The case against Hillary Clinton: This is the disaster Democrats must avoid

[Barack_America]

The case against Hillary Clinton: This is the disaster Democrats must avoid

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/28/the_case_against_hillary_clinton_this_is_the_disaster_democrats_must_avoid/

You like what Bernie’s calling for, but you just don’t think he’s likely to win the general election, perhaps because “this country would never elect a socialist.” And even if he did win, you don’t think he’d be able to accomplish his goals, given how entrenched the GOP opposition is. Maybe you even think it’s already settled—that Hillary’s got the nomination locked up.

Here’s why going with that assumption—and backing Hillary in general—would be, in the words of Donald Trump, a disaster....

...Hillary in General

It seems then, that the only remaining argument for Clinton is that she knows what all of us idealists don’t: that to get things done in a messy world, you have to get your hands dirty. (After all, as some leftist critics have argued, Sanders’ hands aren’t entirely clean. If Clinton wins the nomination, we may even come to see him speaking passionately on her behalf at the Democratic National Convention.)

This argument might be compelling if it weren’t for the fact that Clinton, far from “getting things done” for those who need it most, instead seems primarily to be about “getting things done” for the corporate elite, for vassal states like Saudi Arabia, and indeed for herself.

A stunning, point-by-point argument against a Clinton nomination and presidency.

[djean111]

1. Yes - that whine about "getting things done" - I have no doubt that the GOP will be happy to work

with her on the MIC and Third Way and Wall Street and Corporation wish list. That's why I will not support her. Because of what she wants to get done, and what the GOP may enable her to get done.

[Cobalt Violet]

5. I think she'll get TPP, XLpipeline, Chain CPI, another endless war Done!

No doubt she will get things done if given the opportunity.

[Lizzie Poppet]

7. "Done" as in "we're finished."

It was a good little run, but clearly it's high time we peasants were put back in our place.

[NWCorona]

15. That's the issue no one speaks about.

Hillary plays both sides. In one breath Hillary speaks of a vast right-wing conspiracy and in the second breath she says that "once in office " the Republicans love her. Unfortunately the emails prove the latter and that should scare the hell out of people.

[jwirr]

23. If we follow the fear line and vote for her to keep trump out

then we can count on more of the same as the rich get richer, the corporations gain more power, the jails continue to be overcrowded and the poor continue to suffer.

And the next election will be even harder to win even if we could find another Bernie.

NOW is the time.

[stonecutter357]

2. #ImWithHer

[Barack_America]

6. Did you read the article to understand what you're "with"?

Or is Clinton just your team, your brand, and you're not interested in knowing more?

[Kelvin Mace]

11. They really don't care

She is a saint and no fact will convince them otherwise.

[pinebox]

26. Blindness is a disease these days among many

[Cobalt Violet]

3. K & R

Glad to see that at least some people have their eyes open.

[VulgarPoet]

4. #whichhillary? nt

[Barack_America]

8. #TheRealHillary

#AfterTheNominationHillary

[VulgarPoet]

10. Ah, right. That moment when the weathervane becomes just decoration that points to the right. nt

[Barack_America]

14. Yep. Just like her "H".

Like a Shyamalan plot twist, so obvious and right in front of you the whole time.

#OkeyDokeHillary

[Codeine]

17. #theonewhojustwhuppedBernie'sass nt

[Laser102]

27. LOL!!!

[great white snark]

29. Bwaha!

[libdem4life]

9. Unfortunately, Salon is not the MSM. I have never seen a list like this for HRC.

But then I've fortunately been banned from the HRC Group. I've seen plenty of unflattering lists taken directly from her record, but as to what value she brings to the presidency other than achieving a life long dream for herself, lists are scarce.

And the fact "she's been vetted", that's not correct as to her misdeeds over the last 8 years. I'll not elaborate. The Republicans will, however. Unfortunately, Clinton Fatigue will come in November, if she's nominated. She's no match for Trump, IMO.

[HereSince1628]

12. Nothing leads to change more than losing

I'd like to see significant change in the philosophical orientation of professional democrats.

If that comes by winning, great.

If it comes by losing first, changing course and then winning that's great, too.

[Ferd Berfel]

21. Revolutions Cost. Even 'bloodless' political Revolutions have a price.

This one will cost in pain and suffering if Bernie is not the Nom because if Clinton is the Nom, she will loose and the Fourth Reich will run rampant - for a while. And that may be what it takes to finally get enough people off of their asses.
Maybe we haven't reached critical mass yet.

[HereSince1628]

22. I don't think critical mass, per se, is the issue

the folks in charge of our politics still think of the people as f'ing retards who can be taken for granted because those FRs don't have any other place to go.

The folks in charge won't take the FRs seriously and make change until the FRs don't deliver votes to them. At that point things will happen.

The mass of people needed to make a difference is present, they've just been highly conditioned to fear losing.

Go back over DU posts for the past 11 months. Winning is always the central theme. Winning even if you have to vote for what you don't want is part of that theme. We're presented with myths as truth. A dem is -always- better than anything else. Looking at Dems like George Wallace, Joe Lieberman, Rahm Emmanuel, John Edwards and too many others... that always better nonsense doesn't come across as an honest representation of the real distribution of human virtues.

