This is How You Get Ants

Since America is incapable of letting one election finish without immediately focusing on the next one, we already seem to be shifting into the presidential race for 2020.  And with that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, this piece in the Chicago Sun-Times and not one but two features in The Guardian, it increasingly looks like Hillary Clinton is going to throw her hat in the ring, again, so I feel we should just drill this mantra into our heads at the soonest opportunity:

Hillary Clinton will never -ever- be President of the United States.

A major reason for this is that no one, including her, can articulate a reason why she should be president.  "Well, she's experienced," is a common refrain, usually followed by the fact that she's been First Lady, a Senator, and Secretary of State.  Notably, however, the gushing over her CV usually ends there which is weird, right?  Don't you think if Clinton and her supporters were touting her time occupying positions of power as one of her central qualifications that they'd spend just as much time pointing to things accomplished using that power?  Maybe they don't want to talk about how she was an ardent supporter of both the crime and welfare "reform" bills her husband signed way back when, bills that fed more non-violent offenders into the prison system and gutted the welfare benefits most poor Americans depended on.  Considering that Clinton will need the votes of poor people of color, especially African-Americans, you can see why this would be a sensitive legacy to bring up.

Oh, right, how could we forget how, as a Senator, Clinton also voted down a bill that would reform how student loans functioned, such as their recipients being allowed to declare bankruptcy, after receiving a massive influx of cash from the financial institutions administrating those loans.  For Clinton to win, she needs the millennial block (which are people aged 20-35, remember) to stay with her and not splinter off to 3rd-parties or not show up like they did the last time.  Considering that my generation is the first to have a shorter life expectancy than the one before it because we're literally drinking ourselves to death, ODing on heroin, or using more traditional means of suicide in the face of massive economic pressures due to low wages and inescapable student loan debt, it goes without saying that any pitch Clinton makes about how she pinkie swears to solve a problem she had a direct role in creating will be something of a hard sell.

Finally, let's note that Clinton's crowning achievement as Secretary of State was convincing Obama to pursue regime change in Libya, disposing Muammar Gaddafi.  How'd that turn out?  Sure, we instituted the regime change easily enough, but now Libya has two militia-controlled governments with one of the most bustling slave trades in the entire world.  So... not great, it seems. Suddenly being saddled with the Benghazi bullshit doesn't seem like a bad thing for Clinton's image.

All in all, the focus on Clinton's legacy is one of the most incompetent "don't look at the man behind the curtain" games in all of politics.  You're supposed to be awed by the majesty of her accumulated titles, but any investigation into her actual policies, who they benefited, and who ended paying the most for her ambitions gets you labelled a misogynist or a Russian agent.  A winning strategy this is, obviously, not.

That being said, presidential elections are based more on popularity and public engagement than any real experience so, how is she on that front?  The last Gallup poll that asked about her was in September 2018 and two years after losing her approval rating is sitting at the rather abysmal 36%.  For comparison, Trump's approval rating during the same polling period (September 4-12) ranged between 41-38%.  Let's just pause to reflect on the fact that Trump, the most unpopular president in the history of presidential polling by a mile, is still more popular Hillary Clinton two years into his presidency.

This is usually the time that someone pops up with the refrain of "Popular vote! Three million votes!!!!"  Which, okay, sure, she won the most irrelevant vote in politics, but how significant is that vote margin?  When you convert those numbers to percentages, the final vote tally comes out to Hillary getting 48% of the vote to Trump's 46%.  You can see why people insist on screaming out the three million number because it makes it seem like she achieved something significant instead of barely winning a popularity contest against a proto-fascist pig by the skin of her teeth.  This isn't even touching on the fact that she couldn't even muster 50% of the fucking vote.  The idea that there's some overwhelming popular support just waiting in the wings that will rally Hillary to victory is a fantasy on par with Trump's supporter's insistence that he's an honest man.

So, why the disconnect?  How can Clinton be in the hole to a man so utterly repugnant as Trump?  The answer lies in the fact that the Republican base is solidly behind Trump, while the Democratic base is more ambivalent about Clinton.  In that Gallup poll I mentioned earlier, the party breakdowns for Clinton's approval went this way: Democrats had a 77% approval rating, independents had a 30%, and Republicans had 4 %.  In comparison, Trump's approval rating among Republicans and Independents over that same period were 85 and 36%, respectively.  I guess there's an argument to be made that she could close that gap to something more competitive in a campaign, but I will point out that she's failed to do that twice already; there's no reason to believe that she'll be able to do so on the third go round, either.

