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You keep hearing the same refrain from several of your friends: Bernie Sanders is America’s savior. The Facebook posts are everywhere, the tweets, the memes. You’ve heard his impassioned speeches, and, yes, they are definitely fiery and exciting. The young liberal inside you applauds when you hear him speak out for justice, and if you were twenty years old right now, perhaps you’d even be convinced. But you’re not twenty years old anymore, and you’ve seen enough in this world to know that the idealism of youth falls short when dealing with the messy reality of human beings- especially in the world of American Politics.
And so, even though Hillary isn’t as exciting as Bernie, you begin to realize her message is much more sober: slow change for the better, much in the manner of Barack Obama. It may not be as flashy, but it’s definitely more certain, and in 4 or 8 years, moving forward a little will be better than moving nowhere fast. As the weeks go by and the Bernie supporters get louder, your faith in Hillary’s no-nonsense speeches grows stronger; your tolerance for drinking that Bernie kool-aid gets weaker. A revolution? Really? Besides, what could be more revolutionary than finally having a woman in the White House? Isn’t that, in itself, about as revolutionary as it gets?
If you identify with some, or all, of this point of view, you’re not alone. In an election that is bringing out some very ugly sides of humanity, Hillary Clinton is probably our best bet for sanity right now. This is no time for experimenting with Democracy; if ever we need to keep things on an even keel, it’s now.
All of the above would be true, except for the fact that it is very, very, very much untrue. But, wait- before you turn away from these words in frustration, thinking the last thing you need to read is another anti-Hillary rant, allow yourself to play devil’s advocate for just a couple of minutes longer. After all, if Hillary is the wiser choice, then nothing you can read below will change that irrevocable fact. But if the facts reflect a much different truth- if, in fact, they completely contradict the above argument- don’t you owe it to yourself to at least consider them? If only to better understand your opposition? Is the election simply about picking a team and rooting for them loudly until the season ends, or is actually about finding the best method to improve your country? If it’s the latter, read on. These are just words on paper, after all- you can choose to disagree with them and never have to worry about anyone’s opinion of you, nor damage a friendship because of political differences. They’re just words.
Why Not Hillary?
We’ll get to scrutinizing Bernie’s ideas and examining his criticisms, but let’s begin with Hillary. Will she bring about slow, but positive change in small ways? The best way to predict the future is to study the past. In 1986, Sam Walton, Wal-Mart’s founder, made Hillary the only female member in a board of 15. The move was clearly political: Hillary was married to Bill, who was then the governor of Arkansas, Wal-Mart’s corporate home. Putting Hillary on his board would help appease criticisms that Wal-Mart was a good ol’ boys club (which is still very much true,) and having the governor’s wife working for you made dealing with government regulations much less problematic. But that’s Sam Walton’s angle. What about Hillary? Did she manage to do anything good while she was there?
Remember, in 1986, Wal-Mart was not a household name, but it was about to become one. By 1990, sales had quadrupled over the five previous years, and by 1992, the year Hillary left Wal-Mart to become First Lady, none other than George Bush Sr. himself had
awarded Sam Walton the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his financial empire’s success. With Bill Clinton now leading our country, the 90’s saw an unprecedented transformation in the workplace, as low-wage, part-time, benefit-free jobs became more and more common, spearheaded by Wal-Mart’s proud anti-union stance. In her six-year tenure as board member, Hillary Clinton
never spoke out once about fair union practices or any of the related issues the Wal-Mart board must have discussed during her tenure. To be fair, there is some evidence that she managed to make small headway with improving women’s roles within the Wal-Mart organization and advocating for some environmentally-friendly practices, but neither of these issues threatened Wal-Mart’s wallet. Still, one could argue that Hillary was doing what she claims to be doing now: playing the game in order to fight the good fight in small ways wherever she can. Is this a good strategy? Does it yield results?
This is an incredibly important point to consider, because a lot of Hillary’s support comes from people who believe it
is a good strategy given the reality of our surroundings. But Hillary’s record is unequivocally clear: the times she’s actually fought for something in her career are strikingly few, and within those, the battles she picked were far from the battles that needed to be fought. Her days at Wal-Mart underscore this point clearly. It’s impossible to stress just how much Wal-Mart’s practices have changed our workforce’s landscape for the worse; for working-class Americans, “normal” went from having a lifetime job with a decent pension, a health plan, and quite often a labor union that protected those benefits to working two part-time minimum wage jobs with no benefits and, most definitely, no labor union whatsoever. Let me repeat that: after Americans had spent most of the 20th Century creating a country where people could get an honest wage for an honest day’s work, Wal-Mart, with the help of our government, almost single-handedly destroyed it. The company’s directors have gone on record
repeatedly lambasting the very idea of a union; if ever there was a battle for Hillary to pick, it was this one, about preserving a system that served as the backbone to generations of working Americans. By avoiding the one battle she was in a singular position to fight, Hillary Clinton silently supported the erosion of our middle class.
That’s not just liberal hype: things change for the better or the worse not because of magical, unforeseeable reasons but because of specific decisions made by specific individuals who have the power to do so. Our responsibility as citizens is to elect a leader whom we can trust to make the right decisions- and if they can’t do that, they can’t do their job. It’s especially ironic when you realize that the people Hillary get the most credit for advocating- America’s women- have been especially damaged by Wal-Mart’s practices. Today,
72% of Wal-Mart’s cashiers are women; google “wal-mart labor practices” and you’ll receive endless news stories of the abysmal treatment these women workers have received.
8 cents out of every U.S. dollar is spent at Wal-Mart, and 90% of us live within 15 minutes of one of its stores- yet, despite Hillary’s attempts to downplay her Wal-Mart ties, Billionaire Wal-Mart heiress
Alice Walton was one of the top donors of Hillary’s recent “Ready for Hillary” Super PAC. In other words, you can’t just chalk her Wal-Mart involvement up to the folly of youth. Hillary is still very much working for Wal-Mart today.
So even if we are to believe that Hillary is sincere about her “work within the system” strategy, the question remains: at what point does this approach become part of the problem?
How many times can you sleep with the enemy before you’re indistinguishable from the enemy? It’s a question each person needs to answer for her/him self. While we all understand that government is an imperfect entity, it’s imperative that we, as Americans, keep our values and goals as a nation clear, and be as objective as possible when analyzing our current situation. You cannot deny that Wall Street loves her, or that Goldman Sachs- the same company that got caught masterminding the biggest financial scam we’ve had in 80 years- has wooed Hillary with the vigor of a rich high school boyfriend (literally
: they’ve donated half a million bucks to her foundation, and another half a million to her wallet as payment for two speeches. Count ’em: two speeches.) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For many of us, Hillary’s lifelong affair with the exact people who are trying to rob America blind is no mere coincidence- it’s a fact too gigantic to ignore or argue away.
And yet, you might already be completely aware of all these facts, yet fail to find it problematic enough to abandon her. If so, allow me to get to the heart of the disagreement: The Economy.
Economics 101
The rift begins and ends with the economy. To understand why Bernie supporters are so fervently anti-Hillary, one needs a genuine understanding of our Economic past and present. Here’s a quick, but accurate-as-these-things-go version: while the tension between rich and poor has always existed, America was, in general terms anyway, doing pretty well at keeping things fairly even for everyone until Vietnam, Watergate, and the formation of OPEC turned our prosperous golden dream into a polluted, rundown mess. Of course, “everyone” means “white people” (and specifically “white males,”) but that’s a different (albeit important) story altogether.
In terms of taking care of the populace it cared about, America’s strong economic health after World War II is an uncontroversial fact.
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Now listen to how this economic prosperity came about: the 3-hit-combo of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, the Depression, and the War gave Americans the motivation to band together in a rare display of social solidarity. That’s right,
democratic socialism at it’s best. The Wall Street Crash of ’29 was the result of a bubble, artificially inflated by a market that chose to believe its own hype rather than reality, combined with a loosening of financial regulations- pretty much the same thing that happened in 2008. This financial collapse set Americans on a desperate call for Hope and Change, a call answered by our beloved Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who tried one crazy, untested, heavily-criticized, but often effective program after another (more commonly known as his
New Deal.) One of his changes, 1933’s Glass-Steagall Act, split investment banks and commercial banks into two separate entities, making it impossible for your local bank to take your savings and gamble it on high-risk money-making schemes. Glass-Steagall was one of the wisest regulations America has ever given itself, a perfect way to prevent fallible humans from giving into the temptation of easy money, forcing bankers to stick to sound investments that benefit the public good. This wasn’t communism; capitalists were still free to gamble for high stakes- just not with your money.
If you understand the wisdom in that law, you’ll understand why Bill Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 was the reverse: one of the dumbest, most destructive moves America has made in recent years. It single-handedly opened the door to the Housing Crisis of 2008, by allowing Wall Street to once again use your soundly-invested bank money in its get-rich-quick schemes, all of which led to a zillion foreclosures and the destruction of many, many livelihoods in this country. Eight years later, a lot of us are still paying the price.
Now, is any of this Hillary’s fault? Well, no, not directly. But the economic philosophy that guided Wal-Mart into destroying small businesses while offering poorly paid jobs, which is the same philosophy guiding Bill Clinton’s hand into repealing Glass-Steagall, has a name: neo-liberalism, which has nothing to do with being liberal, and everything to do with having unshakeable faith in the idea that a free market with no governmental supervision whatsoever yields the best results. It’s a philosophy brought to life by Chicago economist Milton Friedman, an economic adviser to both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. And that’s where our trouble really begins: Reagan, as you may or may not realize, began taking a sledgehammer to all those regulations that had kept this country working so well since the depression. Many Democrats have no problem acknowledging this, yet they stumble with the next step: Bill Clinton, beloved king of the 90’s, expanded what Reagan had done to new heights (or lows, actually.) Not just with the aforementioned repeal of Glass-Steagall, but with NAFTA- the Trade Agreement that allowed American Corporations to ditch their U.S. factories and set up shop in Mexico at a fraction of the price, thereby managing to completely mess up the economies of two countries at the same time. Mexico lost a lot of its economic capital but was prevented from doing anything about it, while the U.S. lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. It was a lose-lose situation for everyone except the few that got rich off the deal.
We must pause now to repeat this point: Bill Clinton was a Democrat, yet his actions were, in many ways, identical to those of Reagan. Yes, they disagreed on some social issues, and you’d probably rather have a beer with Bill than Ron, but on economic matters, which is the foundation of everything else, they were virtually identical. That’s the thing about neo-liberalism: it doesn’t care what party is in charge. Its only real allegiance is to the goal of maximum profit. When Clinton apologists accuse Sanders of having a “one-note platform,” this is what they’re referring to- the fact that Bernie is always bringing things back to economics. But if you understand American History, and hell, World History, you realize that it is pretty much all about economics. For better or for worse, money- aka power in a concentrated form- drives people to do everything: from improving their education system to starting wars to saving or destroying the environment to creating classes of citizens based on skin tone or sexual organs. If you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that the reason why anybody has done anything in our history boils down to this drive for taking as much power for yourself as possible, which by necessity means taking as much power away from others as possible.
When you start examining Hillary Clinton under this light, you realize that she, like her husband, is right in the center of this seemingly unstoppable neo-liberal machine. It’s not just because she’s married to Bill, although you have to be incredibly naïve to deny that they have the same friends, hobnob with the same power brokers, and are funded by the same people who subscribe to the neo-liberal agenda. Can anyone honestly claim that these relations do not influence her decisions? Her track records as well, as both Senator and Secretary of State, have always, unequivocally gone along with neo-liberal policies. When Bush lied to us about those Weapons of Mass Destruction, Congress and the media both readily accepted his war proposal despite being given
a government report that cast doubt onto that claim. But most Senators
didn’t bother to read it, yet voted for war anyway. Why would Congress choose to start such a reckless war with so little proof? The sad answer, if you don’t know, is that there were plenty of government contracts waiting to be awarded to private American companies like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, which
overcharged the U.S. government $88 million in a mere four months in the name of rebuilding Iraq, which, incidentally, it never did. Voting to invade Iraq was an irresponsible and cowardly Congressional decision destroying the lives of thousands of civilians, sowing the seeds for future terrorists (read: ISIS) and rendering the Iraqi economy dysfunctional even today- yet our Congresspeople still claim they didn’t know any better. That’s the neo-liberal machine in full swing, fully powered by Democrats and Republicans alike. Did Hillary Clinton vote for the invasion of Iraq? Yes, she did. Did Bernie Sanders vote for the invasion of Iraq? No, he didn’t.
I say that not to rub it in Hillary supporters’ faces, but because you see this vital difference between our candidates time and time again. You can take potshots at Bernie’s age or his idealism, but the fact is, the man’s record is spotless. In a career field where politicians are almost expected to lie, cheat and steal, Bernie has sincerely maintained his integrity for decades, constantly supporting issues that weren’t popular at the time but are now vindicated, like fighting for racial equality alongside Martin Luther King. This fundamental difference is what disqualifies Hillary Clinton from any kind of pro-Hillary argument. Assuming you care about the people you share this country with, you have to accept the facts for what they are: Hillary Clinton works for the neo-liberal system, and the neo-liberal system works for itself. Without it, she would never have been able to run in 2008 or 2016- literally,
because neo-liberal corporations fully funded her campaign. Republicans may hate having Democratic presidents, but their whining is hypocritical; between Wall Street, Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex, the last 36 years have all proceeded down one long neo-liberal road, with Republicans and Democrats hand-in-hand.
A Broken System?
Now, if your view is that the system is working just fine for everyone, I’m probably not convincing you of anything. Unfortunately for your view, fewer and fewer people agree. As globalization sweeps the planet and your expensive iPhones continue to be
made by Chinese workers working 72 hour weeks at a tiny fraction of your salary, as Flint residents get lead-filled water while
Nestle gets to bottle their bustling water business for free from nearby Great Lake aquifers, as rent prices continue to skyrocket while salaries stagnate, as colleges become the biggest money-making scam around and students convert themselves to eternal wage-slaves by taking out criminally-high loans, and as Barack Obama prepares to deliver us the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (another “free trade” agreement that makes NAFTA seem like the kiddie trial version) more and more Americans are hitting rock bottom.
If you’re not one of them, thank your lucky stars- but don’t fool yourself. The reason you can allow your mind to even consider Hillary is that your life isn’t in the same spot as those of millions of Americans- because if it was, you’d be angry and frustrated too. Consider this:
this is not the first time Donald Trump has attempted a presidential bid. It’s just that usually, everyone ignores him and he fizzles away, only to come back screaming for attention years later. So what’s different this time around? Did Americans all of a sudden become more racist? It’s an appealing argument to a liberal, but show me the data that supports it. Though racism is alive and well, it has
always been alive and well in our country. What is different is the amount of desperate people living in the U.S. today, people who have been burned by the blanket “corporations are
supposed to make money!” ideology of the Free Market. The Tea Party, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump on the right, the Seattle WTO protests, Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders on the left: the one thing all of these have in common is that they are expressions of American frustration, beyond anything we would have imagined 20 years ago… and yet, here we are.
This shouldn’t be surprising, really- every single empire in the history of mankind has gone through the same cycle, which always ends up in some kind of revolution. To think America is somehow going to be the exception is foolish; we are bound to experience one in our lifetime. The question is, what kind of revolution do you prefer? Bernie’s peaceful revolution, looking to take place within Washington? Trump’s ideological war on Women, Islam and Mexicans, not to mention anyone else he feels like targeting? Or perhaps something closer to Bastille Day, where folks grab their NRA-protected guns and burn everything they see down? That’s the thing middle-of-the-road Democrats need to realize: all these angry people to the left and right of you are not going away. And if Hillary does become president, they’re just going to increase in number, the way they did during the last 8 years of Obama’s presidency. Right now, you have the Bernie option. In eight years, it’s very likely that you won’t- and the amount of frustrated Americans angered by sixteen straight years of Democratic Presidents who have failed to affect any significant change could easily result in a new president that would make Trump look like a pretty decent guy the way he makes Bush look like a pretty decent guy.
At some point, we’re going to have to turn away from our embrace of the free-market love affair our last five presidents have been having. Yes, corporations are supposed to make money, but not at the expense of every living thing- that’s why we need a balanced economy that allows for both private enterprise to grow
and the government to apply brakes as needed. That’s exactly what we used to have, before the last 36 years slowly ripped it to shreds. We’ve lost that precious balance, as anyone whose town has been destroyed by fracking or whose job has been shipped to India can tell you. That’s why, when Hillary refuses to clearly criticize any of these issues, people correctly call her out. This isn’t one you can chalk under “we have to play the game and hope for small, positive changes” because our planet literally cannot afford small, positive changes. We don’t have the time, and people are living in unacceptable situations because of it. It’s not just fracking- the environment is a ticking time bomb, and if Hillary truly continues Obama’s legacy, which is exactly what she’s claiming she’ll do, that time bomb’s fuse will be used up. That’s not environmentalist hyperbole, that’s the hard-scientific-data conclusion given by every single legitimate scientist working today. And yet, despite heat records being broken almost every day
and the sea level rising even faster than we expected, Washington continues to do absolutely nothing. With this in mind, supporting Hillary’s “slow, incremental change” plan isn’t just naïve, it’s downright criminal.
