Category: Electoral Politics Page 20 of 30

Just as people were soooo convinced that Trump couldn’t win the Republican nomination.

Let’s clear a couple things up.

1. Trump is not stupid by any useful definition of stupid. He has spent his life getting what he wanted.
2. Trump is not crazy, except in terms of being crazy like a fox. He knew what he was doing and it worked.

Trump has a basic critique:

Our elites are corrupt fuck-ups who work for rich people, screw over ordinary people, and couldn’t manage to a Taco Bell.

They have bungled the economy, they have lost multiple wars, and they allowed 9/11 to happen on their watch.

Trump, because he is rich and successful, is not politically corrupt; he does not need to take anyone else’s money. He owes no one anything.

Because he has played at the top of the game, he knows how politics and business works and because he needs nothing from anyone, he will use his skill and knowledge to help ordinary shmoes.

America’s economy will work under him. America will avoid stupid wars.

This is a strong critique, because it is true. America’s elites are corrupt incompetents whose only skill is funneling more money to rich people. They have lost multiple wars, bungled terrorism, and completely fucked up the economy for ordinary people.

Whether Trump is the right man to fix this is more questionable, but his critique works against Clinton. She was there for all of it and she was in favor of virtually all of it. Clinton is a corrupt, oligarchical tool who never saw a war she didn’t like, and whose reign as Secretary of State was an endless series of fuck-ups.

Maybe Trump isn’t all he says he is, but many Americans are very likely to be willing to take a flier on him, because his critique of Clinton will be right in the essence, even if it misses some of the details.

I shouldn’t have to point out, but apparently do, that Trump will now move to the center. He’s pandered to the right-wingers whom he needed to to win the nomination. Now, he’ll pander to the people he needs to win the presidency.

I do not know whether Trump will win. But I am quite certain he can win.

This is true, also, because Clinton is an incompetent executive and campaigner. She damn near lost the nomination to a socialist. She did lose in ’08 when she had everything going for her. She promotes cronyism, her entire campaign is, “No, we can’t, don’t be a child, you can’t have anything good,” and her instincts are terrible.

Clinton’s campaign premise will be, “I have ovaries and he’s crazy.”

That isn’t a good message against, “I’ll make America great again and give you a good job.”

Clinton’s entire hope comes down to Trump’s bigotry. She will rest heavily on the minority and female votes.  But if inroads are made there, she can easily lose. Women are not the monolith people act like they are: Married women often vote in their husband’s interests, seeing those interests as their own.

Also, it remains to be seen how much people will come out for Hillary. They won’t vote for Trump? Okay. But vote for Hillary? A different thing.

There’s plenty of time before the election, and Clinton does not seem to me to be a sure thing.

Sanders-021507-18335- 0004

So, Sanders has most likely lost. Last minute upsets are possible, but highly unlikely.

And now come the calls for Bernie to be conciliatory.

This misses the point.

Sanders doesn’t need anything Clinton can give.

Any promises she makes with respect to his priorities are not credible. He’s old and his career is all but over anyway, so there is little she can offer in terms of career “advancement.”

Why does he need to be conciliatory? Only “for the good of the party.”  But the party has not been good to Sanders–in fact, it has repeatedly put its hand on the scales to help Hillary.

Clinton’s policies are far enough from Sanders that the only argument for him to be “conciliatory” are based on Trump being even further from him. But on things like not attacking foreign countries, Trump is actually closer to Sanders.

From my POV, the onus is on Clinton to be credibly conciliatory to Bernie, and more importantly his supporters. If her entire argument is “I’m the lesser evil,” then she should expect little beyond the occasional symbolic olive branch from Sanders or his followers.

Of course, it’s hard to be conciliatory for Clinton. Her entire campaign has been based on “I deserve this,” which doesn’t leave a lot of room for saying to other people, “I see your side.” She’s already saying things like TPP only needs a few tweaks, etc.

She’s simply, and to the core, a right wing hawk who is fundamentally opposed to most left-wing policies and who only changes her mind once those policies are inevitable (as with gay marriage, which she supported very late in the game).

In emotive language, she’s evil. Bernie’s no wonder on a lot of issues, but he did actually oppose all the key wars, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and so on. Clinton? On the wrong side of almost every issue which has mattered for her entire career and she’s not even believable where she’s better than Bernie, for instance on gun-control, about which she has attacked Obama as anti-guns, but then pandered in PA on gun-control.

So Clinton has to rely on Bernie being loyal to a party which has screwed him repeatedly in order to help her win the nomination, and she can’t credibly give him anything that matters because she’s not trustworthy on any issue that matters to Sanders or his followers.

Conciliatory? Ridiculous. She’s not credible, and he doesn’t need her. If she wants to be conciliated, she had best go first and find out how to make it credible.

Ok.  I’ve had enough. Let’s speak truthfully about Hillary Clinton:

She voted for the Iraq war and defended that vote for years.

She was a primary driver behind the Libyan war.

She was involved in the cluster-fuck that is Syria.

She was for the “welfare reform” and three strikes laws during her husband’s administration. She actively spoke for them, thus, she is culpable.

She opposes the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.

She has blamed homeowners for the financial crisis.

Henry Kissinger, a man who has a great deal of responsibility for two genocides was her adviser while she was Secretary of State, and he is her personal friend.

Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq sanctions which killed half a million Iraqi children or so.

She has compared Putin to Hitler.

It is a fact that Clinton is a bad person, who has championed policies which have killed a lot of people, and which have impoverished many others.

No Realpolitik case can be made for these policies: They have clearly made the world a more dangerous place, vastly increasing failed states and terrorism. These policies were unethical both in and of themselves, and massive suffering have been direct results.

I have been told by people who know her that she is a wonderful, concerned friend, and very warm in small groups.

I care about that as much as I do about the fact that Americans thought that George W. Bush was “someone who they wanted to have a beer with.”

Clinton, as a politician, has supported terrible policies. Moreover, she has not learned from these policy failures. For example, after Iraq, she supported Libya.

I am tired of the “lesser evil” argument; but it is not clear to me that Clinton is the lesser evil.