politics and politicians
See other politics and politicians Articles
Title: The astonishing weakness of Hillary Clinton
Source:
TheWeek
URL Source: http://theweek.com/articles/569184/ ... shing-weakness-hillary-clinton
Published: Jul 31, 2015
Author: Michael Brendan Dougherty
Post Date: 2015-07-31 10:43:17 by Tooconservative
Ping List: *2016 The Likely Suspects* Subscribe to *2016 The Likely Suspects*
Keywords: None
Views: 6765
Comments: 124
Hillary Clinton is as unpopular as she ever has been. Her favorability ratings have fallen to just 40 percent. Her campaign is already heading south, even though she has serious advantages over everyone else in the campaign, both Democratic and Republican. Her opponents in the Democratic field do not pose a plausible mathematical threat. Bernie Sanders can attract huge crowds in college towns, but he is going nowhere with the African-American voters who would be key to building an anti-Clinton Democratic primary coalition. Martin O'Malley's record, shaped by his transition from the Baltimore mayoralty to the Maryland statehouse, has made him radioactive to an activist Democratic base that wants criminal justice reform and that winces when a politician like him says, "All Lives Matter." Clinton is thus free to define her agenda apart from them. Because the Republican field is startlingly unanimous in its positions, Clinton has the opportunity of running against a coherent platform, while picking out its weakest spokesperson on every individual issue. She can run against Trump on immigration, against Huckabee on social issues, against Walker on foreign policy. But it's an opportunity that she has so far passed over. Perhaps she doesn't want to get bogged down in actual policy details, always unpopular with an electorate that grows fat on cliché but retches at details. Still, it means that the entirety of Clinton's campaign has alternated between distancing herself from the legacy of her family name, and stonewalling reporters investigating one scandal or another. In the first category, she has repudiated the tough-on-crime policies of her husband. She has strongly embraced gay marriage even though her previous support for traditional marriage was, according to Clinton, rooted in timeless religious principles. She has joined the new gender politics, despite her own history of slut-shaming her husband's mistresses. Calling Bill's pump-and-dump paramours "trailer trash" and "narcissistic loony tunes" is understandable in my own view, but considered impolitic today. Hillary Clinton has never won a competitive election. This can't be repeated enough. She beat Republican Rep. Rick Lazio for her Senate seat in 2000. And she defeated a mayor from Yonkers in 2006. In her first competitive race, the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, she began as a heavy favorite and she lost. What has she done to improve her chances in that time? She's aged well, I guess. And she served without distinction as secretary of state. The most notable addition to her CV was her strenuous support of military intervention in Libya, which has left that nation in ruins and vulnerable to ISIS. In turn, Libya has left Clinton with a new scandal about her home-brew email server and the deletion of thousands of emails that congressional oversight might have used against her. She has high name-recognition. Until she started campaigning she was polling well even with Republicans. She has the Obama coalition, and an electoral map where Republicans need significant pickups. But boy, it all seems underwhelming. What is the task for Democrats in the post-Obama era? Why is Clinton the one to take on this mission? After achieving a policy almost approximating universal health care, the dream of Democrats since Harry Truman, what are the Democrats to do? Are they pro-globalization? Do they have ideas for integrating the great wave of immigration to America that has occurred over the past 50 years? Do they have anything to offer the dying white working class? Are they for reforming any of America's major institutions? Clinton just seems like a mismatch for the party and the moment. The center-left darling of Wall Street talking up issues of inequality. The former Walmart board member posing as savior of American jobs. The "Smart Power" leader whose achievement at state was wrecking a nation and turning it over to Sunni terrorists faster than George W. Bush. A champion of women who pretended the leader of the free world was the victim of his intern. The wife of a man who flies on the "Lolita Express" with a porn star that was booked for "massages." The vanquisher of a Yonkers mayor. Is this really the best the Democrats can do? Yes, and that should worry them. Poster Comment: After a few weeks of Trumpsterism, the GOP has forgotten about Hitlery altogether. But she is self-destructing from her own scandals and repulsive public persona. Her name recognition and reputation are sky-high. And that is her biggest problem. The Dems know who and what she is. I think the writer overlooked just how repulsive her major Wall Street banking connections are with Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, the new UBS scandal, etc. That's pure poison to the Dem base voters, the bulwark of the Occupy Wall Street types. And the Xlintons are still loathed by the Obama Dem establishment.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 90.