What About Bernie?
But let’s put aside that alarmist talk for now and focus on Bernie. Let’s pretend America has all the time in the world to improve, and examine Bernie’s promises of unicorns and rainbows. Can this pigheaded socialist really accomplish anything in the realpolitik landscape inside of the Beltway?
Again, we must turn to history for the answer. Here’s another brief excerpt: after we became the U.S. of A. our economy struggled for a while to find its footing. One thing that helped it do so (in the South, anyway) was the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790’s, which made cotton a cheap and popular commodity, which made slave ownership a very profitable and attractive thing. Fast forward to the Civil War, which found the North printing lots of new money to buy much-needed war materials. This demand made a few people incredibly rich incredibly quickly, and after the war, they stayed rich- giving them unprecedented power in an American economy that had never experienced such disparity in wealth. In other words, we didn’t have many regulations in place because there had never been anyone rich and powerful enough to regulate.
For the next few decades, people with names like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller became so powerful with their monopolies, they could literally boss Washington around. If people attempted a labor strike, they commandeered the U.S. Army. If congressmen or state governments tried to regulate them, they would make sure those people did not get reelected. Thus, Congress switched from serving the voters to serving the oligarchs. Is this starting to sound familiar?
And just like our economic system today, the system back then went out of balance and began to crumble. The 99% of the late 19th century was also feeling the burn- the burn of long hours, low wages, and a complete lack of job safety regulations, unions, and infrastructure. This scenario wasn’t just the natural result of the free market: just like today, the American Government was writing laws that gave large corporations unfair advantages. In 1886, the Supreme Court declared corporations were “a legal person,” and, as such, had a constitutional right to make money even when it came in conflict with state laws. In other words, corporations trumped local laws; a neo-liberal principle decades before the term existed. In 1890, New Jersey allowed corporations to own stock in other corporations- a common and accepted practice today, but totally unheard of back then. This allowed corporations to grow at an unprecedented rate… and so on. The corruption was so rampant, U.S. President Rutherford Hayes actually publicly declared the following: “this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”
Let’s pause again to think about that: things were so bad, our own president was fully admitting that corporations were the ones in charge. If Bernie Sanders had run for president then, who would have believed his ridiculous claims that he could clean up Washington? Everyone knew the system was broken beyond repair; such promises were either hopelessly naïve or outright lies.
And yet, Bernie Sanders did run for president, except he was a Republican by the name of Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy was as progressive as they came, full of fire and anger against the people that had turned his country into a monopoly. The Hillary supporters of 1900 would have scoffed at his rhetoric, yet Roosevelt’s eight years succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations, as he used his position as president to break up corporate monopolies and protect huge chunks of American land from being developed. Everything Hillary Clinton supporters are claiming Sanders will never achieve was achieved under very similar circumstances a century ago, for one very simple but powerful reason: there were finally enough fed up Americans to back Roosevelt up, and that made Congress more afraid of the public than of the rich oligarchs who’s pocket they were in. For the first (and almost only) time in our country’s history, Democracy actually worked, but only because people wanted it to work. Muckrakers like Upton Sinclair exposed the hidden underbelly of industrial America with books like The Jungle, shocking the public out of its slumber and inciting the country into becoming active participants in our political process. We’re going through a similar muckraking awakening now with the advent of the internet, which has allowed our society to break free from the stranglehold that corporate-owned news sources like CNN and The New York Times have long held. This is the tool that has allowed a minor Senator from Vermont with no corporate backing to catapult onto the front stage, and if we’re ever going to witness any real change in our country, the internet will be the hammer that brings it about.
