If I were worried that Clinton might lose, here’s what I would—and wouldn’t—do…

I’m on record as saying that Clinton is going to win big-time in November. I’ve believed that for months (even when I was rooting for Sanders, I believed Clinton could beat Trump and said so). The latest polls only confirm what we’ve seen, with a few exceptions, for a year now: in a match-up between Clinton and Trump, Clinton wins.

If, however, I were a big booster of Clinton and if were at all worried that she wasn’t going to win in November, here’s what I’d be doing:

First, I’d get the hell off social media. This is the place where political persuasion goes to die. The whole point is argument and dissensus, conflict and opposition, often over ancillary matters that distract from the main point. Differences get heightened, misunderstandings mount, feelings get hurt: to paraphrase Adorno, it’s like psychoanalysis in reverse. Not a good place to build and bridge.

And then, if I lived in a safe state, I’d be accumulating lists of people to call in all the swing states; and if I lived in a swing state, I’d be organizing committees either in my neighborhood or town, or if that neighborhood or town were solidly in Clinton’s camp, I’d organize committees in the next town or neighborhood, committees that were trained and readied to make phone calls and knock on doors and hand out fliers and all the rest.

And then I’d spend every waking or at least spare minute of my life between now and November making sure that every potential Clinton voter that I or my committees could reach was converted into an absolutely solid and reliable vote for Clinton come November.

If I encountered anyone who I thought was gettable but who tried to distance themselves from me, I’d do everything I could to convince that person that we were in fact quite similar, that we shared the same values, and that whatever differences we had paled in comparison to our shared desire and need to elect Clinton and defeat Trump. I’d use all of my powers of charm (ahem) and guile and persuasion to soften that brittle opposition that so often gets created between people who are alike in so many ways but one. I’d avoid all the traps of needless and fruitless disagreement, constantly keeping my eye out for those oases of potential concord and consensus.

So if these people I was trying to reach tried to up the ideological octane of the conversation, just to create distance between us, I’d bring the conversation back down to the dull pragmatics of achieving our shared values. If they tried to invoke dull pragmatism, just to create distance between us, I’d bring us back up to the high plains of ideology. I would do absolutely everything I could, in other words, not to create a sense of division or opposition between us. If politics is the contest between friends and enemies, I’d say: let us be friends, let’s leave the enemies out there.

And if I were the shy, retiring type who couldn’t handle face-to-face or phone conversations, I’d try to use social media to that effect, knowing that that can often be a losing proposition.

And here’s what I’d not do: spend my time on social media or in person castigating every member of the left who is a potential Clinton voter but is skeptical or leaning toward Jill Stein or thinking about sitting this one out, castigating them as reckless, irresponsible, childish, purist, fanatical, immature, incompetent, cultish, blinkered fantasists of the revolution, and so on, and then deliver long, sonorous monologues—where I demonstrate zero desire to listen or understand, much less engage, with what the people I’m trying to persuade are thinking—about the need for a popular front that includes the very people I’ve just dismissed as childish and irresponsible.

Now the fact that some people who are pro-Clinton and say they’re terrified she might lose in November are not doing what I’m saying I would do if I were they, tells me one of the three things:

1) they don’t actually think Clinton is going to lose, they’re not even fearful that she may lose, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her);

2) they do fear that she may lose but they take greater pleasure in going after the Clinton skeptics on the left than they fear her losing in November, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her);

3) they don’t know what they’re doing politically, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her).

There’s actually a fourth option:

4) they don’t think they share any values with the Clinton skeptics on the left; they think those leftists actually believe in very different things.

In which case I wonder two further things:

5) do they think they need these voters, and if so, well, we come back to where we started;

6) do they think they don’t need these voters?

In which case we come back to (1), (2), (3), or:

7) they’re right.

 

81 Comments

  1. stevelaudig August 10, 2016 at 1:48 am | #

    “And here’s what I’d not do: spend my time on social media or in person castigating every member of the left who is a potential Clinton voter but is skeptical or leaning toward Jill Stein or thinking about sitting this one out, castigating them as reckless, irresponsible, childish, purist, fanatical, immature, incompetent, cultish, and so on, and then deliver long, sonorous monologues—where I demonstrate zero desire to understand, much less engage, with what the people I’m trying to persuade are thinking—about the need for a popular front that includes the very people I’ve just dismissed as childish and irresponsible.”

    Hectoring people doesn’t persuade them, it stiffens them in their resolve.

    • Glenn August 10, 2016 at 2:29 pm | #

      Hectoring people doesn’t persuade them, it stiffens them in their resolve.

      True.

      Even bombing people doesn’t persuade them, it just stiffens them in their resolve.

      Neither England, nor Vietnam surrendered because they were bombed; they were both resolute in their efforts and ultimately victorious.

      • Alan Smithee August 15, 2016 at 4:38 pm | #

        How about death squads? Clinton and Negroponte have lots of experience with them.

        • William M Brown November 3, 2016 at 2:52 pm | #

          Well, if you think you can organize some in the next few days, by all means….

  2. Anonymous August 10, 2016 at 2:45 am | #

    It seems pretty clear that the minority of them who have any bandwidth for strategizing are attempting to shore-up the decades-old dominant paradigm that “corporate-funded economic policies and electoral strategies can never fail; they can only be failed”.

  3. Graham Clark August 10, 2016 at 3:03 am | #

    And #7 it is.

  4. phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 3:18 am | #

    I’ll go for #7 as well. I won’t vote for either Clinton or Trump. Neither one of them is concerned with the welfare of anyone outside the 1%. I’ll either write in Bernie or vote for Stein. Establishment Dems don’t like leftists, and they never have. After Rahm’s comment about the left, why should anyone on the left care about the Dems? I’m not a registered Dem, I’m independent, and about to embark on a new journey with Our Revolution.

    • Anthony Greco August 10, 2016 at 9:02 am | #

      “After Rahm’s comment about the left, why should anyone on the left care about the Dems?” Because Bernie Sanders demonstrated that the Sanders/Warren wing of the Democratic Party is or can be the future; the Rahm Emanuel wing is the past. Hillary Clinton is transitional.

      • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:38 pm | #

        But Bernie has returned to being an Independent, so now it’s just the Warren wing, and I’m not too sure about her. Had she endorsed Bernie early on, he would likely have “won”, and she might be his VP. (Bernie DID win, but was not allowed to claim it.) There is a new organization that Bernie started, called “Our Revolution”, and it seeks to build a new movement – whether or not it is within the Dem party, is not clear yet. Going to a meetup on the 24th and we will see what happens.

