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[BainsBane]

44. No, she wasn't forced into the position

Nor were you, but you twice voted for the policies. Well, I'm assuming that you like I voted for it or you wouldn't be on this site.

Liberalism is tied to the notion of free markets as the best and most efficient means of economic production. Adam Smith was a liberal, as was John Locke. Liberalism emerged as the political corollary to capitalism. The term neoliberal should clue you in to its meaning. Americans are parochial and ahistorical in their conception of political ideology and thus manage to miss the fact that around the world liberalism is associated with the center-right. Liberals are not socialists and socialists are not liberals. Socialists oppose capital and seek a post-capitalist world order. Liberals don't critique capital. They seek to benefit form it. The socialist tradition in the US was systematically purged by the state, through the Palmer raids, deportation of socialist union leaders and activists, and ultimately through McCarthyism.

It is also clear the SW is lost without the former Soviet Union. It was always a publication that took it's cues from the USSR rather than Marxism itself. Now they seem to have abandoned Marxism entirely. That piece could have been posted on Think Progress or any other liberal site. I have read some very good, thoughtful articles in the International Socialist Review, http://isreview.org/issue/96. They certainly aren't going to endorse a candidate like Clinton, but they engage in critique grounded in Marxism, which matters to me.

You may not have defeating Clinton as your primary goal, but some do, and have even promoted Republicans like Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina over her. It's great that you want to support the best available Democratic candidate, only we have exactly zero Democratic candidates for President so far. Nor do I see an explanation for why O'Malley, the only other likely entrant into the race, is so much better than Clinton.

When so many people devote their political energies (some for years on end) to taking down a Democratic candidate, it is not an unreasonable conclusion that that is in fact their primary goal. Again, I'm not talking about you, but en masse the threads create a general impression.

Around 2001, I reconciled myself to the fact that I would have to choose among pro-capitalist candidates in the Democratic Party if I was to play my part in keeping the country from the kind of disaster that was the Bush administration. I now make political decisions pragmatically. I continue to care a great deal about worker oppression and income inequality, but as a feminism with a doctoral background in history, it bothers me to see attributed to Hillary Clinton all the ills associated with capitalism and American empire, characteristics that have defined this nation for as long as any of us has been alive. I would never suggest you should vote for Clinton or anyone else because she leads in the polls or any of that nonsense. You should vote for and support whichever candidate you choose, as I will make my own decision upon watching the debates and hearing the actual declared candidates positions. Yet when thread after thread focus entirely on attacking Clinton and advocating FOR nothing, I get pissed off.