#3. To: TooConservative (#0)
Not a bad article, but I can sum it up in fewer words: The ruling party will determine whether or not all of its election fraud, stuffing ballot boxes, and illegal immigrant voting will be enough to get a flawed candidate like Hilliary Xlinton elected. It may or may not be - the jury's still out on that one. But since the ruling party will decide who the republican branch candidate will be, they'll just have to ensure Xlinton's "opponent" will be the Jebster - another flawed candidate. Jebster or Xlinton. Doesn't matter.
Despite their similarities, there will be significant differences in the outcomes from those two. Appointees to the Supreme Court, etc. I'd say too little difference but not "no difference".
I've posted this before, but I'll repeat myself here: The ONLY reason I've had for voting GOP since Reagan is the argument you just presented. Repeat - ONLY. In the Bible - Book of Esther verse 4:14 - there is this: Since 2008, there have been two (no, three) SCOTUS decisions that defy Constitutional logic. Upholding Zero-care; Re-upholding Zero-care; and homosexual marriage. Republican appointees whiffed on all three. That reason no longer holds water, and since Jeb (or another corrupted candidate) will be the nominee, I don't see me voting gop for POTUS anytime in the near future.
And the Dems voted in unison. Again, it is weak but it is what it is when you judge by actions, not words. For each justice a Prez Hitlery appoints to the Court, assume at least five more years before the Court will allow any opportunity to move the Court's jurisprudence to the Right (toward liberty) and away from collectivism and Leftist ideology. With Dems on the Court, you are absolutely guaranteed to lose every fight, most likely irremediably as they pile up one precedent upon another.
With Republican nominees you are also guaranteed to lose every abortion fight. O'Connor. Kennedy. Souter. Roberts. The attempt to put Harriet Miers. I'm reminded of the American Revolution. Throughout the war there was an opposition in the British Parliament that thought the American grievances were legitimate and that the government should stop the war and give the Americans what they wanted, short of independence (which the Americans did not originally seek). Should the Americans have stuck with England because a toothless minority in Parliament was on their side? That's what you're advocating. You're saying that the Democrats are SO TERRIBLE that the Republicans must be supported. But one what, exactly, are the Democrats "so terrible"? Not on war policy. Bush gave us the wars and lost them. The Democrats have continued them at a lower scale with less American death. You're not going to get anything different from the Republicans than the Democrats on war policy. What, then? The Border? Bush and the Republicans left the Border open, and make clear they will continue to do so. The Democrats, at least, have Unions constraining them. The Republicans have given nothing more than the Democrats. So, what then? What's left? Economic policy. The Republicans want to privatize Social Security and put it into the stock market. Madness and greed. Crony capitalism. The country very rightly sees that the Democrats are hands-down superior at protecting the American retirement program. The Republicans hate Obamacare. And they hate Medicare. And they hate Medicaid. So, what DO the Republicans propose? Nothing. They would simply dismantle government health insurance, apparently, and "leave it to the markets". They did this once upon a time, under the leadership of a very charismatic President who was a good grand strategist and an economic moron. Ronald Reagan deregulated the Savings and Loans. Some crony capitalists got rich, and a whole industry was destroyed and had to be bailed out by the taxpayers. Fact is, government health insurance is a necessity. It cannot be done any other way. Obamacare will never be repealed by Republicans. They had two shots at it in the Supreme Court, and opportunities to defund it. Fact is, Republican leaders about national health care are the same as they are about abortion: they throw boob bait for Bubbas about repeal, etc, but they intend to ENTRENCH it too. Why? Because Obamacare is very, very good for the interests of crony capitalists. People HAVE to buy insurance, and that's good for financiers. So, we've got Democrats installing Obamacare because they rightly see that we need universal health insurance. And you've got Republicans conniving at making sure it survives, not because the Republicans give a good goddamn about the health of Americans, but because their economic