      • Daniel August 10, 2016 at 4:17 pm | #

        Perhaps. However, consider the possibility that Clinton’s reach to the right and newly found, or not so newly found, support from GOP and GOP Independents actually reflects the far deeper disarray, dysfunction, and defection within the Republican Party. For a long time there has been a dwindling home for “Liberal Republicans”. It might just be that Hillary Clinton, like Bill when he took over the Democratic Leadership Council, seeks to move the party further to the right as a means of holding the progressive wing of the party at bay now and in the future?

        Second, I offer the following prospect to Corey’s point about what else she could do. As both Trump and Clinton have acknowledged the corrupting influence of money in elections, wouldn’t it make sense for either candidate to propose that both agree to abide by McCain-Feingold for this election cycle? One doesn’t have to spend more than a decade trying to overturn “Citizens United”. The experience of a single election that is financially disarmed would set the tone for future elections. Obama and McCain agreed to it in 2008 but Obama withdrew from the commitment. The suggestion is not polemics. Given her poll numbers, an offer coming from her is a plus. Given Trumps financial difficulties, accepting would be a plus for him. Either way, the polity gains when the integrity of the process is enhanced.

        –Daniel

      • Kate Riley August 12, 2016 at 9:13 am | #

        I hope you are right!

    • George Bowman August 10, 2016 at 10:53 am | #

      As a child of the 60’s, I have shared your fervor for progress and bemoaned the hopeless state of affairs on many occasions. Yet, there has been and will continue to be steady progress. We were taught in business school that our function was to “maximize value to the shareholder.” We did a pretty good job of that.

      Today, my hope is that those leaving university understand that the function of an executive is to maximize and balance value to the stakeholder, among which are the shareholder, the customer and the employee. While Hillary can be seen as burdened with her own place in history, an education that overly emphasized the value of legal argument at the expense of standing up for clear principals, she has demonstrated, in many good works, her intention to serve the interests of children and others in need.

      I was crushed when McGovern failed his election bid, leaving government in the hands of Nixon. The activism that his campaign engendered continued to burn and can be credited with much of the progress of my time, civil rights of all individuals. My hope is that Bernie supporters realize the transitory nature of any single battle and make sure that Democrat’s hope will trump hate. The Supreme Court is the big prize. GET OUT THE VOTE!

      • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:41 pm | #

        Your viewpoint is no doubt influenced by having gone to “business school”. HRC doesn’t care about children – or women – unless it is to her advantage to do so. If she cared about women and children, she wouldn’t be so eager to bomb the crap out of brown families in the middle east. Or incarcerate tons of black people for BS offenses so they can work for prison industries for free. Shall I go on?

        • Bill Michtom August 11, 2016 at 11:49 pm | #

          What phatkhat said … a thousand times over.

    • Alan Smithee August 15, 2016 at 4:46 pm | #

      Funding for “Our Revolution” is through Act Blue. Act Blue is a PAC run by DNC flunkies. The Sanders “revolution” is dead because there never was a “revolution.” It is, and always was, a scam. Sorry.

  5. Greg Harris August 10, 2016 at 3:38 am | #

    Don’t hold out on us about what you wonder re: their high dudgeon and heavy breathing.

  6. mark August 10, 2016 at 5:20 am | #

    It is amazing the difference of being and not being in executive power in the late summer of 2008 has had on American and UK politics of the left-liberal parties.

    In the US the Clintons have carried on regardless, while in the UK New Labour, well, I’m supposed to get sense from this:

    ‘Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has said his party is at risk of being taken over by hard-left “Trotsky entryists”, who are “twisting the arms” of young members, sparking a furious response from backers of Jeremy Corbyn.

    Corbyn’s campaign team accused Watson of “peddling baseless conspiracy theories,” after the MP for West Bromwich East used an interview with the Guardian to claim that “Trots” are infiltrating Labour.’

    (Guardian, Tuesday 9 August 2016)

    • hyperbola August 11, 2016 at 11:13 am | #

      The “trots” run both political parties in the US. It is not “kosher” to mention this.

  7. Gavolt August 10, 2016 at 6:10 am | #

    Gore Vidal once wrote in an essay that Jack Kennedy told him he found liberals far more annoying than conservatives.

    On a totally unrelated note I’m sure, it is amazing how much more willing the Clintons are to working with a party that threatens to kill them than with a movement that merely might make some of their ideas irrelevant. And people say ideology is dead.

  8. Roqeuntin August 10, 2016 at 7:50 am | #

    I’m not even sure where to start. I suppose I can do so by saying I don’t like predicting the future and I would never try to call an election this far out. That said, at this point I give Clinton the edge for one reason and one reason only. Trump has abysmal support from nonwhite voters and winning the presidency with only the white vote, which isn’t universally behind him to start with, is a very tall order. Since white supremacy is the center of gravity of his entire campaign, I can’t see any way that he’ll tone down that racism and bring at least some minority voters into the fold. This is likely an obstacle too big to overcome, and the strategy which served him so well in the primary has painted him into a corner now.

    As for Clinton, the campaign, whether the people supporting it realize it or not, has two goals:

    1) Defeating Trump and electing HRC
    2) Purging the left from the Democratic party

    Every indication I see, is that when #2 comes into conflict with #1, they choose #2 every single time. #2 is less about what the people voting for HRC want than what the capitalist system wants to happen and is using them to accomplish. The Clinton campaign is forging a new center-right coalition so the Dems will no longer even have to pretend to give a shit about the things Sanders campaigned on, and it’s working. I maintain that Clinton and the people behind her, as much as they hyperventilate about Trump, find losing preferable to advocating for single-payer healthcare, breaking up the banks, tuition-free state universities, etc. Once again, HRC’s supporters may not understand this but frankly it will work better that way in most cases. A victory for Clinton is a victory for neoliberalism, a neoliberalism with a multicultural face.

    • Glenn August 10, 2016 at 11:00 am | #

      Great analysis, R.

    • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:43 pm | #

      Hammer, meet nail head. ;o)

    • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 11, 2016 at 2:15 pm | #

      You’re DAMNED RIGHT!

