On Sunday, Flint, Michigan’s, eighteen month-plus struggle to get safe drinking water became an issue in the Democratic primary. When asked what issue should have been discussed at that evening’s debate, Hillary Clinton raised Flint, “a city in the United States of America where the population which is poor in many ways and majority African American has been drinking and bathing in lead contaminated water.”
Clinton laid out the things she had done in the previous week to learn about the problem and suggested that her call, on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to ask for federal help led him to take action. “I said, ‘It was outrageous that the governor hadn’t acted’ and within two hours he had,” Hillary said, suggesting though not saying explicitly there was a causal connection between the two events.