I am a 27-year-old, politically active, progressive millennial voter. I am a political junkie; my background is political science and American history. However, if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination (a big “if”), I will likely not vote for her, and will instead write in “Bernie Sanders” … and I encourage my readers to do so as well.

I never thought I would be encouraging people to not vote for the Democratic nominee for president. Looking at 2012, history illustrates that the only way to change politics is through primary elections: If you want change, vote for the party aligned most closely to that change, and participate in primaries, but when it comes to the general, select the “lesser of two evils.” However, I am disgusted with how the Democratic Party is resisting that process.

The DNC’s actions regarding the number of debates, the scheduling of those debates and the treatment of the candidates is disgraceful, and undemocratic. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has disappointed me as a young, active Democrat. The second debate was on a Saturday night, and the viewership was predictably small. In fact, three of the seven debates are scheduled for Saturdays. The DNC’s leadership has seemingly aligned itself with Hillary Clinton, someone who, in my opinion, is an unqualified candidate for the following reasons:

That’s why I am not ready for Hillary. Bernie Sanders has given America a vision of what a statesman looks like — the caliber of political leader we can have if we choose. He’s been consistent throughout his entire career on issues that matter. There are videos of him from the early ’90s that sound remarkably similar to what he is saying today. He voted against “welfare reform,” he supported universal healthcare, and in terms of foreign policy, he’s been vindicated. Bernie gives me real hope, and I cannot support the “lesser-of-two-evils” model when there is such a person in the race with a serious chance of winning.

...What about the rest of us? Is it inevitable that we swallow the nomination of the neo-liberal Clinton, whose support of Bush’s Iraq madness (not to mention Obama’s Afghan and Libyan stupidity) and her husband’s recklessly pro-“free trade,” pro-banker, pro-deregulation politics ought to send reasonable liberals fleeing? Is it predestined that principled conservatives accept the anointment of the thoroughly fraudulent Jeb, whose support of his brother’s interventionist folly, along with his own outrageous meddling as governor of Florida to “rescue” brain-dead Terri Schiavo, should give pause to even the greediest oil baron seeking patronage from a Republican administration?

Like Adolph Reed Jr., I’m tempted to opt out of it all on the theory that we conserve energy by reducing “the frenzied self-delusion that rivets attention to the quadrennial, biennial, and now seemingly permanent horse races.” To echo Maureen Dowd, it is, indeed, fatiguing to urge on reluctant horses such as Senators Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) when the only office they seem to seek these days is vice president or committee chairman.

Nevertheless, a straightforward, nationwide electoral strategy is required if the left wants to reverse the rightward trend of both parties over the past three decades. The Tea Party has had much success moving the Republican Party to the right through primary challenges that should be the envy of frustrated Democrats, even though liberals of the Nation magazine–Rachel Maddow persuasion appear blind to the lessons of Tea Party tactics. One wouldn’t want to weaken Democratic incumbents with insurgencies lest “we” lose “our” Senate majority.

Yet political logic cries out for just such a strategy. Ask a mainstream “progressive” to list the most calamitous events in recent times. At or near the top would be the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, which opened wide the floodgates to plutocratic and corporate influence in election campaigns — in effect, an overthrow of the democratic ideal of one man/woman, one vote.
...

WASHINGTON — Between the chilly temperatures and the pace of the push-ups, there was plenty to complain about after eight lawmakers straggled into the park behind the Longworth House Office Building for their regular 6:30 a.m. workout.

While the others in the group griped and groaned on a recent Tuesday, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, 34, her Hindu prayer beads wrapped around a wrist for her daily yoga meditation, said little.

“Tulsi, you hearing a lot of whining?” asked Representative Markwayne Mullin, a burly Oklahoma Republican and former professional mixed martial arts fighter who leads the workouts, mocking the complaints of her companions.

“I’m feeling like whining,” she replied between push-ups.

Ms. Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, has a reputation among her colleagues for being a composed, contemplative presence in a chamber more prone to reaction than reflection. But lately she has started to shed that persona. Since the deadly attacks in Paris, she has become a high-profile critic of President Obama’s policies in Syria by amplifying her argument that President Bashar al-Assad should stay in power to avoid elevating the Islamic State and by introducing legislation to defund American efforts to overthrow him.
...

The Democratic Party continues its illicit love affair with presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when asked about then Senator Clinton’s vote authorizing President George Bush’s disastrous and murderous invasion of Iraq, said this: “Elections are about the future. They’re not about what happened 13 years ago. They’re about the future, and that’s really what people want to hear.” Yes, this is the same Mrs. Pelosi who took the possibility of the impeachment of Mr. Bush ‘off the table’, because the evidence wasn’t there, she said, and she apparently had no interest in looking for it. So, as with Mr. Bush, with Mrs. Clinton we need not look at what she’s actually done, only at what she says she will do in the future. One is reminded of the abusive husband who, during the remorse stage, swears that he’ll never again strike his wife. No need to look at a long pattern of abuse; simply take his word that there will be no more.

Unfortunately, we must, as voters and potential victims of a Hillary Clinton presidency, look back, forward and to the present. And it is that alarming present, put in context by the not-too-distant past, that should give everyone pause.

