{"id":270727,"date":"2016-10-02T18:04:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-02T18:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=270727"},"modified":"2018-03-28T19:13:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T18:13:12","slug":"im-bernie-sanders-voter-heres-ill-vote-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/im-bernie-sanders-voter-heres-ill-vote-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m a Bernie Sanders Voter: Here’s Why I’ll Vote Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, things in politics are the opposite of the way they seem. The Presidential contest between the \u2018liberal\u2019 Hillary Clinton\u2019 and the \u2018conservative\u2019 Donald Trump is perhaps the most extreme example of this \u2014 for ten reasons that will be documented here.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have never voted Republican in my life, starting with my first vote in the 1960s. I\u2019ve consistently supported Bernie Sanders for President (even before he entered the contest). The reason for that support is his record in public office, regarding especially these ten key issues, where Sanders\u2019s actions in public office contrast sharply<\/i> against Hillary Clinton\u2019s actions<\/i> in public office. (Her policy-words<\/i> lie often; but her policy-actions<\/i> never have lied \u2014 actions speak the truth.) Trump has no record at all in public office. Even if he\u2019s as bad as he sometimes projects to be, he\u2019s not as bad as Hillary\u2019s policy-record<\/i> already is. But his clear superiority over her isn\u2019t merely<\/i> his lack of any record<\/i> in public office; because, as will be demonstrated here, his words on some of the crucial public-policy issues have been consistently far more progressive than her actions<\/i> on those same issues have been (and sometimes more progressive than her words on these issues have been) \u2014 and, in Donald Trump\u2019s case, words are all that we have to go by, because his record as a businessman displays nothing about his authentic views about public policy, but only about his self-interest. Both of these two candidates are liars, and any intelligent voter knows it by now.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, here, will be stated these ten key issues, on each of which issues Bernie and Hillary are opposites, and then Trump\u2019s stated position regarding each of the ten will be presented. <\/span><\/p>\n

At the end will be presented the reason I won\u2019t<\/i> vote for Jill Stein. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the ten key issues:<\/span><\/p>\n

1:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors \u201cbreaking up the big banks.\u201d Hillary Clinton opposes that.<\/span><\/p>\n

2:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders has fought consistently against Obama\u2019s mega-\u2018trade\u2019 deals. Hillary consistently favored them.<\/span><\/p>\n

3:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors working with Russia against jihadists in Syria. Hillary opposes that.<\/span><\/p>\n

4:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says jihadists are America\u2019s top foe. Hillary says both jihadists and Russia are equally anti-American, equally dangerous to America. Hillary is simply a neoconservative; Sanders isn\u2019t. Her having voted to invade Iraq was no mistake on her part; it was consistent with her entire international outlook, all of which is neoconservative, like invading Libya, Syria, etcetera. Bernie\u2019s vote against invading Iraq was likewise consistent with his international outlook.<\/span><\/p>\n

5:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders has been consistently opposed to fossil fuels. Hillary has aggressively supported them.<\/span><\/p>\n

6:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says that the system<\/i> is rigged. Hillary says that it\u2019s not.<\/span><\/p>\n

7:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says the system is rigged specifically against the poor. Hillary says the problem that keeps people poor is instead<\/i> individual bigots \u2014 against Blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, etc. Not<\/i> the system itself. She is proud to represent the system. She\u2019s not against it. She\u2019s for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

8:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders\u2019s political career has been financed by small-dollar donations. Hillary\u2019s has been financed by mega-donations.<\/span><\/p>\n

9:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors every possible means of reducing the influence big-money donations to politicians has over politics. Hillary opposes that idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

10:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors socialized health insurance, like exists in the European nations that spend per-capita half what America does but have higher life-expectancy than America does. Hillary opposes that \u2014 she favors the existing profit-based system of health-care, and opposes the European system where basic healthcare is a right, no privilege (that\u2019s based only on ability-to-pay).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

I support Sanders not because his rhetoric<\/i> on these matters is correct in my view, but because his record<\/i> on them is correct: he has voted in Congress consistently in the ways that his rhetoric has said<\/i> he believes \u2014 and I agree with his record, and thus too with his rhetoric (since it\u2019s the same<\/i> as his rhetoric). Hillary has instead contradicted herself frequently \u2014 and even voted in Congress, and acted as the U.S. Secretary of State<\/span><\/a> \u2014 in ways that directly contradict<\/i> her mealy-mouthed progressive statements. Her record shows that she\u2019s actually the anti-Bernie, the opposite of Bernie. Trump (as I shall document here) is definitely not that (despite his frequent appeals to conservatives for their votes). This article will document the reasons why any reasonable and well-informed progressive will vote for Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the positions of Trump and of Clinton on these ten key issues:<\/span><\/p>\n

1:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors \u201cbreaking up the big banks.\u201d Hillary Clinton opposes that.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The real meaning of \u201cbreaking up the big banks\u201d is separating investment banks from commercial banks: it has nothing actually to do with a bank\u2019s size<\/i>. It has to do with a bank\u2019s function<\/i>. It\u2019s structural, not an issue of mere size (which Bernie\u2019s opponents pretend it to be). <\/span><\/p>\n

As Morning Consult reported on 18 July 2016<\/span><\/a>, Bernie Sanders required as a precondition in order for him to endorse Hillary Clinton for President, the inclusion in the Democratic Party platform of a recommendation that the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated investment banking (stock-brokerage) from commercial banking (checking and savings accounts), be restored. Bill Clinton had killed Glass-Steagall, and that\u2019s one big reason why Wall Street heavily funds the Clintons. The elimination of Glass-Steagall returned the U.S. in 2000 to the structure that had produced the Great Depression, in which billionaires were gambling with the money of depositors \u2014 gambling with depositors\u2019 checking accounts and savings accounts. That ending of Glass-Steagall set the groundwork for building the bubble which ended with the 2008 economic crash. Both Clintons have been against restoring Glass-Steagall, but Sanders forced this into the platform, even though a party\u2019s platform is pure PR, no real<\/i> policy-statement. This was purely Bernie\u2019s<\/i> statement, not at all Hillary\u2019s. (In fact, at the very same time she did this merely nominal act, she selected as her VP pick Senator Tim Kaine, who is a longtime agent for Wall Street and international corporations, and who just before she selected him, was the subject of an article by Zach Carter at Huffington Post, on July 20th, headlined \u201cTim Kaine Calls To Deregulate Banks As He Campaigns To Be Clinton\u2019s VP\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Kaine also had provided one of the 60 votes<\/span><\/a> to pass Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, the enabling act for ultimate passage of Obama\u2019s TPP, which will give international corporations unprecedented power if passed. Fast Track needed 60 votes in order to pass, and that\u2019s exactly what it got; each of those 60 votes, including Tim Kaine\u2019s, was essential for it. Hillary supported Fast Track<\/span><\/a>. Clearly, she also will deregulate further the financial firms; what her husband did in 1999 wasn\u2019t bad enough to suit her. With this VP pick, she was stabbing Sanders in the back, right at the start of the Democratic National Convention.)<\/span><\/p>\n