      And that begs a question: why do the Hillary-bots waste time with us here and in other progressive blogs with their “hectoring” us (as one respondent here called it) on the Bernie-left to vote for Hillary, while at the same time they try so damned hard to drive the left out of the Party? They want our vote but the don’t want US (one is reminded of that song by Sonia Sanchez in which she sings the refrain “They want the oil but they don’t want the people! They want the oil but they don’t want the people!” — here, the “oil” are the votes of us Bern-ers….)

      And note: with all the Trump-scarifying, none of these people — NONE! — promise to come on board with us in any progressive action that could be taken with a less hostile (than Trump) executive in the White House. If I were a Hilliary-bot I’d tell the Bern-ers to vote for Hillary now, and I will join you in the inevitable protests against any of her reactionary policies her rich backers will press her to pursue — and you and I know they will do that. A good Hillary- bot would say, “We can be there to stop it, but only if Hillary is president because with her in office we have a tiny chance (instead of NO chance) to win!”

      Where is THAT argument?

      Wanna know why it, and others like it, ain’t being made? Read Roquentin’s comment ten times until it sinks in and learn why.

      And I have said in reply to an earlier post: the Hillary-bots SUCK AT THEIR JOB!

      Their efforts only make things worse because of it. Sad!

      They want our vote but they don’t want us!

    • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:15 am | #

      “The Clinton campaign is forging a new center-right coalition”
      There is nothing center about this.

  9. Tom August 10, 2016 at 8:03 am | #

    I voted for Sanders and plan to vote for Clinton.

    Small sample size, but I see about 100 times more hectoring on social media etc. from Sanders/Stein supporters than from HRC supporters. A lot of “neo liberal TPP corporate democrat sellout what Bill did” stuff. Half of it seems like Crypto Republican prop to divide left voters.

    My thought is that the way to approach this is where will we be on issues if the various candidates are elected. My estimation is that we will not get perfection in either case. With HRC, there is at least some chance of influencing policy through advocacy and progressive dems. With DJT, there is zero chance, plus it will creat a backlog of bad policies to undo that will set us that much farther behend when he leaves office. (See “compassionate conservatism Bush=Gore). But some people say my view is not the way to think about it….

    • s. wallerstein August 10, 2016 at 9:58 am | #

      I don’t know who is more abusive towards whom, whether the mainstream democrats insult and disqualify the leftists more or vice versa, but there are clearly two distinct human groups which don’t like each other much. For someone on the left, like myself, being mistakenly called “a liberal” irritates me more than if someone were to mistake me, for, say, a libertarian, which I’m not. That is, the two groups not only detest each other, but also
      derive much of their sense of core identity from distinguishing themselves one from the other.

      Actually, it’s just an accident of U.S. politics that liberals and leftists get lumped together. The Republicans have drifted so far towards the crazy or Le Pen right that the mainstream Democrats now occupy the political space of the moderate right in a “normal” European country, say, Germany. Angela Merkel in the U.S. would be a Clinton Democrat, not a Trump or even Ryan Republican.

      • hyperbola August 11, 2016 at 10:47 am | #

        Angela Merkel has been a lackey of british zionists (Lord Weidenfeld) ever since the beginning of her career. Gerrmany now needs to throw her out and lead Europe into declaring independence from the anglo-zionist (meo-liberal) crap.

    • Donald August 10, 2016 at 12:01 pm | #

      I saw constant denunciations of both Sanders and his supporters from both pundits in the press ( Krugman and almost every other NYT opinion writer) and in comment sections. It was non stop. Sanders was one note, he was rude, he knew nothing, his supporters were Berniebros who knew nothing, all the criticisms of Clinton originated on the right and Berniebros were dupes, etc… If you read the comments on articles and opinion pieces at the NYT you would have seen this, not to mention at some blogs. I agree that Sanders supporters were also harsh, but the pretense that all the nastiness in the campaign came from the Sanders people was just more nastiness from the Clintonites, because it wasn’t even remotely true.

      • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:45 pm | #

        You, too, must have hung out at Daily KOS. It got brutal over there. It’s why there are several break-away blogs, now.

        • Donald August 10, 2016 at 12:53 pm | #

          Actually no, I almost never visit dailykos, but my experience was that it was ugly everywhere.

      • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:29 am | #

        When the Times started its propaganda campaign against Sanders after hiding his campaign for about a month), the overwhelming response in the comments was outrage at the lies. Support for HRC was fairly minimal until a few months down the road, after the various questionable primaries gave HRC an insurmountable lead.

        What I have experienced most is that Hillary supporters have been sore winners.

        • phatkhat August 12, 2016 at 1:03 am | #

          Ain’t THAT the truth!!

    • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:24 am | #

      “With HRC, there is at least some chance of influencing policy through advocacy and progressive dems.”

      You seem to have missed what happened with the platform committee. Everything from the Bernie members was tossed … everything–even after some sweet-talking from HRC or her spokesmodels.

    • Lana August 12, 2016 at 2:26 am | #

      This is a good illustration of the gulf between the left and Democrats – this sort of eye-rolling dismissal on the part of liberals of policies which the left correctly see as foundational to the preservation/advancement of life on this planet:

      “A lot of ‘neo liberal TPP corporate democrat sellout what Bill did'”

      If you think the left’s view of these things is something to dismiss then you clearly have very little understanding of neoliberalism, the TPP, & regulatory capture & the impacts of NAFTA, mass incarceration, & deregulation of banks (to name only a few horrific policies.)

      I encourage those who think Supreme Court Justice picks are worth ushering in of the TPP to read about what happened to Ecuador when their people were poisoned by Chevron’s pillaging (neoliberalism in action!) of their environment. This is a taste of what is to come for the citizens of any state, any country, that is a party to the TPP agreement.
      This is a good overview by Correa. (If you read more of the news about this case published over the years it bears this out.)
      http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Correa-Corruption-Lets-Chevron-off-Hook-for-Amazon-Pollution-20160125-0015.html

      I would vote for HRC if I was in a swing state bc Trump has mentioned using nukes and past & current Presidents have opened up the possibility of him doing so unilaterally. However as others have said, the Dems prove their falseness in that instead of moving left to represent the populace they move right and use threats to force the populace to go with them.

  10. Yves Smith August 10, 2016 at 9:08 am | #

    This is a great post, but MHO you missed the real reason.