Take, for example, one of her features in The Guardian, where she says that Europe must focus on curbing migration to cut off the far right's exploitation of the issue to rally people behind nationalist causes.  On the surface, seems like something of a decent idea, right?  If you "solve" the problem your enemies are using as a rallying cry, then you've cut them off at the knees, right?  Except, that's not how politics work.  Consider, if Republicans passed a comprehensive Medicare-for-All bill that instituted a national, single-payer system in the U.S., do you think people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would stop with the rest of their agenda?  No, of course not.  All they'd do is say, "Look, we created enough political pressure to get the opposition to accomplish one of our goals for us, let's cross it off the list and keep pushing for the rest."  The far-right parties of Europe, and here, would behave no differently.

There's also this lovely quote, where Hillary describes the motivations of Trump's supporters:

"The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king or other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They don’t want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to be told what to do and where to go and how to live … and only given one version of reality."

Remember when Hillary dropped the deplorable line and it turned into a rallying cry for Trump supporters and galvanized their opposition to her?  Imagine what's going to happen if she's the nominee and every single campaign ad from the Trump camp includes this quote where she's dismissing all of them has freedom-hating bigoted automatons.  When the only people you can effectively mobilize are members of your opposition, you probably shouldn't be running for higher office.

More importantly though, Clinton is just not up to the task.  Right now, we face two existential threats- climate change and the rise of fascism, both of which will require radical reforms implemented by bold, fearless leaders who understand that the goal is to defeat the opposition, not try to co-opt it.  Hillary's insistence that the center-left parties of Europe implement a right-wing agenda for their own survival shows that her political instincts are misguided at best and deliberately obtuse at worst.  If your main advice to a party losing power in the face of waning support from your political base and an emboldened opposition is to implement the policies of your opposition which further emboldens the opposition and alienating your base, you probably shouldn't be listened to by anyone wanting to win their next election.

This also touches another important point to make about Clinton, namely, that she isn't really an opposition figure to Trump.  What I mean by that is that Clinton's political philosophy means that, when she's faced with political opposition, she will try to find a "balance" between the two sides.  In practical terms, this means she'd recall the troops stationed at the border, rescind the executive order that basically cancels our amnesty policy, but those kids in the tents?  They'll stay right where they are.  Because in the end, Clinton is a difference of degree from Trump, not kind.  Trump is the ass end of American attitudes- he's aggressively stupid, knows absolutely nothing about the world or how it works, and is a petulant bully who incessantly whines about not getting his way.  Clinton, on the other hand, is more the dignified face that we want our leaders to put on our activities.  Hers is the face that stand behind sanctions on Iraq that kill 500,000 children, or invade Afghanistan and Iraq which kills hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians, who can stand idly by as we kidnap and torture people all over the world, who again, can leave a nation in chaos and thousands in slavery, who can help the Saudi's institute a famine for years on end in Yemen, without any guilt or even the slightest acknowledgment of our actions.

Hillary has made her entire career making decisions that will doom millions of people at home and abroad to starvation, death, imprisonment and misery and she's done it without flinching or even pausing to reflect on all the wreckage her goals have left behind.  And we let that happen, we want it to happen, because we think as long as our leaders can commit atrocities with a facade of dignity and composure, then the actions can't really be all that bad no matter the consequences.

To get back to the issue at hand, though, we can't trust Hillary to solve the problems of fascism or climate change.  On the fascism note, you have to do more than just beat Trump in an election.  The Republican base has obviously shown it has no issues with the practice, so when the next Trump comes along, they'll flock to him as well.  Fascism breeds in times of economic depression, which, if you haven't noticed, is what we're still experiencing ten years after the crash.  To do away with this, there has to be a massive government spending program that puts people directly to work along with a new progressive tax regime that taxes the richest elements of society both so they don't have as much wealth to use to buy off politicians and so that money can actually be put to good use instead of just hoarded in off-shore bank accounts or mutual funds.  You have to put through a single payer health system that eliminates the biggest source of bankruptcy in the country.  You also need to do a debt jubilee covering medical debt and student loans so people whose income is being hoovered up to stave off the worst effects of those debts so they can use that money for more efficient economic activity.

In addition to all that, you need renewable energy resource and power production like solar and wind set up and incorporated across the country to reduce the reliance on the fossil fuel industry which is literally killing off the ecosystem we need to survive.  I'm sure everybody saw that UN report that said we've only got twelve years as a species to fix this issue or we'll be facing catastrophic consequences we have an uncomfortable chance of not surviving.  We won't even have the potential to implement these changes in the U.S. for another two years, so, we literally don't have the time for a measured, balanced approach to policies that may or may not come to full realization in a few decades if ever.  We need leaders who understand the urgency of the moment and act like our lives depend on it.

There's a term I've seen thrown around, unicorns, which refers to a type of candidate that leftists prefer who only want the perfect candidate that will give them all their policy dreams and actively sabotage real, capable candidates like, well, Hillary Clinton.  And while there is a certain truth to this (see, all the people who voted for Jill Stein or wrote-in Bernie Sanders) I also believe that the term applies just as well to people who want someone like Clinton to be president.  

