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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Hate Trump AND Clinton? There Are Better Alternatives

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Ted Rall

Image result for voting booth

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the least popular presidential candidates of all time. So why vote for either one?

You wouldn’t know it to watch or read the news, but living in a duopoly doesn’t require you to hold your nose as you vote for someone you hate – merely because you hate the other candidate even more, or you’re deathly afraid of them. There are alternatives. And they don’t require you to compromise your ethics or vote against your own interests.

We’ve all heard it so often that we take it for granted: if you don’t vote, you’re apathetic. If you’re apathetic, you don’t have any right to complain when someone you don’t like wins and messes up the country.

That might be true when at least one of the candidates is palatable. But the argument falls apart at times like this, when most Americans agree that both are awful.

You and me, we may or may not agree on policy. But we probably agree on this: Wednesday morning, someone terrible will be president-elect. My lesser of two evils would be Hillary Clinton. But voting for her would tell the world that invading Iraq was OK. It would tell working-class people that NAFTA another free trade deals are OK. It would endorse the things that she endorses: bombing Libya and Syria, arming jihadis, Guantánamo, influence peddling, corruption on a scale that would make Nixon blush. None of that stuff is OK.

We must vote for Clinton in order to keep Trump out. That’s what they tell us. Trump, after all, is racist. But so is Clinton! What could be more racist than her obscene “war on terror”? All her victims are Muslim and brown – which is why white America doesn’t care. And don’t get me started on her and her husband’s “criminal justice reform” of the 1990s against “superpredators.”

With a “choice” like that, you have to look outside the box:

Voter Boycott

Citizens of countries with repressive and unresponsive ruling regimes often resort to the honorable strategy of the voter boycott. By denying the tyrants their votes, they rob their oppressors of legitimacy.

Never doubt that governments need their citizens to vote. For example, you might wonder why Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein bothered to hold his 2002 reelection campaign, in which he was the only candidate. The 11.4 million Iraqis who gave him his 100.00% victory (up from 99.96% in his previous “race”) allowed him, just before the U.S. invasion, to tell the world that he enjoyed his people’s popular support.

The “No Land! No House! No Vote!” movement, which began in 2004, calls for the poor and dispossessed to boycott South Africa’s electoral political system on the ground that the bourgeois political parties don’t care about their interests. In the 2011 election, 42% of registered voters respected the boycott. Concerned that the movement hurts its reputation internationally — and it has — the ruling African National Congress party has subjected the movement to torture and beatings.

It isn’t hard to imagine that a substantial decline in America’s already low voter participation rate would have some interesting effects. It would deny the United States its current holier-than-thou attitude toward other countries. And it would certainly inspire Americans outside the two-party system to consider the creation of a new political movement or third party as a more viable.

“If a huge number of people joined [in an election boycott] it would make an important statement,” Noam Chomsky has said.

Leave the Presidential Box Blank

“I will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot,” says Ari Fleischer, press secretary for George W. Bush. “But when it comes to the presidency, I’m going to leave my ballot blank.” Some Latino Republicans say they’ll do the same. So do some Bernie Sanders Democrats.

As with a voter boycott, the idea is to let the system know that you are civically engaged, not apathetic. Nevertheless, you’re displeased with the candidates on offer.

In counties and states that tally blank (also called “spoilt”) votes, this approach registers as a “none of the above” protest vote. The problem is, most municipalities do not count them — so they can’t send a message to the powers that be, the media, or to prospective third-party candidates.

Third Party

            The appeal of voting third party is obvious: it’s a protest vote and it allows you to direct your vote to someone whom you might really want to see win in an ideal world. The problem is, the fact that it isn’t an ideal world is the reason that you’re voting going outside the duopoly in the first place.

I’m voting for Jill Stein. My reason is simple: I would be happy to see her elected president. I agree with her on the vast majority of important issues. I can’t say that about anyone else on the ballot. (Not sure if that’s true for you? I strongly recommend that you take this test to determine which candidate is closest to you on policy.)

There’s only one reasonable argument against voting for a candidate who, like Stein, won’t win but with whom you agree: the lesser of two evils. In my case, by voting for Stein instead of Clinton, I’m effectively helping Trump. (Let’s forget for a moment that I live in New York, which will certainly go to Hillary.)

Theoretically, that’s a powerful argument. Trump is a fascist. I’m terrified of what he would do as president. I hate Hillary – but she’s not quite as obviously dangerous. Fortunately, this lesser-of-two-evils argument dies on the hill of mathematics.

