“The political process is about
the business of assassinating hope and aspiration and replacing them with fear
and loathing” ----from “The Quotations
of Chairman Joe”
For over
a year now I have in these columns and on Facebook been arguing that if the
Democratic Party were to nominate Hillary Clinton it thereby forfeits any claim
to either progressive reform or representation of the working Middle Class. It becomes, on the contrary, the modern
equivalent of the Wall Street political hacks that heretofore had been the
backbone of the old main-line Republican Party; the much-despised ‘Eastern
Establishment’ controlling the party of Warren Harding, William Howard Taft,
Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
Presented now with the likelihood of a Clinton-Trump contest in the
national election the Middle Class looks now in vain for a dog in the hunt.
This
matchup assassinates hope and aspiration substituting fear and loathing.
Presented with two steaming piles of crap ensures a low turnout favoring Trump.
All Trump has to do is venture into the old industrial heartland, long disparaged
as the 'rustbelt' and promise to tear up the trade agreements. Note he got more
primary votes in Indiana than Clinton and Sanders combined and with nearly 100
million in combined attack ads directed at him he still crushed his opposition.
Assuming his demise is dangerous. Hillary may tout experience but what have the
politically experienced done for the other 80 percent?
Additionally,
let's look at the singularly tone deaf and inept campaign Hillary has run to
date. Her campaign, for instance, has been whining about losing in
unrepresentative caucuses as if the Sanders people are guilty of some foul
play.
Charles
M. Blow, writing last month in the op-ed page of the New York Times, wrote:
While
the first proposition in his blanket statement is true enough, the ‘insurmountable’
delegate lead that Clinton through media coverage of the ‘horse race’ has
adroitly used to dampen the enthusiasm driving the insurgency, is almost entirely
composed of so-called “Superdelegates”—unelected party hacks and lobbyists
chosen by the party apparatchiks precisely to ensure that a candidate favorable
to the ‘establishment’ will almost always prevail favors Clinton; but the
second proposition simply doesn’t stand.
Caucuses
are sponsored and organized by the Party.
The times held, the cites chosen, are determined by the party, usually
at the county level. Word is then spread
through the party organization and usually the party faithful, the political ‘activists’
can be relied upon to show up in these low-turnout affairs to ensure the party
favorite wins. This, on the face of it,
should favor Clinton. The fact that she
had lost 10 of the first 14 such state-wide contests is not only a testament to
the superior political organization of the Sanders campaign but to the
miserable organization and lack of enthusiasm awaiting the nomination of the
once and future Queen.
The sad
fact is that Clinton, as in 2008, has run a miserable campaign, convincing no
one but the already convinced of either the legitimacy or the need of her
candidacy. And, as it was 8 long years ago, nearly half of her own party—as most
clearly demonstrated by the severe drubbing she has received in Caucus—balks at
the prospect of her bearing the Party’s standard in the general election.
Yet she
is the near unanimous choice of the party hacks and mossbacks that run the
party. Caucuses are not organized by the state but by the political parties.
The party decides where they will be held under their auspices and put out
calls to all the party activists to attend. Under these circumstances the
caucuses should have been a Clinton cake-walk. Instead they revealed not only
the weaknesses of the party to deliver but the telling fact that for the second
time in 8 years half or more of her own party find the prospect of her
nomination repugnant and are recoiling accordingly. She is a weak candidate whose
agenda, as in 2008, is shaped by her opponent, running a 'me-too but not so
fast' version of whomever stands in opposition. Already as I write she is about
the business of wooing Bush supporters (note the arrow on the logo points in
the wrong direction). By mid-summer she will, as Bill before her, be rifling
the Republican agenda and presenting us with Bush-Lite. Given the choice the
country may well opt for the genuine article.
_____
(1). Blow, Charles M. “The (Un)Democratic Party” New
York Times April 4, 2016 pA19
