2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: SANDERS OR BUST 2! Purity Pledge Edition! [View all]Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)I will not vote Republican, I can assure you of that.
I will vote only very reluctantly for a corporatist. Hillary Clinton, like DLC/Third Way/New Democrats in general, is a corporatist. So is Barack Obama. So is Bill Clinton. This is a program that follows an economic theory called variously neoliberalism, Reaganomics, supply side economics or trickle-down economics. It is a fundamentally an unsustainable system and the results have been the transfer of wealth upwards. You may ask why almost all the income created since the crash of 2008 goes to a small class of people who own at least as much wealth than the bottom 50%. Yes, the fact that every president or either party we've had since 1980 has been a corporatist has a lot to do with it. The Free Trade pacts they have pushed have a lot to do with it. The fact that the middle class has evaporated during this time has a lot to do with it.
Capitalism is impossible to maintain without a market full of buyers. Without a large and thriving middle class, that will not be the case. My parents, who would both be over 100 today, saw that movie when they were young. It was called the Great Depression. They told me that I wouldn't want to see it. They told me what it was like.
I understand your point, Ms Vee. In spite of being a corporatist, Mrs Clinton has laudable views on equality before the law. She would be better than Jeb Bush, who, pathetic as it sounds, is the best the Republicans have to offer. There is a great deal of injustice afoot these days. Some of it is social injustice and some of it is economic injustice. Some of it seems more aimed at you, some of might be more aimed at me and quite a bit of it is aimed at both of us at once.
I'll close by saying that although we may agree on much, I still resent your post suggesting that possess some luxury or privilege that I can think about not voting for for a corporatist Democrat over a corporatist Republican. I have no luxuries. I'm a sick old man living on disability in ratty mobile home. I will turn 65 a few days before the 2016 election. I go into a panic whenever Paul Ryan, apparently soon to be Speaker of the House, tells me the country can't afford social security and medicare and that I am in a national hammock or when President Obama speaks warmly of the recommendations of the bipartisan catfood commission he appointed during his first term.
Even if Bernie is elected president, then I will still be hitting the streets in protest of what this country has become under the regime of neoliberalism or Reaganomics or whatever you want to call it. It will feel better, though, if the President is somebody who tells me that is exactly what good citizens should do in these times, rather than some mealy-mouthed pean about the virtues of law and order. And if the police shoot, I'll stand in front and make a pathetic effort to shield all I can. That, I think, would beat starving to death so that the rich can have more and more.