Did anyone notice something strange yesterday, the Monday before the last big Tuesday of the primary election season?
There were absolutely no political races on Monday, just before the final big Tuesday that will include primaries in both California and New Jersey. Yet, all of a sudden, the major news corporations (the Associated Press and NBC News) had "breaking news" that Hillary actually had enough delegates now to guarantee the nomination.
And "breaking news" like this, when there actually were not votes to be counted on the Monday before the big day, makes me more suspicious than ever that the major news media not only makes a point of not showing much bigger political rallies and general support for her opponent, Bernie Sanders, rather than for Hillary, but also that they actively fix the numbers in favor of their darling candidate. Never have I seen them essentially officially call an election before the election takes place.
A lot of people seem to be falling for the trick, because as we learned during the Bush years, a lie repeated often enough comes to be seen as the truth, nonetheless.
So it is that Hillary has basically been declared the official winner.
Hopefully, this will actually backfire, as determined Bernie voters come out in large numbers to hand Hillary shocking defeats right after she was essentially annointed the nomination.
The presumption is based on how many superdelegates are backing Hillary, even though they do not actually get to vote until the Democratic National Convention in July. And without those superdelegate votes, Hillary still has not hit the magic number needed to secure the nomination, nor has she even a huge or necessarily insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders, especially if she loses some big states later today - particularly California, but also New Jersey, among others.
Still, it seems that a lot of prominent voices are already giving in, trying to essentially "prepare" us Bernie supporters for the inevitable, much like Hillary and her supporters have claimed for quite some time now. Yes, the notion that Hillary is inevitable is nothing new, although when you see just how far the major corporate news media goes to convince everyone of this, it is rather sickening. They lose credibility with each passing day. Still, Robert Reich, who has been a rare breath of fresh air among official sources, has essentially warned Bernie supports that it might be time to support Hillary, and that if she does win, Bernie Sanders should definitely vote for Hillary, because a vote against her is a de facto vote for Trump.
I am not sure that I am ready to accept his advice about simply voting for Hillary, using the logic that a vote against Hillary would be a de facto vote for Trump.
The fact of the matter is that I feel this election has been rigged, and that Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate by virtue of still having failed to lock up the nomination despite all of the riggings that have worked in her favor. The most obvious ones were when she lost certain states by double digits, yet still received more delegates nevertheless. That was just about the most anti-democratic election procedures that I have ever heard of in my life, and that includes the whole 200 election debacle.
It has come to this: we either accept that the Democratic and Republican party should by right have a monopoly on American politics, and that however limited and limiting the major candidates are, the destiny of well over 300 million Americans should be determined by the candidates who emerge, even if they are often not only unsatisfactory, but outright take money from some of the corporations and industries that they are supposed to be regulating and keeping in check, for the best interests of the American people.
When you have prominent politicians, such as Hillary Clinton, who shamelessly take millions in funds from the very same Wall Street firms and big banks that she claims she will get tough on, then you just know something is terribly wrong with our democracy, to the point that you have to wonder if it really even is a democracy.
Should Hillary be the nominee, then she is the representative of a party that I simply can no longer relate to. Maybe I could, or felt that I could, in the 1990's, when her husband, Bill Clinton, gave such wonderful and stirring speeches, and appeared to be leading the country down a new path. Instead, he very much advanced the agenda of Reaganomics in the whole deregulation purge of democratic control over industry and profits.
Under President Clinton scrapped the Glass-Steagall Act, considering it unnecessary. This and other deregulatory measures basically directly led to the financial collapse of 2008. Clinton advocated NAFTA as a candidate, and managed to get it passed, even though there were warnings of the dire impact this would have on American workers, and the long-term economy. The emphasis on deregulation led to all manner of abuses by huge corporations, including the takeover of major media sources by six private corporations, effectively placing a severe limit on access to information. He launched numerous airstrikes on Iraq, and the economic boycott that followed cost possibly up to half a million Iraqi children their lives. Finally, it was Bill Clinton who basically helped to set up the for profit prison system that has become such a source of shame for Americans the world over.
Yet, this is the record that Hillary Clinton appears to be proud of, and this is what many Hillary supporters seem to want to bring back, perhaps simply because Bill Clinton was the one candidate in a span of over two decades who broke through the Republican dominance, although it should be noted that he himself was sometimes derisively regarded as "Republican lite."
She and her husband made half-assed apologies about the for profit prison system, which some liken to modern day slavery. But she makes no apologies for supporting trade deals that have done such harm to American workers. She does not apologize for her husband repealing Glass-Steagall, and has no plans to reinstate it, or anything like it.
In short, she would be more of the same. And that is not what we need.
Should it indeed prove to be Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump in the general election, it really will be the posterchild for all such mediocre elections, where you get the feeling that both options are bad for the country. There is nothing exciting about either candidate, and it is all too easy to imagine the damage that each could potentially do. Trump is a hot head who says whatever is on his mind, regardless of the consequences. He has been careless with calls for military action and hostilities towards other countries, and has sounded borderline racist at times. Clinton, on the other hand, is too transparently pro-corporatist, and it is all too easy to see the continuation of, if not perhaps even an expansion of, the for profit prison system, as well as the for profit healthcare system. As far as what her environmental record might be, I suspect that it might be much like her husband's, when he passed most of the environmental initiatives in the last 72 hours of an eight year term, knowing full well that the incoming President Bush would wipe them out within hours of taking office. In other words, everything would be done to enhance the Clinton political machine. Everything would be done to look good on paper, and for speeches. But little to nothing would be done that would be truly best for the country as a whole.
These are some of the reasons why I feel supporting Hillary, or even giving her my vote, would simply feed the political machine still more. It would tell establishment figures that the nonsense pulled in the 2000 election, and now surpassed on many levels in this 2016 election, are okay. That, in other words, the democratic process itself can be circumvented to ensure that their darling candidate wins, come what may.
Instead of leaving well enough alone and simply waiting one more day to see how their candidate does, they had to call the whole thing a win for Hillary, a whole day before the last big Tuesday. That really does stink of corruption and a fixed election, which most people have come to understand now, and is the reason for the dramatic spike in skepticism towards major news media.
No matter what, as a Bernie supporter living in New Jersey, I will be heading to the voting booth today, and most decidedly will not vote for Hillary, either today or, should it come to it in, in November. After all of the nonsense that she and her supports pulled during this election, the last thing that she will earn is my vote, and the same, tired old arguments of not voting for her is basically a vote for Trump will fall on deaf ears. At this point, even though I can never bring myself to vote for Trump, I have pretty much reached the same conclusion with Hillary, as well.
The AP, NBC Just Called The Primary For Hillary Clinton — And Why This Is Good News For Bernie Sanders. ByMangoFeedPosted on June 7, 2016:
Robert Reich: It’s time for Clinton and Sanders supporters to swallow some tough medicine by Robert Reich, AlterNet, 27 May 2016:
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