    Team Dem has long regarded the left (the real left, not the Vichy Left) as its true enemy. They thought 30+ years of hippie punching had them throughly marginalized. But an old hippie like Berne Sanders succeeds in brainwashing the young. How dare he! And how dare these young people listen to such dangerous policy proposals. Were they to succeed, they would thoroughly upend all sorts of carefully constructed power and money relations in the Acela corridor, knocking many people out of safe and lucrative perches.

    Trump is a much less fundamental threat. He has so many opponents that the odds favor that he would make a lot of noise but gets little done. Jimmy Carter had vastly more relevant experience, had Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, yet was famously unproductive by virtue of being an outsider who fancied he had a mandate to do things differently.

    To the careerists. Trump merely means the Dems sit in the wilderness for four years. Then they oust him and re-establsh the old order with a few gestures to Trump’s followers. Remember the Bourbon Restoration?

    • Stan August 10, 2016 at 10:00 am | #

      As a DC resident I second the point: “Were they to succeed, they would thoroughly upend all sorts of carefully constructed power and money relations in the Acela corridor, knocking many people out of safe and lucrative perches.” The divide is not so much driven by ideology but by personal interests. Sanders is literally a threat to the livelihood of the establishment.

    • Corey Robin August 10, 2016 at 10:41 am | #

      Yes, you’re right, this is the alternative, and maybe more plausible, explanation. Something I’ve been thinking about for a longer post at a later time. Always nice to see you around these parts, Yves.

    • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:32 am | #

      Nice to see you here, Yves.

    • Joseph Brenner August 16, 2016 at 2:53 pm | #

      Yves Smith:
      “They thought 30+ years of hippie punching had them throughly marginalized. But an old hippie like Berne Sanders succeeds in brainwashing the young. How dare he! And how dare these young people listen to such dangerous policy proposals.”

      Well, it’s certainly a point that the Bernie Sanders campaign seems to have shown that there are a lot of folks out there who are completely driven insane by hearing words like “revolution”. I’ve completely given up on Krugman, these days– I wonder if the Times can detect the drop in his traffic.

      To evaluate whether this sort of thing can explain the “hectoring” that Corey Robin refers to depends on the specific cases, I would say. Myself, I think a lot of the people claiming the side of virtue in this case are textbook examples of trolls: it makes them feel important to have someone ranting at them, so they do their best to provoke it.

      • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 16, 2016 at 3:06 pm | #

        “Myself, I think a lot of the people claiming the side of virtue in this case are textbook examples of trolls: it makes them feel important to have someone ranting at them, so they do their best to provoke it.”

        And is that the reason that you are here now? Are you, by your “ranting”, here to “provoke” our (alleged by you) sense of importance? Are you an example of what Hillary’s PAC is spending its money on? If so, it is being wasted.

        I don’t think this sense of importance is ours. Projection, thy name is “Joseph Brenner”.

        Or — as I asked before — are you really a Trump troll trying to anger progressives away from Hillary by pretending to be a “hectoring” Hillary supporter?

        Which is it, Joey?

        • Joseph Brenner August 16, 2016 at 5:06 pm | #

          Ooh, you *answered me back*. You won!

          But actually none of us are winning anything here.

          If you think you’re going prevent a Hillary presidency at this point, you’re completely wrong– realclearpolitics has her consistently running 6 or 7 points up, and Tannenbaum’s electoral-vote.com site projects she’s going to take 352 electoral votes (and she only needs 270)– we can look forward to some of those “Electoral Landslide!” headlines again.

          But let’s say you “succeed” and you manage to put Trump in office. That’ll show ’em, right? Why, next time around, they’ll take the left more seriously! If that’s the idea, it’s a pretty crazy idea: check the attitude toward Ralph Nader, and multiply it by 100.

          But actually, none of the DNC-insider types are worried about this at present. Most Bernie supporters actually switched over to Hillary-side of the force pretty quickly (e.g. with apologies for a dailykos link, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/26/1542650/-Bad-news-for-Trump-ABC-WaPo-poll-81-of-Sanders-backers-have-rallied-to-Hillary-already). So they don’t particularly care about you, you’re the residue, a tiny slice of a couple of percent of the electorate at best.

          Now me, why do *I* care? I care because I *like* fringe political movements, but I want one that’s sane and engaged with reality and has at least a small chance of really and truly making the world a better place, at least someday.

          I keep waiting for Corey Robin to step in here and show us how it’s done. He suggested that there’s *some* way a person more diplomatic than myself could find some way to blow enough sunshine up your skirts to bring you around. I can’t imagine what’d if would be.

          • s. wallerstein August 16, 2016 at 5:34 pm | #

            Joseph Brenner,

            It seems that this blog provides a space for critical voices, for political outsiders (on the left) and that it is valuable, whether or not it is germ of something “bigger”.

            “Normal” people don’t call themselves “enemy combatant” and still less sign that with their real name. That takes courage and intellectual autonomy, which seem like qualities we should cultivate.

            Maybe some day these critical positions will become massive, maybe not, but it is valuable that they get expressed, if only because the human picture gets pretty dark at times and a little light from the enemy combatants is welcome.

          • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 17, 2016 at 11:57 am | #

            Okay, people, your friendly neighborhood Enemy Combatant is about to drop another of his epic-sized comments. Gather the kids around for another heartwarming tirade!

            “If you think you’re going prevent a Hillary presidency at this point, you’re completely wrong–”

            It is evident that Joseph Brenner does not understand why some of us are little inclined to support Hillary: we have historical memory regarding the current crop of neo-liberal Democrats, and why that is the case. We are not inclined to reward a politician who has no progressive history to speak of while pretending the opposite. The public record of Ms. Clinton’s public life is available for all to read and see. No need to rehash it once again. As well, no one here is trying to “prevent” Ms. Clinton’s enthroning. As if.

            Rather, we are trying to understand how we got here, with Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton as candidates and the connected matters that ensure such an outcome and the tendency of American politics (and punditry) to disincline progressive policy and grease the skids for social and economic reaction and a persistently truculent foreign policy. This is not about Ms. Clinton the person, this is about whether or not it will ever happen — or if it is ever even possible — to pursue a truly progressive agenda at official levels in the current historical moment. Some historians, such as Rick Perlstein and Morris Berman, and journalists like Christian Parenti, suggest that the progressive moments in American history are actually NOT a part of the overall trajectory of American history but are largely inconsistent with it, but do get a good shot “during a moment of danger.” I won’t name drop my source for that quote as I tend to do that too much already.

