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U.S. Election Thread 2016-03 – Yves Smith On “Not Hillary!”
Not Hillary!
Yves Smith of the Naked Capitalism explains why many of her progressive acquaintances will either not vote, or vote for Trump in the upcoming U.S. election. I recommend to read this in full.
For starters two excerpts:
Hillary's experience is one of failure. And she did not learn from it.
Hillary has a résumé of glittering titles with disasters or at best thin accomplishments under each. Her vaunted co-presidency with Bill? After her first major project, health care reform, turned into such a debacle that it was impossible to broach the topic for a generation, she retreated into a more traditional first lady role. As New York senator, she accomplished less with a bigger name and from a more powerful state than Sanders did. As secretary of state, she participated and encouraged strategically pointless nation-breaking in Iraq and Syria. She bureaucratically outmaneuvered Obama, leading to U.S. intervention in Libya, which he has called the worst decision of his administration. And her plan to fob her domestic economic duties off on Bill comes off as an admission that she can’t handle being president on her own.
And the conclusion:
The Sanders voters in Naked Capitalism’s active commentariat also explicitly reject lesser-evilism, the cudgel that has previously kept true lefties somewhat in line. They are willing to gamble, given that outsider presidents like Jimmy Carter and celebrity governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura didn’t get much done, that a Trump presidency represents an acceptable cost of inflicting punishment on the Democratic Party for 20 years of selling out ordinary Americans.
The Clintons, like the Bourbons before the French Revolution, have ensconced themselves in such a bubble of operative and media sycophancy that they’ve mistakenly viewed escalating distress and legitimate demands from citizens as mere noise.
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If my readers are representative, Clinton and the Democratic Party are about to have a long-overdue day of reckoning.
To vote for the far right because the former center (left) has lost its bearing is a somewhat dangerous gamble. The U.S. has a relative stable, inertial system with lots of checks and balances that make this move less risky than similar moves underway in Poland, Germany or France. But unless the center left/right politicians recognize that they have lost their former majority there is no chance they will shun the neoliberal globalization nonsense they impose on their constituency.
Voting for a stronger movement towards a genuine left is be a better strategy than voting for the far right. But notorious lack of unity within the left, center-right control over the media and the absence of a successful current archetype will keep a majority away from taking that step.
I agree that the day of reckoning is a long-overdue day. But it may not bring the reckoning we want.
For those contemplating write-in votes, this site gives the requirements for US states, as of May 2008 (lots of voters were unhappy with the choices on the ballots back then).
http://writein2008.blogspot.com
Perhaps people here could call their state election offices to find out if any changes have been made, such as requiring write-ins to be registered ahead of the election (like, what’s the use of a write-in if the individual has to be registered ahead of time???). Let other readers know what you find out. States and territories.
I live in NJ looked into how my possible 2008 write-in vote would be counted. Turned out NO WRITE-IN VOTES ARE COUNTED unless the election is so close the write-ins might affect the outcome. So, I voted the Green Party ballot line for president, Cynthia McKinney. In looking up the ’08 results I just learned all the Green Party presidential votes came to 0.01% of the votes for a total of 3,950. All the write-in votes were double that, 0.02% for a total of 7,718, but how many went to each write-in was left uncounted.
ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Jersey,_2008
Those numbers may indicate one reason Bernie ran as a Democrat. Plus, of course, it was the only way to get real attention to his reasons for running. And, for all of us who paid attention, it took until well into the primary season for the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) to report on anything other the horse race. But, finally, some of his proposals were introduced to general public.
Beginning with Carter, the effect of Big Bidness began to strongly influence the leadership of the Democratic Party (deregulation began big time under Carter). By the time of Obama considering his run, Wall Street had accomplished its hostile takeover of the party, buying out, with the power of Big Money, the major candidates in just about every office nation wide. Bill Clinton was masterful in speaking to the Dem electorate as if he were one with their aims and needs, but his loyalty was for his new masters. For most voters that only became really clear with the results of his deregulation of Wall Street causing the Great Recession. Most of the presidential candidates, until Obama, were not as effective in covering their Wall Street loyalty and did not win when it seemed any real Dem should have won. Of course it took some chicanery and a Supreme Court soft coup to give BushBoy his presidency….
Bernie knew there were many, many Americans who believed strongly in the good the New Deal FDR and his like-thinking following presidents brought to most Americans There was a deep hunger for a candidate who actually would implement the legislation and executive actions to keep the accomplishments of the New Dealers intact and would expand on them for the good of the vast majority of Americans. The way Dems and independents flocked to support Bernie speaks strongly to this desire and to Bernie’s wisdom in running for the Dem nomination.
Bernie tells his voters it will not be easy to take back the Democratic Party, that it will take a revolution, and revolutions take hard work. He sees it as a bloodless revolution, but revolt we the voters must. Bernie knows he must fight on to the convention and we the people must work hard afterwards to take back the party or forge a new one, leaving the Corporatist Dems to the tender mercies of the Republicans. It will take energy, enthusiasm, unity, and guts to do what Bernie sees as possible and necessary.
So, I know I need to get off my butt and, with many others, we should all lift out eyes from our computer and cell phone screens for hours on end to do that work. And, yes, it takes time to also keep abreast of all the horrors of living in a Corporatist state, to know what is being done to us….
Posted by: jawbone | Jun 3 2016 16:25 utc | 104
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