"The Case Against Hillary: This Is The Disaster Democrats Must Avoid"

[amborin]

The case against Hillary Clinton: This is the disaster Democrats must avoid

She's not the candidate of economic fairness, peace or a genuine progressive agenda. She's also not more electable


You like what Bernie’s calling for, but you just don’t think he’s likely to win the general election......Maybe you even think it’s already settled—that Hillary’s got the nomination locked up.

Here’s why going with that assumption—and backing Hillary in general—would be, in the words of Donald Trump, a disaster.

Contrary to conventional pundit wisdom, Hillary is not the stronger general-election candidate.

So far Clinton seems to have retained the status of favorite for the Democratic nomination. But there are strong signs that it’s Sanders who would fare better against the eventual GOP nominee.

Recent polling shows Sanders doing better than Clinton against each of the Republican contenders. One can question the relevance of early-stage matchups such as these, but as Princeton’s Matt Karp recently noted in his eye-opening piece on Sanders and Clinton’s comparative electability:

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Even much earlier “trial heats” seem to be far from meaningless. As partisan polarization has increased over the last three decades, there’s some evidence that early polling has become more predictive than ever. In all five elections since 1996, February matchup polls yielded average results within two points of the final outcome.

Still skeptical? Consider the candidates’ favorability ratings:

Sanders is the only one of the leading candidates—from either party—with a greater favorable than unfavorable rating.

Hillary’s 53-percent unfavorable rating would, as Karp noted, “make her the most disliked presidential nominee in modern history.”

A look at party identification is also revealing:

Independents now vastly outnumber Democrats or Republicans, and among independents, Sanders is far and away the favorite.

Meanwhile, as statistician Joshua Loftus notes: “Dangerously, even Donald Trump and Ted Cruz get a much greater proportion of independent voters than Clinton.”

Putting Clinton and Sanders side by side, Salon’s H.A. Goodman summarized it well:

.... Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate capable of winning the White House in 2016.

Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party. In reality, Clinton is a liability to Democrats…

Even if she were more electable (which—again—it seems she isn’t), consider Hillary on her own terms.

Some say Sanders’ plan is too ambitious. (Others very much disagree.) The critics say Clinton’s proposals are more likely to get past entrenched opposition. But this position seems strange: Why would starting out asking for less yield better results? If the Obama years have taught us nothing else, it’s that far-right members of Congress will prioritize obstruction. So why not go for broke, harness the appeal that increasing taxes on the wealthiest to redistribute money to the middle class has with a majority of Americans, and invest in jobs, infrastructure, public education, healthcare, etc.? .... But here, Clinton seems even less likely to fight tooth and nail.)

But even apart from question of feasibility, we have to ask: Were Clinton to take office, would she seriously push for greater economic fairness, more peace and a generally progressive agenda, or would she defend the status quo?

To answer this, let’s look first at our context.

Strange things are happening. Establishment neoconservatives seem to be gravitating toward Clinton as an anti-Trump.

Meanwhile, Billionaire right-winger Charles Koch writes of Sanders:

The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.

I agree with him.

So what the hell is going on?

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It’s hard to imagine that Hillary would break—much less break significantly—from this wealthy-friendly, bipartisan consensus.

One reason is her take on the financial sector. She’s made it clear that she won’t seek to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which Bill repealed, and whose absence is broadly considered central to the 2008-2009 financial crisis, during which countless Americans lost their savings, homes, and jobs, while major banks were bailed out from the public coffers and bank executives continued receiving massive bonuses.

So, it doesn’t take much skepticism to see why Wall Street is donating so heavily to her campaign (to say nothing of her controversial paid speeches to the big banks, whose transcripts she refuses to release).

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When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, with the War on Crime and War on Drugs by then entrenched public policy, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. “Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs,”

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Experts and pundits disagree about the true impact of welfare reform, but one thing seems clear: Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after the law was passed.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/28/the_case_against_hillary_clinton_this_is_the_disaster_democrats_must_avoid/

[longship]

1. Let TYT's Cenk Uygur address the electability issue.

Here: