Thursday, June 9, 2016

Hillary?? Hillary. Hillary! (We're supposed to say Yay!)

The way I understand it, Hillary was not to have serious/significant primary opposition. She was to be granted the Democratic Party Presidential Nomination by Right, on a Silken Pillow, after a not-too-strenuous primary season that would be abbreviated thanks to all the other primary candidates dropping out by mid-March if not sooner.

It would be a cakewalk for her compared to the brawl on the Other Side.

Bernie was either not to run at all, or if he did run, his numbers would be so low (cf: O'Malley -- who?) that he would see the writing on the wall and disappear back to the nether reaches of the People's Republic of Vermont and the Senate where he came from.

Didn't work out quite that way. Not quite that way at all.

I voted for Bernie here in New Mexico, and my county's Democrats went for Bernie over Hillary ... two votes. I don't know whether anybody will call for a recount. Interestingly, the more rural counties tended to favor Bernie while the more urban counties were Hillary strongholds. Hmmm.

Same thing seemed to happen in California.

Hillary won New Mexico's Democratic Primary by a small margin, less than 7,000 votes state wide out of 215,000 or so cast (turnout was pitiful.) In California, the margin was greater, but still.

Bernie was not supposed to do so well. He wasn't really supposed to run at all. He's a crabby old man, after all, and who wants that in the White House? Yuk.

Not just old and crabby, but a fricking Socialist to boot. Eeek! Run away!

But no. He piled up victory after victory defying expectations and the polls, and toward the end his rallies seemed to get bigger not smaller.

Herself had the Machine and Wall Street and the Dem Party backing; Bernie only had the frustrations of the masses backing his campaign -- and that little birdie, of course.

It was remarkable in every way that Bernie could come as close as he did to the nomination given the political disabilities he started with. I'm sure he was as astonished as Hillary was.

The depth of anger and despair at the shenannigans of the high and the mighty is much greater than Our Rulers ever imagined. As Bernie's numbers grew and grew, the Overclass got more and more alarmed ... and pissed off.

Don't let's fool ourselves. There will be hell to pay for this mini-rebellion. Hell, I say.

I've never had a great deal of regard for the Bernie campaign, for the simple reason that you can't conduct a genuine revolution from the Left from within the Palace. Ain't -- ever -- gonna happen. That Palace is so locked down and securitized, and the Left is so marginalized, even to the point of complete absence, that there cannot be a Leftish rebellion/revolution from within. It's designed that way. It works to prevent the Left from acquiring power and implementing policies and programs on behalf of the People. It's always been that way, even during the supposed hey-days of the supposed Left in government (FDR, LBJ, etc.)

Nothing that Bernie proposed was radical or particularly Socialist. In fact, to Old Farts like me, a lot of it was pretty familiar. What he proposed was basically a restoration of the social and economic trendlines of the pre-1980 era. Ie: Before Reagan dismantled all that.

While I wouldn't object, the problem with his program was that it was locked in the past. And we can't go back, much as we might like to. We can't pick up in 1980 and go forth as if the intervening eras never happened, but that was what I was feeling Bernie was offering in his stump speechs and campaign.

We need something new. And that is not what Bernie was offering. He offered a kind of reversion to Better Days -- which is nice to hear -- and specific relief to suffering segments of the population, but there wasn't enough in that program to attract the Dems in sufficient numbers to gain the nomination -- something I don't think he ever in his wildest dreams thought he could do anyway. It was a campaign of ideas to be sure, but not ones that he thought would get him the nomination.

Hillary's campaign has been predicated on motto "No you can't," Many people are comforted by what  they and others are prevented from doing. If the Left is prevented from acting and the Rightists are confined to a narrow set of actions, then the status quo is mostly preserved; the only real political movement under those circumstances is ever-further rightward, and that's always pleasing to the NeoLibCon Masters of the Universe.

Those are the people Hillary serves. Everyone knows it. Bernie, on the other hand, does not serve them, not directly, but because he has been inside the Belly of the Beast for as long as he has, he doesn't -- and can't -- separate himself entirely from them. He is, as part of the government, their creature just as much as anybody else inside the gates.

That was the other problem I had with Bernie's campaign. He was asserting a kind of fantasy of what you can do from "within" as it were. You can, it's true, get a lot done when you're in charge of the government or even just have a seat at the table. But what you can get done will always be restricted and constrained by the nature of the institutions you are within or part of. That means that you cannot ultimately do anything that the institutional framework (of government in this case) does not enable or foster. In our country, the institutional framework of government is abusive and preventional. It is set up to and operates efficiently to foster and excuse some of the worst actions and abuses we've seen over the course of our long history, and to prevent the People from doing much of anything about it.

The government of the United States serves an elite coterie, not the People. It is institutionally and functionally unable to serve the People without the permission of that coterie. That permission is rarely granted, and when it is, it is often enough temporary and subject to alteration or revocation at any minute. The People have very little or no say in what is allowed, and the only times they have a say is when they object so loudly or rebel so strenuously that the High and Mighty cannot ignore them anymore.