And so the answer is a resounding “yes”. Yes, Bernie Sanders can actually make a difference, yes, history proves it to be possible, and yes, it’s only going to happen if you want it to happen, because if we don’t show our Congresspeople we mean business, they’ll remain more scared of Monsanto and Mobil than they will of you. This isn’t just idealistic rhetoric talking, it’s history and fact. Look it up if you don’t believe me- in fact, please look it up, and learn the history of the country you’ve inherited. The philosophy of “working within the system” is a myth- especially when the system is so entrenched and widespread. Anyone who starts off with good intentions gets sucked into its orbit and spat out four or eight years later completely defeated. Look at Barack Obama: hope and change he promised, but despite his wonderful speeches, his economic (Wall Street, TPP, bailouts) environmental (Climate Change Summits) and military (Afghanistan, drones) records are pretty abysmal. I’m not saying he’s a bad man; I’m saying his strategy of compromise has gotten us nowhere, and he started out with all the positive energy of the American Public behind him.
That’s why Wall Street is pouring as much money as they’re allowed into Clinton’s campaign. A Hillary presidency is a safe presidency- safe, at least, for those for whom the system works. Yes, from a personality standpoint, Trump wins the award for biggest asshole, but that doesn’t make a Clinton victory that much more appealing. In the end, a victory for either of them will still make things worse in this country. With Donald, you arrive at worse quickly; with Hillary, worse takes a little more time. Is this really the best we can do as a nation?
Paying For It
And yes, universal health care, free college tuition and other important social benefits are not just possible, but essential. Bill Clinton’s own Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich- a Washington insider with the kind of experience Hillary supporters praise- has not only
publicly claimed his support for Sanders’ plan, he thinks we can- and should- go even further. Again, Sanders’ plan is not magic socialist fairy dust, it’s actually right in line with the kind of action two of our greatest presidents took when facing a similar problems in America. And how do we pay for such wild promises as free college tuition? It’s really quite simple if you look at America’s budgets between World War II and Ronald Reagan. For example: in 1946, a single male who made $5,000 a year (
the average single male only made $1,100 a year, by comparison) paid $700- or 14%- in income tax. That’s pretty low, right? But if you made $200,000 a year, you paid $148,000 in taxes- basically 75% of your income. In fact, from the 50’s through the 70’s,
the top income tax bracket never went below 70%, and often hovered at a whopping 90%. That’s ninety percent of your income returned to the government! Today, the top income tax rate (if you make a million dollars or more) is
a mere 27.4%- and that’s for
reported earned income. The IRS has introduced plenty of loopholes and tax shelters to lower the amount of income the rich must declare- not to mention, a lot of the money the rich make is from dividends,
and those are taxed at a mere 15%. In other words, the rich today pay a fraction of the taxes they paid during the time America was at its most prosperous.
What does all this boring tax talk mean? Simply this: the rich used to give us back a LOT more money than they do today. That money is what allowed America build a strong network of public schools and state colleges; it’s what gave us highways, social security, and countless programs that Americans benefited from between WWII and Ronald Reagan. This idea was not controversial; conservative right-wingers and rich CEO’s alike understood, inherently, that paying those high taxes was part of the social contract. Giving most of your earned money back to the government was not considered “socialist,” and this at a time when our fear of Communism was at its highest. The truth was, even with those high taxes, rich people were still plenty rich, and they knew it.
Bernie Sanders’ economic plans don’t bring us anywhere near the rates of that golden time period; they merely take us a couple of small steps back in that direction. To implement his plans, America doesn’t have to drink his magic kool-aid, and (depending on your income) you probably won’t even have to pay more in taxes, because the richest 1% will carry most of the financial burden easily and still keep more of their income than their grandparents did, year after year. When Hillary Clinton plays the part of the realistic pragmatist, she is playing pretend. The statistics I just quoted don’t come from a secret archive only I have access to; this is public knowledge, and it certainly is known by Wall Street and Washington. After all, they’re the ones that spent the last 40 years rewriting the rules.
I know Bernie fans can get pretty passionate, and even obnoxious. It can make you want to vote for anyone BUT Bernie. I’m hoping you can look past that for a moment and understand why those people are loud and passionate. They’re angry- for all the reasons you just read. They’re excited, too, because for the first time in their lives, someone on TV is admitting what we all knew but no one wanted to say. Not just that- this guy is offering practical, working solutions to our biggest problems. If the rich contribute more, we can provide better education for more people- more under-served people like all our minorities trapped in a cycle of poverty. More educated people means less ignorance, less crime, fewer people choosing welfare because now they have legitimate job options. You want to see racism go away? Start by giving young people more possibilities with their lives, and see how a more educated generation will go beyond the thug-life stereotypes too many of our cops are wired to expect from them. Reinstating the financial regulations we used to have means less gambling by Wall Street with your money, and actual penalties if they get caught doing so. A universal health care system means a gigantic reduction in costs for not just you as an individual but small business owners all over the country, who can now use that money to invest in their business better, or afford that raise you’ve been asking for. Combine a better education with a smarter health care system and you’ll get a country eating better and exercising, thereby reducing health care costs even more. And so on- we live in an interconnected world where everything affects everything else. Fixing our economic system doesn’t solve every single problem, but it does provide the breathing room for people to solve the rest of our issues with a clearer head. It is a very important step number one.
