Failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suggests she would have gone to war in Syria by now, but Democrats still can’t grasp why some “peace” voters defected to third parties, as Nat Parry explains.
By Nat Parry
In the latest installment from The Election That Will Not End, a renewed attack on third party supporters for supposedly enabling Donald Trump’s surprise victory last year is making headlines, with political commentator Bill Maher leading the charge against those who could not bring themselves to supporting the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine Democratic ticket in Election 2016.
Comedian Bill Maher.
Singling out Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and leading academic Cornel West – who backed Stein in the general election – Maher suggests that they may be mentally defective for suggesting that Trump and Clinton both represented potential threats to the country and the world. “Have you lost your fucking minds?” Maher asks. “Go fuck yourselves with a locally grown organic cucumber,” Maher tells the “liberal purists” who allegedly cost Clinton the election.
This renewed assault on Stein ignores the fact that her share of the vote was statistically negligible and there were far more people who chose not to vote or had their votes suppressed. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, for instance, has shown that tens of thousands of voters may have been improperly purged from the rolls in key states such as Michigan, which likely had a greater effect on the electoral outcome than Stein’s vote totals. The analysis also rests on the flawed assumption that all of Stein’s votes would have gone to Clinton had the Green Party not been competing.
Nevertheless, the attacks on Stein and West represent the latest salvo in a rather undemocratic and disingenuous effort to shame individuals who have decided to reject the limited choices offered by the two-party system and are exercising their democratic right to build independent political movements. This right is enshrined in a number of international human rights accords agreed to by the U.S. government, but apparently is still rather controversial in the United States.
For the most part, Democratic and Republican partisans grudgingly accept the right of other political parties to compete (even if no one should vote for them, of course, so as not to “spoil” the election), but in some cases they come out and actually make their true views known that parties such as the Greens and Libertarians should simply not exist.
This was the case last week when a Democrat named Abbey Bartletmitzvah tweeted that “the Green Party does a disservice to America by existing,” a statement that was unique only in that it openly stated the desire among two-party system defenders for the elimination of any challenge to this system. More often, Democrats just lob accusations at Greens and independent voters insinuating that they are personally responsible for all the problems in the world.
Following the House vote to repeal Obamacare last week, for example, the Green Party reiterated its longstanding call for a universal health care model like those enjoyed by most of the world only to be met with hatred and anger by Democrats still seething over their loss a half-year ago.
“You’re responsible for this!” one hysterical Twitter user responded. “You & your minions brought this on us,” said another. “You realize you are the fucking reason Trumpcare is a thing, right?” asked another.
Quasi-Official Parties
There is a tinge of unfairness to the implication that every one of Trump’s misdeeds can be laid at the feet of dissidents who refused to vote in line with the Democratic Party establishment. Considering that many of these people have long been committed to activism only to come to the painful conclusion that the answers they are looking for could not be found in voting for one of the two quasi-official U.S. parties, it can be difficult for third party voters to accept that they are responsible for everything from the Supreme Court to climate change.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
There are also some mixed messages in the U.S. approach to multi-party democracy, with on one hand, alternative parties being allowed to exist, but on the other hand, anyone who votes for them coming under criticism as “spoilers.” If Democrats were more upfront in their desire to ensure that voters have no options other than choosing between the Democratic or Republican parties, they might consider introducing legislation declaring these two parties as the officially recognized parties in the United States and prohibiting other parties from competing.
Of course, this would place the U.S. on par with totalitarian states and in clear violation of international standards for democratic elections, but at least the ambiguity would be removed as to whether third parties are allowed to compete or not. Voters would also have more clarity on whether they are permitted to cast ballots for these renegade parties.
But coming out and expressly banning third parties is not likely to happen because, for one, it could raise international concerns about the U.S. commitment to basic democratic principles and, perhaps more importantly, it would deprive supporters of the two-party system of one of their favorite scapegoats.
Democratic critics of the Greens take delight in pointing out their lack of electoral success on the national level, highlighting this as a repudiation of the Green Party platform and as legitimation of the Democrats. But despite the fact that the Greens’ lack of success means that the Greens have never actually held power, they are still routinely blamed for all the country’s problems.
Straw Man Arguments
There is also a tendency to distort the primary arguments of Green Party backers, with straw man arguments set up such as “Clinton and Trump are the same.” This is called the “false equivalence” argument, which Democrats enjoy shooting down with counter-points about Trump’s cabinet picks and xenophobic policies such as the “Muslim ban” and the proposed Mexico border wall.
President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)
The implication is that Republicans are obviously much worse than Democrats in all respects, so the “liberal purists” who may object to Clinton’s hawkishness or close ties to Wall Street are just being unrealistic and holding her to a different standard. Clinton alluded to this straw man argument herself in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last week.
Pointing to a number of factors that she says cost her the election – mainly the “Comey letter,” which had informed Congress prior to the election that the FBI was reopening its examination of her use of a private email server as Secretary of State, and what she called “Russian Wikileaks,” which had shared with the public excerpts of her paid Wall Street speeches and revealed collusion between the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to sideline insurgent Bernie Sanders’ candidacy in the primaries – she complained that she had to overcome not only those obstacles, but also an “enormous barrage of negativity, of false equivalence, of so much else.”
Clinton’s “false equivalence” charge is one that is familiar to supporters of third parties, who are often accused of engaging in this logical fallacy when weighing options and evaluating candidates. When people decide that they cannot in good conscience support either of the candidates nominated by the two major parties, they are routinely accused of drawing a “false equivalence,” i.e. falsely claiming that “they are all the same,” when in fact this is rarely the view of people who decide on a third party option.
