A reminder from President Clinton

I’m not comfortable having something in common with the right wing illiterates.

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Because she is a woman, mostly. And not a republican.

Look at Barack and Michelle Obama. As far as anyone can tell they are really excellent people. And there is a huge percentage of the population that remains convinced - utterly certain - that Obama is some kind of sleeper cell Muslim terrorist/ Communist mole. Never mind 7.5 years of tremendously competent and skilled governing (in the face of a huge, sustained 7 year temper tantrum in Congress).

If he is a sleeper, he is really waiting until the very last minute to pull off the mask. (I woulda got away with it if it weren’t for these dang right wing lunatics…)

Any remotely sane comparison of Clinton and Trump would have someone running screaming to the polls to vote for Clinton. But remotely sane just isn’t done these days.

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Probably about the same that a President’s wife would be running against his golf buddy.

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That’s the conservative answer.

If we’re looking for the progressive answer, the answer is ‘she isn’t a progressive’. Lots of progressives are unhappy because they almost had somebody to vote FOR, and now they’re stuck voting AGAINST Trump.

Voting the lesser of two evils isn’t a good feeling. It sucks and it generally gets us nowhere as a nation, it just keeps something even worse from happening.

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A lot of people suspect that she’s in the pocket of big business. She supported TPP until Sanders made that too uncomfortable, then hedged to the position that she can’t support it “in its current form.” She has an uncomfortably close relationship with Goldman Sachs; they contribute to her campaign and paid her more than $400,000 to deliver a lecture there. Some people look back unhappily on her role in promoting our 1998 war on Serbia, and the way a number of her friends and colleagues have profited from it. I am not sold on her health care platform, since it seems to be “do more with the ACA.” My family’s experience with the ACA has been shite.

This isn’t Benghazi-talk. These are real issues that many of us find troubling. I am holding out hope that she turns out to be great. But I wish I could vote for Sanders or Warren instead.

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Yeah, the ACA’s an example of what we get stuck with (and the Public Option is an example of what we lose) when we’re forced to choose between corporate-center and corporate-right.

I don’t have words for how much suffering that trapped us in and how many wasted resources the ACA-over-Public Option decision resulted in.

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yeah you don’t have to @ me with this, I voted for Bernie enthusiastically, and it sucked that he lost. And there’s no suspecting that she’s in the pocket of Big Business: of course she is. They’ve all been that way.

But what we’re left with now is Hillary or Pantone 021C Baron Harkonnen, and I know what I’m doing in November.

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In short, (ignoring the raging right) people who dislike Hillary Clinton are just suffering from misplaced frustration or disappointment?

Because I can live with that. Plenty of time 'til November for those people to redirect their negativity and vote for nottrump.

(( which is why I ask. I worry about the vocal minority. I mean, look at Brexit. I’m in Canada, so I still half half a horse in this race ))

Also, I might just steal @Bemopolis’ “Pantone 021C Baron Harkonnen” because that’s fantastic.

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Oh it’s gotten us somewhere. It’s gotten us so far to the right that the Democratic party now nearly exclusively services corporate interests at the cost of labor, the poor, minorities, students, the elderly, progressives, the working class, drug users and the mentally ill. So far to the right that FDR, one of the most popular American presidents would today be viewed as a left-wing extremist. And yet they still tell you that warm trickle of urine running down your back is frosty fair-trade organic cold press, and then shame you if you don’t soak it up enthusiastically enough. Yeah, feeling a little crusty this morning.

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In fairness, this is also the first election cycle I can remember when anyone who can’t see any meaningful difference between the candidates needs to fuck off.

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What hungryjoe said. One other item I would throw in is the nature of the role that Bill Clinton will have in the White House. As far as I am concerned, it looks as if there is no need for a VP, since Bill will be there to do the job. It has already been said that he will have a major policy role, but what kind of financial restrictions would he have to work under as First Husband (First Lord, First Gentleman?) to prevent conflicts of interest? This is simply uncharted territory that I have no doubt the Clinton’s will work to their advantage.

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There are plenty of meaningful differences. And everyone shaming us for trying to talk about them honestly can fuck right off too.

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Different people have different reasons.

Some are misogynists who think that a woman just shouldn’t be president. Some just don’t like the sound of her voice.

Others dislike her policies, which look leftish on social issues but swing pretty far to the right on economic ones. Others dislike how, like so many other politicians, she often refuses to actually answer a reporter’s question. Some haven’t forgotten her having resorted to race-baiting while running against Obama, and while serving as “First Lady.” Others dislike how she pushed or favored policies in the nineties that further disadvantaged the already disadvantaged. Others dislike how hawkish she is, including her ghoulish gloating over the sodomizing and death of a country’s leader, and her apparently having pushed Obama into doing what US forces did to that country (and for what Obama has termed the greatest mistake of his presidency, the lack of a plan for what to do in and for that country afterward). Some dislike her condoning, and perhaps even direct engagement, in the overthrowing of a democratically elected leader in another country. Others dislike her refusal to release transcripts of speeches that she was paid fortunes for by Wall Street firms that clearly expect and will no doubt her favor in return. Some don’t like how entitled she seems to feel to the presidency. Others dislike that she’s so business friendly (and so willing to abuse workers) that even the Koch bros have said they’ll vote for her (or was that just one of them?). Others dislike that she doesn’t seem to have effectively distanced herself from the rightward pull that her husband exerted on the Democratic party while president, and that Obama has continued. Others suspect that despite what she currently claims in order to garner votes, she’ll push hard for passage of the corporate- and elite-friendly TPP. Others dislike her residency on the executive board of the heinous worker-kicker Wal-Mart. Others don’t like her choice of a centrist (read: right-wing) vice presidential pick, nor her selection of Debbie Wasserman as a central campaign figure, right after Wasserman’s disgrace as a patently biased central operator in the Democratic National Committee, which as an organization, actively worked to quash the chances of her opponent, Bernie Sanders. Some don’t like how, as her VP choice suggests, she says and does things that are to the left of current Republicans, but are nevertheless well to the right of what Democrats used to stand for.

I could go on, but the list, you see, is a long one . . .

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I wonder how much money whoever the person who’s squatting on FGOTUS on Twitter will get?

You think the previous ones weren’t obviously worse than the Democratic alternative? Okay, Nixon has cartoon villain appeal, but really, they’ve been pretty consistently awful post-Eisenhower.

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Oh, there’s some properly-placed disappointment too. There’s lots not to like, including the fact that we got the weakest candidate vs. trump and the one least likely to serve the greater good.

It’s not like she responded to only losing to the truly progressive candidate because she had every advantage by being gracious and consolidating the party. Instead now that she’s won she’s just doubling-down on the corporate-friendly centrist approach.

Sure, progressives in swing states will still vote against Trump…he’s really that scary…but they’ll be holding their noses. As far as those of us who serve the greater good are concerned…these are some horrible choices we’ve been given.

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Fifteen more weeks… Fifteen more weeks.

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I’m not voting for her. The DNC made their bed, and now we all have to sleep in it. I’ll vote third party, and I hope you will all join me.

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Yep, one of them has received massive contributions from Wall Street, foreign countries, and international financiers, and the other has a weird orange hairdo.

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That sounds like a legitimate list of grievances that aren’t completely covered by “disappointment or frustration.” So much for trying to simplify my understanding :S

Well, none of those reasons listed are reasons to not vote nottrump… but, combined, they are possibly enough to encourage voters to notvote.

Which is bad. Really bad. Since we can be fairly certain all the post-fact, nightmare fuel, “real america” voters will vote. And we know for whom they’ll vote.

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I wish we could send you a clone of Justin Trudeau to vote for.

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