When Bill Clinton ended Glass-Steagall, it was by his signing a piece of legislation titled the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act<\/span><\/a>, and all three of those names attached to it were Republicans<\/i> \u2014 this was the fulfillment, the very culmination, of a longtime Republican Party effort to end Glass-Steagall. Bill Clinton was a right-wing Democrat (though not as far-right as Hillary) who, by moving the Democratic Party to the right, forced the Republican Party even farther to the right than it had been, in order for Republican candidates to be able to continue to attract conservative voters. Barack Obama has perfected this strategy (of moving America\u2019s political center toward the right) even further. Hillary Clinton would carry it much farther still. The congressional vote on Gramm-Leach-Bliley occurred near the end of Bill Clinton\u2019s Presidency, by which time, there was almost as high a percentage of congressional Democrats who voted to repeal that Democratic Party (FDR) milestone law as there was of Republicans who voted to repeal it, but only Republicans would attach their names<\/i> to this far-right bill. Gramm-Leach-Bliley was a sell-out to Wall Street. Hillary Clinton always supported strongly that sell-out; Bernie forced her now to nominally<\/i> oppose it.<\/span><\/p>\n

That same Morning Consult article also reported that, \u201cPaul Manafort, campaign chairman of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, told reporters in Cleveland today that the Republican platform will include language calling for the reinstatement of the law that was repealed in 1999.\u201d That was shocking news. <\/span><\/p>\n

When Donald Trump forced into the Republican platform a restoration of the Democratic Glass-Steagall Act, this was his<\/i> statement, not something that somebody else forced upon him. He knew that doing this would antagonize Wall Street<\/span><\/a>, but he did it anyway. Trump actually wants to \u2018break up the big banks\u2019. He would allow the traditional Republican lower-class voter-base favorites of banning abortions, etc. (he needs those people\u2019s votes<\/i> in order to win), but he wouldn\u2019t allow Gramm-Leach-Bliley to continue (he apparently doesn\u2019t think he\u2019ll need those people\u2019s money<\/i> in order to win).<\/span><\/p>\n

On 9 August 2016, the far-right American Enterprise Institute headlined \u201cHow Can Trump Support Deregulation and Glass-Steagall?\u201d<\/span><\/a> and opened by saying, \u201cThe Republican platform\u2019s proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall is hard to understand, even in the confused policy mishmash created by Donald Trump. The best interpretation is that it\u2019s an awkward outreach to the disappointed \u2018progressive\u2019 supporters of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The worst is that it calls into question whether Donald Trump really supports financial deregulation. The key problem for those Republicans who are now warily supporting their presidential nominee is that it is not clear where he will lead the party in this election \u2014 and the country \u2014 if he wins.\u201d<\/i> That\u2019s precisely true. Conservatives view this with alarm. By contrast, few progressives have yet been equally smart, to even recognize that it exists \u2014 the fact that Donald Trump is, perhaps, as much of a closeted progressive, as Hillary Clinton is a closeted fascist (servant of international corporations, their chosen government dictator).<\/span><\/p>\n

The AEI article continued: \u201cBut how can we believe any of this [Trump\u2019s anti-regulatory statements]? More than anything else, the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall suggests that the government, and not private decision-making, should determine the structure of the economy. One can\u2019t believe in the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and still believe in the repeal or significant modification of Dodd-Frank. It\u2019s like saying free markets work, but price controls can help.\u201d <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The answer to that is: Trump recognizes \u201cthat the government, and not private decision-making, should determine the structure of the economy,\u201d and that this is one of the fundamental reasons government even exists \u2014 to establish \u201cthe rules of the road\u201d<\/i> for the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 28 January 2016, Chris Arnade headlined in Britain\u2019s Guardian<\/i>, \u201cI worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he wrote: “Ask anyone who has spent the last two decades on Wall Street which politicians have worked for them the hardest and most will grudgingly admit it\u2019s the Clintons.\u201d Those millions of dollars didn\u2019t come from Occupy Wall Street \u2014 they came from Wall Street.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any really well-informed progressive knows that Dodd-Frank was largely a sell-out to the mega-corporations, which competitively gain, from the enormously complex Dodd-Frank Act, a huge advantage against the smaller firms, because the more complex a regulatory law is, the more that the required paperwork to comply with it will cripple small firms and so provide added competitive advantage to large firms (for which such paperwork is inevitably a far smaller percentage of their total costs of doing business). Dodd-Frank is a Wall Street monstrosity, and AEI knows it, but they\u2019re appalled that the Republican Presidential nominee stands against the mega-firms that pay AEI\u2019s bills. This is not something that AEI is accustomed to, from a Republican Presidential nominee. After all: the Dodd-Frank Act was Barack Obama\u2019s law he wanted to pass in order to placate Democrats who were demanding restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act. It\u2019s not something that a progressive would support. It was the way to avoid doing what progressives wanted to be done \u2014 restoring Glass-Steagall. (Similarly: Obamacare was the way for Obama to avoid pushing a single-payer health insurance plan, such as by opening Medicare to everyone.) <\/span><\/p>\n

The AEI commentary closed: \u201cThe Trump proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall \u2014 only a technical idea of no particular consequence to most American voters \u2014 has major implications for the credibility of the candidate in whom so many Republicans have now placed their trust. Like the canary in the coal mine, it\u2019s small but significant.\u201d<\/i> They know that though the public don\u2019t pay attention to such things (the things that are important), the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall is an enormous threat to the ability of America\u2019s billionaires to gamble with the money in the public\u2019s checking accounts and savings accounts \u2014 their ability to take the gambling-profits and to leave the government holding the bag in the event that those aristocrats\u2019 gambles don\u2019t pay off (like the Wall Street bailouts in 2008). They favor \u2018socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor\u2019. So does the Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton; and, thus, AEI is part of the Republican Party elite\u2019s move away from Trump, toward Hillary. They\u2019re increasingly recognizing such \u201ccanaries in the coal mines,\u201d from Trump. Progressive Democratic voters should recognize it too, before they help elect Wall Street\u2019s favorite candidate by not<\/i> voting for Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

2:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders has fought consistently against Obama\u2019s mega-\u2018trade\u2019 deals. Hillary consistently favored them.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton was instrumental in getting the \u201cFast Track Trade Promotion Authority\u201d law approved by congressional Democrats, and that\u2019s the enabling law which now makes likely the ability of Obama to get his TPP \u2018trade\u2019 treaty with Pacific countries passed into law<\/a><\/span> during the upcoming \u201clame duck\u201d session of Congress, November 9th through January 3rd. She was a part of it, and she has always acted behind the scenes to push for passage of such treaties, including her own husband\u2019s NAFTA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump has passionately condemned those treaties, and is urging members of Congress to vote against TPP if and when Obama tries to get it passed into law right after the November 8th elections (which is when members of Congress are maximally willing to do what their funders want and their voters oppose).<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary’s 2003\u00a0Living History<\/i>\u00a0(p. 182) actually\u00a0bragged\u00a0about her husband\u2019s having passed NAFTA, and she said: \u201cCreating a free trade zone in North America \u2014 the largest free trade zone in the world \u2014 would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our country was reaping the\u00a0benefits, not the burdens, of globalization.\u201d This was one of, supposedly,\u00a0her\u00a0proudest achievements, which were (p. 231) \u201cBill\u2019s successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA.\u201d But Hillary in her 2008 primary campaign against Obama was demanding that he apologise for his campaign flyer\u2019s having said: \u201cOnly Barack Obama\u00a0fought NAFTA and other bad trade deals.\u201d That statement was just a fact.\u00a0(Only after Obama started his second Presidential term in 2012 did he staff-up for, and start an operation to institute, mega-\u2018trade\u2019 agreements that are much bigger, and much worse, even than NAFTA. For that purpose, he hired Michael Froman<\/span><\/a>, who had been the Clinton-operative and longtime Obama friend who had personally introduced Obama in 2004 to the top people on Wall Street who had financed the Clintons\u2019 political careers.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On 20 March 2008, the day after Hillary finally released her schedule during her White House years, The\u00a0Nation<\/i>\u2019s John Nichols blogged \u201cClinton Lie Kills Her Credibility on Trade Policy\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he said: \u201cNow that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents\u00a0released this week that [the] former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; … now that we know she was in the thick of the maneuvering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement; … now that we know from official records\u00a0of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that \u2018her remarks were\u00a0totally pro-NAFTA\u2019 and that \u2018there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time\u2019; … what should we make of Clinton\u2019s campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The next day, Jennifer Parker at Jake Tapper\u2019s \u201cPolitical Punch\u201d blog, headlined \u201cFrom the Fact Check Desk: The Clinton Campaign Misrepresents Clinton NAFTA Meeting\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and she reported: \u201cI have now talked to three former Clinton Administration officials whom I trust who tell me\u00a0that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton opposed the idea of introducing NAFTA before health care, but expressed no reservations in public or private about the substance of NAFTA. Yet the Clinton campaign continues to propagate this myth that she fought NAFTA.\u201d Hillary continued this lie\u00a0even after it had been repeatedly and soundly exposed to be a lie. Her behavior in this regard was reminiscent of George W. Bush\u2019s statements on WMD in Iraq, and on many other issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only a sucker would believe Hillary\u2019s statements in which she says she has changed her mind and now opposes TPP. She knows that when she helped Obama to win Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, she had the only impact on that matter which she will ever have, and that it\u2019s because of that law, which she helped Obama to pass, that TPP might be approved in Congress even before the next President enters the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those \u2018trade\u2019 deals are actually transfers of national sovereignty to international corporations. TPP, if it passes into law will be the biggest and worst such of them all, even worse than NAFTA \u2014 it would virtually end democracy in America<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

3:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors working with Russia against jihadists in Syria. Hillary opposes that.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump says: \u201cThe approach of fighting Assad and ISIS simultaneously\u00a0was madness, and idiocy. They\u2019re fighting each other and\u00a0yet we\u2019re\u00a0fighting both of them. You know, we were fighting both of them. I think\u00a0that our far bigger problem than Assad is ISIS, I\u2019ve always\u00a0felt that.\u00a0Assad is, you know I\u2019m not saying Assad is a good man, \u2019cause he\u2019s not,\u00a0but our far greater problem is not Assad, it\u2019s ISIS. \u2026 I think, you can\u2019t be fighting\u00a0two\u00a0people that are fighting each other, and fighting them together. You\u00a0have to pick one or the other.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Assad is allied with Russia against the Sauds, so the U.S. (in accord with a policy that George Herbert Walker Bush initiated on 24 February 1990 and which has been carried out by all subsequent U.S. Presidents<\/span><\/a>) is determined to overthrow Assad, but Trump is firmly opposed to that policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Months before that, Trump had said<\/a><\/span>: \u201cI think Assad is a bad guy, a very bad guy, all\u00a0right? Lots of people killed. I think we are backing people\u00a0we have no idea who they are. The rebels, we call them the\u00a0rebels, the patriotic rebels. We have no idea. A lot of people\u00a0think, Hugh, that they are ISIS. We have to do one thing at a time. We can’t be fighting ISIS\u00a0and fighting Assad.\u00a0Assad is fighting ISIS. He is fighting\u00a0ISIS. Russia is fighting now ISIS.\u00a0And Iran is fighting ISIS. We have to do one thing at a time. We can’t go \u2014 and I\u00a0watched Lindsey Graham, he said, I have been here for 10\u00a0years fighting. Well, he will be there with that thinking for\u00a0another 50 years. He won’t be able to solve the problem. We have to get rid of ISIS first. After we get rid of ISIS, we’ll\u00a0start thinking about it. But we can’t be fighting Assad. And\u00a0when you’re fighting Assad, you are fighting Russia, you’re\u00a0fighting \u2014 you’re fighting a lot of different groups. But we can’t be fighting everybody at one time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In that same debate (15 December 2015) he also said: \u201cIn my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to\u00a0topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if\u00a0we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix\u00a0our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our\u00a0airports and all of the other problems we’ve had, we\u00a0would’ve been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now. We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle\u00a0East, we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity.\u00a0The\u00a0people that have been killed, the people that have wiped\u00a0away, and for what?\u00a0It’s not like we had victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total\u00a0and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5\u00a0trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States,\u00a0on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything\u00a0else that are all falling apart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His thinking about this matter is in the same direction as Bernie Sanders\u2019s but far more fully thought-out, with the connections being made in a prominent way even to domestic spending. If there is anything that is clearly and carefully thought-out in Trump\u2019s policy-positions \u2014 and war-peace and the avoidance of precipitating a nuclear war is the very biggest single issue of all \u2014 then this issue is it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here was the debate-segment about this issue between Bernie and Hillary:<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton, in a debate with Bernie on 19 December 2015, argued for her proposal that the U.S. impose in Syria a \u201cno-fly zone\u201d where Russians were dropping bombs on the imported jihadists who have been trying to overthrow and replace Assad:\u00a0“I am advocating the no-fly zone both because I think it would help us on the\u00a0ground to protect Syrians; I’m also advocating it because I think it gives us\u00a0some leverage in our conversations with Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0She said there that allowing the jihadists to overthrow Assad \u201cwould help us on the ground to protect Syrians,\u201d somehow; and, also, that, somehow, shooting down Russia\u2019s planes in Syria (the \u201cno-fly zone\u201d) “gives us\u00a0some leverage in our conversations with Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders\u2019s response to that was: “I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a\u00a0little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences\u00a0might be. Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire\u00a0region. Yes, we could get rid of Gadhafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a\u00a0vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would\u00a0create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS. So I think, yeah,\u00a0regime change is easy, getting rid of dictators is easy. But before you do that,\u00a0you’ve got to think about what happens the day after.\u00a0And in my view, what we\u00a0need to do is put together broad coalitions to understand that we’re not going to\u00a0have a political vacuum filled by terrorists, that, in fact, we are going to move\u00a0steadily \u2014 and maybe slowly \u2014 toward democratic societies, in terms of Assad, a\u00a0terrible dictator. But\u00a0I think in Syria the primary focus now must be on\u00a0destroying ISIS and working over the years to get rid of Assad. That’s the\u00a0secondary issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

4:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says jihadists are America\u2019s top foe. Hillary says both jihadists and Russia are equally anti-American, equally dangerous to America. Hillary is simply a neoconservative; Sanders isn\u2019t. Her having voted to invade Iraq was no mistake on her part; it was consistent with her entire international outlook, all of which is neoconservative, like invading Libya, Syria, etcetera. Bernie\u2019s vote against invading Iraq was likewise consistent with his international outlook.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly said that jihadists are America\u2019s #1 foe. He constantly says that fundamentalist Muslims \u2014 jihadists, such as have been sent out and paid by the Sauds<\/span><\/a> to countries around the world to punish and conquer people who don\u2019t share the Sauds\u2019 particular fundamentalist faith \u2014 are the biggest danger to American national security. On this basis, Trump says that America\u2019s invasion of Iraq was wrong:<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump turned the conversation back to Iraq.\u00a0“Where were the weapons of mass destruction, Brian?” Trump asked Kilmeade.\u00a0Again, Kilmeade defended the former president: [Former Secretary of State] “Madeleine Albright said they were there, [former President] Bill Clinton said they were there, [former French President] Jacques Chirac said they were there, the Portuguese prime minster said they were\u00a0there, [former Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak said they were there.\u201d\u00a0Trump retorted: “Well, they weren’t there, they didn’t find them. They found nothing.\u00a0Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi\u00a0\u2014 take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

He also said: \u201cSaddam Hussein\u00a0was a bad\u00a0guy but he was good at one thing: Killing terrorists. He killed\u00a0terrorists like nobody, all right? Now it\u2019s Harvard of terrorism. You\u00a0want to be a terrorist you go to Iraq. But he killed terrorists. O.K.,\u00a0so we destroyed that.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Leaders of the Republican Party condemned him for saying this<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Intercept headlined on 29 February 2016, \u201cNeoconservatives Declare War on Trump\u201d<\/span><\/a>. On 21 March 2016, the Washington Post<\/i> bannered, \u201cTrump Questions Need for NATO, Outlines Noninterventionist Foreign Policy\u201d<\/span><\/a>. On 23 March 2016, William Greider headlined in The Nation<\/i>, \u201cDonald Trump Could Be the Military-Industrial Complex\u2019s Worst Nightmare\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is called by some people \u2018non-interventionist\u2019, but actually it\u2019s more correctly called opposition to the continuing take-over of the U.S. government by the military-industrial complex. Trump says: \u201cRight now we\u2019re protecting, we\u2019re basically protecting Japan, and we\u00a0are, every time North Korea raises its head, you know,\u00a0we get calls\u00a0from Japan and we get calls from everybody else, and \u2018Do something.\u2019 And\u00a0there\u2019ll be a point at which we\u2019re just not going to be\u00a0able to do it\u00a0anymore. Now, does that [intervention] mean nuclear? It could mean nuclear. It\u2019s a very\u00a0scary nuclear world. Biggest problem, to me, in the\u00a0world, is nuclear,\u00a0and proliferation.\u201d<\/span><\/a> On the same basis, he especially wants to ratchet-down, not up (like Clinton does), the U.S. arms-race with Russia, which restoration of the \u2018Cold War\u2019 is beneficial to arms-makers and their investors, but not to anyone else. And he\u2019s especially against continuing our existing relationship with the Sauds, the royal family who own Saudi Arabia. He says: \u201cWe\u2019re not being reimbursed for the kind of tremendous service\u00a0that we\u2019re performing by protecting various\u00a0countries. Now Saudi\u00a0Arabia\u2019s one of them. I think if Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of\u00a0American protection, \u2026 I don\u2019t think it would be around. It would be, whether it was\u00a0internal or external, it wouldn\u2019t be around for\u00a0very long. And they\u2019re a\u00a0money machine, they\u2019re a monetary machine, and yet they don\u2019t reimburse\u00a0us the way we should be reimbursed. So\u00a0that\u2019s a real problem.\u201d<\/span><\/a> The Saud family, the royal owners of their nation, compete against the government of Russia as the leading suppliers of oil to the world. Russia\u2019s main export market was Europe, and the Sauds have wanted to replace Russia\u2019s oil and gas dominance there. The Saud family are also the world\u2019s leading buyer of weaponry. U.S. weapons-makers profit enormously from continuing this relationship \u2014 the Sauds buy America\u2019s weapons, and the U.S. joins the Sauds\u2019 wars, which are basically against the allies of Iran and of Russia, the Sauds\u2019 chief competitors. The Sauds helped us end the Soviet Union, by sending Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan etc. and creating Islamic terrorism<\/span><\/a>, both there and subsequently inside Russia, in Chechnia<\/span><\/a>. After King Fahd had a stroke in 1995, Osama bin Laden\u2019s advice was even sought by the Saud Princes to determine which of them should become the next king, and he supplied that advice to them in a letter, which was delivered by a private courier<\/span><\/a>. Since the U.S.-Saudi creation of Islamic terrorism<\/span><\/a> helped end the Soviet Union by 1991, the Sauds have been just a huge drain and embarrassment to America. Only the armaments firms benefit from continuing the campaign, now directed against Russia and its allies (such as were Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych<\/span><\/a>), instead of against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact (which are gone).<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump says: \u201cMany people in countries that you think are our allies, are giving ISIS\u00a0tremendous amounts of money and it\u2019s going through very dark banking\u00a0channels. And we should have stopped those banking channels long ago and\u00a0I think we\u2019ve done nothing to stop them, and that money is massive.\u00a0…\u00a0And money is coming in from\u00a0people that we think are our allies.\u201d<\/span><\/a> By \u201cour allies,\u201d he certainly means the Sauds<\/span><\/a>, but he might also be referring to the royal families of Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait<\/span><\/a>, all of whom likewise are competitors against Russia, and share essentially the same fundamentalist-Islamic faith the Sauds do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump is much more explicit about these things than Sanders has been, and Trump has been even so bold as to assert: \u201cI have two problems with NATO. No. 1, it\u2019s\u00a0obsolete. When\u00a0NATO was formed many decades ago we were a different country. There was\u00a0a different threat. Soviet Union was, the\u00a0Soviet Union, not Russia,\u00a0which was much bigger than Russia, as you know. And, it was certainly\u00a0much more powerful than even today\u2019s\u00a0Russia, although again you go back\u00a0into the weaponry. But, but \u2013 I said, I think NATO is obsolete, and I\u00a0think that \u2013 because I don\u2019t think \u2013\u00a0right now we don\u2019t have somebody\u00a0looking at terror, and we should be looking at terror. And you may want\u00a0to add and subtract from NATO in\u00a0terms of countries. But we have to be\u00a0looking at terror, because terror today is the big threat.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Though there was his usual incoherence \u2014 NATO is \u201cobsolete\u201d but \u201cyou may want to add and subtract from NATO in terms of countries\u201d (instead of to end it) \u2014 his statement isn\u2019t nearly as incoherent as, for example, Hillary\u2019s proposing to bring peace to Syria by going to war there against Russia. And he clarified his view further when he went on to say of NATO, that not only are its member-countries wrong for today\u2019s challenges, but that \u201cit was set up to talk about the Soviet Union,\u201d and the big problem today is terrorism, and \u201cI think,\u00a0probably a new institution maybe would be better for that than using\u00a0NATO which was not meant for that.\u201d So: he actually knows<\/i> that it\u2019s got to be ended. A military alliance that\u2019s \u201cobsolete\u201d is dangerous. Perhaps no U.S. Presidential candidate has spoken in such depth about foreign affairs. In this matter, he has delved far beyond the fashionable political platitutudes, to the basic realities, which no politician wants to talk about. Doing this requires guts. He\u2019s correct not only regarding TPP etc., but regarding fundamental military strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 18 May 2016, the Republican Robert Kagan, scion of (along with the Kristols) the most famous neoconservative family, and also the husband of Victoria Nuland (Hillary\u2019s friend who ran Obama\u2019s coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a> and installed racist fascists or nazis into control there<\/span><\/a>), headlined in the Washington Post<\/i>, \u201cThis Is How Fascism Comes to America\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he opened, with his usual sanctimonious pomposity, \u201cThe Republican Party\u2019s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a\u00a0normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so\u00a0perilous to the republic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, the May\/June 2016 issue of Politico<\/i> magazine headlined \u201cThe Kremlin\u2019s Candidate\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and Michael Crowley, formerly of The New Republic<\/i> (the top Democratic Party neoconservative magazine), portrayed Trump in the way that Joseph R. McCarthy had been famous in the old days for portraying people such as Robert La Follette Jr.<\/span><\/a>: as being a traitor. The far-right \u2018media-watchdog\u2019 organization, Accuracy In Media (AIM), headlined on 20 April 2016, 25 years after the end of the Soviet Union, \u201cTrump Hires \u2018Fixer\u2019 With Soviet Connections\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Hillary Clinton\u2019s shills are all over the newsmedia proclaiming Trump to be Putin\u2019s fool, or Putin\u2019s secret agent, or even to be both at once<\/span><\/a> (which simply exposes how little respect they have for the people who believe their lies).<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s basic message is that the actual Cold War against the Soviet Union and its communism ended in 1991 when the U.S.S.R. and its Warsaw Pact ended, and that until Islamic terrorism arose after that, America really had no enemy after the end of communism \u2014 that Islamic jihadists are<\/i> America\u2019s real enemy, and Mitt Romney was profoundly wrong<\/i> to allege that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Mitt supported the invasion of Iraq, just as did Hillary. Hillary was also the one member of the Obama Administration who most effectively argued for and persuaded President Obama to invade Libya.<\/span><\/a> (Both Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein and Libya\u2019s Muammar Gaddafi were friendly toward Russia, which neoconservatives especially and viscerally hate. Thus, there was Hillary\u2019s famous \u201cWe came, we saw, he died \u2014 ha, ha!!\u201d<\/span><\/a>) Trump says something that Sanders himself has merely hinted at: NATO\u2019s emphasis against Russia \u2014 the very basis<\/i> of NATO \u2014 is, after 1991, outdated, and needs to be replaced by an entirely new U.S. defense-strategy, one directed instead against jihadists, no longer against Russia, which isn\u2019t even communist anymore, and doesn\u2019t even have the Soviet Union\u2019s Warsaw Pact military alliance anymore. He\u2019s looking long-term, and saying that national security against jihadists is a real concern, but that the war against Russia needs to stop and has no reason to continue, and that, to the contrary, the U.S. and Russia have shared interests in eliminating jihadists and jihadism. He says we\u2019ll need to work together in order to end Islamic terrorism, which will mean a profound change in today\u2019s Islamic world \u2014 a change that will benefit Moslems even more than anyone else, but that will also benefit us enormously. The idea of fighting both jihadists and Russians makes no sense at all to him: \u201cYou can\u2019t be fighting two people. \u2026 You have to pick one or the other.\u201d That\u2019s a stronger statement than Sanders\u2019s (\u201cI think in Syria the primary focus now must be on\u00a0destroying ISIS and working over the years to get rid of Assad. That’s the\u00a0secondary issue.\u201d), but it\u2019s in exactly the same direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already, the Obama Administration and NATO have pushed the anti-Russian agenda, and are expanding NATO, to such an extent that \u201cThe US leadership has done everything it could to push the situation to the brink of disaster.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Beyond that brink is nuclear war. A potential ally in the global war against jihadists is thus instead \u201cwithout question, our number one geopolitical foe,\u201d and declared by Obama to be the world\u2019s most \u201caggressive\u201d<\/span><\/a> nation. That\u2019s being said of a nation which wants to be America\u2019s strongest ally, in America\u2019s \u2014 and Russia\u2019s \u2014 real<\/i> war: against jihadism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, the U.S. military are now starting to push for the necessity of going to war as soon as possible against China, so as not to permit the Chinese to arm themselves enough to be able to survive and remain an independent power<\/span><\/a>. Trump has said that as President he will respect China\u2019s independence, though he will negotiate with them a new agreement regarding trade between the two countries. Neoconservatives, by contrast, are only slightly less hostile toward China than they are toward Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

5:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders has been consistently opposed to fossil fuels. Hillary has aggressively supported them.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump, like all Republican Presidential contenders (except for Ted Cruz), is no longer outright, and with certainty, denying that global warming is a real problem. On 11 February 2016, MSNBC headlined about this, \u201cHow Trump and company warmed to climate change\u201d<\/span><\/a>. However, no Republican Presidential candidate can afford to speak about the necessity to end reliance on fossil fuels, which constitute that Party\u2019s chief and most reliable financial support. A Democrat, such as Hillary Clinton, can afford to speak about it, even if, like Clinton, the given candidate is actually also in the bag for fossil fuel companies. The Trump-Clinton rhetorical difference on global warming can\u2019t be evaluated in a vacuum that\u2019s devoid of these funding-realities. During all of Hillary\u2019s time in public office, she has \u2014 by her actions<\/i> though not always by her words \u2014 been a reliable supporter of fossil fuels, and fossil-fuels companies have responded with their money<\/span><\/a>. Trump has no policy-record at all, but only rhetoric (pro-fossil-fuels, of course), and even his rhetoric hasn\u2019t been consistently Republican on this quintessentially Republican issue. The biggest organizer of fossil-fuels political donations, the Koch brothers, are directing all of the Presidential-campaign cash to the Clinton campaign, none to Trump<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 17 July 2015, Paul Blumenthal and Kate Sheppard at Huffington Post bannered,\u00a0\u201cHillary Clinton’s Biggest Campaign Bundlers Are Fossil Fuel Lobbyists\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and the sub-head was “Clinton’s top campaign financiers are linked to Big Oil, natural gas and the Keystone pipeline.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her record does show that she represents those lobbyists<\/span><\/a>, not the public. As I had\u00a0reported previously<\/span><\/a>, the Hillary Clinton State Department\u2019s two environmental impact statements on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline were triple-hoaxes that totally and scandalously ignored the proposed pipeline\u2019s impact on climate-change but that did discuss the impact of climate-change on the proposed pipeline (as if anybody even cared about that); neither of the two studies had even one climatologist on the team that prepared the report; and the State Department didn\u2019t do either of the reports themselves, but instead hired two oil-industry contractors that were proposed to the State Department by TransCanada Corporation, which is the company that was proposing to build and own the pipeline. So: those \u2018studies’ were rigged to enable the President to approve the Pipeline \u2014 which he ultimately decided not<\/i> \u00a0to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, on 2 May 2013, Steve Horn headlined,\u00a0“Digging Into TransCanada’s Lobbying History,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he found that, indeed, Hillary Clinton was surrounded by TransCanada lobbyists while the reports were being prepared by TransCanada\u2019s chosen oil-industry contractors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton is also a big champion of fracking. In September 2014, Mariah Blake bannered\u00a0“How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold\u00a0Fracking to the World,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “As part of its expanded energy mandate, the State Department hosted\u00a0conferences on fracking from\u00a0Thailand to Botswana. It sent US experts to\u00a0work alongside foreign officials as they developed shale\u00a0gas programs.\u201d The energy-companies didn\u2019t pay for those sales-calls by the U.S. Secretary of State; taxpayers did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Clinton verbally endorses the view that global warming is the world\u2019s biggest problem, she doesn\u2019t care about it in her actual actions as a public official. It\u2019s mere rhetoric to her. Trump seems more honest, by saying<\/span><\/a>: \u201cWhen people talk global warming, I say the\u00a0global warming that we have to be careful of is the nuclear global\u00a0warming [blowing up the world]. Single biggest problem that the world has. Power of weaponry\u00a0today is beyond anything ever thought of, or even, you know, it\u2019s\u00a0unthinkable, the power. You look at Hiroshima and you can multiply that\u00a0times many, many times, is what you have today. And to me, it\u2019s the\u00a0single biggest, it\u2019s the single biggest problem.\u201d Furthermore, that statement was his response to an interviewer\u2019s question, \u201cWould you be\u00a0willing to have the U.S. be the first to use nuclear\u00a0weapons in a\u00a0confrontation with adversaries?\u201d Trump\u2019s response indicated that the nuclear-war issue brought to his mind the issue of global warming: it showed that the mental association in his mind is that these two issues are the two most important issues that a U.S. President must address. He answered the question about nuclear war, by asserting that nuclear war is an even bigger concern for him than is global warming. That\u2019s the correct priority, but it also shows that Trump is no conservative when the issue is global warming. No conservative thinks \u201cglobal warming\u201d when being asked about nuclear war.<\/span><\/p>\n

In order for Trump to hold his conservative base, he must include among his nominal \u2018economic advisors\u2019 some rabid anti-environmentalists. One of them is the libertarian Stephen Moore, chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, and founder of the Club for Growth. On 10 August 2016, Morning Consult bannered, \u201cTrump Adviser Not Sweating Consequences of Promised Coal Boom\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and Moore criticized Trump for not being sufficiently pro-fracking. Moore even condemned environmentalists by saying \u201cFracking reduces global warming, you morons!\u201d Of course, that statement of his is false. He then lambasted Barack Obama: \u201cI think he believes totally in this lunatic idea that somehow everything\u2019s going to be underwater\u00a0in 20 years. \u2026 I think Obama is the most fanatical politician I\u2019ve ever met on global warming.\u201d The kicker in the article was this: \u201cHillary Clinton, however, appears to be \u2018less extreme\u2019 than Obama in opposing fossil fuels, Moore said.\u201d Moore, a \u2018former\u2019 lobbyist himself, knows that she\u2019s in the fossil-fuels industries\u2019 pockets. Trump, on the other hand, is just a question-mark. Clearly, Trump is seen as the enemy, by the biggest anti-environmentalist political spenders of all: the strongly pro-Hillary Koch brothers<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, though the issue of global warming wasn\u2019t raised by the interviewer or anyone else in the September 26th U.S. Presidential nominees\u2019 debate between Hillary and Donald<\/span><\/a>; Trump, and he alone, chose to bring it up<\/i> during the discussion of nuclear war, when Hillary said there that, \u201chis cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons is so deeply troubling. That is the number-one threat we face in the world.\u201d He replied: \u201cI agree with her on one thing. The single\u00a0greatest problem the world has is nuclear\u00a0armament, nuclear weapons, not global\u00a0warming, like you think and your \u2014 your\u00a0president thinks.\u00a0Nuclear is the single greatest threat.\u201d Yet again, he was showing the link that exists in his mind between these two premier issues; he was showing an implicit acknowledgement that though nuclear war is the top<\/i> threat, global warming \u2014 if it is occurring \u2014 would be #2. If he becomes President, then not only the scientific consensus that it\u2019s happening and is human-caused<\/span><\/a> would be constantly pressing in upon him to acknowledge this reality publicly, but his \u2018yielding to it\u2019 and \u2018changing his mind\u2019 (if that\u2019s really what it would be) about it, will be far more effective at reducing the shockingly high percentage of the American public who deny this terrible reality, than would a President Clinton\u2019s acknowledgement that it\u2019s real. It could cause the entire Koch-Exxon-etc. campaign of lies about it to collapse (much as happened with regard to the lies that the tobacco industry so successfully had peddled for so long about smoking). The U.S. would become far more cooperative with the international movement against fossil fuels than this country ever has been.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fossil-fuels industries are smart to be pouring funds into ads against Trump<\/span><\/a>. They\u2019ve been doing that for a long time<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

6:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says that the system<\/i> is rigged. Hillary says that it\u2019s not.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump says, \u201cIt’s not just the political system that’s rigged, it’s the whole economy. \u2026 Hillary Clinton’s message is old and tired. Her message is that things can’t change. My message is that things have to change.\u201d<\/span><\/a> That\u2019s basically the same message as Sanders was promoting<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

7:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders says the system is rigged specifically against the poor. Hillary says the problem that keeps people poor is instead<\/i> individual bigots \u2014 against Blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, etc. Not<\/i> the system itself. She is proud to represent the system. She\u2019s not against it. She\u2019s for it.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

On 18 March 2016, Jason Linkins at Huffington Post bannered \u201cHow To Explain Hillary Clinton\u2019s Fundraiser With Failed Theranos\u00a0CEO Elizabeth Holmes: Scenes from the wreckage of the Democratic party\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he reported that, \u201c\u2018At some\u00a0point,\u2019 [Thomas] Frank tells the Huffington Post,\u00a0\u2018[the Democrats] decided that\u00a0they weren\u2019t all that interested in the concerns of working people\u00a0anymore.\u2019\u00a0Rather, Frank says, they became fixated on \u2018the concerns of\u00a0the professional class, people with advanced\u00a0degrees, people at the very\u00a0top of our economic society.\u2019\u201d Those are the voters whom Hillary Clinton\u2019s policies aim to please. Trump, like Bernie, is pitching to working people. By making economic regulations so complex that only large corporations can afford the costs of compliance with them, more lawyers are needed, and more accountants are needed. By reducing and blocking taxpayer-funded healthcare, more doctors and more bill-collection agencies and more lobbyists are hired at higher salaries, in order to produce any given quality-level of healthcare. <\/span><\/p>\n

8:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders\u2019s political career has been financed by small-dollar donations. Hillary\u2019s has been financed by mega-donations.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s stated positions are basically like Sanders\u2019s: Trump has stated:<\/span><\/p>\n

“SuperPACs are a disaster. They’re a scam. They cause dishonesty. And you\u00a0better get rid of them because they are causing a lot of bad decisions\u00a0to be made by some very\u00a0good people.\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. \u2026 And that\u2019s a broken\u00a0system.\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As regards proposed solutions, Trump\u2019s focus is different from Sanders\u2019s, which proposes both limits on donations, and also total transparency of mega-donations so that the public will accurately know who actually was behind each particular mega-donation. Trump recognizes that the Republicans on the Supreme Court have eliminated the former (size-limits), and that they have also opened up a huge door to increased non<\/i>-transparency, regarding whom the actual mega-donors to a candidate are. Trump has said:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[JORGE RAMOS]: But should it be limited legally \u2014 TRUMP: I don’t know about the limits. I think the most important\u00a0thing is transparency. You have to know who you’re dealing with. And\u00a0right now you don’t. You don’t. And I’m\u00a0talking about PACs in all\u00a0fairness. I have good friends who like to put money into PACs. Many\u00a0friends, I have some enemies too, by the way. But I have many friends.\u00a0They\u00a0put money in PACs. And you need transparency. You need to know who\u00a0is putting up what. So when they start making deals in a year or two\u00a0years or three years, you know\u00a0what is happening.”<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton has opposed Sanders\u2019s proposal regarding limiting the size of campaign-contributions, and she has been vague on everything else except\u00a0\u201cOverturn Citizens United\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0which is one of the Republican judges\u2019 decisions (starting with Buckley v. Valeo<\/i> in 1976) that unleashed mega-donations by declaring that in political campaigns, money is first-amendment-protected \u201cspeech,\u201d and that therefore the more money that\u2019s spent advertising any candidate, the more \u201cfree speech\u201d there is, and therefore, the better it is. In other words: Clinton has no actual<\/i> position on money-in-politics (the idea that \u2018money is speech\u2019), she has only empty rhetoric, though she\u2019s long been in public office collecting mega-donations. Clinton made it all the way through the primaries against Sanders and never even asserted (as if one can even trust what she says) a coherent position on the matter, other than the bumper-sticker \u201cOverturn Citizens United,\u201d to please liberal fools to vote for her. Meanwhile, the lawyer Glenn Greenwald has pointed out that Hillary was lying, even on the little she says about Citizens United \u2014<\/i> the one money-in-politics decision she condemns. Greenwald wrote:\u00a0\u201cThe Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court\u2019s conservatives: In Citizens United, the\u00a0right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of\u00a0independent\u00a0expenditures (i.e., ones not\u00a0coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of\u00a0direct campaign donations\u00a0by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid\u00a0to an individual politician\u00a0shortly before and after\u00a0that person holds massive political power.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Donald Trump has spoken clearly against all of that \u2014 he opposes, in principle, the type of opacity in donations, which the Democratic Party under Clinton encourages; and he also opposes, in principle, the opacity (such as Clinton\u2019s being allowed to hide from the public her 91 paid secret speeches to mega-corporations and to their lobbying organizations). Trump, like Bernie, says the system itself is corrupt and corruptiing. The corruptors don\u2019t like him much more than they liked Bernie. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/i> headlined on 1 March 2016, \u201cGOP Super PAC\u2019s Ad Portrays Donald Trump as a Predatory Huckster\u201d<\/span><\/a>. The next day, Politico reported:<\/span><\/p>\n

The effort [by Republican mega-donors against Trump] is centered on the recently formed Our Principles PAC, the latest big-money group airing anti-Trump ads, which is run by GOP strategist Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012.\u00a0The group, initially funded by $3 million from Marlene Ricketts, wife of billionaire T.D. Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, wants to saturate the expensive Florida airwaves ahead of the state\u2019s March 15 primary with\u00a0hopes of denying Trump a victory that could crush the hopes of home state Sen. Marco Rubio.\u00a0A conference call on Tuesday to solicit donors for the group included Paul Singer, billionaire founder of hedge fund Elliott Management; Hewlett Packard President and CEO Meg Whitman; and Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, one of Joe and Marlene Ricketts\u2019 three sons. Wealthy Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein is also expected to help fund the effort. Jim Francis, a big GOP donor and bundler from Texas, was\u00a0also on the phone call on Tuesday<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

