I did admit bias off the start. I don’t like Nader because I’m far to the left and he’s a toxic asset. IMO, Nader is and was a terrible person (he lied about the data against Corvairs in the 60s, which followup studies showed, and has been a BS artist since then). I sometimes agree with his policy ideas, but I still don’t like his person, I do care about policy being realized, but that doesn’t mean I have to like people I sometimes agree with who are bastards (be they Rahm, Nader, or Weiner). His dishonest tactics in his 2000 run were completely unforgivable, in dishonest content (Bush and Gore were not the same, not at all, and that was one of a litany of lies he dropped, mostly attacking Gore), in an approach that focused on attacking Gore and targeting the Dems. in swing states at a time that risked and did turn the SCOTUS to conservatives, and in the results of eight years of Bush. When Nader said that if he had to choose, he’d vote for Bush over Gore, it was over and he earned a spot on my list of horrible people.
I have given crap to Clinton over the super-predator thing (and am not a Clinton fan, I voted Bernie), and I’ll give it to Nader about his not “supposed” but actual racist comments about Obama, his recent Harvard kerfuffle, etc.
Time will tell. One thing is for certain though, she’s far more likely to implement it than Donald Trump! The standard logic here seems to be if Goldman Sachs gave you money you could never possibly even consider reform, but Trump has almost entirely self financed his run so far and we know he’s never going to do it (even if he wanted to do it his supreme court picks wouldn’t allow him to). Parts of it will be difficult, especially the constitutional amendment, but I think it’s pretty likely she’ll at least enact some of her stated policies here, and make a good effort to do all of them.
if it weren’t for the supreme court i would be more forgiving of those who wish to dump their vote on a third party candidate, although not much more i have to admit. however, we have a vacancy which gives us a fighting chance for someone who can change the balance to the left for the first time in almost 50 years. doing anything other than working toward the election of the democrat would be a bizarre choice for anyone who considers themselves progressive, liberal, leftist, etc.
do i love clinton? no. will i support clinton? absolutely, because clinton will give me much more of what i want a president to do than donald trump will.
Exactly, and if you examine the build up to, and the reaction to, the financial crisis of 2007, you will find that neoliberal economic theory didn’t actually have a whole lot to do with it a lot of the time. Sure you can point to certain parts of said theory and find plenty of examples of their implementation (privatisation, certain forms of deregulation, fiscal responsibility, free trade, tax policy, certain monetary policy), but you’ll also find as many examples of policy in direct opposition to neoliberal theories (e.g. regulatory corruption and market manipulation, i.e. corporatism; certain monetary policy; lack of fiscal responsibility; bailouts). Neoliberalism has turned into a bogey word that means ‘all the bad things that have happened’, rather than actually pointing to the economic theories described in the wikipedia article you linked.
I personally think you’re very wrong, and that it’s a dangerous thing to be wrong about, because I think people (myself included) have underestimated Trump’s atavistic political instincts and might continue to do so until our Republic really is replaced with a populist fascism that could last well beyond Trump. That said, I respect your right to disagree.
Well, she’s conservative on economic issues (which really makes her a neoliberal since economic conservatism hasn’t had a major platform in American politics in over a century), and she’s a foreign policy hawk (which makes her somewhat analogous to paleo-conservatives and a slightly less braggadocio version of modern foreign policy conservatives). Socially she’s center-left by American standards, centrist by Western European standards. But she’s shown much willingness to follow the weather-vane of social politics and change her views as American society accepts things like LGBT rights; basically I don’t think she’s socially ideological, and will follow the social progressive lead, but won’t put herself out at the forefront (though she’ll be happy to claim credit after others take the risks).
Mostly I find the conservative vs liberal distinction simple to the point of useless, most epsecially when used to describe a whole person as opposed to the realms of their views (social, economic, foreign policy, campaign reform, Constitution, ect…). IMO, there are real substantive differences between Bernie and Clinton, but they pale in comparison to the differences between either one of them and Trump (or even Cruz).
Understand, I don’t particularly hate Clinton (or Obama or even Bush). But I believe everyone of them has been corrosive to the body politic.
it’s disturbing how little has changed in so many ways. The left-wing anti-corporate Naderite positions and moderate pragmatic status-quo-ite positions for Gore are reminiscent of the Sanders v. Clinton positions, lots of familiar rhetorical styles, lots of common tropes. So incredibly glad there’s no charismatic left-wing third party candidate with much momentum this election to add extra chaos to an already hideous election.
No doubt, I don’t see the Donald as a very sophisticated politician and upon a huge amount of critical analysis, I think it would be 100 percent unethical to vote for the guy… but… that doesn’t mean the vote should go to Clinton. I think the 3rd parties need supporters, and by voting for them we help build legitimacy for them as a movement.
I think that if you are dissatisfied with what is being offered, and you can vote for something closer to what you want without risk of ushering in exactly what you don’t want, you should. Got to move that Overton window. Otherwise that word won’t ever be Green.
In my case, I don’t even have a vote, so all I can do is express my opinion and fund the campaigns I want to. It’s not like Clinton’s going to need money from schlubs like me anyway.
Plus, even if I had a vote, I live in a solidly blue state, so if she lost here due to third party votes, she’d have lost pretty much everywhere else too. If I lived in a red state I wouldn’t vote for her there either.
If I lived in a swing state, I guess I’d hold my nose and support her.
I’d like to see the president elected by popular vote via an instant-runoff system, so I could happily vote for the party I wanted to and still make sure I didn’t gift anything to the parties I really don’t want to win, but nobody seems to want to put that system in place.
If she does win, I hope she has a better first two years than Obama did, so she doesn’t end up losing badly in the midterms like he did.