Unless you are in Chicago, where you can make the dead vote, the only vote you control is your own: one. Statisticians have found that the odds of one vote changing the outcome of the presidential election is 1-in-10 million — and that’s only if you live in a swing state. For most people, the odds are more like 1-in-60 million. As one wag calculated, you have the same odds of changing the outcome of a major election as dying in a car accident while driving to the voting station.

The odds of your vote “going to waste” are significantly less than being struck by lightning twice during your life.

So live a little. Vote, or don’t vote, however you feel like.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Support independent political cartooning and writing — support Ted on Patreon.)

 

 

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Win or Lose, Hillary is Finished

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Ted Rall

Image result for hillary clinton goldman sachs            Hillary Clinton, they say, is the most qualified person ever to have run for the presidency. They are, of course, mistaken. But one week away from an election that, for once, really may prove to be the most important of our lives, what boggles the mind of those of us who are paying attention is just how terrible a candidate Hillary Clinton has proven to be.

It feels like years ago, but remember the primaries? Polls notwithstanding, Hillary’s supporters – the editorial board of The New York Times and the CNN talking head who slipped her debate questions so she could cheat against Bernie – argued that her awesome resume put her in a better position to take on Donald Trump in the fall. Yet here we are with national tracking polls in a dead heat or within the statistical margin of error, with Ohio firmly in the Trump column, Florida probably leaning the same way, and the whole thing probably coming down to a slim margin in Pennsylvania. And those polls don’t take the brand-new FBI EmailGate investigation into account. (At this writing, there’s one — and it shows Trump ahead.)

The Very Serious Democrats owe Bernie Sanders an apology.

Objectively speaking, Hillary ought to be wiping the floor with Trump. The man is a maniac. His campaign is a disaster. He doesn’t even have an organization. Why isn’t this race 65% to 35% in her favor?

To be fair, Trump isn’t totally stupid. Whether by scheming or luck, Trump has proven that free social media is much more effective than television advertising. He packaged crassness as authenticity. And he’s a master of crisis management, as seen when he nuked the open-mic “pussy grabbing” video by inviting Bill Clinton’s female accusers to attend the debate hours beforehand.

But those tricks ought not to be nearly enough to give Hillary a run for her money.

With the benefit of hindsight – and in the case of writers like yours truly, foresight – that Hillary Clinton would underperform was foreseeable well before she announced her run for president.

“Hillary is out of touch,” I wrote in May 2015. “She hasn’t been behind the wheel of an automobile for nearly 20 years, is a multi-multi-millionaire who nevertheless considered herself ‘dead broke’ and still believes that she and her husband are not among ‘the truly well off.’ … For a Democrat under heavy fire from her party’s progressive base — with Elizabeth Warren, Bill de Blasio and Bernie Sanders leading the charge — this stuff could be politically fatal.”

Right now, it really could.

We’re screwed.

Even if she wins next Tuesday, a second Clinton Administration will begin with zero mandate other than to be Not Trump. And there’s a serious risk Republicans will begin impeachment proceedings within her first year. And she could easily lose — which would put American democracy in grave peril. Heckuva job, Hillary!

When the political equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board examines the train wreck of Hillary’s campaign — even if she wins, they’ll find that alienation from the electorate is but one of many unforced errors. Here’s my pre-mortality autopsy report:

Main Cause of Death: Failure to unify the Democratic Party. ClintonWorld snubbed Bernie Sanders and his supporters. This ain’t the 1990s, when Bill Clinton courted the corporate right because he knew he could take the liberal-progressive base for granted. Courting Republicans even before the convention was a major screw-up. Failing to seriously consider Bernie for veep, or even a cabinet appointment, doubled down on that mistake. Clinton operatives wouldn’t even let former Sanders workers volunteer for her campaign. Now the lefties are so pissed that not even Bernie himself can get them back. Many will stay home, leave the president box unticked or even vote for Trump next week.

Major Contributing Factor: Failure to articulate an affirmative policy agenda. You know what Donald Trump would do during his first 100 days: build the wall, mass deportations, ban Muslims, probably suspend the Constitution for some as yet undetermined pretext. What would Hillary Clinton’s first 100 days look like? I don’t know. And I’m a political junkie. No one else knows either. Here is what she has said, and she hasn’t said it very often: “I pledge that in my first 100 days as president, we will make the biggest investment in new good-paying jobs since World War II.” What kind of investment? How much? Where? How?

