The wedding dance
Hillary Clinton says she won in Nevada because America is more than a “one issue” country. Actually, right now it’s not. The issue of the legalized bribery of our public officials shadows all other electoral issues, and Clinton would give anything for you to believe that her acceptance of large contributions from Wall Street does not affect the way she does her job. These bloodsuckers of the Financial District are confidence men that do everything within the law-- and sometimes outside of it-- to maximize their profit margins. Still, she expects us to believe that they give money to her just for the hell of it? And more maddening still, she makes comments such as this that suggest she thinks she’s the only adult at the table.This year’s presidential race is shaping up to be more of the same, thanks to lies, distortion, and institutional delegate malfeasance on the Democratic side, and more of the same fear and loathing from the Grand Old Party. Oh, you thought this year was different? The overheated rhetoric? The bad manners? The supposed rejection of establishment candidates? Not in the slightest. Less than a month from now, the stage will be formally set for a match-up of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and just like 1992, and ’96, and 2000, and ’04, and ’08, and ’12, the choice will be between two heads of the same corporate monster. But this year is different? you say, Trump has damaged our politics. Right.
Five years ago, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were exactly the same, politically. Donald was a Clinton Democrat, a free-trader, pro-choice, a critic of a war in Iraq that he didn’t start criticizing until the situation had become catastrophic. Clinton was, of course, literally a Clinton Democrat, a free-trader, pro-choice, a critic of a war in Iraq that she voted for, but turned against as soon as the situation had become catastrophic, and also such a corporate shill that a Manhattan billionaire developer could publicly support her role in government without fear of having his financial hustle disrupted. Bill Clinton brags now on the stump about how Donald called and offered his support when the Republicans were being mean during his presidency. The Clintons even attended Trump’s wedding to Melania Knauss in Florida in 2005. Like anybody else that wants to curry real favor with the Clintons, Trump gave to their foundation-- as recently as 2014. The only difference between the two candidates now, unless you’re pretty gullible to believe more, is that Trump began playing a character on stage that would allow him to successfully navigate the traveling big top that is the Republican primaries. (For purposes of full disclosure, Clinton has also been presenting herself to primary voters as something she’s not.)
I seem to personally know a lot of mushy liberals that were warmed by reports last week of the largely-unknown, close personal relationship between Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the late Antonin Scalia. The two diametrically-opposed Supreme Court Justices put their work aside, we’re told, and came to be great friends-- a throwback concept to an earlier era, we’re also told. Ok, so now I’m asking this question to those liberals very seriously: What is the difference between the Ginsberg/Scalia relationship and the relationship between Clinton and Trump? They socialize away from work, living in the same city, and they were publicly complimenting each other up until the last presidential election cycle. Yes, you say, but Trump is a racist and a xenophobe. He has coarsened American political culture with his rude behavior. To that I offer that Scalia is a bigot and a homophobe who believes that racism no longer exists in America and that homosexuals should be thrown in prison for having consensual sex-. The honorable justice was coarsening American political culture (his favored attack: "Get over it") long before Trump entered the sphere of government.
Here we go again. We have a Democrat and a Republican who are expert at drawing personality distinctions between one another during the campaign, but have no intention of governing any differently from one another if elected. Wall Street has vetted both parties' choices and given its approval. The rest is just window treatments. We know what Trump would do in office because his kind are all the same. The caricature was well-drawn and specific even before he performed it for us on television for eleven seasons. If there was no Donald Trump in a city like New York, there would be another Donald Trump. And we know how Clinton would govern because her husband was already there. She would continue reading one script of promises and deeply-held beliefs in front of an audience of the Black Congressional Caucus, and then an entirely different one behind closed doors to investment bank executives. (For what it's worth, I would like to see the transcripts of Bill's speeches as well.) Unless a third party candidate gets into the race to disrupt American political business as usual, there’s going to be nothing more of substance here to see. Remember that if this is indeed “the most important presidential election of your lifetime,” as you will soon be told, that makes it the fourth one in a row.
posted by CM @ 6:16 PM
11 Comments:
No it makes a difference. George W. Bush was a catastrophic president and now thanks to Obama, it's better. Not perfect, but better. Trump, I have no doubt, would be catastrophic. Hillary, while deeply flawed, would be better.