While the factors for people opting for a third party candidate are complex and varied, one of the main reasons is simply that the candidate is expressing views that the voter identifies with. Of course, this is the essence of democracy – being able to freely cast your vote for a candidate who represents your interests without fear of retribution or having to defend yourself against recriminations – but apparently it is still considered a radical concept in the United States.
Regime Change Wars
Ironically, in the same Amanpour interview in which Clinton warned against “false equivalence,” she also offered a substantive policy reminder of why many peace-minded voters decided they could not cast a ballot for the former Secretary of State who has built a reputation as a hawkish interventionist and a vocal proponent of regime change operations from Iraq to Libya to Syria.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at the Women for Women International conference on May 2, 2017. (Screen shot from YouTube)
In discussing Trump’s approach to Syria, Clinton said she supported the recent U.S. missile strike targeting a Syrian airfield, but nevertheless complained that it was too limited in scope and perhaps may have even been coordinated with Russia in order to keep East-West tensions under control.
“I am not convinced that it really made much of a difference, and I don’t know what kind of potentially backroom deals were made with the Russians,” Clinton told Amanpour. “There’s a lot that we don’t really yet fully know about what was part of that strike. And if after all it was a one-off effort, it’s not going to have much of an effect.”
In other words, Trump erred not by firing 59 cruise missiles against Syria, which violated international law and resulted in numerous civilian casualties, but by limiting the scope of this attack. The clear implication is that if Clinton were president, it would not have been “a one-off effort,” and probably would not have been done in consultation with Russia.
Instead, Clinton would likely be making U.S. intervention in Syria a centerpiece of her foreign policy, and would show little concern over how this might spiral out of control in terms of ratcheting up tensions – or all-out military confrontation – with nuclear-armed Russia.
So, despite what Democratic partisans may insist, in fact, there is reason to believe that in some ways, a hypothetical Clinton presidency may indeed have brought many of its own dangers. While a Muslim ban may not have been in the cards in a Clinton administration, another U.S. war in the Middle East certainly was. In some ways this vindicates the arguments of those who decided to cast a vote for an alternative to Clinton or Trump, or what Wikileaks’ Julian Assange likened to a choice between “cholera or gonorrhea.”
And indeed, despite the ongoing efforts to blame third party supporters for the calamities of the Trump presidency – most recently exemplified by Bill Maher’s malicious attacks on Stein and West – interestingly, public opinion surveys continue to indicate that many Americans are increasingly open to alternatives to the two-party system.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that if the election were held today, Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson would likely fare better than they did six months ago. While Stein and Johnson only received 2 and 4 percent of the vote, respectively, on Nov. 8, if the election took place now, 3 percent would vote for Stein and 5 percent for Johnson, the poll found.
This growing support for third parties reflects longstanding public-opinion trends in which Americans appear to be clamoring for alternatives, as shown in polling last year, and may stem from the fact that large numbers of Americans find that the two major parties do not represent their interests.
Indeed, in the same poll that found growing support for Stein and Johnson, 62 percent of voters said that the Republican Party is out of touch with Americans, and 67 percent said Democrats were out of touch.
If many Democrats have their way though, these disaffected voters would have no other options outside of the two-party system.
Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush. [This article first appeared at https://essentialopinion.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/renewed-recriminations-over-election-2016/ ]
And Jill Stein was at the same dinner with Flynn and Putin so why aren’t they investigating her connections to RT since they featured her on their segments.
I don’t know why the Clintonistas go after Stein voters when it really was the Johnson voters who did her in. Twenty five percent of his voters would have voted for Clinton while only 15 percent of her voters would have voted for Clinton. Given that he had a greater turnout than Stein, he really should be the focus of their frustration.
It really was the third-party candidates that did her in. And going forward, I think that third-party candidates will continue to take votes away.
A “Muslim ban” wouldn’t have been in the cards in a Clinton adminstration? She ran on a 3rd Obama term and he had been restricting visas from those same Muslim majority countries also known as the 7 countries he was bombing since 2013 even if the media never called it Muslim ban or made it about religion until Trump got into office because they failed to even mention it when Obama did it. Sure they wouldn’t be calling it a Muslim ban or mention they are Muslim majority countries if Clinton was the one bombing them because it doesn’t fit the narrative that she would be different but there would be no functional difference in reality.
The biggest argument for voting against Trump, whether you liked Hillary or not, was that Trump didn’t pass the sanity test. By voting for third party candidates, voters allowed Trump to eke out an electoral victory with our antiquated electoral system (Clinton got almost 3 million more votes). The “Hillary is just as bad crowd” likes to focus on things like US relations with Russia exclusively, and chooses to ignore other important issues like Trump’s insane climate change denial, which my threaten the planet even more than our strained relations with Russia.
“There is a tinge of unfairness to the implication that every one of Trump’s misdeeds can be laid at the feet of dissidents who refused to vote in line with the Democratic Party establishment.”
A tinge? This is Nader 2000 redux, with the same bankrupt undemocratic brain-dead argumentation. It should always be remembered after four years of the worst administration ever, the Dems applied more energy and resources to preventing Green candidates than campaigning against Bush.
Sanders should have left the Dems after the convention, joined with the Greens to surge their poll numbers into debate appearance territory, and provided the electorate with actual policy and choices. A missed opportunity.
The problem is that my former party is anything but Democratic in its current aims or behaviors. It doesn’t have a platform, it’s just obstructionist, and is still busy trying to thwart an election. Besides, it’s so evidently corrupt that it still can’t rid itself of the Clintons who wish to run it. At least the Republicans tear one another part, a sign of democratic processes!
Abraham Lincoln was a third party candidate. Enough Said.
Abraham Lincoln was a third party candidate. Enough.Said.
Please Nat do NOT call that retrogade ugly thing a comedian and show his photo! Maher is undeserving of publicity!
The completely illogical attitude of the “democratic party” in going on about this election result is getting very boring, with the “comedians” like Colbert even continuing the Russian interference stories. Trump won, with the help since 2010 of POTUS Obama who made no attempt to preserve the Democratic majority in congress and allowed the precipitous loss of Senate seats, “Representatives”, governors of States over the next six years (helped of course by the actions of the Repugs that the Dems should have noticed over the years and done something to stop the voter-purging and gerrymandering, but did not).
All the fuss about Trump accepting his possible loss, that Dems asked about before the election, yet now that he won, the whining of the Dems is allowing them to fall into complete disrepute and failure for the future.
Exactly. We see attacks on Trump for maybe doing some of what Hillary openly promised to do, wars and trade agreements and neoliberal economics from start to finish.
It is a bad idea if Trump does those things, but that means Hillary was a horrible idea before him.
They tried to cram down a neocon agenda, and now complain they don’t have a neocon agenda, and at the same time complain that Trump might just do what the neocons would have done.
We are well rid of Hillary. If Democrats continue to bring her back, they will disappear as surely as have the old Republicans.
Maher is an overpaid, blowhard huckster who’s become more of a demagogue over time. What is his real concern for the struggling middle class Americans? He certainly is not of their class, if he ever was. And why do Americans watch so much TV? Are they that bored? Too many people don’t realize what a conditioning tool TV is for the power structure to wield. Americans might learn to think better if they stopped listening to overpaid pundits filling their heads with drivel. There seems to be very little governing in this country, which has become an endless tabloid cult. We did dodge a bullet with Trump, at least.
It appears that the politics of other nations may turn out to be more influential for the world’s future, since the USA hegemonic lust is not yet overpowered by the debt that is staring it smack in the face.
Maher is a RACIST overpaid blowhard huckster.
anyone with a brain cell knows that Trump is President because The DNC robbed Birnie Sanders. The DNC to blame because they tried to shove a warmonger and corporate shill. Lessoned learned… find a warmongering corporate whore who is more likeable. THe masses are stupid. Problem solved. Can we please stop reporting on this waste of skin. Let’s get it ouit of the headlines. This farce of a “democratic” election was over months ago. Who cares what she thinks?
Nat, I’m sure you are a Democrat, like myself. There was no possibility that I could vote for Clinton, for exactly the reasons you mention … no one is going to survive WWIII. The fact that she is a servant of Wall Street was just confirmation.
I used to believe that the Democrat party was more the party of reason, but Russia-gate, one of, if not the most despicable political campaign I have witnessed (I’m not quite old enough for McCarthy), has convinced me that the current Democratic Party (at least on the national level) no longer deserves my respect or my vote.
Thanks to the Electoral College, many voters in most states realized their individual votes would not make a bit of difference to the national results, and if some of these voted for a third party alternative, who can point a finger at them?
When will all the popular discontent with the two reigning orthodoxies spawn a genuine, viable third national party, is the thing I still want to know.
What I get from this is that though Trump, to gain freedom of action, probably committed a war crime in the bombing of Syria based on a false pretence, we are probably still alive because cankles failed to get elected. The Flynn story mentioned above exposes the fascist modus operandi of the contemporary democratic leadership. Yates is an apologist for criminals. The lamestream media is nothing more than the propaganda arm of an odious dictatorial deep state. Maher, meanwhile, has degenerated into an apologist for war criminals.
@conorsen
Nobody took seriously all the deep-seated desire for centrist globalism!
Ya blumee? @yablumee May 7
Replying to @conorsen
the alt-center is changing politics as we know it!
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity …
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? –W. B. Yeats
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/vital-center.html
The center is vital.
“Today we are witnessing the triumph of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure.”
José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
The law can’t hold.
yes, the infrastructure has crumbled when Trump triumphs over a half-dozen up-and-coming party faithfuls (no matter how unattractive they seemed to be) and Hillary Clinton runs for the nomination against a Socialist senator from Vermont …
Quite seriously … love Bernie or loathe him… loathe the entire Keystone Cops assemblage of Republican also-rans… there something very seriously wrong with this picture
(.. using bill’s own “brand” of humor in this paragraph..)
.. This Working Class Hack,
.. he saw just who was coming at him, and she was wearing a black leather pants suit – while carrying a whip in one hand, and a cucumber in the other..
.. So, the Hack did – just what he did every other Presidential Cycle since 1996, he ran straight to the Greens. .. And once again, watched in democratic horror as his Candidate was ordered to be physically removed from the property of the Presidential Debates by State Thugs, that were directly ordered to protect the wealth and serve the rich.
What the Clinton Campaign ‘knows’ but cannot openly state is that they got snookered by the Trump security team before they could steal a number of state vote-counts using ‘Inslaw’ programming. Kris Kobach’s voter-verification program also lowered the qualified vote count by kicking out bogus registrations which the dem’s use on every election.
Me thinks you should have read the accounts of poll workers and the antics of the army of lawyers Trumps team sent into Michigan for the recount. Then there are the accounts of multiple votes of dead people and tallies of more votes than voters in Minnesota. there ain’t no innocents here. They are just the opposing team, doing what they have to, to win. In the end the only winners are Zionists and neos…but they win in any scenario.
Funny that Maher doesn’t seem capable of noticing that the trope of a scheming, evil people motivated by a loathsome religion to destroy their moral superiors is exactly what some once claimed was the true description of his people, the Jews. In his movie “Religulous” Maher did a fine job of savaging Christian fundamentalists –by simply letting them speak for themselves – but when confronted by members of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist Orthodex Jewish group, he refused to engage them. Kinda tells you where his sympathies really lie.
