Political Blues [EvolutionBlog]

I think in the end Hillary will win in November, but I become less confident about that by the day.

Donald Trump’s latest is to bring up Vince Foster. Those of us who remember the nineties will recall this as one of the many fake scandals the right-wing noise machine just invented from whole cloth. But for those millennials whose political memory starts with Obama, this is all new. And since Bernie Sanders has spent months telling them how untrustworthy she is, they are already primed to believe it.

When this election started, I had some admiration for Sanders. I liked a lot of what he was saying, and it was a relief to finally see a Democrat speaking clearly and non-defensively. But, having seen a few Presidential elections, I understood that this country would never elect an atheistic socialist. Ideologically he’s a bit left-wing even for me, but I admired him anyway.

No more. His actions recently have disabused me of any warm feelings I had for him. Turns out he’s just another preening narcissist, little better than Trump.

The Democratic primary has now mostly played itself out, and Sanders got slaughtered. Hillary has gotten over three million more votes than him. Three. Million. She’s slaughtering him among the pledged delegates as well. Meanwhile, Sanders rails about the system being rigged. But if you really want to find the anti-democratic aspects of the process, you look at the caucuses. Most of what little success Bernie has had has been there, but they are specifically designed to make it difficult for normal people to participate.

Sanders is like Trump in that he makes wild, lavish promises without the slightest thought of how he could ever fulfill them. When he provides economic specifics to defend the viability of his proposals, they are based on Republican-level distortions and absurdities. He does not seem to have given the slightest thought to anything beyond a narrow-range of economic issues, which is why Hillary made him look pretty foolish in the debates.

But that’s not why I’ve come to despise him. I have no problem with him running a tough campaign, or staying in through the end of the process. Nor do I have a problem with him pointing out the differences between him and Hillary. But I have a big problem with a candidate who, after having lost fair and square, does everything in his power to undermine the legitimacy of the candidate who beat him. It gains him nothing to keep lying to his supporters about his chances, or to rail about how the system is rigged against him (without ever saying specifically where the rigging is to be found). It only helps Trump, and also feeds his own ego.

Contrast Sanders’ behavior with Hillary’s in 2008. At every stage of the race, she was much closer to Obama than Sanders has ever been to her. But from a very early point, when the writing was on the wall, Hillary muted her attacks against Obama. She did that because she cares about getting things done, and she recognized that undercutting the eventual Democratic nominee, no matter how satisfying in the short term, accomplished nothing good in the long term. In this she differs from Sanders, who has been sulking in a corner in Congress for thirty years, accomplishing nothing. When the time came she endorsed Obama whole-heartedly. She did not first demand concessions.

There were twenty candidates in this race (seventeen Republicans and three Democrats). Of these twenty, Hillary is not only the most qualified to be President, she has by far the most integrity of anyone in the race. The Republicans hardly rate a mention in any discussion of integrity. There was not an admirable person in the bunch. Sanders has shown recently that he likewise lacks character. He’s now proven that he sees this race as all about him. It’s about the boon to his ego from attracting big crowds at a rally. It certainly hasn’t been about all those working class folks he claims to care about. They certainly will not benefit from a Trump presidency. But that hasn’t stopped Sanders from acting as a Trump surrogate these days.

There’s an old saying that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Hillary never learned the part about campaigning in poetry. While the other candidates have been falling all over themselves to make the most absurd promises or to tell the most outrageous lie, Hillary’s been offering nothing but policy wonkery and a long history of public service. And yet she is the one who is forever on the defensive about her honesty. And why? Because she gave some paid speeches? Because she had a private e-mail server as Secretary of State, just like all her recent predecessors did? This is what gets you loathed by millennials and independents?

The chattering classes have been asking how Hillary can campaign against Trump. She can’t. Campaigning is about persuading low-information voters (to use the euphemism) to your cause, and those voters will go for theater over substance every time. Hillary’s only hope is an outbreak of basic sanity in November. I have to believe this country is not yet so far gone that the crazies and stupids are running the show. Surely people can see through the incessant lies summoned forth by the right, dutifully given respectful coverage by a docile and fundamentally unserious media. Surely there’s still a voting majority in this country who understand that the fictional character Donald Trump plays on The Apprentice is not the real Donald Trump.

Isn’t there?

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1s906rw