OK – I admit this is hard for me. It runs contrary to my instincts on every level, but I’ve finally realized that I need to swallow the pill and support Hillary Clinton for President. After all, the Democratic leaders who have brought us all the successes of the Clinton and Obama administrations and all the smart people picked to represent the viewpoints of the Democratic Party on TV all say I should.
I’m reasonably sophisticated about politics and policy (particularly healthcare and national security, fields where I had policy jobs back in the day). So I recognize the stirring successes of Third-way, DLC policy making. I think they are principally 7 in the last 24 years:
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Reinventing welfare as we know it
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NAFTA (even though it was technically negotiated under George Bush I)
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Balancing the federal budget (forget Democratic complacency in then helping give away all the potential surpluses, mainly to the 1%, through the Bush tax cuts and plunging us back into a significant debt trajectory – it was the only pragmatic thing to do)
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Financial regulatory reform (not the Clinton Administration deregulatory moves that set up the financial crisis; I’m talking about the Obama moves to partially fix some of the massive institutional damage – though, alas, not massive damage to swindled individuals – graciously accepted by the banks as a quid-pro-quo for the world historic bailout)
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Overseeing and/or supporting the orderly transition of our judicial branch to oversight by judges who often get personal freedom issues correct, and now almost universally recognize that corporations need to run free to prosper and to allow us to have jobs
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Providing critical foreign-policy and national-security policy continuity from the Bush II administration to the present
And of course:
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The Affordable Care Act – the landmark law where leading Obama Administration and Congressional strategists pragmatically had the wisdom to let private-sector insurance companies dictate the parameters and detailed rules to ensure passage.Note: no one could have known this would undermine the possibility of achieving universal coverage, drive up long-term costs (the utterly wasted 5% middleman premium), and infuriate ~10% of the electorate forced to pay large premiums to sleazy insurance companies (like my independent-contractor sister who once worked for the DCCC, but is so enraged about this she claims she would even vote for Trump). Let’s face it: insurance companies want to make lots of money, too.
The stirring patriotism Democratic/DLC leaders (Clinton, Edwards, Daschle, and on and on) showed in supporting the invasion of Iraq also re-established Democratic Party bona fides as serious national security players and patriots. But that one isn’t looking so clearly like a success anymore. So we won’t count it.
I recognize Hillary Clinton as the living, breathing embodiment of this neoliberal domestic & trade policy / neoconservative national security policy agenda, a contributor to many of these accomplishments (there would not have been ObamaRomneycare without Hillarycare!), and ready to add a few proud bullets of her own.
OK, so its not a sterling track record of success. In fact, these measures have collectively helped undermine the middle class while allowing corporate lobbies to extensively capture most of our legal code and government agencies. But it happened everywhere – the European left, for example, also extensively embraced neo-liberalism.
Now some might see this legacy as a 100-boxcar pile-up about to burst into flame. Hilary sees that there’s still track and still freight to move, and rolls up her sleeves. If our current mess is the policy equivalent of the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hillary Clinton is the Corexit.
Remember: we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
OK, the mix of policies embraced by Democratic/DLC leadership has been something of a disaster foreign-policy wise, too – costing us $trillions and a huge measure of our standing in world affairs, while killing millions of people in other countries, and maiming tens of thousands of our soldiers.
But its not like our leaders exactly embraced all that stuff. It’s the system, damn it, and our leaders have to play with the hands they’re dealt. If we had rallied the public the way we should have, they wouldn’t have been backed into all those corners. And, look, its not like those corners were comfortable places to be, other trappings and subsequent revolving-door arrangements aside.
And, as much as these policies may ultimately have failed, can you even imagine what a President Trump or Cruz would do? Progress toward an all-consuming corporate kleptocracy under Clinton will be less than half of what it would be under Ted Cruz or Donald Trump.
Also, I’m not interested in the little white lies (the supposed $100K in profits from commodity trades, the Edmund Hillary thing) nor the $10s of millions in speaking fees from banks and such. Humans have foibles, and the fees were her right, or at least her business. There is nothing unseemly here – think of these fees primarily as the bankers’ way of saying a hearty “Thank you!” on behalf of all Americans for 20 years of public service.