Maher proves that atheism does not grant immunity from idiocy. You would think a man who has the sense to understand the nonsense of the god myth would see through the capitalist propaganda about The Evil Other – who just happens to inhabit the region where the world’s last easily available oil reserves are located. Or that he would have knowledge of the history of the last century, to see how badly these people have been screwed over by the west since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Maher might notice the history of his own country, where waging total bloody war against non-whites and stealing their stuff has been our national hobby for four hundred years now. Radical Islam is like the Ghost Dance of the American Indians, an ultimately suicidal supernatural fantasy born of the desperation of occupation and decimation by a foreign enemy too powerful to expel by conventional means.
I always like reading your history historicus, but I’ve seen Maher get snippy with guest who when the guest brings up historical background, Bill spits out, ‘That was then This is Now’! Bill get testy at times, and when he runs out of intellect he resorts to joke his way out of his hearing any other logic. Maher’s biggest advocacy is making ‘Weed’ legal, and although he finds it fun to make fun of rural folk and tough guys from Jersey who voted for Reagan, he is on a life long quest that we all recognize each other for what we are….just don’t tell Bill you went to church last Sunday. He’s a fraud, but at times he can be a funny fraudster. Carlin is truly missed, but for now Bill Maher is our liberal comedian….we should be thankful we get him.
Speaking of elections – France just had one. Add the fear-mongers did not win this time. So what was the difference?
As reported in an article in WAPO.
“First, French news outlets respected the blackout. The documents landed at the 11th hour, without time for journalists to scrutinize them properly before the ban went into effect.
Second, the news media heeded an admonition by the government’s campaign regulatory body not to publish false news. The Macron campaign said that fake documents had been mixed in with authentic ones.
But there was yet another crucial factor — France does not have an equivalent to the thriving tabloid culture in Britain or the robust right-wing broadcast media in the United States.”
What interests me in the 3rd reason. Part of the “the thriving tabloid culture in Britain” are media outlets owned by Murdoch. This same fellow who now owns 2 of the main tabloid entities – Fox News and WSJ, in good ole USA. The drumbeat of lies and propaganda from just those two is enormous. And crucially for many right wingers FOX is their ONLY source. Just like the Bible, whatever Fox says is gold. This is a phenomenon that I don’t think has been truly understood or acknowledged.
We just had an election where post polling showed 50% of T supporters did not believe Obama was born in this country. How is that possible without a massive propaganda campaign? How can 50% be that stupid even after O showed his certificate in 2011?
The answer is simple, watch FOX and listen to Rush as your only source of info. For years now I have felt like I’m living in a 1930’s movie watching and listening to people parrot insanity from these right wing demagogue media sources. And what really scares me is the demagogues are winning. I have long had this faith in humanity slowly, incrementally, inching forward making life as we know it a little better now and for the future. I no longer have that faith, and my years of reading, loving history and what it can teach us tells a different story. Things can get worse, and might. Fear and propaganda are incredibly powerful tools.
Yes, and 50% of Hillary voters/Dems believe that Russia hacked the voting machines and changed the tallies to help elect Trump. And those are the people who watch MSDNC, CNN and read WaPo and the NYT. Partisan propaganda is not limited to the right/Repugs. The irony is that many of the people who ridicule those who watch FoxNews are the very same people who watch and believe everything they hear on MSNBC.
“50% of Hillary voters/Dems believe that Russia hacked the voting machines and changed the tallies to help elect Trump”
“Hacked the voting machines” ??? That’s a new one.
Really? Can you quantify that? Unless so then you are perpetuating just what Fox/Trump have been so successful at. And making my point.
But more importantly :
Do you really really not understand the racial/racist component of the birthers? Your prev tried to make an equivalency, falsely, about Dems and Russia. Can you provide an equivalent between birthers, and Dems believing same of any white Rep politician?
Do you not understand the difference between a proven fact of O’s birthplace, Obama openly providing his original birth certificate and 5 years later 50% of T voters still believing the lie – and anything related to possible or not interference by Russia?
Please don’t play that game.
Lemonde did not respect the blackout, in violation of French law. They were blatantly pro Macron
You may be right,”But there was yet another crucial factor — France does not have an equivalent to the thriving tabloid culture in Britain or the robust right-wing broadcast media in the United States.” but all the media supported Micron(sic) and also all the internet providers, CEOs of businesses, politicians of every type except FN, “thinktanks” and he has had more exposure than he main four adversaries for two years. hard to avoid the blue-eyed boy.
“While Stein and Johnson only received 2 and 4 percent of the vote, respectively, on Nov. 8, if the election took place now, 3 percent would vote for Stein and 5 percent for Johnson, the poll found.”
Except that the poll has a 3.5% margin of error:
http://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1186a1Trump100Days.pdf#page=6
(See the bottom of page 6.)
Bill Maher’s endorsement of Colin Powell was the last straw for me as far as Maher was concerned and it has been downhill ever since.
With reference to the charge we shouldn’t vote for third party “spoilers” I always understood that when it came to elections we should vote for the candidate we considered the best for the office involved. And, what did we get on November 8, 2016? 120 million Americans said that one or the other of the two worst candidates were okay by them. No wonder the United States and all exposed to its expanding empire are in trouble.
I think most of those 120 million were scared out of their minds at the prospect of Hildabeast holding the keys to the Kingdom-me included. Trump was not my first, or second, choice. But when push came to shove, I just could not accept another 4 [or 8] years of Clinton WH occupancy.
