Hillary Clinton is repeatedly touted as inevitable because she has so much experience. But she’s only won elected office once. And when it happened, it was handed to her on a silver platter. Can she pull off her first real win in a race for president?
Inevitable?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Interesting. Hadn’t thought of it that way.
Jack
Interesting,
You don’t like Clinton because she’s a socialist and (I’m guessing here but correct me if I’m wrong) won’t be strongly enough pro-war, and I don’t like her because she’s a war mongering capitalist that bails out REC (really-existing-capitalism) as it exists under US law.
You are indeed guessing, which you shouldn’t have to do. I’ve never said anything “pro-war” to my knowledge. In fact, here I’ve often made non-interventionist comments. It’s a tendency of most people, Left or Right, to assume about their opponents.
And my previous comment referred to what a good point it is that Hillary has only won one election and an easy one at that. We can agree sometimes Glenn. I want a streamlined, efficient military so we can balance the budget and stop lining the pockets of war profiteers. I don’t want 1000 bases around the world. After all, I’m here because I’m anti-corporate, anti-war, anti-surveillance, anti-drone, and anti-torture. And of course because I value the perspective of an intelligent, honest Leftist. (I mean Ted, not you, but I wouldn’t call you unintelligent. 😉 )
I’m weary of arguing over labels, but no, Hillary isn’t much more socialist than most Americans. She is “left-liberal” though. As a classical liberal, I cannot support feminism, affirmative action (ie codified discrimination), massive social welfare programs, mass immigration, globalism, or muliculturalism to name a few. But in Hill’s case, it hardly matters. I dislike her for the same reasons as anyone else here. She is a soulless (figuratively speaking), corrupt, corporate, power-mad, entitled, unaccomplished, hypocritical, lying, shilling, thieving, murdering, war-mongering cunt.
“As a classical liberal, I cannot support feminism, affirmative action (ie codified discrimination), massive social welfare programs, mass immigration, globalism, or muliculturalism to name a few. ”
I’m searching for a suitably humorous reply, but I just can’t top the quote above for sheer entertainment value.
Madison & Jefferson both supported affirmative action to free the slaves and integrate them into society. Social welfare and globalism are built into the constitution. The founders’ belief in multiculturalism is expressed by the motto of the country, and codified in the first amendment. All of the founders came here by way of mass immigration, either in their own person or that of their European ancestors.
In short, if the founders were as liberal as you are we’d still be subjects of the crown. You should get together with Whimsy, he’s under the mistaken impression he’s a liberal as well.
“She is a soulless (figuratively speaking), corrupt, corporate, power-mad, entitled, unaccomplished, hypocritical, lying, shilling, thieving, murdering, war-mongering cunt.”
So you intend to vote for a soulless (figuratively speaking), corrupt, corporate, power-mad, entitled, unaccomplished, hypocritical, lying, shilling, thieving, murdering, war-mongering dick.
At least you vote for what’s really important to you.
CH,
Boy, you really came out both guns blazing this time, but you missed the side of the barn entirely.
1. Somehow I doubt the founders would have supported turning away better candidates for jobs and education away due to race.
2. Reread the Constitution.
3. Assimilation is not multiculturalism.
4. And once and for all, any immigrations of the past in no way obligate us today. Since it’s inception, America has always restricted immigration, and to assert otherwise is to reveal your ignorance of history. People and pols of the past considered how such policies might affect the character of America. Unlike today the spigot was shut off after a wave. And unlike today, most immigrants were grateful to be here, were encouraged to assimilate, and came from somewhat similar cultures. Somehow I can’t quite imagine any founders saying, “Well guys, we got to come here, so anybody else can. It’s only fair we get no say. That’s just logic.”
6. For whom is Trump shilling? From whom has he stolen? Whom has he murdered? How is he unaccomplished? You’re coming off even more unhinged than usual.
I assume you mean “Social welfare and globalism are built into the constitution.” when you say ‘read the Constitution.
One more time, “We the people … provide for the common welfare” Not “the government” We. The. People. Welfare. Duh?
From article VI, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; ”
Treaties. With other countries. On the globe. Duh?
“3. Assimilation is not multiculturalism.”
