Saturday Night Live's Hillary Clinton: "You have a choice in this election. You can vote for a Republican, or you can vote for Donald Trump."
Hillary Clinton is enjoying an embarrassment of riches. She has her limited hard-core base of traditional Democrats, the support of maverick Democrat (?) Bernie Sanders and most of his millennials....and the support of much of corporate America.
Wikileaks has given us the transcript of what Hillary told a group of Goldman Sachs VIPs in a speech they paid her a cool QUARTER MILLION $$$ to hear. That is....big shock....that she is a two-faced politician.*
During her primary campaign against Bernie Sanders she wanted us to believe she was a progressive's progressive. Even after she took him out she enthusiastically embraced Bernie's "break up the big banks, no (TPP) trade deal, free college for everyone, etc" agenda. She even agreed to make it a part of the official Democratic Party platform. But what about what she told Goldman Sachs, and by inference the business community?
She told them that she had a face for public consumption, and a face for behind the magic curtain, and it was the latter that they should pay attention to. Yes, she would push for "banking regulation", but the banks would have a say in writing it. Which really meant "don't you guys lose any sleep."
At the time she said that Republicans were firmly in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. If she could some day become President she could deliver on her promise to her progressive friends to champion their traditional Democratic values, all while knowing a Republican controlled Congress would never go along with any meaningful change in the status quo. Win/win....votes from traditional Democrats, money from traditional Republican business interests. SWEET!
As it now turns out several years later she appears to be coasting to a presidential victory, and the odds are pretty good that she might, just might, get a Democratic Senate, too.
But what if the Democrats could pull off a modern miracle and win the House of Representatives also? Her Democratic faithful/Bernie Sanders coalition would then expect her to live up to her promises to them....she would have the votes in Congress to do pretty much whatever she wanted....while the business community would still be expecting her to stand aside for them, too, and they don't take kindly to being stiffed for a couple of hundred million $$$. YIKES!
Hillary's "happy dance" could well turn into a "tap dance". Hey, stranger things have happened.
S
* I know, I know. I used "two faced" and "politician" in the same sentence. It goes without saying, huh? :)
Presidents have a habit of surprising us. FDR was an extremely rich patrician yet his policies hardly helped the upper classes.
ReplyDeleteI've never believed she was very progressive, at least not since 1994.
ReplyDeleteWould your rather have Trump? That's gonna be the choice. A flawed person who is qualified in every way to do the office, or a person as repugnant as Trump. There are a sizable percentage out there who like his ideas. I hope you're, as you say in the past, not one of them. So why keep trying to bring the person down who is the other option? Yes, we all know she's flawed. She's imperfect. So am I. Maybe you are not.
ReplyDeleteLet's just try to keep this monster out of office. It's come to that, we are not choosing between two honorable people, as in some elections in the past. We face what we face.
So yes, it's a bad choice. You, many many people have told us that in the months past. I/we, get it. Yes, it is what it is.
Which do you want it to be. Reality, unfortunately, keeps us from simply canceling out the next 4 years.
Cheers,
Mike
Maybe I'm just pissed that these two are our only real choices. What does this say about our country, and its future? Good people don't want to get involved in "public service". And no, I'm still NOT voting for Trump, no way. It looks like Hillary will win, but I just can't get over the fact that she has likely sold us out before she ever even takes the oath of office. Batten down the hatches.
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