            In other words, the so-called “liberal consensus” is largely disproved by the reality of American history, as the fewness of victories for progressivism and the vigorous and official (and unofficial) reaction to them clearly demonstrate. At the presidential level, reaction to progressive policy is seen from Nixon to Obama. It is worth noting that the four-to-five decade span of reaction comes to follow the 1954 Brown v. Board decision/Civil Rights/labor activism/feminism/anti-war-to-1972 period — a span of only eighteen years. (Of course, this reaction also had the New Deal in its gunsights, too.) In this context, Trump vs. Clinton is actually business as usual, and the inevitability in which Brenner seems to enthuse is not without evidence. That may explain the official shock that met Bernie’s powerful candidacy. Therefore, for you, Brenner, to accuse us of thinking we could “prevent” Hillary from becoming president is to accuse us of historical ignorance. When you come to this site, at the very least do us in the comments section the courtesy of respecting our historical literacy. That is why we come here: we have it and we, by reading Corey, cultivate, challenge, and expand on it.

            “But let’s say you ‘succeed’ and you manage to put Trump in office. That’ll show ’em, right? Why, next time around, they’ll take the left more seriously! If that’s the idea, it’s a pretty crazy idea: check the attitude toward Ralph Nader, and multiply it by 100.”

            Read my earlier replies to other posters. But let us take this as you likely mean it: if Trump becomes president because we turn our backs on Hillary (a false assumption btw; and do you really think we have ANY kind of moral obligation to vote for Hillary because you hector us, using Trump as a cudgel?) maybe the fault lay more with you and your “interventions”, as well as with your candidate. With every post, you give others cause to re-think voting for Hillary to stop Trump — it rewards people like you and your tactics as well as the anti-left reaction that pays for your hourly troll-wages. So, Joey — how’s that workin’ out for ya?

            In light of the foregoing, I just thought of something — the treatment we are getting now should act as a clue as to how we will be treated under a Clinton administration. If Joseph Brenner thinks his hectoring is having any effect, he should know that I think I now have cause to vote for Jill Stein: HIM. Through him we are getting a taste of what awaits us under Clinton.

            We on the left don’t have any friends in the Clinton crew, just mostly enemies (and most of us are ok with that). Brenner is one of them and he has come here to tell us that. THAT may be the true reason he is here: we are being warned that hell is being prepared for us and not by Trump. What he thinks are his mere taunts, exulted joyfully by a sore winner and leveled at us despised and disgruntled losers may, in fact, be more than that.

            Online mockery now, political abandonment next — which is what the Times and Post will advise to a Hillary Clinton administration. How far behind these are surveillance and repression, American style? I ask this because one of the tactics used on us is a President-Trump-will-get-you scare. We are actually supposed to worry about what Trump will do and UNdo. To us and to the people we purport to care about. That ignores what CLINTON will do to us. Should we not take Brenner as a warning about what awaits US?

            Mere commentators on a blog post are not likely to invite official scrutiny; this is not my point. Rather, it is our progressive ACTIVISM that truly puts us at risk under Clinton at least as much as it would under Trump, given his bigotry at the very least. That is the point and Brenner’s contributions here should be seen as just such a warning. We on the left lost in the presidential run and will continue to lose after Ms. Clinton receives her crowning in January (unless we fight back, of course). Is not that what Brenner means when he tell us that “the Bernie Sanders campaign seems to have shown that there are a lot of folks out there who are completely driven insane by hearing words like ‘revolution’”? Don’t these “insane” “folks” need to be stopped, and is not Hillary Clinton the one to do the job? We will pay for our insolence and it won’t stop merely with the doleful sight of Hillary raising her hand on the podium before the Chief Justice. Joseph Brenner, message received.

            And some of us actually though that you came here to persuade us “insane” folks to go and vote for Hillary. Oh, silly us for thinking that your candidate might want us along with her current supporters to boost her to victory! Thanks to you, now we know better.

            “Now me, why do *I* care? I care because I *like* fringe political movements, but I want one that’s sane and engaged with reality and has at least a small chance of really and truly making the world a better place, at least someday.”

            Bernie and Ralph are not “fringe”, although they were both so labelled in the press, in spite of their respective brands of well-known and long-standing public service. Given their contributions that benefited actual weak persons in need, one could also conclude that they are both “sane and engaged with reality”. Hey, just ask that car company honcho who was forced to apologize in public to Nader!

            So who do you think will do the scut work “of really and truly making the world a better place”, other than people like Bernie, Ralph, and the “insane” “folks” you come here to hector? I notice that you did not suggest that this work would find YOUR own hands involved therein.

            And who do you think will resist us if not BOTH (and not merely one) of the current front-running candidates?

            And speaking of running, go outside and play Joey. Run along now. That’s the boy! Go play in the traffic.

            God, I am such a prolix rotter!!

          • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 17, 2016 at 2:44 pm | #

            Oh, and this just in:

            http://www.democracynow.org/

            See the segment “Why Did Clinton Just Tap a Pro-TPP, Pro KXL, Pro Fracking Politician to Head Her Transition Team”.

            You’re welcome, Joey.

      • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 16, 2016 at 3:49 pm | #

        Or maybe you are blaming US for provoking your “ranting” (the “hectoring”) because it feeds our sense of our importance? We need you to hector us because without you, we are nothing.

        So, it is our fault that you are here?

        Do you routinely indulge others’ sense of importance while displaying open contempt for them?

        For what end, to what purpose?

        Who is paying you, Trump or Clinton?

        Or is this just a hobby of yours, a summer pastime?

  11. stevenjohnson August 10, 2016 at 9:18 am | #

    Trump supporters will vote. It’s not clear that Clinton actually has many committed supporters. At this point, polls are uncomfortably close to tabloid reports on the state of movie star marriages. If the couple does the opposite of what the tabloids said, it was because the stars changed their minds later, right? Or to put it another way, Nate Silver et al. are convinced that there is a formed public opinion that keeps changing, when the real question is whether the public opinion on elections isn’t a real thing until much closer to the election.