alphas have figured out a way to make a killing at it. The Democrat plan was originally single payer, essentially universal Medicare. And that's what we'll eventually end up with. Obamacare was a compromise by Democrats, to offer Romneycare, just exactly what the Republican Presidential nominee had done in Massachussetts, to the nation. Republicans refuse to be realistic about the economics of middle class and working families. They fundamentally oppose Social Security and public health insurance. In this very real sense there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, and the Republicans are clearly worse, and have been since Herbert Hoover. Democrats win over time on economics, because they understand the modern world, and understand that urban societies need national insurance to cover the basic needs of health, education and retirement. Eventually, they'll add home ownership to that, and they'll do it by direct government loans - single lender - and cut the financiers out again. All in good time. Republicans, meanwhile, bellow about socialism and propose nothing but a return to the Great Depression. On economic grounds alone the Democrats are the better party. It's a pity they are evil murderers, glorifying in the killing of babies. For if the Democrats were pro-life, it would be a no-brainer to vote for them, and they'd win every election. But they're not. Instead, we have two parties that get to the same place, in their ACTIONS, on abortion and foreign policy, and a Democrat Party that is much better on economics. All things being equal, then, by YOUR logic, because the Democrats are better at ONE thing that is important, I should vote for them. But I am a moral purist. I don't vote for murderers. The Democrats are the better party, because their economics are sane and work. BUT, they're babykillers, so I will not join them. Instead, because of that ONE issue, I stayed in the Republican ranks. But the betrayal is now so clear, I know that the Republicans will NEVER actually use their power - which they have even right now - to move against abortion. Which means that both parties connive at abortion, but Republicans LIE about it. Which makes them scumbags. Still not voting for babykillers. But following your logic, I SHOULD vote Democrat, because both parties are IN FACT equal on abortion results, but the Democrats are better on economics. If I were you, that's what I'd do. But I'm me, and I don't vote for babykillers, or cut them any slack, just because they happen to be right on some other things.
No, you know factually that it is Democrat nominees that make it guaranteed to lose. This is why pro-lifers stick with the GOP; they know that no federal judge appointed by Dems in the last 30 years has the slightest interest in any protection of the unborn. If you were the raging pro-lifer you try to depict yourself as, you would know this. I've concluded you are, at most, nominally pro-life. Not actually pro-life in any meaningful sense. IOW, you are even less pro-life than your fellow-Catholic GOP justices you love to decry as the traitors of the pro-life cause. I think that would describe you much better. As always, every drop of your venom is used on a GOP target, not on the Dems who have been the implacable enemies of the unborn for the last 50 years and whose judges are absolutely uniform in their enmity toward unborn children. You aren't fooling us with your more-pro-life-than-thou routine. So you can have your communism and your abortion ban too? Don't make me laugh. Surely no serious person you've ever met considers you anything but a loon on this topic.
I don't vote Democrat, even though the Democrats are right on economics. You DO vote Republican, even though the Republicans put Roe in place, expanded it with Casey, and ushered in public funding of abortion through Romneycare and two Supreme Court decisions protecting Obamacare. Truth is, you serve money. That's what Republicans do: they serve money. They serve monied interests. Then they lie about being pro-life, even though they GAVE us Roe v Wade and Casey and Romneycare and Obamacare, because that's the only way they can persuade a large electorate to vote against its interests. People like me, for example, who voted Republican for all these years, against my economic beliefs, because of the abortion issue. So I guess if voting is a meaningful thing, then the fact that I have voted for Republicans for 15-odd years because of the abortion issue means that I am "actually" pro-life in a meaningful sense. Truth is, in this corrupt and dying country, the most meaningful thing that anybody can do that is pro- life is to pray.
