If Hillary’s So Great, Why Isn’t She a Runaway Bestseller Already?

Let’s run Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through the spin cycle a few hundred more times, shall we?

Because no matter how hard and fast Hillary Clintons’s sponsors* spin this thing, Hillary’s not winning the Democratic primary by anything close to a landslide, and the party’s nomination is not exactly a done deal.

People are soothsaying all over the place about how the Democratic Convention in July will turn out, but the truth is, no one actually knows.

(*Make no mistake: the mainstream media and Wall Street own Hillary Clinton. We’re not talking a little help from some friends. We’re talking sold-out on a soul level.)

One thing I do know is that Bernie Sanders is more of a Democrat than Hillary Clinton is, that’s for goshdamn sure.

Or at least what I thought a Democrat was.

I used to think the Democratic Party spoke my language.

Social justice.

Racial equality.

Equal rights.

Human rights.

People over profits.

This sort of stuff.

I was willing to let politics be politics with an understanding and a hope that the cream rises to the top; I was willing to accept that compromise is part of the game. 

But something’s changed—it’s more than a game of compromise anymore.

The Democratic Party is now a full-blown bought-and-paid-for political party, exactly like the Republican Party, so yay.

Except that at least the GOP doesn’t much care if you know it.

If the Democratic party really wanted to represent the party’s supposed values, then Bernie Sanders would be the candidate already.

The problem with people sing-songing “vote blue no matter who” is that it’s obvious they’re talking about Hillary Clinton, the assumption being that Hillary will be the party’s presidential nominee and Bernie will not.

Or the assumption being that the Hillary supporters know they’re stuck with an incredibly messy candidate but that’s their story and they’re stickin’ to it.

Or the assumption being that goshdammit, it’s her turn.

Aaannnd, of course, the assumptive conclusion to it all is that come November, it will be a Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump match-up.

But you know what they say about assuming things…

So allow me to spell out my observations:

1– Yes, the media is trying their damnedest to make it look like she will, but we don’t know that Hillary will be the nominee. (Unless she’s planning to steal the nomination, in which case I suppose she’s got a right to be confident.)

2– We don’t know for a fact that she can beat Trump. (Unless, again, she’s planning to steal the win against Trump, which might be a helluva lot harder than stealing her party’s nomination.)

3– There are no doubt plenty of backroom deals going on that are what’s keeping Hillary’s (ever-weakening) lead intact, but the force that is Bernie Sanders is really cramping her style anyway. Weird, huh?

4– Poll after poll shows Bernie beating Trump in the general election, and Hillary, eh—maybe not so much.

5– In the months between the nomination and the election, if Hillary is the nominee, Donald Trump will positively annihilate her.

He will not “watch his tone,” as Hillary complains about Bernie; he will not avoid negativity (since that’s Trump’s finest move, after all); and he will exploit every scrap and morsel of Hillary’s dirty laundry, of which there is gracious plenty.

She may think Bernie is playing hardball but whoa, I think we all know she’s got another think coming if she wants to be in the race with Trump.

(And just for a little perspective, does anyone remember Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Obama prior to the 2008 election? Same ol’ negative, lowball strategy lo these eight years later.)

6– Hillary’s ability or inability to withstand the heat that would be a match against Donald Trump aside, an even bigger problem I see with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee is that she is just so damned un-liked.

Say what you will of her credentials, but there’s no arguing she’s unpopular.

Republicans simply don’t like her. Some may hold their noses and vote for her over Trump, but many won’t; many Republicans will just take their chances on Door No. 2 rather than vote for someone they’ve loathed for years.

And as we well know by now, young people and progressives don’t much like her. These are the people who would rather vote their conscience than perpetuate a system they either don’t like or have grown mightily disillusioned with.

These are the people not buying the hype. You may have guessed that I’m one of these people.

And there’s that one particularly big load to spin:

7– So yeah, there’s the FBI investigation.

Shit, that could really fuck up the works if Hillary’s indicted while she’s the Democratic nominee! Sure, she’s made it very clear that she won’t be indicted, but how does she know this?

Even if she has a crystal-clear conscience and is 100% not-guilty, she can still be indicted. Perhaps unjustly so, but it could happen.

Or does she have some reason to be so confident?

Let’s assume the fine folks at the FBI are indeed doing their job and aren’t just playing Texas hold ’em while getting paid to look busy, and that there really is a chance Hillary will in fact be indicted.

Well how the hell is that supposed to work if she’s the nominee?

The Hillary spin machine is hyperventilating trying to get Bernie to drop out of the race for the good of the party…

But maybe Hillary’s the one who should drop out for the good of the whole country.

Hillary Clinton is a scandal waiting to happen.

Lord, I don’t even know how she’s kept her pace all these years. Scandal after scandal, it just keeps coming.

Now I’ll confess to you that I didn’t love Bernie Sanders at first. He seemed scream-y. I wanted him to fix his hair and wear better clothes. (Hell, that’d still be alright by me.)

But the man grew on me. His message, his integrity, his consistency, his decent human being-ness.

