This past Thursday’s PBS
Democratic debate in Milwaukee was apparently not important enough for the Seattle Times to put on its front page,
or at least above the cutline. Political commentator Buck Sexton, offering an
opinion on CNN’s website, claimed that Hillary Clinton “won” the debate by not
“losing” it, or at least she said all the things her diehard supporters wanted
to hear. While this seems to be the general consensus amongst the mainstream
media following her unprecedented 22-point loss in New Hampshire, this once
more flies in the face of current reality, as more and more Democrats and
left-leaning young voters are getting “The Bern.”
While Saturday Night Live is showing its “age” by airing skits that
clearly show a pro-Clinton bias and suggesting that Bernie Sanders is “insensitive”
to blacks despite a civil rights record dating back to at least 1962 as a
student activist (back when Hillary was a teenager canvassing for votes for
Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater), in the real world on-line polls once more
showed Sanders trouncing Clinton, in some cases by 4-1 and even 8-1 margins. What
are the pundits listening to? They certainly are not hearing what the
“people”—or at least those who are politically and socially aware—are, only
those who have already made-up the minds that it is Hillary or else, like real
racial bigots like Harriet Christian in 2008.
No, the problem wasn’t that
Clinton looked “unpresidential” in that outfit she was wearing, but that many people remain unconvinced of her
“commanding” way of delivering her manipulative and opportunistic lines, women being told that they will “burn in hell”
if they don’t vote for her (that didn’t sound like a “joke” by Madeline
Albright), or turning people off by making accusatory demands on their gender
consciousness (Barack Obama for his part never
demanded that people vote for him because he was “black”). I admit that Clinton’s
late night talk show appearances made her look like a “good sport,” but that is
easy to be when you are the center of attention of a captive audience--and the audience isn't "captive" anymore, and those who are not following the "party" line are feeling the backside of Clinton's hand.
Furthermore, the “card” that
Clinton and her media supporters believe she can play against Sanders (besides
the gender card)—that his plans are “unrealistic”—holds no water. What Clinton
and her supporters don’t understand is that if you think small (i.e. “pragmatic”),
you’ll get even less than that from those who oppose your plans. You might even
get nothing, because both your friends and enemies do not think you are even serious,
expose you as being disingenuous to begin with.
What we need now is someone who
thinks “big,” is a “populist” who can
both strongly and energetically articulate the issues and make it “big” in the
minds of the people, enough to convince at least a few Republicans in Congress
in less hidebound states to realize it is bad for their own electability to be
hidebound in their thinking. This might not be as “impossible” as some people
might think; as mayor of Burlington, Sanders was able to find common ground on
a variety of public programs with people who were opposed to him ideologically,
which was cause for USA Today to rank
him as one of the country’s best mayors back in the 1980s.
Obama himself didn’t have quite
the reach he could have had for gaining widespread popular support for his
policies, since those inclined to look at the world in the narrow confines of their own prejudices chose to be completely tone deaf to anything he said. Clinton,
meanwhile, is the kind of person who either “loves” those who love her—or hates
those who don’t love her. We remember what happened in 2008 when black voters
proved less “loving” to her—she disparaged Martin Luther King, Jr and Bill called
Obama a “fairytale” while campaigning before the South Carolina primary (black
leaders and voters apparently have forgotten all of that). Since Clinton needs
to feel the “love,” she increasingly patronizes minorities like she is their
“great mother”—or rather, grandmother. Perhaps out of desperation, she naturally
plays her other “trump” card, shaming people for blocking her “historic”
election, accusing those Democrats who don’t support her as misogynists, sexists or "traitors";
that in itself tells the self-obsession and megalomania that drives her. But Sanders,
on the other hand, is enough of a “populist” the he will at least have the
advantage of not immediately shutting ears on the “assumption” that he isn’t
speaking for all of us. Because he is.
Yet the Democratic Party leadership
sits like a block of lead behind Clinton, mainly because the DNC has been behind
the times and has lost track of the newer generation of Democratic voters for
some time. Instead of standing with core progressive principles, we are “reminded”
ad nauseam that Clinton is “experienced.” What the New York Times said in its 2008 endorsement of Clinton over Obama
will likely be repeated this year, that her resumé was “one of
the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern
history.”
I wish someone would please explain to me how her
resumé is “deeper” than Sanders’—or her husband’s, or John McCain’s or John
Kerry’s or even Barack Obama’s or Mitt Romney’s. OK, I’ll concede Sarah Palin’s,
but the guy elected dogcatcher probably does too. This is just more of the
outrageous and dishonest hyperbole the media has bestowed on Clinton. For her
time as First Lady, she is most famously (or infamously) known for her botched
effort to sell health care reform. As Senator her most notable “accomplishment”
was voting for the Iraq war, in which more than 4,000 Americans were killed and
many thousands more maimed to no purpose. As Secretary of State, the only
things that come to mind are the Benghazi tragedy and her illegal use of her personal
computers for classified state department information, no doubt to keep her own
shenanigans a “state” secret. In fact, her only “accomplishments” in public
life have been taking up space—and giving it “substance” for the mere fact that
she is a woman; someone should remind her that two women before her held the
title of “Secretary of State.”
The aforementioned commentator, Buck Sexton,
tells us that despite the fact that Sanders is “what the Democratic base wishes
it could elect in an attempt to change the country,” he states that while
being “the quintessential politician-for-sale,” Clinton’s “disingenuousness and
dishonesty is the price Democrats are willing to pay in order to keep one of
their own as commander-in-chief…This most recent debate served as a reminder of
that unsavory truth.”
One can read between the lines a sense of
defeatism or fatalism, giving in to the tyranny of feminist self-entitlement
both from the Clinton campaign and its supporters in the media. There are many
who demand that Hillary Clinton is “owed” the nomination and even the
presidency, but those of us who care about the direction this country is
going—particularly in the face of the demagoguery of hate being espoused by
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz—don’t wish to be shackled by this defeatism and
fatalism or the idea that they “owe” something to someone to satisfy an outdated
ideology largely fueled by hate in the service of self-victimization. Sanders
can win if people like Sexton do not allow themselves to persuaded by the myth
that he can’t; that is only what the pro-Clinton media desperately wishes you
to believe.
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