Are You Experienced?
“Experience” has been a big selling point for Hillary Clinton, and perhaps it’s a big selling point for you as well. Which is logical, since experiencing things makes you wiser- usually. So let us ignore all the other criticisms we’ve been discussing about Hillary Clinton, and just focus on experience. Let us compare how much experience working in Washington other famous Democrats had before reaching the White House:
John F. Kennedy: 14 years in Congress
Barack Obama: 4 years in Congress
Hillary Clinton: 8 years Senator, 4 years Secretary of State
Bernie Sanders: 26 years in Congress
Yes, Bernie has double the experience of not only his opponent, but of the most famous Democratic president of the 20th Century, and six time that of Obama. Do with that what you will. This is a good moment to point out that, from a conventional point of view, Hillary is as qualified to be president as Reagan or anyone after him. In terms of competence and the ability to deal with this high-pressure job, there’s no doubt she can handle herself as well as Bush #1, and definitely better than Bush #2 or even her own husband. Any sexist attitudes that claim otherwise are wrong, and I will completely defend her abilities in this arena. But those skills, while important, merely describe competence, not integrity or wisdom. I’m sure her four years as Secretary of State gave her a lot of insight on things, but look at what she actually accomplished with that position: convincing Obama to trounce into Libya and assassinate Qaddafi (same thing we did in Iraq, basically) which only served to transform the country into an incapacitated mess and an incubator for terrorists. ISIS is thriving because of what we did to Libya. Even the incredibly-pro-Hillary corporate rag called
The New York Times published an exposé on this story; they painted her in the best light possible, but the facts are pretty damning.
Yes, I would love to finally see a woman run this country. Yes, it would be an important milestone and let’s hope it happens someday soon. But people are first and foremost individuals, not historical symbols. Putting a person like Hillary Clinton in charge just so you can check something off America’s progressive bucket list is not just a bad move- it’s a dangerous move. I could point out every poll and statistic out there predicting that Americans will most likely never elect Hillary, and that Sanders has a better chance than she does at beating any Republican- but that’s not the point. If Hillary were a woman with integrity, a woman who really did have the compassion and focus she has never shown, I wouldn’t care what the polls said about her electability- I would back her until the end. Instead, I fear that a Hillary victory will actually set feminism back several decades- for once her tenure is over, too many frustrated people will unfairly say “a woman president? Never again.”
Which is too bad, because if anyone deserves to be president more than Bernie Sanders, it just might be Elizabeth Warren, another senator with the experience, intelligence, and moral fortitude the position of president demands. But Hillary doesn’t deserve your vote. She doesn’t care about you- she never has. Her lack of compassion for people is a constant throughout her career- not just evident in her actions, but in her interviews and dealings with average people. If
this recent clip of a young, frustrated black woman being blown off by Hillary doesn’t bother you, what will?
It’s the combination of all these factors that makes Bernie Sanders fans so annoyingly excited. He is compassionate, he does have integrity, he does have sound ideas and economically feasible plans. The facts are there, for your sake and mine, and personally, they have made me excited about politics for the first time in my four decades of existence. It’s not because I think Sanders will usher in a utopia, or solve all the world’s problems. It’s because finally, the Change that Barack promised us is getting closer to becoming a reality. Whether or not it comes in the form of a Donald Trump, a Bernie Sanders, or a chaotic, violent parade of rifles and torches, none of us know yet- but change is coming for sure. You know what version I prefer. The question is, what about you?
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[i] Pretty much all the American History summarized in this essay can easily be found in Michael Goodwin and Dan Burr’s
Economix, which does the amazing job of consolidating a huge stack of history and economics texts into a single, readable narrative. I owe Michael a big thanks (and apology) for doing the homework I liberally pilfered. The book’s extensive bibliography will more than satisfy your need to know more, if you want to know more.
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