And meanwhile, the more I learn about Hillary, the more shocked I am that this person I was supportive of all these years is not at all who I thought she was. Or rather, assumed she was.

My god, I trusted her.

She was a female Democrat and I gave her plenty of latitude. I assumed she was doing a great job, but the more I know, the more I can see that her gender is about her only attribute I want in a President.

I do realize her supporters call this stuff lies, all lies, and accuse anyone saying these things of smearing her name, and I was one of them for a time.

But this shit is becoming impossible to ignore

So here’s a simplified and far-from-complete list of some of Hillary’s dastardly behavior and questionable policies: the e-mails, her faux feminism, her support of fracking, her record in Latin America, her convenient flip-flopping on everything from marriage equality to the minimum wage, and her outrageous Wall Street support (and thus her furthering of our increasingly corrupt political system).

Lest anyone accuse me of naively “throwing away” my vote and thereby vote for Trump by not voting for Hillary in November, I want to assure you that I most certainly do not want a Republican President—or, rather, an entitled, egotistical, power-hungry, all-bun-no-beef, dictator-type of pseudo-Republican, as the case may be.

Nor do I want a self-serving, ass-kissing, non-progressive, corporately-owned pseudo-Democrat for my President, no matter how smart and tough she is.

I simply don’t want either one of them.

I’m done with the fall-in-line-and-vote-blue lingo, and I’m done with our rigged politics.

I’m not worried about Sanders causing another Ralph Nadar-ish split in the vote this year because this is by far not the same election we had in 2000.

What I am worried about is the Presidency being stolen again.

Yeah, yeah, lies all lies and conspiracy theories and all that shit, but seriously, the Hillary Clinton campaign is, um, bending the rules of fair play and decency. Of course that’s putting it mildly.

I mean, what the fuck is this country anymore, a massively corrupt and unstable military regime where rigged elections and truly despicable leaders are the norm? What, are we going to be bribing cops whenever we get pulled over next?

So, nah, I’ll pass on voting blue no matter who.

And I’ll tell you what, if the Democratic party self-destructs, the blame won’t lie with those of us who want much, much better behavior and higher standards from our political party.

The blame will lie with the Democratic Party establishment for being so beholden to their corporate puppet-masters that they have become entirely unable and unwilling to buck the fucking system for the good of the whole damned country.

I’m a progressive. I lean left. I’m a tree-hugger. I’m a freak-flag-flying liberal. And I’m all up into some social justice. These are things I want in my political party.

Plainly stated, Hillary Clinton is no progressive.

And the Democratic Party’s only hope of survival is Bernie Sanders.

Yeah, Hillary’s ahead, but not by much, in spite of what the media keeps going on about—they just keep running that spin cycle.

Even once-reliable and credible sources like the New York Times and my beloved New Yorker magazine no longer have a solid political backbone, because they are no longer independent.

That’s right, friends, every one of the mainstream news sources is unable to, you know, actually practice journalism like they ought to because someone owns their ass.

Even local newspapers and TV stations are no longer independent, so don’t count on any of ’em to tell you any more of the truth than they can spare. Learn to sort through the spin.

Hillary Clinton cannot—and will not save the Democratic party.

She is only pulling the party further and further to the right to the point where a truly progressive party could very well arise of out of this election if the Democratic Party rejects its last chance to save itself.

It’s very clear. A Hillary Clinton Presidency would further sell the country to corporate interests. Yeah, capitalism is great, but not when it’s out of control.

And a Hillary Clinton Presidency would sure-as-shootin’ find us another war to sink our trillions of dollars into, ’cause this one, she just loves (to profit from) our military industrial complex.

If the Democratic Party is hell-bent on sending Hillary into the race with Trump, then that just proves my recent theory:

The DNC and the GOP have made a double suicide pact.

As we all know, the GOP has completely lost control of its bowels by courting and creating, as if by magic!, the likes of Donald Jackass Trump, who takes his role of capitalizing on the more gullible, starstruck, money-impressed, blame-y members of our citizenry very seriously.

(In fact, I hope Trump remembers to write his thank-you notes to the mainstream media for promoting the fucking hell out of him. All at no charge to him!)

The irony here is that the Democratic candidate who was supposed to be the sensible choice to bring down the sunburned nazi wannabe is actually a much riskier choice than the frumpy old liberal dude who’s turned out to be the only sensible candidate after all.

Bernie Sanders isn’t even radical.

It’s just that standing next to Ms. Can’t-Bite-The-Hands-That-Feed-Her, it feels like he’s talking about the United States of Mars and not our ailing country.

At first I wanted Hillary to get her turn, and by golly, I know my special place in hell is waiting for me for not supporting the woman candidate, but I just can’t support this specific woman.

I’m glad Bernie Sanders is running—maybe he’ll win and make a giant (yuge!) positive difference in the country.

And the world.

We are, after all, the most influential country in the world, and this isn’t just another reality show the whole world can turn off if we don’t like it after all.

So yep, the game is close and the plot is thick.

And there’s no sense in calling the game before the fat lady sings.

 

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