2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Not With Her, Still a Feminist [View all]SheilaT
(23,156 posts)I do not support her. I do not see her as a genuine champion of people like me.
This evening I had dinner with a dear friend of mine (gay man a decade older, which shouldn't matter but it does) who honestly cannot understand why I'm not switching automatically from Bernie to Hillary. He's focussed, as so many are, on the Trump v Clinton aspect, and doesn't understand her fundamental flaws. I suggested that the choice between the two was rather like a choice between Idi Amin and Adolf Hitler. So I exaggerate a little, but my point is that neither one is a good choice.
And THAT'S what so many don't get. They think that now we have the Democratic nominee sealed in stone, of course I'll vote for the Democrat, because what choice is there?
I'll tell what choice there is: For far too long I've been told I need to vote for the lesser of two evils. Well, at this point I'm DONE with that. If I can't vote in a positive way for the candidate I really want, then fuck this. I won't vote in that category. And I WILL NOT accept any responsibility for the outcome of the election. That is on all of you who actually do vote.
Hillary is beyond flawed. And all of those who support her need to think about this, and think about it without just waving your hands and saying, "It doesn't matter." Because it does. She has real flaws, real deficits, real things that will come back to bite her.
The email thing is NOT a figment of someone's imagination. It's real. And even if it doesn't result in some sort of indictment (which it should) it displays a real character flaw, an arrogance of "I'm SOS and I can do whatever I please, screw National Security" coupled with a genuine lack of understanding of technology, how it works, or how it matters. And that's genuinely dangerous in this world.
Not to mention she brings along a lot of baggage, mainly in the form of her attachment to Wall Street and investment banks. It's ludicrous to believe she can take enormous donations from them, or accept huge sums of money to speak to them, and walk away not influenced by that money. If you really believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
She simply does not understand, and has almost no sympathy for, ordinary citizens. As First Lady she opposed the bankruptcy law being proposed in the late '90s. As Senator, she voted for that same law. What changed? Figure it out yourself.
In a similar manner, we all had very high hopes for Barack Obama in the beginning, and he's betrayed those high hopes in many ways. He was for health care reform, but then took Single Payer off the table at the very start. And while ObamaCare started out well enough, the increase in premiums is scary. Let's go back to Single Payer, shall we? Oh, Hillary has said that's a nonstarter. So much for her vaunted defense of women and children and all others who need protection.
There are so many other issues at stake: the TPP, fracking, Glass-Stiegal, that it's pretty depressing.
I no longer hold out any hope that she will actually support the kind of legislation that will help me or anyone else who is not already wealthy.
Go ahead and vote for her, but do not be shocked when she tells you that the cost of wars means we can't begin to cover health care, and we might need to scale back Social Security and Medicare.
Keep in mind that this is the ONLY first world country without some sort of universal health care. Is it only a coincidence that we spend more money on our military than the entire rest of the world combined?
Think about it.