The lesser evil thing just won’t seem to go away. It’s very simple; Don’t vote for evil – greater or lesser.
They can’t seem to grasp that Trump’s Victory (be it “by a hair”, regardless of raw vote numbers) is TESTIMONY to how much people REJECTED Clinton … who was obviously the better educated, more qualified, sane and “presentable” candidate …. this is like some broken hearted suitor who doesn’t under that “she’s not that into you” … and will not listen when she explains, again and again, “but I just don’t love you” …
Maher is a comedian – to rip on him is meaningless.
On the other hand – not so when it comes to Hillary. I voted for her, and would do so again on this very simple principle. In a choice between a documented racist and misogynist and ANYONE else – I vote else. I cannot and will not support, enable or look the blind eye towards racism and misogyny. Whether it is a relative, friend, or politician. I will not.
Having said that yes Hillary is a war monger – a horrible war monger. It is impossible to know for sure if she was in the WH seeing Intel on Syria what she would have done. But to make those kind of statements is pathetic. I wish she would just go away – at this point she is a detriment to the Dems and any kind of progressive movement away from US military intervention throughout the world – and sadly she is incapable of seeing such.
But there is a difference between being wrong on issues and completely stupid as is our current POTUS.
A War Against the Peace is a War Crime carrying possible capital punishment. T may also as guilty of the preceding as is H.
It’s hard to know, ADL, if having Clinton in the White House would have stifled, for another few years, the current outrage that Trump is now fomenting with his outrageous pissing in the face of Americans.
Clinton, with her quiet lip service to the status quo might have kept us all confused/divided.
I kept hoping that Obama would stand up – close Guantanamo; help Main Street along with Wall Street (actually if he had helped Main Street stabilize their sub prime mortgages by an executive order to make them affordable by setting an affordable reset fixed rate on floating rate mortgages to legitimate homeowners, he might have avoided the $billions for a bail out which which went to AIG so they could pay off their bad bets to Goldman et al.; end the regime change wars; keep Medicare-for-all in his health care bill as an option; etc etc. But instead he pandered to big bidness while giving us smooth talk….
Trump is making it abundantly, unmistakably clear what he is doing and who he is really serving. He may finally succeed in uniting Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Greens to say together – a pox on both their houses – we’re voting for honest people who will represent our interests….
I agree with all – I could write for hours on my wishlist of things Obama coulda/shoulda done. Even knowing that for the last 6 yrs he had virtually no chance of overcoming the Republican blockade on anything he tried to accomplish.
Same with Clinton – what a disappointment, especially her views on Foreign Policy.
My point, my personal view, is that racism and misogyny eliminate you as a person who can hold an elected office. Zip. I don’t need to know any of your views on anything else. I will not tolerate, I cannot understand how others do. And I am appalled that we have so much of it in our country, in this world. And how people, my sisters, could just shrug off the vile racism and misogyny of Trump and somehow call it a lesser evil. It makes me despair for humanity.
Many Citizens of the USA causually accept having a multitude of Chief Executives who are guilty of capital war crimes.
But as Garrett notes below, Hillary is a warmonger, and thereby also utterly disqualified for public office. To see only the disqualifiers “racism and misogyny” makes one the victim of identity-politics gamers. Those who voted Hillary on those grounds were simply fooled into advocating war crimes. There was no choice between the candidates but the choice of lies. I would suggest broadening your list of disqualifiers to include warmongering, and supporting third parties that make meaningful coalitions.
The Dems are now owned by oligarchy (top ten donors all zionists, 100% WallSt and MIC support, 100% betrayal of the People) and serve only as a backstop in case the Reps miscalculate. It is time to dump the Dems and support progressive third parties.
A Third party candidate had NO chance of winning the Prez election. So it is very very easy to vote for anyone over a racist and misogynist. Not even a choice.
I would and do happily support 3rd parties – I totally supported Bernie. But if thru process of elimination it comes down to 2 candidates I care not if they are Dem, Rep, or 3rd party. The racist is automatically disqualified.
We need to purge racism, not enable it.
No need to include warmongering. You seem to misunderstand the causes of war. Racism is one, if not the most prevalent, reason for war. War is not a reason for racism.
Not recognizing that gives rise and cover for racism – which is why is continues and prospers so well.
Same for misogyny. When males can explain it away as just another ‘issue’, something that is just ‘politically correct’, or try to make it comparable to a politician’s tax plan or Foreign policy ideas, than 1/2 of the human population is degraded and deprived of basic rights. The same rights males enjoy. Misogyny is not a political issue. There is no ‘other side’ to misogyny.
I remember reading a quote by Hank Aaron- who was asked during the 60’s by his teammate Warren Spahn ‘what is it you African Americans want?’. He replied, “just the same rights and privileges you want”.
ADL, While some wars in the past have been racist, US warmongering is not in any way related to racism or misogyny. All of the warmongers are tyrants serving the zionists, MIC, and themselves by posing falsely as protectors. Racism may help them gain support, but has not recently been a cause of US wars.
I understand the emotion of women angry about discrimination, but a president cannot legislate against women’s rights, while he/she can and will start more crazy wars if so inclined. So it does not help to vote for a warmonger for president because her opponent is backwards on women’s rights.
Incidentally, I have never met a “misogynist.” That is just false accusation of those reluctant on some women’s rights issue. It is better to be specific about the issues to avoid getting them out of proportion. A earlier gain on something like longer maternity leaves would not be a strong argument for killing more millions.
Also, unfortunately the presidential election issues did not include the “1/2 of the human population … degraded and deprived of basic rights.” If we wish to help the poorest, we must re-purpose 80 percent of the military to building the roads, schools, and hospitals of the developing nations. That would include help for all ages and sexes, and can lead to progress on social justice issues.