Then how is it that the tycoons are largely aligned with the Dems and have been for years? Buffet, Gates, Zuckerburg, Soros, the Hollywood donors, the Wall Street donors, all are aligned to the Dems as the bulwark of Dem party finances. On the GOP side, you have only a few large players (Koch brothers at $80B, Adelson's gambling interests ($37B) along with his fellow gambling tycoons for more billions, some others like the big Mariott hotel chain (Mormon, hundreds of hotels), or the Coors family. The money balance of the permanent big money sector comes in on the Dem side politically, more so than on the GOP side. In addition, Dems also have the libmedia openly abetting their agenda, academia indoctrinating it, and Big Labor to serve as the grassroots arm in a unique carveout of political power that no other group can match. I see the two parties as two competing factions of tycoons and corporate lobbyists, none of whom I like or trust much.
Because to be a billionaire, you have to be smart. And smart people with a lot of money know their history. They know what happened in France. And in Russia. And in China. And in Mexico. And in so many other countries, where the rich were allowed to get super-rich, and the poor were allowed to rot. Revolution. And then the wealth was lost. Also, there's something about most of those billionaires you mentioned. Most of them are Jews. The Jewish Scriptures command systematic charity, they know it's the obligation of the Jew to pay to support the state and the poor. Some Christians think that Christ stripped all of that charity out of the Scriptures and made usury ok too, reducing it all to charity and making it all about believing some mantra or other. These people are not smart. Therefore, they don't have billions of dollars, or millions of dollars. They follow millionaires, who tell them strange things, and they believe them. That's why the billionaires are mostly with the Democrats. Because to have a sustainable society long term, the government has to do those infrastructural things that can't be done for a profit: like educating all children, and giving retirement pensions to everybody, and covering medical care. Those things have to be done, or you end up with a poorer, stupider population that can't buy as many of your products, and you have a breakdown of the rule of law too, so you're not safe. And you have lots of crime. Social welfare buys social peace. And in an environment of peace, commerce flourishes. Like any other insurance, social welfare is expensive, but like any other insurance, when the pool is the biggest (the whole populace) and it's operated non-profit (by the government) the rates are lowest. Therefore, the smartest are the richest, and the richest want things that can be most efficiently covered by government, like building roads and providing retirement payments and medical coverage, to be covered by government. And they're willing to pay taxes to do that, because they control the government through their influence, and doing it this way is cheaper. The few Republican billionaires are mostly greedy bastards, or lost in fantasies about American exceptionalism such that they don't believe that what happened in France, Russia, China, Mexico, Cuba, etc. can happen here. Or they figure they'll be fine no matter what. That's why.
Revolution. And then the wealth was lost. It was socialism that made most of them billionaires in the first place. Lots of folks assume that wealth redistribution means the transfer of wealth away from the rich. Historically it is just the opposite. John Corzine would have been been ruined 20 years ago; except for a socialist bailout. The biggest piggies at the federal pig trough are the left wing globalist billionaires. And biggest wealth redistribution scheme today is the immigration invasion, a gold mine for the plutocrats.