According to The Hill: “she has indicated that her first 100 days would include nominating women for half of her Cabinet positions, investing in renewable energy, setting stricter rules for health insurers and drugmakers, and pushing for greater protections for voting rights.” Zzzzzzz. Americans want their president to do two things: boost the economy and keep them safe. Trump owns the national security debate. But she still hasn’t told us how she’ll put us back to work, get us a raise, or fix the retirement system to account for the big switch from 40-hour-a-week wage labor to self-employment. Her entire campaign boils down to: I’m Not Trump.

Additional Contributing Factors:

A crazy penchant for secrecy and cover-ups that gave us EmailGate.

Unbridled lust for corporate and dictator cash funneled via influence peddling through the Clinton Foundation, up until the last second before she formally declared she was running. Why didn’t she give it a rest after 2008?

Incrementalism. It’s impossible to get excited about someone who thinks $12 an hour would mark a major increase in the federal minimum wage – after states and municipalities have already gone to $15. Remember, this is a change year.

She still won’t apologize for voting to invade Iraq. Sure, she says she got it wrong. “But Clinton has never explicitly said what, exactly, she did wrong,” Scott Beauchamp wrote in The Atlantic. “From Clinton herself, there has been a demand for nuance in discussing her vote, a clarification of her intentions, and plenty of blame heaped on the Bush administration. But without a clear explanation of what her mistake was and how she plans to avoid repeating it, what does an apology actually mean?”

R.I.P.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Support independent political cartooning and writing — support Ted on Patreon.)

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Hey Lefties: Hillary Is Not Your Friend

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Ted Rall

Image result for hillary clinton warmonger           If you lean left, the only presidential candidate who shares your values is Dr. Jill Stein. But she can’t win. The two major parties have left — sorry for the pun — you and your concerns high and dry.

Certainly, Donald Trump is not your man. Though he has recently made noises to the contrary, Trump has repeatedly argued that wages are too high and that America’s pathetically low minimum wage should remain at its present poverty level. He’s a fan of torture. Trump calls the police — the police! — “the most mistreated people” in America. The governing philosophy that best approximates his ideology is authoritarianism. His opposition to “free trade” and the Iraq War aren’t nearly enough to justify casting a vote for him.

Polls show Hillary Clinton heading toward the White House. But that prospect should make liberals shudder in horror. Like Trump, Hillary is an enemy of human rights and the struggle for equality and justice. But she’s worse than him in one important respect: she’ll send the Bernie Sanders wing of the party packing.

A right-wing Trump presidency would galvanize the Left. We saw that during the Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr. years, which generated massive street protests. But DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) like Bill Clinton and Obama have the opposite effect. Satisfied that a Democrat is president, progressives tend to stay home, their criticisms muted to the point of nonexistence. Under Democratic presidents, outrageous acts of repression — like Obama’s brutal coordinated raids on the Occupy Wall Street movement — are received by liberals with little more than a mildly annoyed tweet. Look for the Left to be defanged under First Woman President/DINO Hillary Clinton.

Don’t vote for Trump. But don’t fall for the same identity politics crap that tricked progressives and liberals in 2008.

Obama made history as the first black president, but he didn’t share the liberal politics or values of most black Americans. On the issues that matter most, he turned out to be a right-winger: expanded old wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (he voted six times to fund the Iraq bloodshed), new wars in Libya and Syria and Yemen and Somalia, drones gone wild, and talk about mass deportations — no president has ever expelled more illegal immigrants than Obama.

Corporate media political observers say that progressive stalwarts Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will influence cabinet picks and policy in a Hillary Clinton administration. But the tea leaves as well as her track record suggest that right-wing forces – particularly Wall Street and the war industry – will exert a much stronger gravitational pull.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that top Hillary Clinton insiders consider Bernie Sanders to be a “doofus,” that she looks forward to an interventionist foreign policy, will continue to be highly secretive to the point that she would love to wage war covertly, and considers Wall Street bankers to be the most qualified people to write financial regulations.

Like her husband, she is likely to choose cabinet members who lean right. The one possible exception would echo Bill’s. Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, a liberal, is being considered for the relatively minor post of secretary of labor, where Robert Reich famously languished without portfolio or influence before leaving in disgust after a few years. All the others are conservatives.

Pro-Hillary Democrats argue that Clinton might nominate big-time liberals to the Supreme Court. But the judges she has on her shortlist for SCOTUS vacancies are closer to the centrist wing of her party. Obviously she will nominate Democrats for seats where Donald Trump would nominate Republicans. But I wouldn’t look for a seismic shift there.

What liberal Democrats should worry more about than anything else is probably her current saber-rattling with Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. First, she’s challenging the Russians’ alliance with Syria and threatening to shoot down Russian planes.