Bernie, even if he had been nominated and elected to the Presidency would have been able to do almost nothing that he proposed/promised unless the PTB agreed and granted permission. That would be unlikely to say the least. So the stalemate-gridlock of the past several years would have continued or worsened.

Hillary, on the other hand, as an annointed representative of those High an Mighty Ones, would be able to do their bidding with relative ease ("Getting things done") and probably would be able to sell it as "Good For You!" even though it's crap.

That's what I think is the next part of her audition: can she sell a Shit Sandwich to the ravening masses and keep them in line the while?

We'll see.

It depends on a number of factors: how much worse things will get for the majority before the election in November, how bad for most Hillary's NeoLibCon policies will be -- assuming they are recognized in the first place; how deceptive her campaign will be in selling this horseshit.

We'll see.

As for Trump, I'm more and more convinced he's a ratfuck. My god in heaven what a political disaster.

8 comments:

  1. This is some shitty third-world way to run an election. First off, the media declares her the nominee before a bunch of states even vote. Obama made his endorsement video congratulating her WHILE those states were voting (it was filmed on Tuesday).

    Secondly, she doesn't really have the delegates yet. It takes 2383 delegates to win the nomination. Right now, she has 2184 pledged delegates; Sanders has 1810. What puts her over the 2383 mark are the super-delegates. Okay, call her the "presumptive nominee", because those supers are not going to switch their votes, but she ain't the "nominee" until the convention and the delegates actually cast their votes. Funny how Trump gets the adjective "presumptive", but she does not.

    California has not finished counting votes and say they won't have the official results until July. Matter of fact, somewhere around 3 million votes still haven't been tallied yet. That might make a big difference, although I am assuming the media (and Clinton) are hoping the public will forget about the states where the votes aren't in yet. Puerto Rico is stuck at 69% of the vote in for some reason and has been for several days now, not that PR counts for much, but it's odd. Betcha the media will just never report the final tallies until after November. Or never.

    Also, she isn't the first woman even nominated for president. Cynthia McKinney and Jill Stein have been nominees in recent years, although what they did with Stein was to [literally] zip-tie her to a chair in a warehouse during one of the presidential debates in order to avoid having to mention that she was even running.

    On the other hand, there is this possibility:

    http://lawnewz.com/politics/hillary-clintons-emails-now-might-finally-take-her-down/

    What is interesting about this guy's theory is that he is an insider of sorts (check out his bio at the end of the article) and he is a Clinton supporter. Takes a lot for a Clinton supporter to be as honest as he is in the article.

    I saw yesterday's press conference, and Josh Earnest (WH spokesman/media dude) referred to the email thing as an FBI "criminal investigation" when he answered some questions about it. As in, "No, Obama would never interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation..", which would indicate that there is some "there" there, and the WH doesn't mind if a little bit of validity given to the theoretical problems that might occur in the near future.

    On the OTHER other hand, Obama was meeting later in the day with Loretta Lynch and the topic was not released to the press. So the same day he hangs it out on the line by endorsing War-pig, he is meeting with the US Atty Gen. Doesn't take too much pondering to assume he's putting in the fix for her with the DoJ.

    And, here comes Elizabeth Warren, like Clinton a woman, a former Republican and an Israel-firster, saying she not only endorses Clinton, she would agree to be her VP. Sure didn't take Liz long to grasp how to play politics once she got to Washington. Fast learner, that one. They sent her out to go after Trump in a speech last night (either before or after she was all gushy on the Rachel Maddow show) to show her serious VP creds. The bits I saw from the anti-Trump speech was middle school stuff, Liz saying tripe like, "No, shame on YOU, Donald Trump!"

    Dear god, what a hell of a spectacle we have going on here.

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    1. Bah... my brilliant reply to your excellent comment got eaten by Blogger and I'm too pissed about it to re-create it right now.

      Just let it be said that you've made some very good points, and when I gather my wits, I'll try to respond coherently...

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    2. Hm. I’m writing this in Word because Blogger is consistently eating my comments when I try to write them in the reply box. It’s odd and frustrating.

      What I meant to say was that elections are little more than pageants. One is allowed to vote only on Personality, Talent, and sometimes Beauty. Never policy. Media will focus almost entirely on the horserace – who’s ahead by how much (always seems to be neck and neck, doesn’t it?) and what awful thing someone said or did.

      Consequently we wind up with the increasingly horrible rulers we have had. It’s unsustainable, but when it will all collapse, who can say? Roman elections continued long after the so-called Fall of the Roman Empire, but they were as meaningless as ours have become.

      I’m hearing rumblings there is something definitely wrong with the California primary election results, and there may be something wrong with New Mexico’s too. The outcome is suspicious because it’s so divergent from the polls and because the county-by-county results don’t make a whole lot of sense. We’ll see.