Very good Jack! And “freedom of religion” is the exact opposite of assimilation. If the founders had meant to “Assimilate” people, they would have said so. Instead they granted us the *liberty* to do as we please. Nowhere did they say we had to conform to anyone else’s standards, speak a particular language, dress the same, eat the same or anything. At the time the Constitution was written the states were far more heterogeneous than they are now. All the settlers brought their own languages, ethics, and traditions. They had no TV, no radio, and very little communication outside their communities. If the founders had intended for us all to be ‘the same’ they would have said so, and the states would never have ratified the Constitution in the first place.
I’m not even going to bother with the rest of your nonsense.
And I assume you don’t know what globalist means. No anti-globalist believes we shouldn’t have any treaties with anyone.
I’m not even going to bother with the rest of your nonsense.
One thing I haven’t seen discussed yet. Bernie Sanders’ campaign, boiled down to a single concept, is that people should be able to pursue the American Dream. Things like job security, economic security, healthcare, the fundamentals of a middle-class, productive existence, should be a birthright, not something you cling to by the merest of margins in a game rigged against you.
And the Democrats (not the Republicans, mind you, but the Democrats) are having a friggin’ fit about it. The chair of the DNC put up the smallest number of debates possible, and at strange times. Why? To help Hillary. All I hear from Hillary’s camp is how hard she’s going to work, how prepped she is, how her way is much better than Sanders way.
Think about that. The guy with the most American message of all is being treated like he’s a crazy man by the establishment.
What, EXACTLY, has Hillary done? Seriously. She and Bill have collected over $100 million (that’s not a typo–one hundred million plus) in speaking fees in their political careers. Where does all that money go? Certainly not to help people through the Clinton Foundation (which uses something like 9 to 15% of donations to provide actual help to those in need).
And why, EXACTLY, do so many people defend her so vociferously? I can understand the people sticking up for Bernie Sanders, for the reasons mentioned. But Hillary never says anything that isn’t like an answer to a law exam question.
That’s odd. I don’t remember ever hearing that the American Dream was something everyone deserved and would be guaranteed by gov’t.
eh-hem “We hold these truths to be self evident…” ring a bell?
Of course, the operative phrase there is pursuit of happiness, just as Alex said pursue the American Dream.
Neither he nor the founders said anything about guaranteeing you that could catch it.
Jack,
Then you’ve skipped the last 50 years of politics at least.
Jack doesn’t believe the wealthy 1% deserve to have their wealth guaranteed by 20 trillion dollar bailouts or have it increased by military industrial complex government wars of aggression.
Jack believes that Trump is going to bring the prosecutions that Obama should have brought against the 1% and return the 1%’s ill gotten gains back to the middle class people they stole it from.
And that Trump is going to prosecute the Bush administration for starting a war of aggression against international law and torturing prisoners.
It’s wonderful that you such a sense of justice, but I need to know where Trump has pledged these things that seem so out of character for him.
Quite right. Alex says, “people should be able to pursue the American Dream.”
*But* then he immediately follows with, “Things like job security, economic security, healthcare, the fundamentals of a middle-class, productive existence, should be a birthright”
Apparently the only part of the American Dream that the gov’t won’t cover, at least directly, are the house and spouse!
Sadly, Glenn, no elected person will ever achieve those things. We both know it.
Jack,
Read the Preamble. “We the People … establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and hence secure the blessing of liberty …”
What they were saying is that the purpose of government is to help people. It doesn’t say they’ll give you every single damned thing, but it also doesn’t say, “We’ll rig the system so no matter how hard you struggle, you’ll drown.”
Sheesh.
Maybe, just maybe, alex, there’s an option between rigging the system for people or rigging it against them.
Jack,
Now we’re finding common ground. The system shouldn’t be a total welfare state, nor should it be a “the people in Flint oughta be grateful we don’t just line them all up and shoot them” state.
So what’s “fair”? That’s easy. Fair is when you and another person share a sandwich. One of you cuts it into two pieces, and the other one gets to pick which piece to take.
But “fair” is never, I cut the sandwich, I get to decide which piece to take, and I also get to take the filling out of the piece I leave.
And all the argument against universal healthcare, tuition-free college, and so forth always comes from someone who doesn’t think they’ll ever be sick and uninsured or unable to come up with six figures for a four-year degree. Unless you’re willing to accept your stance at any position on the luck-wheel, it can’t be fair.
“… it’ll be the first time she won fair and square”
wait, what? Did something change to make US elections fair & square? Neither the electoral college or gerrymandering are F & S. Gore didn’t lose Florida ‘cuz the Bushie’s cheated – he lost because they out-cheated the dems.