She’s blaming Russia to deflect revelations about her machinations against Bernie Sanders. “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks [like the WikiLeaks DNC and John Podesta hacks], these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election,” Hillary Clinton says. Why does she expect us to take government agencies at their word? After all, these are the same idiotic spooks who supposedly convinced her that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass distraction. No one has presented the slightest evidence, much less proof, that Russia was involved in the hacks.

It’s irresponsible and scary to accuse a nuclear-armed nation of wrongdoing without solid proof. People in the know say that her over-the-top rhetoric has convinced Kremlin officials that she plans to start a war with Russia.

Not smart.

It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton has always been a foreign policy hawk, a corporatist on domestic economic matters, and an incrementalist in general. (Personally, I don’t see how you can call for incremental changes on problems like poverty and unemployment and keep a straight face. Here’s 10% of a job!)

Problem is, she is all but certain to enter office under conditions that will magnify her conservative instincts. House Republicans will still be in a position to block anything ambitious. And it will be all but impossible for Clinton to claim a mandate in an election where the vast majority of voters were motivated by fear and contempt for Trump rather than affirmative support for her and her proposals.

So if you are a member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, there’s only one thing to do after Election Day. Roll up your sleeves and start organizing protests — regardless of who wins.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Please support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Intolerant

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Ted Rall

They say American democracy is a shining beacon to the world. But this year perhaps more than ever, friends and family members aren’t talking to each other because of their choice of a presidential candidate. Surely there must be some way to disagree and discuss and argue without hating one another.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The 4 Things Hillary Could Do To Close the Deal Against Trump

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Ted Rall

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She’s ahead in the polls by roughly three to four points. Given her opposition, however, Hillary Clinton ought be doing a lot better than that.

Consider Clinton’s structural advantages over Donald Trump.

Whereas top Democratic Party officials are so supportive of her that they even cheated to defeat her primary opponent, hundreds of leading Republicans – including the speaker of the house and the last two presidential nominees – have declared war against him. She’s been wildly outspending him in televised political advertising. She has campaign field offices in most counties; he doesn’t have any in most states. The news media despises him.

Then consider her personal advantages.

Trump is a novice, never having run for political office. She has served in the cabinet, presented herself for the Senate twice, run for president, weathered countless scandals and political storms. Whereas he rants and raves incoherently, her experience has taught her how to debate, crisis manage, issue sound bites, and carefully calibrate her every phrase for maximum impact and minimum risk. His main advantage is the perception of authenticity – and it’s a big one, having gotten him where he is now – but it has come at a huge price as all his years of running off at the mouth on and off camera are coming home to roost weeks before election day.

Donald Trump has infuriated more than half the voters: women. He has insulted one out of 10 male and female Americans: Latinos, some of whom are registering to vote just to cast a ballot against him. And let’s not forget Muslims.

Given all that, why is he doing so well? Why is she doing so badly – or more accurately, so not well?

Part of Hillary’s problem is personality. Truth be told, she really isn’t “likeable enough.”

“The vote for president is a ‘feel’ vote,” Chris Cillizza wrote in The Washington Post. “Do you think this person is someone who understands you and the problems (and hopes and dreams) you have for yourself and your children?” Polls have consistently shown that most Americans think she doesn’t.

It’s not all sexism: Clinton yells into microphones and overly enunciates. Her voice is objectively irritating. Then there’s her incredibly ugly, unbelievably hideous wardrobe: it’s hard to like someone who makes your eyes burn.

But let’s face it. Hillary Clinton, probably like you and definitely like me, can’t do anything about her personality. At 68, that stuff is baked in. Still, there’s a lot she could do to close the deal against Donald Trump — to widen her within-the-margin-of-statistical-error lead to a chasm, the insurmountable landslide that her institutional and other advantages would have guaranteed a better candidate.

It’s about policy, stupid.

            Recommendation #1: Guarantee Bernie Sanders a high-profile position in the cabinet. (She should have made him vice president, but it’s too late for that.)

Even after the Democratic convention in which Sanders endorsed her, more than a third of Bernie voters – roughly 1/6 of the electorate – still weren’t behind her. Annoyed that Clinton didn’t grant any significant concessions to the party’s progressive base, many of them will vote for Jill Stein or stay home. I’ve been prognosticating about American politics for decades, and I’ve never been more certain of a prediction: a firm guarantee that Bernie Sanders will have a seat at the table for the next four years would singlehandedly put an end to Trump’s chances.