      There have been so many election snafus this primary season, I’m not about to attribute them all to coincidence. As some observers have suggested, we may be watching an election being stolen – and the pattern being set for future elections. What fun.

      So yes, it’s certainly a spectacle.

      What have we done to deserve this?

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  2. Che,
    Tried to respond to you, but it wouldn't go through. Check your email for my comment....I'm assuming this one will get through somehow.

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  3. Note: this is the comment teri49 tried to post...

    We haven't done anything to deserve this, obviously. Except to ask for some crumbs off the tables, which the neoliberals in charge have no intention of allowing to fall to the floor. They do not want to share even the merest slivers of what they have managed to scoop onto their plates... and they want even more. This is why Hillary does not support minimum wage increases, free college, universal healthcare, and Wall St re-regulation.

    She is their leader now, just as Bill was the leader who really led the charge into neoliberalism when he was in office. (The ending of welfare, the prison pipeline, getting rid of Glass-Stegall, NAFTA, etc.) The neoliberal platform calls for everything to be a commodity to be exploited for the express purpose of enriching a few at the top. Even our health, jobs, and lives are commodities to be bartered in the private market, with all tax monies used to enrich some corporations rather than on social uplift (as MLK, jr. called it). This is why Hillary talks about not needing free college education - she says "why should we pay for rich people's children to get free college?", when what she means is "why should any taxpayer money go to educating YOUR children?", as obviously, the wealthy don't need free college and would almost always select private institutions. They'd not even ask to use such a program, and it would be a simple affair to taylor such a program so the really wealthy aren't siphoning off the funding.

    What have we done? We exist and we expect to live something other than grimy lives of bare survival. "Bare survival", of course, being something completely different in the US than in quite a number of other countries, if I need to point that out. The mantra that if you work hard, you can make it is no longer true in a time where all the fucking jobs to work hard AT are gone, or pay so little that it doesn't matter how hard you do work, and the little you earn is immediately sucked up to pay for nothing that benefits you in any way. Add to that the fact that if you can't work or can't find a job, you are left to entirely fend for yourself. Even the wretched homeless are refused food and a place to put their blankets for a night in this "great country". America would rather throw away hundreds of ton a food a day rather than feed the poor with it.

    There is an inchoate dread in the country now; most people feel scared and helpless, although they may not understand why and can easily be led into thinking it is some other poor slob's fault. Hence the rise of Trumpism.

    Waiting to see what Sanders does. He correctly identified the wealthy elite as the culprits, although he could have gone further in identifying and defining the global reach of the disaster capitalists/corporatocracy/oligarchy.

    Assuming he actually even got that far in his thinking. He may not really understand the true extent of the problem. He isn't, of course, a real socialist, and merely suggests tinkering at the edges of capitalism. He seems to think we can work with the neoliberals and neocons who run this show - and that's very misguided, IMO. If he ends his campaign before the convention, he was never in it for more than sheep-dogging for Clinton, anyway. If he meant what he said, he'll announce he would accept the presidency as a write-in candidate and RENOUNCE and DENOUNCE both Clinton and Trump.

    We'll see. I have no faith in any of them at this point. Or the electoral process. It's a blatant sham for all to see now. They are taking down the tents around us. We just THINK there is still a carnival going on, so some of us are still standing in line, all stupid as shit, buying tickets for the freak shows on the mid-way.

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    1. I don't expect a great deal out of Sanders at this point. Yes, there is a growing sense that he's been sheep-dogging for Hillary, but I suspect that's more a rationalization than reality. Seems to me he plunged in to provide a bone to the vanishing "left." Something else altogether happened, and I think he's surprised as anyone.

      And Hillary's people act like they're terrified.

      But nothing is as it seems.

      The latest mass shooting hasn't overturned anything.. yet. But it could, especially if there are more, especially in October...

      Hate to think that way, though.

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  4. Yeah, another goddamned mass shooting.

    We don't know too much about the shooter's adherence to religious tenets at this point. His father and some of his former friends claim he was not at all religious. However, I would suggest that this part of his factual known history is more indicative of his propensity for violence:

    "Mateen had two firearms licenses, a security officer license and a statewide firearms license. He had worked for the security firm G4S since 2007."

    The guy was an American mercenary, born and raised in America. Maybe the overarching problem we need to address is the one of figuring out why Americans are so prone to using violence, from the national level down to the individual.

    Gosh, the religious right must be going ape about now. Who are they supposed to hate more - the shooter or the ones he killed?

    Clinton is talking about how we need to enhance our security (gosh, what could she possibly mean by that?) and Trump is saying that obviously he was right and we need to bar Muslims from coming in.

    Obama says blah, blah, blah, terrorism, blah, blah, values, blah, freedom, blah, blah and hopes the FBI is as inept at dealing with Clinton as they were at screening the shooter.

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    1. Working on a post about some of that. May take me a day or so more. Many threads to follow and tie up...

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