Not socialism, crony capitalism. That was true of the robber barons of the 19th Century also. After the Civil War, the Republican Party dominated the government, all the way to the election of 1892. During that post-war period, the great trans-Continental railroads were built. They were built on government land, that was simply handed over to well-connected Republican businessmen, who build the railroads, called in the Federal cavalry whenever the Indians got in the way of what was, objectively, an encroachment of their land. The railroad barons were granted huge swathes of land on either side of the railroad also. Basically, they were granted all the land one day's journey on horseback from the railway line - meaning that they had a monopoly on all of the useful land. That land HAD BEEN federal or Indian, and it was simply handed over to the rail barons. They built the railroads and the price of the land along the railroads skyrocketed, and they became very rich. Pure crony capitalism. Note that when the ORIGINAL railroads were built back East, they were built by the states, not by free market private capitalists. The Penn Central Railroad, which became dominant, was built by a bond subscription from the State of Pennsylvania, and operated by the state during all of those long, difficult years of trying to make a railroad work. Only once it was profitable was it handed over…to connected crony capitalists….so that they could privatize the profits from a rail system undertaken, built and brought to profitability by public money. Ditto for the New York Central and the other major early rail lines. They were built and run by the government, and only handed over when they were established. In other words, all of the risks and expense were socialized, and the profits were privatized. With that experience, once it came time to build the trans-Continentals, the government skipped the government development stage and simply handed over tens of thousands of square miles of land, land that was guaranteed to explode in value once the rail line was there, to crony capitalists. The government COULD HAVE simply financed the railroad, or built the railroad directly with the Army Corps of Engineers. Then the government could have SOLD all of that land at its enhanced price. Instead, the utterly corrupt Republican government handed the land and all of the profits over to the best connected barons. The barons got rich, but they did not run railroads well. There were lots of near bankruptcies and bailouts. Socialism, meaning the public ownership of the productive means, is how the American railroads were originally built, and it's how the Interstate Highway system, airports and ports are STILL built and operated. Only once the people have borne the cost and the risk and the burden of getting everything up and running is some lucky well-connected billionaire consortium selected through corruption to pocket all of the profits. The Russian and Chinese socialists grabbed all of the private enterprises. But in America it was the opposite. The government BUILT the vast infrastructure, and crony capitalists arranged to have it transferred to them, And when big, well-connected private concerns go bust, the government steps in with public money to save them. My own view is this: government land should be developed by the government, with profit going into the treasury. There should be a Federal Oil Company, and where there's oil on federal land, the federal government should be drilling it and pumping it and selling it at market prices, with the profits going directly into the charity. Now, instead, private concerns get to exploit the oil, and give some percentage as a royalty to the government. Private concerns pay their executives and shareholders billions - that's where most of the profit goes. The actual cost of roughnecks, drilling and equipment isn't all that high. The profits are enormous, and the government touches maybe ten percent of it. If the Feds did it directly, the government revenues from the same oil would quadruple - all of the middlemen would be taken out. That oil belongs to the People. It is on federal land. Private concerns have no right to take the profits from it. That profit should be going directly into the People's pocket, the Treasury. That would allow for the balancing of the budget, the payoff of national debt and, eventually, once the debt interest was gone from the budget, reducing taxes. Ditto for gold, silver, uranium and the other things mined on federal land. Ditto for state land. There is no private RIGHT to exploit public resources. We should have federal and state corporations doing it directly. And since the money supply is a federal asset, we should have federal and state banks that directly provide the loans for people's primary housing and their education. The loans should be at the federal minimum interest rate for their term length. There is no reason to allow private actors to take a massive cut on the printing of a public asset: money. Private oil companies will exploit oil on private land, still. And there's plenty for private banks to lend for. But when it comes to housing and education, the bank profit needs to be stripped away and the government should lend the money directly to the people - which means that the government can extend loans, and forgive debt in times of unemployment, etc. That's how it ought to be. Note that unlike the USSR, there is no seizure of private assets proposed here, merely the intelligent exploitation of what are already PUBLIC assets by the government. The profits generated will enormously assist the budgetary situation. And the debt relief for housing and education will enormously UN-burden Americans. House loans should be lifetime loans. The government can get paid from the estate. Ditto for education loans. THAT is how you run a railroad, a banking system, and federal land. And THAT is how you redistribute wealth without privatizing it or imposing massive taxes. And yes, it is socialist.
Crony capitalism is crony socialism, the yin and yang. The Penn Central Railroad was the result of the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the one that bought up the Main Line of Public Works in 1857. This was primarily a canal system which used several railroad sections, mainly for portages, including one of the Alleghenies. Philadelphia was attempting to catch up with New York City following completion of the Erie Canal, but the latter had the advantage of crossing the summit between the Atlantic Seaboard and the west at a much lower elevation. The Pennsylvania Railroad was interested in the railroad sections, the canal was just part of the deal. Pennsylvania sank 58 million into the system, and the taxpayers were stuck with a lemon. The Johnstown flood resulted from the collapse of a reservoir originally built for the canal system. Really bad timing, they poured money into a canal system that would have been better spent on railroads. There was a credit bubble at this time, which led to speculation and infrastructure mania, with considerable malinvestment. The debts drove Pennsylvania and 7 other states into bankruptcy.