Because if the idea that a woman with no real popular support or platform, who's already lost the chance to be president twice, and has a history of caution, compromise, and appeasement is the person to not only win but boldly lead us to safety in a world on fire isn't magical thinking then, well, nothing is.

Belated Midterms Thoughts

We're a week out from the midterms, and now that the dust has settled a little bit just wanted to say a few things about them.

It's been curious to see the litany of articles and think pieces trying to figure what "happened" to the supposed Blue Wave that was coming.  The easy answer is, people fundamentally misread the political situation which led to unrealistic expectations which naturally collapsed in the face of reality.  The core idea of this, it seems to me, was that this election would be like 2006, where Democrats retook both houses of Congress and then built even larger majorities in 2008.  That was never going to happen for a very simple reason: no real swing voters.  A large part of the Democrats success in turning previously red states like Colorado in the late aughts was due in large part to conservative voters who were tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the response to Katrina, and the looming-then full-on- financial crisis that they were ready to try something new and the Democratic party was happy to supply candidates who were mostly the same as the Republican incumbents so those disgruntled conservative voters could jump ship without feeling like they were betraying their principles.

The difference this time is that the Republican electorate doesn't have the split to exploit like it did in the later years of the Bush presidency.  Trump's approval rating among Republicans has stayed in the mid-to-high 80's (with dips into the 90 and a few in the high 70's) for his entire presidency, so even if, theoretically, that remaining 10-15% of Republican voters put off by Trump voted for Democrats wherever they are around the country, that really isn't going to make a difference.  The Republican party is solidly behind Trump, any hope that there's going to be a firm rebuke of him and all he stands for from the majority of the Republican electorate is a delusion that needs to be abandoned.

So, when you look at the midterms in the context of a deeply divided partisan electorate where both sides where highly motivated and turned out in near-presidential election numbers, the Democrats did pretty well.  Taking control of the House is no small thing, Scott Walker will no longer be the governor of Wisconsin, a Senate seat in Arizona flipped, and even now votes are still being counted in Georgia and Florida because of how narrow the margins are turning out to be.  Yes, Beto lost, but two years ago if someone told you a Democrat running on an unapologetic progressive platform with only small donations would come within three points of beating the incumbent Senator in Texas, you would've been right to laugh it off as ridiculous.  But now we know it can be done, that is as close to a winning strategy that anyone has found for the ridiculously gerrymandered state, so yes, while six years is a long time for Ted Cruz to be a Senator and inflict even more damage on the country, it's also a long time to build up the political infrastructure in Texas so when Cruz is up again in 2024 there's an even better chance of being free of that sniveling ghoul once and for all.

Turning back to those Georgia and Florida elections for a moment, I also want to stress how, even though both Republican states did everything they could to tilt the elections- or in Kemp's case outright steal it- the sheer number of people turning out to vote has prevented that from happening.  In Georgia, on top of all the things that Kemp did before the election to stop as many people as he could from voting, he then upped the ante by shorting heavily-Democratic areas on voting machines; in one polling place the machines actually died because their batteries ran out and Kemp's state department "forgot" to provide the polling station with enough extension cords to keep the machines powered. 

The real kicker though, was the state department keeping at least 1,000 possibly up to 1,500 voting locked away so they couldn't be used on Election Day.  Kemp's excuse was that the state had been court ordered by a judge to sequester those machines because of an ongoing lawsuit regarding the hacking vulnerability of Georgia's voting machines.  The truth is that the judge did not order Kemp or the State Department to keep the voting machines locked away, she just criticized them for "[standing] by for far too long, given the mounting tide of evidence of the inadequacy and security risks of Georgia’s DRE voting system and software."  You have to appreciate the gall Kemp has to have to site a federal lawsuit accusing him of being actively negligent in protecting voting machines from hacking and manipulation as a reason to keep those machines from districts that would've voted for his opponent to sabotage her chances of winning.  Honestly, Kemp is so brazen and open about his attempts to steal the election that it's actually kind of impressive.

Just one last point about this; the actions of Kemp, of the Texas state department, and how Rick Scott is saying with a straight face that counting every vote is a form of voter fraud should be proof positive that Republican politicians don't care about democracy.  I've said before that the goal of conservatism as a political project is to protect and further entrench established power hierarchies whether they be social, political, economic, or cultural.  Things like democracy or civil rights are means to that end, once those things no longer serve the end purpose, they are to be sabotaged or outright discarded.  So when you see the Texas state department insist on keeping voting machines that change your vote, or Kemp being worried that people will turn up to vote, or see Rick Scott's escalating panic as he creams fraud, this is why.  An engaged, high turnout electorate is an active threat to Republican power, which is why they're so committed to making voting as onerous as they can.

