Street writes: "Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring campaigner.
She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath carefully
constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She's still the same old 'new
Democrat.'"
Hillary Rodham Clinton. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
Hillary's Happy Holidays
By Paul Street, teleSUR
03 December 16
The main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton is a listless bunch of
fellow contenders.
It's been a happy holiday season for the American Empire's next
commander-in-chief Hillary Clinton. Her gifts have been remarkable. I am not
referring to any special talent for inspiring voters and articulating a
vision for democratic change. Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring
campaigner. She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath
carefully constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She's still the same old
"new Democrat" - a dismal, dollar-drenched servant to concentrated wealth
and power - beneath deceptive, populist-mimicking oratory and branding.
She remains a hawkish and imperial militarist - the same politician who
embraced George W. Bush's monumentally criminal invasion of Iraq. The
Clinton campaign makes no apologies for her eager advance (both as a U.S.
Senator and as Barack Obama's aggressively militarist Secretary of State) of
policies that have destroyed Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, creating the
context for the rise of the Islamic State. Or for her leadership role in the
dangerous provocation of Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere. It's not for
nothing that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has described her as a foreign
policy "neocon."
It's fitting that Mrs. Clinton's main campaign logo features an arrow
pointing to the right. The direction suggests the neoliberal and imperial
essence of her career and agenda, well to the starboard side of U.S. public
opinion.
No, the main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton this holiday season
is an unthreatening bunch of fellow contenders in the quadrennial
two-party-big media-big money presidential electoral extravaganza that
passes for meaningful democratic politics in the United States. Who is going
to block the Clintons' return to the White House? Certainly not Donald
Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or any other among the xenophobic candidates of
the ever more apocalyptically right wing, white-nationalist Republican
Party.
The Republicans' leading candidate, the bombastic real estate mogul and
media buffoon Donald Trump, has the highest unfavorable rating among all
presidential aspirants. His campaign seems consciously designed to push
Blacks, Muslims, Latinos and women into the Democratic Party. Ted Cruz,
Trump's closest rival, is an open ideological apparatchik certain to
alienate most voters outside the Tea Party FOX News (TPFN) cohort.
Hillary had to worry about a Republican opponent with the capacity to reach
beyond the hard core Koch brother-fueled TPFN Republican base. But the GOP
contenders with potential to do that - Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco
Rubio, or even John Kasich - have proven to be duds.
Beside their fatal liabilities in a general election, Trump and Cruz help
hide Hillary's own reckless and mass-murderous record. When compared with
the leading Republican candidates' inflammatory rhetoric, the language and
manner of the empire's next new clothes (Hillary) looks calm and careful.
Who would you trust with the nuclear button? Who (to use Hillary's campaign
metaphor in 2008) do you want "getting that call at 3 in the morning"?
Certainly NOT cartoon characters like The Donald, Ted Cruz or the ludicrous
right-wing brain surgeon Ben Carson.
The Democratic candidate field is not much stronger. There are no young and
telegenic rock-stars like Obama and pre-scandal John Edwards for the
Clintons to contend with this time. The primary challenge the Clintons
feared, with reason, was the liberal U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, but it
turned out that "no meant no" when she declined fervent progressive
entreaties to enlist.
Martin O'Malley has tried to build a brand as a younger and more liberal
alternative, but's it's not taking (appropriately enough given his record of
advancing racially disparate mass arrest and incarceration during his years
as Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland). The listless Jim Webb and
affable Lincoln Chaffee have already dropped out. Good old Uncle Joe Biden
(who has the virtue of being less aggressively imperialist than Hillary)
didn't have the heart for another presidential run.
Yes, there's the grim septuagenarian and nominal democratic socialist Bernie
Sanders. It's encouraging to see a candidate willing to identify himself
with socialism (if that's what he really wants to call his barely
social-democratic New Deal liberalism) and "class analysis" attract large
crowds and set new records for small campaign finance donations. The Sanders
phenomenon speaks both to the distance of Cold War neo-McCarthyism and to
the terrible, regressive consequences of U.S. neoliberal capitalism, creator
of a New Gilded Age place where (as Sanders points out) the top 1 percent
owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
True, Bernie is leading in New Hampshire and close in Iowa, causing
irritation in the Clinton camp. Still, even if he were to win one or both of
those states, it's very difficult to seriously imagine a path to a Sanders
nomination. Hillary's financial and organizational advantages are steep. So
is her advantage with the corporate media, which gives her one free pass
after another while insipidly (if predictably) under-covering Sanders' big
rallies and over-covering The Donald's every idiotic comment and gesture.
Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama.
Sanders seems to understand the harsh reality. He is willing to create some
embarrassing moments for Hillary - on her revolting (and revealing) 2003
Iraq War vote and the outsized campaign contributions she has received from
Wall Street executives. But the fact that he is not seriously trying to win
the Democratic nomination is clear from his refusal to substantively and
directly attack the longstanding neoliberal corporatism of his "good friend"
Mrs. Clinton and from his willingness to assist her efforts to squelch
public critique of her outrageous use of a private email server in her
duties as Secretary State.
Meanwhile, Sanders' underlying commitment to the U.S. imperial project and
military Keynesian tends to render mute his call for progressive,
social-democratic, and Scandinavia-inspired change. The costs,
public-private investment pattern, and largely media-manufactured culture of
America's giant military empire and permanent war of/on terror cancel out
social-democratic welfare-state Keynesianism in the "homeland."
In the second Democratic presidential debate, Sanders admitted early on what
"this [his] campaign is [really] about": increasing voter excitement and
turnout for the Democratic Party. Translation: Bernie is running to help the
militant corporatist Hillary Clinton and the rotten, Wall Street-captive and
imperial Democratic Party practice what the formerly left Christopher
Hitchens caustically but all-too accurately called (in his 2000 book on the
Clintons) "the essence of American politics..the manipulation of populism by
elitism." His role (unwitting or not) is to help Hillary's eventual
nomination look less like the advance finance-capitalized coronation that it
is and to help create an, turnout-boosting illusory sense of meaningful
popular debate within the Democratic Party. He's a useful (not-so left) wing
man for the Clinton machine, which is why the Clintons and the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) have been pleased with his campaign.
Meanwhile, the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have helped the corporate
media replace anger over economic inequality (Sanders' main issue) with fear
of terrorism - a topic that favors Mrs. Clinton over Bernie - as U.S.
voters' top concern. More holiday cheer for Hillary!
The struggle for justice and a good society requires a powerful popular
sociopolitical movement beneath and beyond the periodic, money-drenched, and
highly time-staggered, major party candidate-centered elections that
outrageously pass for democratic "politics" - the only "politics that
matters" - in the U.S. Some of my fellow leftists think the Sanders
phenomenon can assist that movement-building. I hope they are right.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Hillarys-Happy-Holidays-20160102-00
04.htmlhttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Hillarys-Happy-Holidays-2016
0102-0004.html
Hillary's Happy Holidays
By Paul Street, teleSUR
03 December 16
The main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton is a listless bunch of
fellow contenders.
t's been a happy holiday season for the American Empire's next
commander-in-chief Hillary Clinton. Her gifts have been remarkable. I am not
referring to any special talent for inspiring voters and articulating a
vision for democratic change. Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring
campaigner. She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath
carefully constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She's still the same old
"new Democrat" - a dismal, dollar-drenched servant to concentrated wealth
and power - beneath deceptive, populist-mimicking oratory and branding.
She remains a hawkish and imperial militarist - the same politician who
embraced George W. Bush's monumentally criminal invasion of Iraq. The
Clinton campaign makes no apologies for her eager advance (both as a U.S.
Senator and as Barack Obama's aggressively militarist Secretary of State) of
policies that have destroyed Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, creating the
context for the rise of the Islamic State. Or for her leadership role in the
dangerous provocation of Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere. It's not for
nothing that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has described her as a foreign
policy "neocon."
It's fitting that Mrs. Clinton's main campaign logo features an arrow
pointing to the right. The direction suggests the neoliberal and imperial
essence of her career and agenda, well to the starboard side of U.S. public
opinion.
No, the main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton this holiday season
is an unthreatening bunch of fellow contenders in the quadrennial
two-party-big media-big money presidential electoral extravaganza that
passes for meaningful democratic politics in the United States. Who is going
to block the Clintons' return to the White House? Certainly not Donald
Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or any other among the xenophobic candidates of
the ever more apocalyptically right wing, white-nationalist Republican
Party.
The Republicans' leading candidate, the bombastic real estate mogul and
media buffoon Donald Trump, has the highest unfavorable rating among all
presidential aspirants. His campaign seems consciously designed to push
Blacks, Muslims, Latinos and women into the Democratic Party. Ted Cruz,
Trump's closest rival, is an open ideological apparatchik certain to
alienate most voters outside the Tea Party FOX News (TPFN) cohort.
Hillary had to worry about a Republican opponent with the capacity to reach
beyond the hard core Koch brother-fueled TPFN Republican base. But the GOP
contenders with potential to do that - Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco
Rubio, or even John Kasich - have proven to be duds.
