Supporters of Hillary Clinton tell the progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders that they have to change their politics, or compromise them, or ignore them, in order to join them in their fight to defeat the dangerous Donald Trump. But no one seems to ask: if Hillary Clinton wants our votes, why doesn’t she change her politics to suit us? Isn’t that what politicians do? Instead of pandering to the people, she panders to corporations.
President Obama says Donald Trump is a dangerous man. But what about him? He murders people by remote control. He plots assassinations. He tortures. He kidnaps. He spies on everyone. How much worse could Trump be than him?
Donald Trump dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by claiming to have “bone spurs.” But now he’s pretending to be a ferocious militarist. Hillary Clinton has never met a war she didn’t like – Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya – but she has to pretend to be a liberal in order to get Democrats to vote for her. What a choice!
After a self-radicalized American shooter massacred 49 patrons at an Orlando gay nightclub called Pulse and retroactively associated himself with ISIS, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for his actions. That’s how ISIS works: you do what you want in their name, then they claim you. Now Donald Trump is threatening sanctions against Muslim immigrants, and Hillary Clinton claims to have a plan to racially profile potentially self-radicalized lone wolves. Both favor bombing Muslim countries. Trump and Clinton are serving ISIS’ interests. Will they claim them?
Here we are, faced with two terrible choices for president this fall (unless there’s a miracle and Bernie Sanders somehow manages to become the Democratic nominee): a lunatic racist Republican versus a wild-eyed interventionist-warmonger who loves big corporations.
Hillary Clinton’s probable victory in the Democratic presidential nomination is said to mark an important historical achievement for women. Certainly, she would become the first woman in the United States to be the nominee of a major party. From a broader historical vantage point, however, there’s nothing novel about a woman marrying a powerful political leader and achieving power as a result, which is what happened in Clinton’s case. It’s time for the system to reward women who achieve power of their own accord.
Hillary Clinton seems poised to become the first woman to be the presidential nominee of a major American political party. It’s supposed to be a major symbolic moment, at least in terms of identity politics. But it feels hollow, largely because of something most commentators hesitate to say in public: if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton, she wouldn’t be where she is now. Why can’t a nation of 319 million people find a woman president who didn’t marry her way into the job? Because the system still won’t allow it.
So this is how American political parties are supposed to unify at the end of the primaries: everyone is supposed to vote for the winner, even if that winner is anathema to everything most members of that party believe in. Best system anyone ever invented, eh?
The media went crazy over false reports that Bernie Sanders supporters threw some chairs at a Democratic convention in Nevada. They deplored the burning of Make America Great Again hats at a Trump rally. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton personally destroyed several Middle East nations…yet the media doesn’t have anything to say about that.
Tribune Publishing, parent company of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, has changed its name after 168 years to Tronc.