Anyway, now that we've got all the optics out of the way, let's get down to the actually important consequences of the election which, basically, what are the Democrats going to do now?  Unfortunately, that all pretty much comes down to what happens with Nancy Pelosi.

In all probability, Pelosi will be Speaker of the House again which doesn't bode well for, anything, really.  A big part of the sales pitch for voting Democrats into power was that if they were in charge of the various Committees, they would have the ability to launch their own investigations into the Trump administrations activities with subpoena power to compel people to testify under oath in the pursuit of those investigations which could, in all likelihood, turn up enough solid evidence to impeach Trump.  The issue is, even in the event that the Democrats receive actionable evidence either from the Mueller report or their own investigations, Pelosi is unlikely to act on it.

The Atlantic has a good interview with Pelosi where she lays out her thinking on the matter and it basically boils down to she won't make any move unless the Republicans in the Senate go along with it.  Her reasoning for this is that Nixon impeachment only got off the ground with Republican cooperation and she wants to avoid the disastrous consequences that came as a result of the failed Clinton impeachment in the 90's.  First thing, there's a big difference between impeaching someone for openly fraudulent, expedient reasons like Gingrich did and impeaching them for actual, legitimate crimes which Trump as already, openly committed.  Second, waiting for the Republicans to come around is a dodge, full stop.  Pelosi has many of the undesirable traits one expects of politicians, but she's not stupid; she's seen every Republican Senator line up behind Trump and every aspect of his agenda, no matter how abhorrent.  Rewrite the Constitution by executive fiat?  Sure, why not.  Lindsay Graham even introduced legislation in support of it.  Possibly illegally replace the Attorney General he forced to resign?  No problem. 

Point is, Pelosi has seen the entirety of the Republican political establishment, media, and voter base circle the wagons around Trump.  Any evidence the House investigations or the Mueller investigation produces will be dismissed like literally everything else as Fake News or Witch Hunt.  It takes a staggering level of idiocy or incompetence to believe any Republican will cross Trump-and, by extension, the entire Republican base- on the word of a Democrat or Robert Mueller.  And like I said, stupid she is not, so this is all a play for her to deflect responsibility for not wanting to impeach Trump to uncooperative Republicans in the Senate.

You can see her pulling a similar move with all those calls for bipartisanship, too.  With a new wave of progressive candidates on her heels demanding legislation for things like Medicare-for-All, tuition-free college, aggressive action on climate change, Pelosi is going to have to find some way to stall all of those things, so, enter Republicans stage right.  Pelosi will use them as a prop to squash any progressive policy agenda as an ugly yet necessary sacrifice on the alter of bipartisanship and cooperation, because "[she] owe[s] it to the country to find common ground" with Trump and the Republicans.  This is flat-out dangerous, the more she engages the Republican party and all it stands for, the more she legitimizes their policies and their goals as normal, acceptable aims.  Compromise in and of itself isn't terrible, but when your compromise is to renew the DACA protections only for the people who recently had them, but let Trump build the wall (like Schumer was willing to do or give him everything but the wall like they both agreed to), then you really haven't achieved anything.  All you've done is abided fascism instead of stopping it, which is what she should be dedicating herself to.

If you feel like I'm being unfair to Pelosi and her aims, I just want to remind all of  you that we've seen this before.  In that Atlantic interview above, she mentions how she had direct evidence that W. Bush lied to the American public to start the Iraq war and she did... nothing. The entirety of her term as Speaker when Obama was president consisted of reaching out to Republicans to create bipartisan friendly bills like the ACA, Dodd-Frank Act, and the Stimulus package, all of which kinda sorta worked, but not very well- and in the case of Dodd-Frank, largely inert- which led to the Democrats losing Congress which lead us to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh so... yeah.  We've already seen the effects of her leadership and they aren't good on either political or policy fronts.  So when she's signaling that she has learned absolutely nothing in the last eight years and plans to do everything the exact same way she did the first time, it's cause for concern and benefit of the doubt doesn't really play in her favor.

So while it may seem like our time is done and we can leave the handling of the Trump presidency to the professionals, but, no- we're going to have stay engaged, stay angry, for a lot longer to make sure these people don't kill us all.


P.S.  Based on this article in the Wall Street Journal, Hillary is "definitely" going to run again for 2020.  Two of her former aides say "She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House."  I don't know how you write that sentence with a straight face, but, you know, how does being emphatically told "We don't want you has president" twice not deter you from trying a third time?  Please, for the love of god, someone find her a new hobby because her current one of losing presidential elections hurts us so, so much more than it hurts her.