#91. To: nativist nationalist (#90)
There you go. Yep, that's the way it's always been. The big projects are built by government. If they're profitable, cronies get the profits. If they fail, the public gets the losses. We just saw this on the grandest scale in human history with the Wall Street bailouts. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. My preference is for government to operate what government builds, and for government to exploit the resources on government land. Have the profits from these enterprises and this exploitation go into the treasury, to pay the budget, rather than handing it over to private actors so they profit and the public only gets pennies on the dollar of the profits - but eats all of the losses. The more money government can extract from the ground, and by selling energy, the less money they have to take in taxes. And what's with privatizing prisons? It's an invitation to abuse and slave labor. Why don't we privatize the military while we're at it. Same logic. We've already privatized Congress: they're all bought and paid for. Truth is, we're a crony capitalist kleptocracy, and the only possible way to fix it is for people like you, me and the others on this board to hate that to come together as a movement to do it. And the further truth is that that's impossible, because individual men of little means have strange ideas in their heads and will fight each other rather than cooperate, and simply accept the rulership of the kleptocrats. Status quo has the enormous advantage to it that actual cooperation among men generally can only be compelled by force or induced by payment - and average men like us have neither force nor wealth at our command. So, without money or power, we would have to nevertheless find a way to cooperate with each other, to systematically move forward as a mass. It could not be violent, at least not for decades and decades, because the status quo has the army and the police. It would have to be peaceful. What do we have that could unite us? Certainly not religion. Christians are still fighting over the ideas of the 1500s. It's fair to say that many of the most motivated of all Christians well and truly hate Catholicism more than they hate crony capitalism. So no unity will come through Christ or faith. What then? Well, nothing. There is nothing that can unite us. And therefore, divided, we fall, and we will continue to be dominated. Demographic changes may change this. One need only look at Latin American history to realize that Latinos are explosive people with a habit of frequent rebellion and insurrection against their overlords. Americans have no tradition of that, but we are importing that tradition, and as we do, it will probably eventually take root here. But that's for the distant future. For most of our lifetimes, we're living in a kleptocracy that is more and more feudal, and we won't be able to shake it off, because we Americans can't cooperate even on a chat board, so how the hell are we EVER going to do it when property and power are involved? We won't.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#5. To: Rufus T Firefly (#3)
Jebster or Xlinton. Doesn't matter.
#10. To: TooConservative (#5)
Appointees to the Supreme Court, etc.
And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
#18. To: Rufus T Firefly (#10)
Republican appointees whiffed on all three.
#30. To: TooConservative (#18)
Again, it is weak but it is what it is when you judge by actions, not words.
#33. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
(Edited)
With Republican nominees you are also guaranteed to lose every abortion fight.
The price of really abolishing abortion is socialism. I have reconciled myself to that reality and accept it.
#39. To: TooConservative (#33)
I've concluded you are, at most, nominally pro-life. Not actually pro-life in any meaningful sense.
#44. To: Vicomte13 (#39)
Truth is, you serve money. That's what Republicans do: they serve money. They serve monied interests.
#46. To: TooConservative (#44)
Then how is it that the tycoons are largely aligned with the Dems and have been for years?
#65. To: Vicomte13 (#46)
Because to be a billionaire, you have to be smart. And smart people with a lot of money know their history. They know what happened in France. And in Russia. And in China. And in Mexico. And in so many other countries, where the rich were allowed to get super-rich, and the poor were allowed to rot.
#70. To: nativist nationalist (#65)
t was socialism that made most of them billionaires in the first place.
#90. To: Vicomte13 (#70)
Not socialism, crony capitalism.
Replies to Comment # 90.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 90.
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]