No, it doesn't. Bush bombed four countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Pakistan) in eight years, instituted torture, and gave us a financial collapse. Hard to top but Obama has bombed seven countries in seven years(Bush's four, plus Syria, Libya, and Yemen), gave torture bipartisan cover (moving it now from Cuba probably to Illinois), commanded drone strikes on Muslim weddings, recategorizing the victims as "enemy combatants," and ordered the assassination of an American citizen in Yemen without trial or even a formal criminal charge. (Bush only wishes he had balls that big.) Obama still holds Bush's prisoners in custody without trial-- now seven years later. He has used the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to prosecute Americans not only more than Bush, but more than all of his Oval Office predecessors combined-- and he has used it to prosecute whistle blowers, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, almost exclusively. Now he's prosecuting Apple for failing to allow him to break into all of our phones. The banking collapse happened under Bush, but nobody from that set has been prosecuted-- not one person, and that falls on Obama's watch. The banks are even bigger now than they were when they were too big to fail. He's done nothing to attempt to break them up. Hillary's husband damaged America as badly as Bush, maybe worse. He gave us mandatory sentencing, unequal prison sentences for black offenders, escalated the drug war, signed Glass Steagal into law, breaking down the Progressive Era wall between banks and securities (actually causing the housing collapse- it wasn't Bush) and he signed NAFTA into law, turning the fortunes of two unfortunate countries over to nationless corporations.
I forgot some. Bush never threatened war against Iran during his presidency (even while Al Gore's 2000 running mate, Joe Lieberman, was doing so in the Senate.) Obama has done that. And which man has deported a larger number of people? Shockingly, Obama's going to win that one, and if he doesn't, that will only be because of a backlog of legal challenges. Obama finally came out for gay marriage in 2012. Bush's wife told him successfully to stop talking about the issue in 2004, and the former president reportedly offered to officiate a lesbian friend's wedding last summer. The woman that the Human Rights Campaign endorsed for president came out for gay marriage the same week that Bill O'Reilly did in 2013. Aaron, you definitely could make a list like this in reverse, but my point is, I have this much.
And I forgot some more. Thanks to Susan Sarandon on Facebook for this one. Hillary's campaign has accepted over $100,000 from a private prison company. Don't expect to see any changes in our modern system of slavery under her guidance. And she has accepted this support even though Washington now has a BIPARTISAN prison reform movement that would ultimately do away with Bill's "three strikes" law, end Bill's mandatory sentencing minimums, reduce sentences for non-violent crimes, and address the heinous state crimes of child imprisonment and solitary confinement. Republicans to the Left of Hillary and her donors on this issue include Charles Grassley, John Cornyn, and Tim Scott.
No, still not convinced Trump wouldn't be worse. Call me a cynic.
And the most important issue in the world is climate change and Obama has made strides, at least far more than ANY republican would, which for that reason alone warrants going out on election day and voting for even a shitty Obama-like Democrat. And also, Clinton's Supreme Court nominees would be less creepy. I suspect women and gays don't have to be told that.
And the most important issue in the world is climate change and Obama has made strides, at least far more than ANY republican would, which for that reason alone warrants going out on election day and voting for even a shitty Obama-like Democrat. And also, Clinton's Supreme Court nominees would be less creepy. I suspect women and gays don't have to be told that.
No, still not convinced Trump wouldn't be worse. Call me a cynic.
No. That is wrong. The Clintons and their foundation have taken money from ExxonMobil, Chevron, foreign cash (unethically, and possibly illegally) from Saudi Arabia, and from an office in the Canadian government in charge of promoting the Keystone pipeline. If that pipeline was under your backyard, I suspect you wouldn't "have to be told" how bad that would be. Who causes pollution? It's not an abstract problem. It's a very specific group of people that is trying to always increase profits, even though nobody anywhere, Republican or Democrat, likes dirty water or dirty air. How do they combat that problem? By buying people in decision-making positions!
You're not a cynic. I'm a cynic. You just don't seem to be armed with any facts. Only a talking point. There IS a major difference between two candidates going head to head right now-- the political fight of our lives (so far) is right now, between Clinton and Sanders. They are currently dead even in delegates, but Clinton leads by more than 100- insurmountable- when you count "super delegates." It is a stacked deck. Does it really strike you as a good voting strategy to just say you're going to support the winner when a finger is on the scale? Does it seem at all obvious that the Republicans have a strategy of going further and further to the right because they know the Democrats will follow them into the new "middle"? Republicans now control the courts, the Senate, the Congress, nearly all of the governorships, and nearly all of the state legislatures outside the northeast. The Clintons have been the lead promoters of an electoral strategy that has been no good for anybody but them. And does it seem like a good strategy for the future to plead with young people to get involved with your party, bring them out to vote and to rallies in the millions, and then take the candidate that EIGHTY percent of them support, screw him over, and just turn your back on that support? He can't talk about it, but there are plenty of reasons why Bernie's not a Democrat. Why do you assume these people even know what comprises an "electable" candidate?
Where in your argument do you think you've convinced me Trump would be a better president to disprove my hypothesis he'd be worse?
Where in your argument do you think you've convinced me Trump would be a better president to disprove my hypothesis he'd be worse?
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