            Recommendation #2: Promise to be a one-term president.

One thing that drives voters crazy is politicians who spend most of their time in office weighing every decision against their future reelection campaign. Nothing would do more to allay voters’ worries that she is a slave of her Wall Street masters than to turn herself into a lame duck on day one — and free herself of the burden of worrying about 2020. Anyway, Hillary Clinton is old and not in the greatest of health. Can anyone really imagine her finishing out the presidency at age 77, the same age as Ronald “Alzheimer” Reagan?

            Recommendation #3: Turn her weaknesses into strengths by promising to finish her own unfinished business.

One of Hillary Clinton’s biggest weaknesses is her support of NAFTA and other job-killing “free trade” deals. Since she can’t run away from her record, why not embrace it by calling for a major national jobs retraining and financial assistance program for people who lose their jobs to globalization, as well as a $25/hour minimum wage? Similarly, her awkward reluctance to concede that Obamacare is too expensive should be replaced by an acknowledgement of what everyone already knows – the Affordable Care Act should have at least included a “public option” – and a promise that she will add one in January. She could also claimed that she learned a valuable lesson from her email scandal; she could promise to be the most transparent president in history by putting a live camera in the oval office and the cabinet, and promising not to conduct government business (other than national security matters) in private.

Recommendation #4: No more optional wars.

You know you’re on the wrong side of an issue when Donald Trump is the calm reasonable one. On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton has quite the reputation as a warmonger. She voted for wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, even though neither had anything to do with 9/11. As Secretary of State she encouraged President Obama to finance the Islamist fundamentalists who turned Libya and Syria into hell. Now she’s saber-rattling with Russia. Americans hate these endless wars. And militarism does us a lot more harm than good. Hillary Clinton should issue an October Surprise: if elected, she should say, she will never deploy American military power anywhere on earth other than to directly defend the American homeland.

I know she probably won’t take my advice. But here’s the thing: she’ll win if she does.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Please support Ted by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Trump’s Guerilla Politics Are Here To Stay

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Ted Rall

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Donald Trump is a cat with 12 or 13 lives.

This past weekend felt like August 1974. Everyone knew Richard Nixon was toast. We didn’t know exactly how or exactly when he’d be forced out. But we knew it was coming.

After a video/audio recording of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” open mic of Donald Trump sharing his reality TV update of the medieval droit du seigneur surfaced on Friday before Sunday’s big second presidential debate, dozens of Republican lawmakers and senior officials abandoned ship. All that remained, it seemed, was a Trumpian version of the GOP bigwigs who trudged to the White House in ’74 to deliver the news that Dirty Donny could no longer count on Republican support in Congress.

Calling for the mass expulsion of 11 million people didn’t finish Trump. Demanding that Muslims be banned from entering the United States didn’t do it. Encouraging supporters to beat up protesters didn’t do it. Making fun of John McCain for being captured didn’t do it. Bragging that he likes to grab women “by the pussy” — that, of all things, was his Waterloo.

But it wasn’t.

The reason Trump is still in the race, merely wounded and behind (rather than humiliated and out), is important to note. This novice politician understands media better than anyone else.

Normally, we’d expect the election to be a referendum on Hillary Clinton and by extension President Obama. She’s the incumbent effectively running for a third term of the same policies. Instead, everyone is talking about Donald Trump — his fitness or lack thereof, his authenticity or lack thereof, his sanity or lack thereof. The reason is simple: Hillary Clinton delivers a cut-and-paste stump speech at every appearance (except for those to Wall Street, where she likes to share her “private position”). Trump, meanwhile, performs jazz. He extemporizes. No one, including him, knows what he’s going to say. So every rally gets covered live. How can she compete?

Throughout the campaign, Trump has neutralized the outrage over each of his scandalous utterances by supplanting it with a new one. The media, always lazy and now shorthanded, can’t keep up. And each one makes him the center of the conversation.

Flooding the zone was the risky but brilliant tactic that Donald Trump, who seemed to be mortally wounded on Friday afternoon, deployed a couple hours before the debate. He called a press conference announcing that he had invited four women who have spent years at war with the Clintons over allegations of sexual harassment, rape and making light of her legal defense of a rapist to attend the debate.

I don’t blame the women for allowing themselves to be used this way. They’ve been marginalized and ridiculed, their stories never taken seriously by the news media. Tacky publicity is better than obscurity.

From a political standpoint, however, I thought it would be widely perceived as a cheap and disgusting Hail Mary pass by a desperate candidate hours away from being forced out of the race. Boy, was I wrong.