Likewise with the potential Clinton indictment(s) and the “troubling” donations to her foundation. Look, *every* large transfer of cash looks unseemly when there are apparent conflicts. Yet the world keeps turning. She’s survived many a scandal before. There is Nothing. To. See. Here.
Its Nothingburgers all the way down.
They say Clinton has high negatives in polling. The naysayers will watch these negatives melt like butter, just as soon as Sanders quits overstaying his welcome, allows Democrats to unite, and finally gives her campaign the opportunity to re-introduce Ms. Clinton to the American people.
I do have to admit that I’m a bit taken aback by maneuvers like kowtowing to the right of Trump before AIPAC. OK, literally nauseated. (I was literally nauseated to read her speech.)
Some might be inclined, on one level, not to vote for Clinton over stuff like this. But imagine the courage, the steely fortitude required to set aside likely moral inhibitions and go tell AIPAC what they needed to hear without getting all hung up about bloody hands or the long-term strategic interests of the United States. Clinton knows how to make the sausage, throw the apron in the wash, and move on.
In sum, I think we’ve all heard more than enough of the same old tired reasons why we shouldn’t support her, no matter how legitimate they may be.
And yes Sanders – give him credit – does provide a pretty much spot-on critique of how and why all of our major institutions – both government and NGO are collapsing before our eyes.
Yes, beyond government, plutocrats and corporations are extensively taking over formerly beneficent NGOs - for example, the direction of universities, hospitals, charitable foundations, etc., too. A friend the other day told me the tale of how the non-profit teaching hospital where he served as a physician for 30 years has just been extensively reorganized, casually (but formally) dropping its core mission of serving the poorest of the poor (after all, where’s the money in that?). It’s the hostile-takeover equivalent to all the “embedded NGO” start-ups (like Kevin Johnson’s little empire in Sacramento). It’s the extension of the neoliberal mission of trying to introduce profit motives into every realm of existence, and capturing more resources under nominally public control, while escaping tedious oversight from guardians of the less wealthy.
Getting this critique right, in itself, makes it tempting to vote for Sanders.
Add in all the Sanders proposals that actually sound kind of progressive (I’m kind of progressive) and it’s totally tempting.
But SO IRRESPONSIBLE.
For example, I’m told that some Sanders supporters are actually quite shrill in person. Some are said to even have – regrettably – questionable hygiene.
This is unacceptable.
Besides, everyone from the New York Times to NPR’s Cokie Roberts to the great Markos himself have made it clear that Hillary. Is. Going. To. Win. The. Nomination.
And consider the credibility in that last assessment – Kos is the guy who wrote “Crashing the Gate” and really birthed this website out of the energy of the Howard Dean campaign - the 50-State-Strategy, the unambiguously progressive campaign of 2004 (yes, I’m that old). If Kos is saying it’s time to embrace Clinton, her particular brand of neoliberalism/neoconservatism really must be the best we can ever really hope for.
Clinton has also won the endorsement of most of the big labor unions. After all the betrayals of the Clinton I and Obama administrations vs. organized labor, you have to figure that they have rock solid intelligence this time that Lucy is not going to yank the football away. These people know what they’re doing. We can be confident its about to start raining Charlie Brown field goals for the progressive movement!
But only after Sanders drops out and quits kidding around.
Its obvious that Clinton will be in a stronger position to win the general election if she wins the nomination with real-voter votes instead of just the backing of the Democratic Party fundraising elite (aka, “super delegates”).
So its time for the Bernie bras to grow up and recognize that Hillary is not nearly as bad as she seems.
Look: the ballot box is not the place to express your values. It is the place to show you understand the conventional wisdom / realpolitik of the here and now.
So let us be adults, recognize where we are, and put a constructive face on the situation. Bill Clinton gave us a victorious 8 years through triangulation™. President Obama gave us a victorious 8 years through pragmatism™.
With Hillary Clinton, we’ll be getting the best of both worlds.
And with her experience and sage judgment, over the next few years we will have the best prospect a Democratic President has had since the 1940s to actually declare victory in our next war/intervention/police action. It will be great.
Our Democratic leadership – who, let’s acknowledge it, have done so much for their base over the last 40 years – all agree. Really, who are we not to?
Hillary Clinton for President.
There’s should be no more debate. The decision is that obvious.
