ca, going to Chi­na, going to Mex­i­co? Absolute­ly they need a hand­out from the Amer­i­can mid­dle class — I don’t think so.

It should be not­ed that the Export-Import Bank does­n’t mere­ly ben­e­fit large com­pa­nies like Boe­ing and Cater­pil­lar. It also ben­e­fits small busi­ness­es that export goods to for­eign mar­kets. Oth­er coun­tries help their com­pa­nies make sales by pro­vid­ing financ­ing, includ­ing the Euro­pean coun­tries where Air­bus does busi­ness. Why should­n’t the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca help its companies?

“In FY 2015, near­ly 90 per­cent of EXIM Bank’s trans­ac­tions — more than 2,300 — direct­ly sup­port­ed Amer­i­can small busi­ness­es,” says a fact sheet on Ex-Im’s web­site.

It should also be not­ed hat Ex-Im actu­al­ly gen­er­ates mon­ey for the Unit­ed States Trea­sury. As the fact sheet also says: “Over the past two decades, the Bank has gen­er­at­ed near­ly $7 bil­lion more than the cost of its oper­a­tions. That’s mon­ey EXIM Bank gen­er­ates for the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er, to help reduce the fed­er­al deficit.”

In our view, the Export-Import Bank is a valu­able pub­lic ser­vice that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­vides to Amer­i­can busi­ness­es large and small. We sup­port it.

Bernie Sanders does not sup­port Ex-Im. That may both­er Wash­ing­ton State’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship and edi­to­r­i­al boards. But will it cost Sanders sup­port in the upcom­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial precinct cau­cus­es on March 26th, as the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer’s Joel Con­nel­ly has sug­gest­ed? We don’t think so.

The basis for our belief is simple.

Ex-Im mat­ters to many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, but we’re guess­ing most cau­cus­go­ers will be cau­cus­ing for the can­di­date who they trust and iden­ti­fy with, in spite of any dis­agree­ments they may have with the can­di­dates on the issues.

That’s usu­al­ly the way it is. The issues are cer­tain­ly rel­e­vant to informed vot­ers, but issues sim­ply don’t dri­ve vot­ing deci­sions for most folks. Trust does. Peo­ple vote their val­ues, and they vote their iden­ti­ty. Authen­tic­i­ty matters.

There’s no evi­dence that sug­gests that any sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple decide who to vote for by pulling out score­cards when they fill out bal­lots, and run­ning through a laun­dry list of issue posi­tions before cal­cu­lat­ing who they’ll fill in the oval for.

Fur­ther­more, Wash­ing­ton State’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus­es are an exer­cise in grass­roots pol­i­tics. Wash­ing­ton State’s edi­to­r­i­al boards and busi­ness elites don’t con­trol the out­come — Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers and Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists do, as they should!

In 2008, most of Wash­ing­ton State’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship (includ­ing the superdel­e­gates) backed Hillary Clin­ton. She enjoyed the endorse­ments of Jay Inslee, Pat­ty Mur­ray, Maria Cantwell, Gary Locke, Ron Sims, and more.

Barack Oba­ma was able to secure the sup­port of Adam Smith, Greg Nick­els, and then-Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire, but Clin­ton def­i­nite­ly had more elect­ed lead­ers in her camp. Did it help Clin­ton ride to vic­to­ry? Nope. Oba­ma won a deci­sive vic­to­ry in Wash­ing­ton. He swept the state, and cap­tured most of Wash­ing­ton’s delegates.

Oba­ma’s string of Feb­ru­ary vic­to­ries, which includ­ed his tri­umph here in Wash­ing­ton, gave him momen­tum and cru­cial del­e­gates. It made all the dif­fer­ence in the end, because Clin­ton kept com­pet­ing through March, April, and May, only bring­ing her cam­paign to an end in June when Oba­ma clinched the nomination.

This time around, Wash­ing­ton State’s polit­i­cal lead­ers are again most­ly in Hillary Clin­ton’s cor­ner. But that does not mean Clin­ton will be vic­to­ri­ous. The fate of the cau­cus­es will be deter­mined by the vot­ers and activists who show up. It’s smart that Clin­ton and Sanders have each opened offices here, and hired staff in an effort to get their sup­port­ers out on March 26th. May the best can­di­date win!

And, to those who pas­sion­ate­ly sup­port Ex-Im and care about its future, we offer this advice: You’re bet­ter served work­ing to edu­cate Bernie Sanders about Ex-Im’s val­ue than try­ing to use his cur­rent posi­tion against him. If he hap­pens to become the nom­i­nee, it’s going to be impor­tant for our state that he rethink his position.