Thirty minutes into the debate, the megastory of the election season had been reduced to one of numerous issues, washed away by Trump’s exercise of a nuclear option. Back to normalish: Hillary Clinton was on the defensive over her emails.

Hillary Clinton was in an impossible position. In politics, the cliché goes, when you are playing defense, you are losing. So she refused to defend herself or her husband. For viewers, however, the effect was to leave Trump’s “I may say bad things about women, but my opponent does bad things to them” argument unchallenged.

If this real estate thing doesn’t work out, Donald Trump can market himself as the brain behind the deftest crisis response in political history. I’m still reeling.

The difference between traditional elites like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is that Trump intuitively grasps the way things get perceived on the idiot box in houses and apartments across the country. Clinton and the corporate media pundit class see Trump’s constant interruptions and interjections while others are speaking as rude and ridiculous. They’re right that it’s rude. But it’s also incredibly effective.

How many times have you seen the president or some other politician say something, and you wanted to or actually did shout “liar!” or “wrong” at the TV? Trump does that for you. You can’t help but empathize with him. Trump has revolutionized political discourse as radically as “cowardly” American colonists did when they shot from behind rocks and trees at British troops lined up in formation, the way armies were “supposed” to fight.

No matter what happens in November, the guerilla politics pioneered by Trump are here to stay.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. Please support Ted by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

What I’d Do If I Were Trump

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Ted Rall

1. Quit. Barring a miracle, it’s all over.

2. If he stays in the race, he must open his debate performance with a statement so self-flagellating that Andrea Dworkin would beg him to shut up and move on, already. (I don’t see this happening.)

3. The pivot: point out that “while I say nasty things about women, Hillary Clinton kills them — with her votes for wars fought for fun and profit, with drones, with bombs, by supporting psychotic terrorists in Syria and Libya. I can become polite, but she can’t bring back her victims.” Leave Bill Clinton out of it. Nobody cares.

4. Show up so prepared that he runs circles around her on policy. Propose specifics that most Americans can get behind. Frankly, her policy chops aren’t that great. (I don’t see this happening either.)

5. Be direct. Respond to the audience questions respectfully and in detail. Don’t go off on tangents. View harsh questions as an opportunity to reveal that, actually, you’re a good person who’s misunderstood because your showmanship gets out of the way.

In the unlikely event that he can do this stuff, it probably won’t be enough to win. But it might save his personal reputation from further harm.

Then he should avoid mics and cameras for a year or two. Americans love a comeback story.

Julian Assange is an Idiot

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Ted Rall

First, I have to be clear. I admire Julian Assange. I value WikiLeaks. A lot. He has performed a valuable service to the world.

So why is he acting like a goddamn idiot?

Of all the times to release the hacked Podesta emails, why Friday – the classic media dump day? And why the same Friday when Donald Trump’s gross woman-groping tape is the obsession of the global media?

As the BBC says: “In some alternate universe, the Clinton Wikileaks story would be dominating the news this weekend, as pundits and analysts speculate on whether the revelations could tilt the election to Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush or even Ted Cruz.”

It’s almost like he wants them to be washed away in a tsunami of distraction.

Obviously, Donald Trump is in big trouble, and he deserves to be. Of course, there’s nothing new here. Everyone knew that he was a sexist misogynist pig. Everyone knew that he objectified women beyond the norms of a male locker room. This audio has the effect of making all the stuff that he has said, and all the stuff that his accusers have said, feel and seem more real. But it sure ain’t new.

The Hillary Clinton hacks aren’t really new either, but they do shine a brighter light than the media has been generally willing to do on the fact that she is a total suck-up to Wall Street, that she is a free-trade purist who doesn’t care about American jobs, that she’ll always be part of the 1% and never one of us. This is stuff that pretty much everyone who has been paying attention already knew all along, of course. But it really goes to confirm the Bernie Sanders narrative during the primaries, as well as put a spotlight on the fact that Hillary Clinton was never going to be a good Democratic nominee.

If things go the way that they currently look like they’re going to go – Trump steps aside, Pence steps in – we’re really going to see that. My guess is that the Bland from Indiana will defeat Hillary Clinton. What if it goes the other way? What if Trump stays in the race and loses, or leaves and Pence loses?

Then Hillary Clinton becomes president of the United States without the American people having any clue about what kind of person she is or what kind of policies she generally espouses. That didn’t need to be the case.

Julian, say it ain’t so!