Mrs. Clinton either has, or is expected to raise, upwards of $2 billion dollars to purchase a four-year lease to the White House. She might wish the public to believe that hard-working United States citizens, toiling at the shop or office every day, are scraping together $5.00 and $10.00 donations, all of which, in total, achieves that $2 billion. However, such is not the case. Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign is being financed by the same organizations that fund her and her husband’s charitable organization, and that list includes at least 118 individuals and companies that lobbied the State Department when Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State. A look at some of them is more than a little interesting. Because the list is so extensive, we will just show oil companies and defense contractors. This list shows companies in those categories that both donated to the Clinton foundation (along with the amount given), and lobbied the State Department.

Defense Contractors:

* Boeing: between $1 million and $5 million.

* Lockheed Martin: between $100,000 and $300,000.

Oil Companies

* Duke Energy Corporation: between $1 million and $5 million

* ExxonMobil: between $1 million and $5 million.

* Chevron: between $500,00 and $1 million

* Noble Energy: between $200,000 and $500.00.

* Hess Corporation: between $100,000 and $250,000.

And, as a bonus, the top three contributors:

* Microsoft/Gates Foundation: at least $26 million

* Walmart: between $2 million and $11 million.

* Coca-Cola: between $5million and $10 million.

When looking at this list, Mrs. Clinton’s vote in 2002 authorizing Mr. Bush to invade oil-rich Iraq is not terribly surprising.

What do we learn from this list? Perhaps it is obvious that few people, and certainly not the intelligent, savvy and crafty Mrs. Clinton, will bite the hands that so generously feed them. We must also speculate on what commitments and promises the illustrious Mrs. Clinton has made to her very generous benefactors. As a senator, she was in a position to introduce, co-sponsor and vote for laws favorable to them. As Secretary of State, she could lobby governments around the world for such laws. One can only imagine the power she would wield as president of the United States to benefit those who helped her purchase that office.
...

Keith Fons showed up for work Nov. 9 at the Subway he manages in downtown Portland, expecting a normal Monday morning rush.

A day earlier, The Oregonian's front page featured a story about Fons and the everyday challenges that low-wage workers face. The 35-year-old father worked as many as 80 hours every week at two Subway shops to provide for his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, and their three young children.

The fam­­­ily's story of making it work on $11.50 an hour struck a chord with readers and dozens offered to help. One befriended Fons on Facebook and sent money. Another donated a box of Christmas presents for the kids.

Fons was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from strangers.

But less than a week after The Oregonian/OregonLive shared Fons' story, he was fired from his second job, at a 24-hour Subway near Northwest 21st Avenue and West Burnside Street. Losing half his hours will cost his family $1,400 to $2,000 a month.

"People say, 'Do what you love.'" Fons said Monday, wearing a puffy down coat given to him by a customer in recent days. "I loved working for Subway and customer service."
...

In the wake of the murderous attacks in Paris, we can expect western heads of state to do what they always do in such circumstances: declare total and unremitting war on those who brought it about. They don’t actually mean it. They’ve had the means to uproot and destroy Islamic State within their hands for over a year now. They’ve simply refused to make use of it. In fact, as the world watched leaders making statements of implacable resolve at the G20 summit in Antalaya, these same leaders are hobnobbing with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a man whose tacit political, economic, and even military support contributed to Isis’s ability to perpetrate the atrocities in Paris, not to mention an endless stream of atrocities inside the Middle East.

How could Isis be eliminated? In the region, everyone knows. All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria, and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. These are, currently, the main forces actually fighting Isis on the ground. They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and oppose every aspect of Isis’s reactionary ideology.

But instead, YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey, and PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdoğan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting Isis; there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding Isis itself.

It might seem outrageous to suggest that a Nato member like Turkey would in any way support an organisation that murders western civilians in cold blood. That would be like a Nato member supporting al-Qaida. But in fact there is reason to believe that Erdoğan’s government does support the Syrian branch of al-Qaida (Jabhat al-Nusra) too, along with any number of other rebel groups that share its conservative Islamist ideology. The Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University has compiled a long list of evidence of Turkish support for Isis in Syria.
...

"You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist. You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker. He cannot be anything but a bloodsucker if he’s going to be a capitalist. He’s got to get it from somewhere other than himself, and that’s where he gets it–from somewhere or someone other than himself. So, when we look at the African continent, when we look at the trouble that’s going on between East and West, we find that the nations in Africa are developing socialistic systems to solve their problems.

There’s one thing that Martin Luther King mentioned at the Armory the other night, which I thought was most significant. I hope he really understood what he was saying. He mentioned that while he was in some of those Scandinavian countries he saw no poverty. There was no unemployment, no poverty. Everyone was getting education, everyone had decent housing, decent whatever–they needed to exist. But why did he mention those countries on his list as different?

This is the richest country on earth and there’s poverty, there’s bad housing, there’s slums, there’s inferior education. And this is the richest country on earth. Now, you know, if those countries that are poor can come up with a solution to their problems so that there’s no unemployment, then instead of you running downtown picketing city hall, you should stop and find out what they do over there to solve their problems."