Making politicians fear losing -has NEVER- been part of the loyalty to dem politicians theme. And THAT is a problem.

If politicians don't fear losing, they don't have to do anything different with respect to being more responsive to people than big money. What Dem politicians -fear- is losing big donations. That's why they are bought out, that's why the US has fallen into oligarchy.

Democratic voters don't just need to push to get money out of politics, we need to get fear of voters BACK INTO the consciousness of politicians

[Ferd Berfel]

25. "...politics still think of the people as f'ing retards ..."

Well .....

The most depressing discovery about the brain, ever
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/the-most-depressing-discovery-about-the-brain-ever/#.VtMdRZtVt0c.facebook

[marions ghost]

13. Good article

which points out that Independents will decide this election:

"A look at party identification is also revealing: Independents now vastly outnumber Democrats or Republicans, and among independents, Sanders is far and away the favorite."

[Barack_America]

16. It's reflected in the head-to-head polling thus far.

Independents have never voted for Hillary. This year will be no exception.

[marions ghost]

18. Yep

Those of us for Sanders need to keep this fact in mind

[Attorney in Texas]

19. More great quotes from excellent article:

"Consider the candidates’ favorability ratings: Sanders is the only one of the leading candidates—from either party—with a greater favorable than unfavorable rating. Hillary’s 53-percent unfavorable rating would, as Karp noted, “make her the most disliked presidential nominee in modern history.”
...
"A look at party identification is also revealing: Independents now vastly outnumber Democrats or Republicans, and among independents, Sanders is far and away the favorite. Meanwhile, as statistician Joshua Loftus notes: “Dangerously, even Donald Trump and Ted Cruz get a much greater proportion of independent voters than Clinton.”"
...
"Famed economist Thomas Piketty recently offered a brief take on where things stand: “Sanders’ success today shows that much of America is tired of rising inequality … and intends to revive both a progressive agenda and the American tradition of egalitarianism. Hillary Clinton, who fought to the left of Barack Obama in 2008 on topics such as health insurance, appears today as if she is defending the status quo, just another heiress of the Reagan-Clinton-Obama political regime.” To explain, he points to wealth distribution under the past century’s presidents:

From 1930 to 1980 – for half a century – the rate for the highest US income (over $1m per year) was on average 82%, with peaks of 91% from the 1940s to 1960s (from Roosevelt to Kennedy), and still as high as 70% during Reagan’s election in 1980. … Reagan was elected in 1980 on a program aiming to restore a mythical capitalism said to have existed in the past. … The culmination of this new program was the tax reform of 1986, which ended half a century of a progressive tax system and lowered the rate applicable to the highest incomes to 28%.

"
...
"It’s hard to imagine that Hillary would break—much less break significantly—from this wealthy-friendly, bipartisan consensus.... She’s made it clear that she won’t seek to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which Bill repealed, and whose absence is broadly considered central to the 2008-2009 financial crisis, during which countless Americans lost their savings, homes, and jobs, while major banks were bailed out from the public coffers and bank executives continued receiving massive bonuses. So, it doesn’t take much skepticism to see why Wall Street is donating so heavily to her campaign (to say nothing of her controversial paid speeches to the big banks, whose transcripts she refuses to release)."

"Recently Michelle Alexander noted that ... “In [Hillary’s] support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”"
...
"The federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds by the Clinton administration in its effort to “end welfare as we know it.” In his 1996 State of the Union address, given during his re-election campaign, Clinton declared that ‘the era of big government is over’ and immediately sought to prove it by dismantling the federal welfare system known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). The welfare-reform legislation that he signed—which Hillary Clinton ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008—replaced the federal safety net with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions, and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored)."
...
"The foreign policy argument for Clinton tends to skip over her time in the Senate—when she voted for the Patriot Act and the 2003 invasion of Iraq—and focus on her experience as secretary of state."
...
"Arguing that “Hillary is the Candidate of the War Machine,” Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs recently extended Cockburn’s point: “After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq.”... Perhaps [her] crowning disaster … has been [her] relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashar al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must “get out of the way,” backed by secret CIA operations."
...
"It seems Secretary Clinton’s hawkishness was matched only by her arms dealing. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang recently reported: after making weapons transfer to Saudi Arabia a “top priority” as secretary of state, emails from Clinton’s private server recently released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit:

show her aides kept her well-informed of the approval process for a $29.4 billion sale in 2011 of up to 84 advanced F-15SA fighters, manufactured by Boeing, along with upgrades to the pre-existing Saudi fleet of 70 F-15 aircraft and munitions, spare parts, training, maintenance, and logistics. The deal was finalized on Christmas Eve 2011."

...
"A look at her work in Latin America adds to the trouble. In June, Salon’s Matthew Pulver showed how Secretary Clinton provided cover for a right-wing coup in Honduras. Political violence spiked in the chaos that followed, and the country went on to have the highest murder rate in the world."

[amborin]

20. K&R

[Live and Learn]

24. K&R nt

[shawn703]

28. NJ, PA, MI are all in play in a Trump vs Clinton matchup

It's scary she's such a weak candidate she could lose some typically blue states to a crazy man.

[Uncle Joe]

30. I believe this was an excellent analysis.

Thanks for the thread, Barack_America.