Or that there’s more.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: 7 Reasons I Won’t Vote for Hillary Clinton

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Ted Rall

http://constitutioncenter.org/images/uploads/callout/MainExhibit_Highlight_VotBoothAlt.png            To my many friends and readers who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton: please stop bullying me.

Also please lay off other people, progressives and liberals and traditional Democrats and socialists and communists, citizens who identify with the political left, who plan to vote for Dr. Jill Stein or stay home.

I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump. I agree with the mainstream liberal consensus that he should never hold political power, much less control over nuclear launch codes. He’s dangerous and scary. But that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Hillary Clinton.

So I won’t.

  1. The main reason that I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton is the same exact main reason that I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump: I don’t vote Republican. Being age 53, Nixon was the first president I remember. Hillary Clinton’s politics (and her paranoia and insularity) remind me of Richard Nixon’s. I can’t bring myself to think of a Democrat as someone who solicits millions of dollars from Wall Street or votes with crazy Republicans (like George W. Bush, whose stupid wars she aggressively supported) to invade foreign countries just for fun. She plays a Democrat on TV, but we know the truth: she’s a Republican.
  2. I’m anti-political dynasty. There should be a constitutional amendment banning anyone related by blood or marriage to a former president from running for the presidency.
  3. There’s a big difference between an impressive resume and a list of accomplishments. Hillary has the former, not the latter. I hold her resume against her: she has held tremendous power, yet has never reached out to grab the brass ring. As senator, her record was undistinguished. As Secretary of State, she barely lifted a finger on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributed to the expansion of the Syrian civil war, and is more responsible than almost anyone else for destroying Libya. What she did well she did small; when she went big she performed badly.
  4. #MuslimLivesMatter. More than a million people died in Iraq. She voted for that. So she isn’t, as the current Clinton campaign meme goes, merely a “flawed” candidate. Voting for the violent deaths of over a million people, and the maiming of God knows how many more — when there was no reason whatsoever to think Iraq had WMDs — is not an “oops, my bad” screw-up. Those were real people, real human beings, and they’re dead because of her. You don’t get to soak your hands in that much blood and just walk away, much less into the White House.
  5. She still hasn’t made an affirmative case for herself. By clinging to President Obama, she’s running as his third term. The standard way to pull this off is to present yourself as new and improved: the old product was great, the new one will be even better. Her campaign boils down to “I’m not Donald Trump.” No matter how bad he is, and he is awful, that’s not enough. Watching her in the first presidential debate, at the beginning when Trump was besting her over trade, I kept asking myself: why doesn’t she admit that the recovery is good but has left too many Americans behind? Why hasn’t she proposed a welfare and retraining program for people who lose their jobs to globalization? A week later, the only answer I can come up with is that she has no imagination, no vision thing.
  6. She has made no significant concessions to the political left. Frankly, this makes me wonder about her intelligence. Current polling shows that the biggest threat to her candidacy is losing millennial, working class, and Bernie Sanders supporters to the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson. She would not have this problem if she’d picked Sanders as her vice presidential running mate. Even now, she could bag the millennial vote by promising the Vermont senator a cabinet post. Why doesn’t she? For the same reason that she won’t embrace the $15-an-hour minimum wage (she gets $225,000 for an hour-long speech but wants you to settle for $12) — she’s a creature of the corporations and therefore the political right. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t care about us.
  7. My vote is worth no less than the vote of someone who supports a major party nominee. So what if the polls say that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president? Why, based on those polls, should I strategically vote for someone whose politics and personality I deplore? By that logic, why shouldn’t they change their votes to conform to mine? I have my vote, you have your vote, let Diebold add them up.

I don’t have a problem with you if you plan to vote for Hillary. This year is the best argument ever for lesser evilism. But the fact that we are selecting between two equally unpopular major party presidential standardbearers indicates that the two-party system is in crisis, if not broken. We need and deserve more and better options. The only way to get them is to start building viable third parties — voting for them, contributing money to them. What better time to start than now?

Anyway, there’s absolutely no way that my refusal to vote for Hillary will put Donald Trump into the White House.

How do I know? Arithmetic. The closest state margin in an American presidential election was four, in Maryland in 1832. Like you, I only get one vote. Whatever I do can’t and won’t change the result.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form.)

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Thrilla at Hofstra: Trump Beat the Spread

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Ted Rall

Image result for presidential debateHe won last night.

I know it runs counter to conventional wisdom – that’s so rare for me! – but I award last night’s first 2016 presidential debate to Donald Trump.