    But let’s suppose the polls at this moment really provide genuine information. Since Trump is being recast by elites as soft on Russia and, for some reason, as leftish, against free trade, a Clinton victory is an endorsement of opposition to Russia and free trade. (Opposition to China is agreed by both.) Personally I think this is a bad thing. That’s why right wing criticisms of Trump and Clinton are turning this election into a plebiscite on reaction, except that votes either way endorse reaction. This is a happy arrangement for the owners and their supporters, but not so much for the rest of us.

  12. Roquentin August 10, 2016 at 9:44 am | #

    Also, after thinking about it a little more. Clinton could win over the youth vote with one simple sentence: “I pledge to legalize marijuana at the federal level.” She wouldn’t even have to abandon the neoliberal economics to do so. With it being legal in five states now (CO, WA, OR, CA, AK) it’s only a matter of when it will happen rather than if. People would forgive so much if even that were done.

    It also baffles me that the Democrats who control New York can’t even pull this one off. Maybe there’s just too much money in arresting kids for no reason, or the pretense it gives them to lock up black and brown kids is too dear to the people in power.

    • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:49 pm | #

      Legalizing pot, or even decriminalizing it, would alienate her prison corp big donors. They depend on petty crime to keep their beds – and coffers – full.

      But you are absolutely right in your last few lines. I learned this at DK. You never criticize a Dem, no matter what they did, that you raised bloody hell when Bush/Reagan/Nixon did it.

      • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:51 pm | #

        Oops. The second paragraph was to someone else.

    • hyperbola August 11, 2016 at 11:00 am | #

      How little knowledge of history. Remember that Aldous Huxley predicted the “elite” would use drugs to keep the hoi polloi debilitated and easy to control.

      Remember that the sect that controls Britain fought two 19th century wars against the Chinese to enforce the “right” of HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghhai Banking Corporation) to drench the chinese population with opium. Remember that this same “bank” was recently caught financing most of the drug trade in Mexico and Columbia – and was given a derisory fine by “our” government as a way of protecting continuing narcotrafficking by HSBC.

      Remember that opium production in Afghanistan has trebled since US troops arrived.

      Frankly “our” elite seems to be heading us towards the chinese coolie option.

      • Roquentin August 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm | #

        First of all, weed is a far cry different from opium. That said, you’d think any leftist worth his salt would find the mass incarceration which is a direct result of the “War on Drugs” a national tragedy and something which should be stopped as soon as possible. This is speaking strictly in domestic terms and doesn’t even include the anti-narco malfeasance in Latin America.

        You can hardly walk down the street in NY without smelling someone smoking weed. White people don’t go to jail for it, by and large. It’s black and brown kids who do. The “War on Drugs” always was a thinly veiled excuse to lock up people living in the hood, who often were selling drugs to the very privileged white children these laws were created to “protect.” It’s shameful, and I have no patience for anyone on the supposed “left” who argues that it should continue.

    • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:41 am | #

      “Clinton could win over the youth vote with one simple sentence: ‘I pledge to legalize marijuana at the federal level.’”

      Is this you imitating Gloria Steinem? It’s certainly equally insulting and utterly unaware of the level of political awareness and engagement that young Bernie supporters had.

      • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 12:43 am | #

        “Had” should be “have.”

      • phatkhat August 12, 2016 at 1:06 am | #

        Indeed. If the young folks were seriously one issue voters on MJ, they would be flocking to Gary Johnson. They aren’t.

        • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 1:08 am | #

          “they would be flocking to Gary Johnson. They aren’t.”

          Another strong endorsement of their awareness and good sense.

  13. jonnybutter August 10, 2016 at 10:54 am | #

    Stipulated that the reality is probably a slurry of more than one of these, I’d say #3 is broadly applicable. HRC, notwithstanding her other worthy qualities, is just terrible at politics. In 2008 I was slow to recognize just how bad she is at it, figuring that no big shot Dem can be *this* poor, that it must be me, etc.

    No. She just is bad at politics. It’s a talent she simply lacks – she doesn’t know what emotion she should be faking. Usually fatal. I agree with CR that Trump will be crushed, electorally – especially now, since his hissy yesterday. But can you imagine HRC running against any even-only-slightly-more-polished GOP candidate? Hell, that anybody was ever worried about her vis a vis Trump says it all about how bad she is.

    I also think #7 is correct. They know they can take enough left supporters’ votes for granted, + the GOP and GOP/indies’ votes they are courting and getting, to win. They probably aren’t incompetent about polling simple questions.

    Of course they have hostility to the Left. They don’t like ‘liberals’ either – ‘knee jerk liberals’ I remember Bill C. called them.

  14. xenon2 August 10, 2016 at 11:02 am | #

    I voted for Sanders in the primary, but I am far, far left of Sanders, who really
    didn’t say much about foreign affairs, except he didn’t meet with AIPAC.

    I am voting for someone who is not an ideologue, will talk to even Kim Jong-un.
    I can’t even say his name on the internet, so despised is he.

    #nohillary means a vote for continued war.The US doesn’t feel the brunt of this
    war, but Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, etc., do.

    I have just read that the US will sell Umpteen trillions of tanks to KSA, who will
    use them only ‘for defense’. KSA has taken over Bahrain with tanks in 2011, and
    as as I know, Is only bombing poor Yemen. Maybe, KSA is using tanks. Where is
    Yemen in nyt?

    The US is selling #chaos.
    MIC.

    • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:56 pm | #

      I’m left of Bernie, too. But he was the best candidate in years. At least he acknowledged the Palestinians. And WHY we refuse to deal with Russia or North Korea or Iran or even Cuba, over supposed human rights violations, but support KSA and Erdogan and that new guy in the Phillippines, among MANY others, I haven’t a clue. The only one I know who has said he would talk to Kim Jong Un is Trump. And I support that, as well as normalizing relations with Russia.

      The two candidates are both bad, but not in the same ways.

  15. Donald August 10, 2016 at 11:50 am | #

    This started with the Nader campaign. And you are right– this behavior can’t be about winning votes. I suspect the motives vary, so there is no need to choose between your different possible explanations except when trying to analyze the motives of some particular hack.

    For me the most convincing case for lesser evil voting comes from Chomsky, and he does it in a few sentences. He obviously despises the mainstream Democrats, but says the Republicans are worse and the differences matter for poor people, so vote Democratic in a swing state. Short and simple, no heated denunciations of people who disagree, an appeal to common values and he doesn’t deny the failings of the Democrats. With most Democratic boosters you get the distinct sense that they hate both you and your issues if you don’t fall into line. What’s worse is that this attitude never stops with some people. There is never a time when it is okay to criticized the Democrats.