“I had a very interesting experience this summer. I remember exactly when it was. It was when I was reading an article by [Evan] Osnos in the New Yorker about Trump. He happened to be covering the white nationalist movement, basically neo-Nazis. Coincidentally, it was right when Donald Trump burst onto the scene, and he wrote about how these guys were embracing Trump, as they never had embraced any Republican candidate before.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/01/rick_perlstein_historian_of_conservatism_on_donald_trump_and_the_gop_crack.html
When the Trump storm broke this summer, it touched off smaller tempests that stirred up American politics in ways that were easy to miss from afar. At the time, I happened to be reporting on extremist white-rights groups, and observed at first hand their reactions to his candidacy. Trump was advancing a dire portrait of immigration that partly overlapped with their own. On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site, endorsed him for President: “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.” The Daily Stormer urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated
Why is everyone so in love with the “founding fathers”? That’s a pretty conservative notion for some of you who claim not to be conservative.
The founding fathers were liberals, and weren’t you going to stop replying to a thread at the top of the column?
Depends on which way you mean it. Their ideology was liberal but today is considered conservative. And they fought to conserve their way of life before the Crown increased its meddling.
Jack is right. The “founders” were classical liberals. That means they were for laissez-faire capitalism and individual property rights.
@Jack
Don’t they teach US history at your school? I certainly don’t expect them to teach from Howard Zinn’s works, but even the watered down propaganda they used to teach covered the basics.
If the colonists wanted to “conserve” their way of life, they wouldn’t have revolted. They wanted a *new* way of life. The Intolerable Acts and the quartering of troops were in response to the colonies’ growing resistance – not the cause thereof.
Check out Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” for an explanation of “classical liberalism”.
The founders were dicks and their murderous dickdom persists to this day.
Classical Liberals hated democracy and wanted to suppress it. See the electoral college and no popular election of senators. The only national office the common people could vote for was their member of the House of Representatives. No senate or president popular vote for a working class democracy.
The Federalists were Anglophiles and wanted a monarchy in the US, but dared not propose such so soon after the war with England.
In Milton Friedman’s free market, requiring any certification (say, to be a dentist) would be a violation of rights. Anybody could put out a sign and start drilling and yanking teeth without any training at all.
Friedman was a totally mad ideologue.
The dicks of dickdom take their murderous madness to be a virtue.
Right, Glenn. Instead we have the false sense of security provided by licensure. Rather than vetting a professional ourselves, we just trust that the gov’t knows what it’s doing, with predictable results.
OK, so they were reactionaries then, CH. They wanted to revert to pre-French and Indian War conditions.
You like to play around with the word conservative. No question there. Well by the *one* definition you choose, then I am actually a reactionary and so are most people who call themselves conservatives. You’ll probably agree. But you won’t agree that Leftists and “liberals” in America today have become the conservatives. Though they conserve SS, Medicare, affirmative action, abortion “rights,” etc. Hell, now they’re technically conserving homomarriage. Oh, sweet irony!
I agree with Glenn.
Jack, how are you qualified to vet a dentist? Did you go to dental school? You don’t trust a government to look out for you. Do you trust any party or organization to represent you and look out for your interests?
Glenn – a lot of what you say is true, but it’s also “tarring with the same brush” not every single person felt exactly the same way.
And you too, are dancing with the Historian’s Fallacy. If you want to understand historical figures, you need to look at them in the light of their own times, not compare them to modern people.
Two hundred years from now people will have different philosophies and ethics, they’ll say, “Hey, that Glenn guy who everyone thought was a progressive? He was really a barbarian who thought X which we know today to be wrong.”
The theory of capitalism was invented by Adam Smith, and first published in 1776. It is highly unlikely that any copies of The Wealth of Nations made it across the ocean in time to influence this country’s founding.
The first copy was almost certainly the one Jefferson brought back with him from France in 1789. If the founders subscribed to any economic theory it was most likely Mercantilism or perhaps Physiocracy.
But to compare them to the people Marx was talking about is to indulge in the Historian’s Fallacy. They were born into feudalism, and saw a better way. They could not conceive of communism any more than they could conceive of an iPhone.
Marx, himself, saw feudalism as a historical necessity. We could not have created civilization without it. He saw feudalism giving way to democracy; democracy leading to socialism; and socialism eventually atrophying in favor of communism.