Cultural progress for women of other cultures can be encouraged with education and communication of the values of the developed world, but cannot be forced. The US has retarded progress for women around the world by overthrowing numerous socialist democracies since WWII, which generally promote social equality, and promoting dictators and religious extremists as proxies against socialism. Stopping this destruction of social development in poor nations requires stopping US warmongers.
Excellent points. Racism and misogyny are among the inevitable outcomes of warmongering and profiteering.
is the indiscriminate bombing/starvation of millions of women and children racist and mysogenistic? be mad at that too it is far more heinous.
Do you think I am for war? Hardly. I abhor the USA warmongering by both sides of the aisle.
Can you understand the difference?
I abhor that women and minorities are paid less, have less representation in our Govt. But I focus on the cause of those inequities – racism and misogyny. Go to the source, not the end result.
Ending racism will end most/many wars. Ending wars will do nothing to end racism. Not killing would be great – but that is only a small part of how racism degrades and deprives people of life, health, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Good grief, look thru the eyes of any black person in this country for 24 hrs and understand what racism does.
Sorry. Hillary has grotesque lust for regime change imposed on weaker countries like Honduras, the Maldives, Paraguay, Ukraine etc.
Hillary, like Palosi and Feinstein opposed medicare for all. She cackled when Gaddafi was killed and said Hisni Mubarak was ‘family.”
Voting for Hillary was difficult to impossible for anyone who reads.
Maher is hardly a comedian! He is a hateful idiot! The people laughing at his trash are either drunk or just like him!
” I voted for her, and would do so again on this very simple principle. In a choice between a documented racist and misogynist and ANYONE else – I vote else. I cannot and will not support, enable or look the blind eye towards racism and misogyny. Whether it is a relative, friend, or politician. I will not.”
Right, because the only way to stop racism and misogyny inside the U.S. is to support the person who wants to expand wars overseas that will kill POC and women. Yep, makes perfect sense to me. The reason so many of my cultural liberal friends supported Clinton. Why? BECAUSE THE WORLD BEYOND OUR BORDERS DOESN’T COUNT.
Also as if the only choice is always to support one of the two candidates. Voting lesser evil always ends up with evil. To stop it at some point you just have to refuse to vote for either one and work until that grows enough to change things.
Until then we can argue until we dies which is the lesser evil: being a racist at home but less war abroad or more war killing foreigners but less racism at home. (Note HRC’s criticism of Trump’s Syria action is it wasn’t near enough and he didn’t kill Russians.)
No, a pox on both houses.
” I voted for her, and would do so again on this very simple principle. In a choice between a documented racist and misogynist and ANYONE else – I vote else.
“Else” even if she is a barbarian with the blood of thousands, including children, on her hands?
agian….. is it not racist to murder millions of brown women and children overseas? OK vote for Hillary
She knew precisely what game was on and played her part to a T. There were other “reasons” for the destruction of Libya, but insofar as providing weapons and a terrorist staging ground for the dirty war on Syria, she was up to her neck in it. Clinton broadcast to the world in the “debates” her desire to impose a no-fly zone in Syria…and we know that would have exacerbated the entire situation immeasurably (being met with Russian resistance). I would call this “being completely stupid”.
As Zizek remarked wrt the French election of Macron over the odious LePen, the election of Macron is part of eventually making LePen or someone like her inevitable because Macron (as Clinton would have done if elected) will do none of the things necessary to address the issues feeding candidates like Trump and LePen
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/dd2b7208-73da-439f-b9dd-0f03c470a1c3.aspx
As I said in a previous post, the two major parties have melded. There is really only one party now, with two wings. I call them the GCW (Globalizing Corporate Warmongers). Maybe if Bill Maher lived in one of the countries ravaged by the wars that Hitlery supported, he would have a different view. Maybe if he had friends and relatives killed by US bombing, and others drowned in the Mediterranean fleeing our regime change wars of aggression, he would realize that we need better choices than what the GCW’s are offering us. Bill Maher, like most Americans, is blinded by his privileged life. The death and mayhem is no more real to him than a reality TV show.
Maher doesn’t listen to the crap that comes out of his mouth, he only listens to see if his ignorant audience applauds it. He really doesn’t give a shit about the truth. That is what is really disgusting about him and his unreflective audience.
Skip Scott, you took the words out of my mou — keyboard. Both parties are aggressive warmongers, H RC a rather unabashed one, BHO a smiling, witty war criminal who salivated over his “kill lists,” dropped more bombs during his “peacetime” presidency than the US did in WWII – some Nobel Peace Prize winner! Sheesh. And the Dems no longer make any pretense whatever at working towards peace. After all the US economy is overwhelmingly a war and armaments economy.
Eisenhower had it right.The US has become a global empire, more powerful exponentially than Rome at its zenith. And it will ultimately fall for the same reasons.
That anyone would have to defend the existence of third parties shows how confused and easily led the American public actually is. What has this question to do with democracy? It shows how far we are from the real thing.
Imagine if the people had voted massively for Ralph Nader as POTUS when they had the chance, instead of assuming that he could not win. The USA would be a different place, and much better for us all.
Maher’s stupid ploys for attention make him almost as idiotic as Trump. Wow! I didn’t think anyone was stupid enough to do that. I bet he wields a mean tweet……
The fault for ALL of our Nation’s problems lays squarely on the shoulders those voters who vote R or D on their ballot. R=austerity vampires/Wall Street whores, sucking the life out of We The People (the 99%ers) by dismantling our tool of government-for-the-General-Welfare, and wielding it as a weapon against us and for the billionaire class. D=war criminals/Wall Street whores, filthy with war crimes and crimes against humanity, sometimes throwing a few crumbs our way with one hand, while, with the other hand, stealing a few more slices of bread from our loaf of Daily Bread that we need for survival. I’ll continue voting Green AND sending them 10$ a month until R and D are dead dead dead, joining their Federalist and Whig brethren in the political grave. Stein is a great stateswoman, and West is a magnificent humanitarian. We are lucky to have them as U.S. citizens.