    • phatkhat August 10, 2016 at 12:52 pm | #

      You are absolutely right in your last few lines. I learned this at DK. You never criticize a Dem, no matter what they did, that you raised bloody hell when Bush/Reagan/Nixon did it.

  16. George August 10, 2016 at 12:54 pm | #

    LOL- lots of fancy sophistry here, but it still comes down to, if you didn’t vote for Hillary, and Trump wins, it’s partly your fault.

    Sure, it’s unlikely, but so is getting killed in Russian Roulette- would you still want to spin the barrel?

    • jonnybutter August 10, 2016 at 3:09 pm | #

      The only sophistry I see is yours (although it’s not all that fancy). The election is nothing like Russian Roulette. It is so unlike RR that we could have a whole thread about all the ways it’s unlike it. Here’s one example: if you don’t vote for HRC and your state does, you aren’t responsible one way or another.

    • Gavolt August 11, 2016 at 7:09 am | #

      No. It is manifestly, 100% the fault of the Democratic party and the campaign they ran if they lose to a glib, wannabe klansman.

    • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 12, 2016 at 12:31 pm | #

      “…if you didn’t vote for Hillary, and Trump wins, it’s partly your fault.”

      In an interview last week on WNYC’s “On The Media” Ralph Nader replies to this very accusation. In the next paragraphs, I paraphrase his comments (I also toss in my own two cents, interpolated here and there as extrapolations on Nader’s own observations).

      Nader opens by referencing 2000. Why is the tiny Green Party at fault for the Dems’ own failures to a loser, barely literate, anti-child, anti-environment, governor from Texas, the anti-voter (and expressly anti-black) crimes by the State of in Florida, the Supremes’ 5-4 decision to stop the vote count, the loss of Gore’s home state of Tennessee and his loss of Arkansas, too (Bill Clinton’s home state). Yeah, all of that is Nader’s fault!

      The problem is the marginal status of the third party challenger – unwelcome by entrenched power. Third parties brought progressive issues to the table and the biggies pick’em up (typically under pressure of the third party and affiliated groups – abolition, women’s suffrage, worker rights, progressive economics/social programs).

      In the debates the mass media act as gate-keeper due to the fact of their funding of the poling companies – owned as they are, directly, by the very mass media that fund them. Nader’s own campaign did everything right: they held mass rallies (I attended one in Southampton, Long Island), cross country travelling, issued position papers for all to read, and Nader himself has a history of public service even if he never held public office. When one of his rallies filled Madison Square Garden, the NYT reported it on the obituary page!!

      Some electoral fixes: a national one-standard ballot access system; instant run off voting (vote 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices – if 1st choice does not win, second choice picks up 1st choice’s votes, and so on); better media: horse race stuff must end and this stuff where the media interviews itself instead of civic representatives who could challenge candidate statements and broaden the agenda. And then there is that voter suppression thing – we are now seeing some victories in court to suppress the suppression.

      And what of siphoning off votes from Hillary (or Gore back in 2000) you say? And the Libertarians? From whom are THEIR votes siphoned? Don’t THEY count? Would not THEIR votes be implicated in a Trump victory since they, as well, would not vote for Hillary — or is that accusation reserved only for those who vote for Jill Stein? Does Hillary own THEIR votes, too, just as much as some of you Hillary-bots seem to think she owns ours? How come the right end of the spectrum gets a pass but the left does not? If a group of persons could be accused of saddling America with Trump – would they not be Trump’s own voters and NOT those who DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM? Don’t Trump voters need an “intervention” far more than disaffected Bern-ers? Are not THEY the ones who need to be convinced of the error of their ways?? Is not their support the reason we have Trump in the race now? How are Bern-ers implicated in that? Talk about Democratic contempt for the left – you shove a problematic candidate in our face and try to curse, mock, insult, scare, and accuse us into supporting her, with the certain outcome that we will be shown the door after you’ve taken our vote and won the election with our help. If you hate us so much that your attempts to reach us don’t even try conceal your hostility to us, can you blame us for looking to cast our vote elsewhere – or not at all? Eff you, Hillary-bots, AND the donkey you rode in on!

      And how come no one ever asks how many votes Trump is stealing from the Libertarians, say, or how many Hillary is ripping off from Stein – why can’t it work the other way around? How can it NOT be the case that Trump and Hillary are siphoning off votes from third party candidates, leaving them marginal? How come we accept this notion that the big two parties own our votes but NOT the other smaller parties since they may be closer to our own policy beliefs? How does it happen that fear of one equals the other’s ownership of your vote? Why is it OUR job to save a nation that, frankly, only comes up with people we DON’T want to vote for, and then angrily tells us to stay away from the ones we DO want to vote for because of the two we DON’T want to vote for one the two is worse than the other? Why is voting for Hillary and thus “saving” America from Trump an act of patriotism? Saving America for whom? For the people who will, AGAIN, only give you two crappy candidates in the future in order that they can, again, face us with the same “choice”? How long is this supposed to go on? Don’t you think that THAT only encourages them to keep doing this to you over and over again? When do you get the right to get fed up and then to act on it by, at least, seeking out a third alternative – or being one yourself?

      In the interview Nader asks, would you tolerate big biz telling you that you can’t go to a small business that sells you what you have been looking for? If you would not, why do you tolerate big parties (and the big bizzes that support them) telling you that you cannot go to a small party candidate??

      Once more with feeling: you Hillary-bots SUCK AT YOUR JOB!

      • phatkhat August 12, 2016 at 7:58 pm | #

        Excellent commentary and rebuttal. How long will we keep voting for the “lesser evil”? I quit in 2012, and not playing their game this time, either.

        • Joseph Brenner August 16, 2016 at 2:40 pm | #

          Excellent. And has the world become a better place since 2012?
          You see, it’s not a question of entitlement, it’s not a question
          of whether I particularly like the idea of a Hillary for
          president, it’s a question of facing *what actually happens*.
          Yeah, I want a better electoral system that lets us vote our
          conscience without fear, but we do not have such a system at
          present. If you have some ideas as to how to get there, I’d
          certainly listen to you, because you see, I’d really really
          really like to have a movement toward a “political revolution”
          that isn’t just folks like yourself feeling smug and posturing
          about how enlightened you are for completely ignoring what seems
          like stunningly obvious political realities to the rest of us.