To deny democracy’s necessary role is to deny Marx. A good little Marxist/Leninist would never do that, would now would he?
I have to agree with Jack that, from where I’m standing, US liberals are pretty conservative / reactionary as well.
The worst insult you could give me is to lump me in with liberals.
Jack & Prole: If you want to debate something, you’d be better off responding to something I’ve actually said, rather than something you pulled out of your ass.
I’ve said many times that most “liberals” in the US today are in fact conservative, but I’m more likely to phrase it something to the effect that the so-called center has moved to the right. I’ve talked specifics many times – such as the way most so-called liberals cheered the gangland slaying of UBL.
Yes, Jack – you are a ‘reactionary.’ Sort of. The past you want to go back to never really existed in the first place.
Nor have I *ever* claimed to be a socialist. While I can see some of the benefits, I can also see some of the drawbacks. When I talk about what I see as a perfect solution, it’s more of a blend of multiple philosophies rather than any one ‘pure’ theory.
CH, I thought you were a socialist, not a liberal.
CH
History is written by the victors.
If the victors, the enforcers, the most violent, name themselves the Department of Justice, and then name Bradly Manning, or Edward Snowden, violent criminal threats to society, does that make it so?
Should I worry what name they apply to me, when the greater worry should be the violence they would apply to those so named?
How is Ted named by the LA Times and the LAPD?
Should fear of being named, and only being named, be sufficient to deny truth?
Believe that and believe cowardice is a virtue.
> History is written by the victors.
Absolutely! That’s why the good guys always win. 😉
CH
And those who name others barbarians may well be revealed, in time, to be barbarians themselves.
The word decide comes from to cut down. The American founders, to clear the land, decided, barbarously, to cut down both deciduous trees and, to extend the word, deciduous Indians.
I won’t accept the relativism of Germany’s Nazis, or Trumps acceptance of the murder of women and children as acceptable, by reason of their being men of their time,
Sorry, CH, we part ways on the issue of Historical Fallacy.
No worries, we’re close enough to work together towards a better future, and that’s what counts.
CH
Absolutely!
Jack, for someone who hates homos you sure do seem to love those 18th century dandies who wore makeup, wigs and high-heeled shoes.
Gosh prole, weren’t you going to stop replying to threads by posting at the top of the column? (second reminder in two days)
If you want to convince people you’re an honest broker, you might want consider acting like one.
Things are quiet here today so I will take the opportunity to complement Trump for his being presidential, in that presidents do not allow “journalists” to ask questions of themselves unless they have a record of kissing up to power.
Trump, by not participating in the last “debate” did what every recent president has done by closing the door on those who will not flatter him.
How many presidential interviews has Ted Rall or DemocracyNow!, for example, had in its entire existence, whether of Clinton, Bush, Obama, or any candidates that have been left for dead and buried by the corporate press?
Ask a question that makes a president uncomfortable and that will be the last time you will be called on to ask a question. The door of opportunity will be closed on you, and because without access and thus being useless to corporate press, expect your welcome to papers such as the LA Times to be chilled.
Once again, Trump reveals an uncomfortable truth about the power dynamics of both corporate parties in America, and we owe him thanks for providing another opportunity for learning.
Yeah, sure. And then there’s what actually happened. I watched the first Fox debate. Moderators are supposed to be impartial. They aren’t simply journalists when they take on that role. Instead, not only Kelly, but Baier and even Wallace ganged up on Trump. Now the issue isn’t that he couldn’t handle it–he did just fine. The point is that they can ask tough questions–just ask them evenhandedly. But they decided to ask Trump only hardball questions while giving all other candidates nearly only softballs. It was appallingly biased. Not the sort of conduct that should come from anyone claiming to be a moderator.
Ted, Ted – don’t you realise that Ms Clinton has a patent on electability – despite, as you point out, her being elected only once, in a situation which smacked of Britain’s «rotten boroughs» transposed to the United States ? While Mr Sanders may have won 14 of some 20 electoral contests (if I’ve calculated aright) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Bernie_Sanders -) no doubt in each of those 14 successful campaigns, he has paid license fees to Ms Clinton – who has, nota bene a perfect electoral record of 100 % – for the use of her patented electability techniques. Mr Sanders, after all, has won no more than 70 % of the contests in which he participated, which shows him to be a rank amateur compared to that paragon of electability, Ms Clinton, who has one all of hers….
Henri