Amen Brad. Anyone who tries to demonize Stein or West only reveals their reveals their own ignorant biases. It makes me dizzy with delight to contemplate what our country could be with people like them in charge.
Apology for the extra “their”. When will I ever learn to proof my stuff……?
let’s put an edit button shall we? suggestion box
We somehow have to convince enough of our fellow galley slaves to row the Ship-of-State in a different direction. One per cent of the galley slaves pulling towards the Green direction can’t overcome the massive 95 per cent propulsion along the Rep/Dem/Wall Street/MIIC course that 95% of the other galley slaves have accepted as the right direction in which to row. Then again, our oars may not even be touching water; there may be an under-water propeller pushing us along, powered by the Deep-State engine. Drop anchor maybe, for maximum drag?(ie. General Strike, including the working-class military people, active-duty, Reserve, and Nat’l Guard).
I can’t send them money anymore but will still be voting Green.
Bill Maher is not the brightest. I now have a hard time tuning in because of his shallow views and wrongheaded conclusions. He’s not funny. Proclaiming Muslims as more dangerous and violent than followers of other religions… I guess he never heard of the Inquisition.
I think Honduras, Berta Caceras, plus all the other violent aggressions weighed heavily on my vote. In Texas it really didn’t matter but when Gary Johnson was viciously attacked for not knowing the city of Aleppo, I thought wow, the people of Aleppo would have been a lot better off with Gary Johnson, and more so since he promised no more regime change wars. So, after voting for Bernie in the primary, I voted for Johnson…it was between him and Jill Stein. My protest vote piled on with Johnson. (although I don’t agree with the Libertarian philosophy in general.)
Jimmy Dore analyzes why she lost and critiques her interview with Christiane Amanpore:
Jimmy is smarter and funnier than Bill Maher.
https://youtu.be/HUJOWHAswdc
Besides. Hillary and Bill Clinton succeeded for decades in lulling Democrats into believing that they knew what they were doing insofar as serving the vast majority of the people in this country. They don’t. Hillary mastered the minutia. She was “the best prepared person to be president”. And the distrust people felt was because she was not an “artful” or “inspiring” politician. (Barack Obama, her supporter, even mocked her campaign at the WHCD as “Trudge up the hill with Hillary”….but the honest truth is that eventually, awareness of the bad policy positions were just too much for her to overcome. …the endless regime change wars and the destabilizing deregulations of the banking system where federally insured deposits became the underpinning of wild gambling and leveraged bets on Wall street, plus “don’t ask don’t tell”; DOMA; for profit prisons and the whole Neoliberal agenda that snuck up on us and was forced down our throats over the last few decades…while so many of us made excuses for the bad policies.
Hillary Clinton cost herself the election in 2008 and also in 2016.
If she had won, she and her MSM mouthpieces would be peddling as fast as they could to persuade us to pursue the same bad policies.
With Donald Trump at the helm, the pig has been stripped of all the lipstick and people have started to take their democracy into their own hands and into the streets. The blinders are off. It’s a huuuuge struggle now. Best of luck to Tulsi Gabbard, Nina Turner, and all the true progressives that are joining the fight and running for office and standing up for addressing the existential threats that have been ignored:
climate change
universal health care
transparency on trade
renewable energy
and all the rest…
O you are so right. Too bad you don’t have a talk show. Or just about anybody commenting here. They’d be better than Zionist Bill and his nets of yahoo.
I wish I could have said it better. We got bamboozeled by the Clintons, played by O’Bama and never did get the change we were hoping for.
Well said. I really get the impression that the choice for the DNC is either win while not breaking their toxic allegiances with war and wall street OR lose. Winning by way of moving where progressives are leading them is NOT and option. The tail is wagging the dog. Tulsi Gabbard, Nina, Turner, and even Bernie Sanders will get no where as long as they try to reform the DNC which is beyond repair. Let’s hope they jump ship and join either the Greens, the newly formed People’s Party, or some other start up.
Why can’t the DNC and GOP just merge into one big corporate, regime change wars and Wall Street party and overtly tell those American voters who do not agree with these policies to buzz-off?
Jimmy Dore is an American treasure. Maher, not so much. Dumb and pandering. Plus, misogynist.
Bill Maher is a clown and stupid people make idiots like him “comedians” and pay them tons of money……Who was the person who said “Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intellect of the American People”?!…….My hat is off to the person who said that……………
H. L. Mencken
P.T. Barnum. A well-regarded statesman.
Also ,”there is a sucker born every day”
Maher is just one of many testifying to the active discouragement of thoughtfulness in the US.
Under no circumstances would I have voted for Clinton. It was no secret to me that Trump is awful, in the sense that, while screwing us over, he’d also sound like someone who is screwing us over, as opposed to the alternative candidate, who would sound fantastic, while also screwing us over and definitely get us into more wars (instead of just probably getting us into more wars, as is the case with Trump).
My not voting for Clinton (I wrote in a name) was meant as a message directly to the DNC. ‘We don’t want the product you are trying to foist on us anymore.’ They know what the message is, but they still — still today! — refuse to listen. Instead they scream about Russia and Comey and Jill Stein and God knows what. Grow up, DNC. Give us a candidate who deserves support.