          Here, perhaps y’all can try foucsing on one simple little point–
          and see if you can *not change the subject* for once, I mean
          *focus* on this *one* *point*: Does Ruth Bader Ginsberg know what
          she’s talking about when she says that another Republican
          presidency will be a disaster for the supreme court, and hence
          for the United States? Please try to convince me you know better
          than Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

          • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 16, 2016 at 2:48 pm | #

            Are you a Trump troll sent here to stoke progressive anger in order to drive people away from voting for Hillary? If you are, it’s working.

            But if you are not, then — YOU HILLARY-BOTS TRULY SUCK AT YOUR JOB!

  17. Joseph Brenner August 10, 2016 at 3:05 pm | #

    It could be I’m one of the hectorists here (but then I also go for “1”: I don’t see how Clinton can lose). If you look at the people hanging out in places like the “Political Revolution” reddit group, it’s an article of faith with them that the “hold your nose and suck it up” argument is heinous nonsense, and I keep trying to ask them where they think their “political revolution” is going if it starts out by telling black and latino people they shouldn’t worry about electing an obvious racist to the presidency, and also by going “oh just fuck the Supreme Court” — Citizen’s United, gutting the Voting Rights Act, the Bush Jr. presidency, that kind of stuff is all irrelevant in the face of really important stuff like showing the DNC they’re ticked-off.

    This may very well be Bad Tactics on my part (I often seem like the least presuasive human being on the planet), but if you’re annoyed that I’m not glad-handing the Bernie-or-Busters, I’m annoyed that they need to be glad-handed.

    Or rather, *want* to be glad-handed, because like I said at the outset I don’t think we *need* to do anything with these guys– most Bernie supporters came around to the “Oh hell, it’s Hillary” conclusion pretty quickly, and the die-hards are looking to me like Green Party fanatics who’re hoping they can co-opt Bernie-supporters– and get them to ignore what Bernie is saying, which would be a good trick.

  18. xenon2 August 10, 2016 at 4:01 pm | #

    But, I do want Trump to win, mostly for his foreign policy.
    #nohillary supports Wall St,, which in turn, supports MIC.

    The whole idea of selling armaments, depends on destabilizing
    the world.So far, the US has done an excellent job of that. I used
    to think it was oil that made the world go round.I was a fool.

    • Edward August 11, 2016 at 7:31 am | #

      For a while I was considering voting for Trump, because I am worried Clinton will get us into a nuclear war with Russia. Not just Clinton, but the entire Washington establishment is hell bent on regime change in Russia and are willing to risk a war to get it. She wants a new war to overthrow the Syrian government which will likely break up Syria, leaving ISIS and Al Qaeda in charge and wiping out the minorities. Clinton (and Trump) also want to scuttle the Iran agreement, paving the way to a new war. I am not sure how much better Trump will be, though.

      • Roquentin August 11, 2016 at 10:04 am | #

        Edward, I couldn’t agree more. Clinton is by most indications even more bellicose than Trump on foreign policy. You hear all this bullshit in the media about worrying that “Trump will have his finger on the button,” when they probably have more to fear in that department out of Hillary. Of course, when Hillary starts a war it’ll be done “professionally,” using the justifications and language the Acela Corridor and Military-Industrial Complex find acceptable.

        The only, and I mean the only things which make Clinton in any way preferable to Trump is the fact that she isn’t disgustingly racist and sexist. That’s it. They are either identical on the other issues and in some cases Hillary is even worse.

        • hyperbola August 11, 2016 at 11:10 am | #

          What you really mean is that “our” media doesn´t report how racist and sexist Killary is.

          This “blog” seems awfully provincial.

          One doesn´t have to look very far to find blacks, latinos, ….. that condemn bitterly the racism and sexism of Killary.

          The sad thing is how the “programming” done by “our” media leaves the provincials only able to argue about predetermined distractions.

          I would go so far as to say that most Americans will only escape from the propaganda bubble if they learn some foreign laguages and begin reading foreign sources of information.

          • Edward August 11, 2016 at 4:39 pm | #

            hyperbola,

            Ms. Israel Lobby doesn’t care about racism for sure; its all a political calculation. I think the reason the Clintons are democrats is that the democrats used to have a monopoly on the politics in Arkansas.

        • Edward August 11, 2016 at 4:36 pm | #

          I normally vote for third party presidential candidates. Now I am oscillating between voting for Trump or Stein. I feel as though Hillary Clinton has put a gun to my head, marched me to a voting booth, and told me, “Vote for Trump or the planet gets it!” It isn’t just Clinton; she will have a whole cabinet full of hawks who want to intimidate Russia.

        • Bill Michtom August 12, 2016 at 1:03 am | #

          “The only … things which make Clinton in any way preferable to Trump is the fact that she isn’t disgustingly racist and sexist.”

          This is only mildly true in the US and not at all outside of the US. Who’s Iraq war vote and SoS policies contributed to ISIS and its sexual slavery, deaths of Arabs by the hundreds of thousands and, of course, the destruction of Honduras and the wave of women and children fleeing there and ending up at the US-Mexico border?

          What makes her mildly preferable to Trump is that she’s not a pathological liar with the attention span of a 3-year-old. And I mean pathological clinically, not as an insult.

      • LFC August 11, 2016 at 5:13 pm | #

        @Edward
        what you say about the Washington establishment and regime change in Russia is — well, it’s beyond ridiculous. I’m not going to change anyone’s mind here but figured I might as well register my view that this is delusional. Big difference betw tension and posturing, on one hand, and war for regime change vs a country w a second-strike nuclear capability (if you don’t happen to know what that phrase means, look it up).

  19. Thomas August 10, 2016 at 6:46 pm | #

    I agree the argumentative methods people use on social media only ensure the other person hardens there beliefs, but no one group has a monopoly on those methods. I’m a man of the Left myself, and gave money to Sanders in the primary. However, we have a habit of assuming the absolute worst motives on the part of Liberals, often suggesting they are not only wrong, but corrupt, while belittling or ignoring the incremental progress they have sometimes made even in the face of extreme opposition from the right.

  20. Edward August 10, 2016 at 10:45 pm | #

    I think a big question is how much fraud will occur in the election. I think Clinton stole the primary. Will her political machine be able to do this in November?

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