Beside their fatal liabilities in a general election, Trump and Cruz help
hide Hillary's own reckless and mass-murderous record. When compared with
the leading Republican candidates' inflammatory rhetoric, the language and
manner of the empire's next new clothes (Hillary) looks calm and careful.
Who would you trust with the nuclear button? Who (to use Hillary's campaign
metaphor in 2008) do you want "getting that call at 3 in the morning"?
Certainly NOT cartoon characters like The Donald, Ted Cruz or the ludicrous
right-wing brain surgeon Ben Carson.
The Democratic candidate field is not much stronger. There are no young and
telegenic rock-stars like Obama and pre-scandal John Edwards for the
Clintons to contend with this time. The primary challenge the Clintons
feared, with reason, was the liberal U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, but it
turned out that "no meant no" when she declined fervent progressive
entreaties to enlist.
Martin O'Malley has tried to build a brand as a younger and more liberal
alternative, but's it's not taking (appropriately enough given his record of
advancing racially disparate mass arrest and incarceration during his years
as Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland). The listless Jim Webb and
affable Lincoln Chaffee have already dropped out. Good old Uncle Joe Biden
(who has the virtue of being less aggressively imperialist than Hillary)
didn't have the heart for another presidential run.
Yes, there's the grim septuagenarian and nominal democratic socialist Bernie
Sanders. It's encouraging to see a candidate willing to identify himself
with socialism (if that's what he really wants to call his barely
social-democratic New Deal liberalism) and "class analysis" attract large
crowds and set new records for small campaign finance donations. The Sanders
phenomenon speaks both to the distance of Cold War neo-McCarthyism and to
the terrible, regressive consequences of U.S. neoliberal capitalism, creator
of a New Gilded Age place where (as Sanders points out) the top 1 percent
owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
True, Bernie is leading in New Hampshire and close in Iowa, causing
irritation in the Clinton camp. Still, even if he were to win one or both of
those states, it's very difficult to seriously imagine a path to a Sanders
nomination. Hillary's financial and organizational advantages are steep. So
is her advantage with the corporate media, which gives her one free pass
after another while insipidly (if predictably) under-covering Sanders' big
rallies and over-covering The Donald's every idiotic comment and gesture.
Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama.
Sanders seems to understand the harsh reality. He is willing to create some
embarrassing moments for Hillary - on her revolting (and revealing) 2003
Iraq War vote and the outsized campaign contributions she has received from
Wall Street executives. But the fact that he is not seriously trying to win
the Democratic nomination is clear from his refusal to substantively and
directly attack the longstanding neoliberal corporatism of his "good friend"
Mrs. Clinton and from his willingness to assist her efforts to squelch
public critique of her outrageous use of a private email server in her
duties as Secretary State.
Meanwhile, Sanders' underlying commitment to the U.S. imperial project and
military Keynesian tends to render mute his call for progressive,
social-democratic, and Scandinavia-inspired change. The costs,
public-private investment pattern, and largely media-manufactured culture of
America's giant military empire and permanent war of/on terror cancel out
social-democratic welfare-state Keynesianism in the "homeland."
In the second Democratic presidential debate, Sanders admitted early on what
"this [his] campaign is [really] about": increasing voter excitement and
turnout for the Democratic Party. Translation: Bernie is running to help the
militant corporatist Hillary Clinton and the rotten, Wall Street-captive and
imperial Democratic Party practice what the formerly left Christopher
Hitchens caustically but all-too accurately called (in his 2000 book on the
Clintons) "the essence of American politics..the manipulation of populism by
elitism." His role (unwitting or not) is to help Hillary's eventual
nomination look less like the advance finance-capitalized coronation that it
is and to help create an, turnout-boosting illusory sense of meaningful
popular debate within the Democratic Party. He's a useful (not-so left) wing
man for the Clinton machine, which is why the Clintons and the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) have been pleased with his campaign.
Meanwhile, the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have helped the corporate
media replace anger over economic inequality (Sanders' main issue) with fear
of terrorism - a topic that favors Mrs. Clinton over Bernie - as U.S.
voters' top concern. More holiday cheer for Hillary!
The struggle for justice and a good society requires a powerful popular
sociopolitical movement beneath and beyond the periodic, money-drenched, and
highly time-staggered, major party candidate-centered elections that
outrageously pass for democratic "politics" - the only "politics that
matters" - in the U.S. Some of my fellow leftists think the Sanders
phenomenon can assist that movement-building. I hope they are right.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