Whilst I carry no torch for Trump his election does suggest that democracy in the USA is still just about alive and well. Trump is to all intents and purposes an independent candidate so in this regard his election was quite remarkable. He not only beat Clinton, he also beat the republicans as well in so far as he saw off every challenger in the primaries’. Other third parties should take comfort from this because it does demonstrate that its possible to break into the two party system.
And you make a very important point here. The GOP apparently doesn’t have it instilled in them to kill off a candidate that they don’t want (perhaps they’ll hone this come future elections); the DEMs, on the other hand, are quite good at it (except that their un-democratic methods [finally] got exposed).
I’ve supported Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul. Any intelligent person can figure out what’s common here. I cast no vote for Clinton or Trump, but held out hope (not that this is a good strategy) that Trump’s desire to back off on Russia and Syria would pay dividends (despite all the other crappy baggage that is slung off his stinky ass).
France has just done this too-removed the so-called socialists and republicans. It would be great if the two Parties in the USA were removed and at least one Party representing real humans was formed.No wonder there is just huge abstention in the USA- no Party, except Greens perhaps, denigrated by the PTB, represents workers/poor/ environmental protection.
WHY, INDEED!
From analysts and commentators who have given so very much to our
understanding of foreign and domestic affairs, it continues to
amaze me that we keep going over and over (and over) the 2016 election.
A candidate for public office in my city once said “In ( city deleted…could
be anywhere),POLITICS IS A BLOODSPORT!”
(This candidate lost the election bid but was rewarded with a
position at City Hall which was duly accepted.)
Articles on our current situation would b e more worthwhile.
For example, one anchor said recently (too quickly) that a
Russian visit to the White House was immanent and
that a Russian version of a “safe zone” in Syria, of discussions about
the Ukraine and Syria would be tops on the agenda.
Maybe, maybe not.
Information on this approaching visit in some depth might
be helpful.
I am tired of reading about 2016. I’ve pretty much had it
on that topic….!!!
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Yep. I voted for Jill Stein and if she hadn’t been on the ballot, I still wouldn’t have voted for Hillary. And if Comey hadn’t announced he was reopening the investigation into her emails, I still wouldn’t have voted for Hillary. And if Wikileaks hadn’t leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, I still wouldn’t have voted for Hillary.
Not that John Podesta and other brainwashed DNCers are reading Consortium News comment threads–tho they should be–but hey Dems, I would not have voted for Hillary under any circumstances. After 30 years voting Dem. And I also didn’t vote for Trump.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Ditto, ditto, ditto. And I didn’t need to read Diana Johnstone’s Queen of Chaos to know I would not have voted for Clinton in any circumstances. A woman who gloated over Qaddafi’s murder and the destruction of Libya, a country in which open slave markets are now held, and that was just her latest crime.
Imagine if all that energy that went into Bernie Sanders’ campaign (sheepdogging for Clinton from day one) had gone into Jill Stein’s campaign!
Unfortunately until the voting system itself is reformed third parties have no chance in a winner take all system. Only in some sort of proportional system, which does not exist at the national level, do they have a chance. This should be obvious from history. Even Theodore Roosevelt, who had already been President once, failed when running on the Progressive party ticket against Wilson. Of course the electoral college MUST go as this is the biggest boondoggle , recall that the people who designed it were very wealthy and some were slave owners. .
The Greens have run year after year candidates with little broad appeal emphasizing ideological purity, lately they keep running a perpetual loser, Dr. Stein, who’s only previous elected experience was on the town council of a plush suburb of Boston. She ran on ideology not experience, or in other words fantasy; and when you lose you don’t run again, find someone else or wait a number of years like Nixon.
Sander’s insurgency showed the only practical approach to this dilemma, and the efforts the DLC types went to screw him revealed for all their total corruption. The race for party chair was disappointing but close; progress has been made. Hopefully the insurgency will continue. As party hacks run around with their bobble heads twirling, yelling “Putin, Putin, the Russian hacked us” hopefully more people will be ready to send the Clinton/Obamascam ship of fools to the ash can of history to paraphrase Reagan.
The Trump regime may have its positive effect, even his own party hates him. Sometimes things have to get really, really bad for people to wake up( like an alcoholic bottoming out). He is doing a splendid job of making a fool out of himself-and anybody who voted for him. Already he has inspired the greatest resistance to Federal government policies since Vietnam. He may just cripple the Republican party.
PS And he is less likely to go toe to nuclear toe with Russia than the “Butcher of Libya”.
Warmongers were automatically excluded from my list of candidates. I sought a candidate that I reasonably believed presented the least threat of vaporizing my great grand babies. Voting for Jill was one of my best votes in my near eighty years…..second to the one I did not cast for Obama in 2012 for the same reason.
In my late 70s and I have never voted for a demican or republocrat in any election ever for any office anywhere. Anyone who has ever read a non scholastic non vanity history book and/or is looking at the state of the world should understand why not to vote for them and/or why not to empower their puppet masters. They are flat out gutless two bit criminals without even a smidgen of a moral compass.
Well said, I concur and have behaved likewise.and I’m of your same vintage….we can only hope things don’t get much worse. before they improve…I pray.
I cannot agree with you more completely. The Democratic Party and its faithful have shown themselves to be as mindless and hysterical as any right-wing Republican. I have often voted for local Democratic candidates (state senate and house), but I will be questioning them closely next year regarding their obeisance to Democratic Party idiocy particularly in regard to Russia. It’s helpful to remember that the party is functioning as most of the U.S. functions, from the elite to the fellow down the road in his shack: Someone else is always to blame, I’m (we’re) not responsible for anything, and everyone should obey the rules except me (figured this one out after living in rural America for a few years).