This isn’t to say that I disagree with what the mainstream men and women of the pundit class said they witnessed. Like them, I watched a well-prepared Clinton outmaneuver a political amateur who showed up to class after a night of partying following a year of refusing to crack open a book. Trump rambled, repeated himself, interrupted and bullied. He conflated NATO and the EU. He even unleashed a fat joke.

All things being equal, I would agree with the corporate media consensus that Hillary won. But that’s the thing – things are far from equal.

Hillary Clinton is a pro. She should have wiped the floor with Trump. Instead, she delivered a performance on the line between a B+ and an A-. Trump gets closer to a C-. That’s much closer than it ought to have been.

As they say in sports, Trump beat the spread.

It went down the same way during the Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton had every advantage: domination of the Democratic National Committee, support of a sitting president, massive name recognition, experience and personnel from a previous run, a huge pool of wealthy institutional donors, a marriage to a popular ex-president fondly remembered for presiding over a great economic expansion. Despite all that, she nearly lost to Bernie Sanders – an aging self-identified socialist from a tiny, powerless state, with no name recognition. How, many people asked, could Hillary’s inevitable Goliath of a campaign have come so close to losing to such a David?

The answer was obvious. As we learned in 2008 when she lost to another obscure politician — Obama, with a weird name, who had little experience — Hillary Clinton underperforms. She has no charm. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She relies on outdated fundraising methods, like sucking up to big corporate donors. Not only does she lie, she insults our intelligence as when she emerged from her daughter’s Manhattan apartment days after being diagnosed with pneumonia. “I’m fine,” she said. What’s the matter with “pneumonia sucks”?

During last night’s debate, I was struck by how many chances Trump had to nail Hillary. If he were a better debater, she’d be toast.

Hillary tacitly confirmed that the United States was behind the Stuxnet virus that attacked Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, implying that she deserves credit for forcing the Islamic Republic to the negotiating table. Because cyberwarfare is illegal, U.S. officials have always refused to comment on whether or not we helped create Stuxnet – so it remains classified. If Trump had been smarter, he would have said: “Jesus, Hillary! There you go again, revealing America’s secrets to our enemies.”

He also allowed her to weasel out of her on-again, off-again support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership “free trade” agreement. Why didn’t he reference the verbal diarrhea of close Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe, who let slip the all-too-credible assertion that President Hillary would sign TPP shortly after coming to office?

His response to Hillary’s demand that he release his taxes came close to disastrous. If ever there was a time to interrupt, there it was. Instead, he just stood there waiting for her to finish. Clearly Trump has a lot to hide. Then he made a lame gambit: “I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer’s wishes — when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release. I will release my tax returns. And that’s against — my lawyers, they say, ‘Don’t do it.’ I will tell you this. No — in fact, watching shows, they’re reading the papers. Almost every lawyer says, you don’t release your returns until the audit’s complete. When the audit’s complete, I’ll do it. But I would go against them if she releases her e-mails.”

It was incoherent and ridiculous. But once he decided to go that direction, why not mention her secret Goldman Sachs speech transcripts? At least that way, he would have conveyed that she has two types of things to hide (emails, speeches) as opposed to his one (taxes).

Rookie errors. But hey, Trump did great for a guy who has never run for political office before – and didn’t cram for the debate. Hillary has debated at the presidential level so many times she could probably do it half of it in her sleep. If I go into the ring with heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury and manage to survive a round with all but one of my teeth, it’s fair to say that I won.

What’s baffling to me is that she wasn’t able to deliver a knockout blow.

Some of it is her inability to just be real.

Part of coming off as an authentic human being is a self-deprecating sense of humor. We saw that when Trump asked Secretary Clinton how she wanted to be addressed: “Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton — yes, is that OK? Good. I want you to be very happy. It’s very important to me.” It was deferential. It almost seemed sweet. (Weirdly, she didn’t adjust to the honorific, failing to tack to “Mr. Trump.”)

Hillary seems allergic to humanism. Back to the TPP, for example, she could have countered Trump’s fictional assertion she “heard what I said about [TPP], and all of a sudden you were against it” with something along the lines of: “actually, that was Bernie Sanders.”

Another awkward moment was her apology for using a private email server. This should have been a win for her. It was the first time that she expressed regret in a straightforward manner. But she clearly wanted to keep talking, to make excuses, to mitigate. It was also a missed opportunity to make an email joke.

Maybe the herd is right. Maybe it’s a simple matter of she did better, he did worse. But I keep thinking, debates are graded on a curve. She was supposed to kick his ass. Yet there he is, dead even in the polls with her.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form.)

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