These people are now donating to Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign<\/span><\/a>, and were donating to it even during the primaries<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/i> reported<\/span><\/a> that \u201cMoney Raised as of June 30\u201d of 2016, produced the following ratios, advantaging Clinton over Trump:<\/span><\/p>\n

Ratio of Hillary Clinton Campaign $ divided by Donald Trump campaign $ = 3.21<\/span><\/p>\n

Ratio of Clinton Super PACs $ divided by Trump Super PACs $ = 12.71<\/span><\/p>\n

18% of Clinton-campaign money came from donations of $200 or less. 27% of Trump-campaign money did. But that 27\/18 ratio, of Trump\/Clinton small donations, under-<\/i>represents the true extent to which Trump was being backed by small donations, because Super PACS are almost entirely big-money donations, and an additional<\/i> $106.8 million of Super PAC money helped Clinton\u2019s campaign, whereas an additional mere $8.4 million of Super PAC money helped Trump\u2019s campaign. Clearly: Clinton attracts the big money; Trump repels it. (He even condemns it.)<\/span><\/p>\n

With Trump, there is at least the possibility of a President who opposes the existing corrupt-and-corrupting system. With Clinton, there is a long and continuing, thoroughly convincing, record of her participating in, and sustaining, corruption in public office. Her top donors are employed by the companies that benefit the most from complexification of our laws, eliminating simplification, adding counter-productive bureacratization, which crushes everyone but the top 1%<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

9:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors every possible means of reducing the influence big-money donations to politicians has over politics. Hillary opposes that idea.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump during the Republican primaries was so averse to selling the Presidency to his fellow-billionaires, that he ran his campaign, against his competitors, on a virtual shoestring. After the primaries, he needs lots more money to campaign, especially against Hillary\u2019s campaign that\u2019s funded more heavily than any political campaign in history, from almost every special-interest group (and see here the list of closed-to-the-public speeches she\u2019s given to the various lobbying organizations<\/span><\/a>). She\u2019s offering the U.S. government for sale<\/span><\/a>. Trump is thus-far getting very few billionaires to pony up for his campaign<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s extraordinary: normally, Republican candidates get even more from mega-donations than Democratic candidates do. However, Trump\u2019s being starved by his fellow-billionaires means that he needs to rely even more heavily upon the Republican Party\u2019s grassroots voting base: especially fundamentalist Christians, gun-rights fanatics, and anti-immigrant voters. The more that he can rely upon Bernie\u2019s voters to win, the less he\u2019ll need to rely upon those traditional Republican groups. If Bernie\u2019s voters show up at the polls for him, this will greatly encourage a future President Trump to surprise the nation with how progressive he actually is. But he can\u2019t afford, right now, to make any overt policy-pitches to Bernie\u2019s voters, because that could scare away lots of the Republican voting-base he\u2019ll definitely need in order to win.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, Trump, unlike Sanders, is running in the traditional<\/i> big-money Party, the Republican Party. Though Sanders was able to be viable while categorically refusing any assistance from Super PACs, Trump wasn\u2019t, and isn\u2019t. Trump, if he wins, will pull the Republican Party toward the \u201cpeace and justice\u201d left; congressional Democrats will then need to move along with them in that same direction, in order to be able to retain their existing base. By contrast, a Clinton victory would move the Democratic Party to the right, and then congressional Republicans will need to move even farther to the right, in order to retain their<\/i> existing voting-base. To move America\u2019s center in the direction of progressivism, Trump is the clear choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton is the Democrats\u2019 deceiver-in-chief; she is actually the Democratic Party\u2019s Richard Nixon<\/span><\/a>. By contrast, the \u201chuckster\u201d Trump is, if anything, too honest for his own good. Maybe he thinks that he\u2019s a good-enough sheer salesman to be able to do that and still win, but he\u2019ll need a lot more support from Bernie-voters in order to make it happen. <\/span><\/p>\n

10:\u00a0 <\/span>Sanders favors socialized health insurance, like exists in the European nations that spend per-capita half what America does but have higher life-expectancy than America does. Hillary opposes that \u2014 she favors the existing profit-based system of health-care, and opposes the European system where basic healthcare is a right, no privilege (that\u2019s based only on ability-to-pay).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump says he favors taxpayer-paid healthcare for Americans who cannot afford to pay for the basic healthcare they need:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/i>Donald Trump:<\/i><\/b> By the way. Everybody’s\u00a0got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because\u00a0a lot of times\u00a0they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t\u00a0afford private.” But \u2014\u00a0<\/i>Scott Pelley:<\/i><\/b> Universal health care?\u00a0Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care\u00a0if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much\u00a0better than they’re\u00a0taken care of now.\u00a0<\/i>Scott Pelley:<\/i><\/b> The uninsured person is going to be taken care of how?\u00a0<\/i>Donald Trump:<\/i><\/b> They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a\u00a0deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what,\u00a0if this is probably \u2014\u00a0<\/i>Scott Pelley:<\/i><\/b> Make a deal? Who pays for it?\u00a0<\/i>Donald Trump:<\/i><\/b> \u2014 The government’s gonna pay for it. But we\u2019re going to save so much money on the other side.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what that \u201cso much money on the other side\u201d might refer to:<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0latest OECD data<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on healthcare costs show that the U.S. spends by far the world\u2019s highest percentage of GDP on healthcare, 16.9 percent; and also show that the average U.S. life expectancy is 78.7 years; by contrast, Canada spends 10.2 percent<\/span><\/a>, and their life expectancy is 81.0 years<\/span><\/a>. The OECD average expenditure is\u00a09.3 percent\u00a0<\/span><\/a>, and life expectancy is\u00a080.1 years<\/span><\/a>. So: the U.S. spends almost twice as high a percentage of GDP as every other OECD nation, and gets markedly inferior results. This makes the U.S. far less economically competitive than it otherwise would be; but, the healthcare industries finance conservative politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and all Republicans; so, those politicians don\u2019t like single-payer \u2014 it would take much of the excess profits out of exploiting the sick, and those excess profits help to fund their campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n

The American people\u2019s financial losses produce exceptional financial gains for the investors in healthcare-related stocks, and also inflate the pay for executives in those firms. This helps to fund lots of what conservatives such as Antonin Scalia lovingly call \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2014 campaign commercials.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the latest available data<\/a><\/span>, and they show that, still, the U.S. is somewhat worse than average, for quality of care, and astronomically higher than any nation on both per-capita healthcare costs, and the percentage of GDP that goes to healthcare costs. For examples: across 45 countries tabulated by the OECD, the U.S. healthcare-expenditure per capita was $8,713 and 16.4% of GDP, whereas the average OECD country paid $3,453 and 8.9% of GDP. France paid $4,124 and 10.9% of GDP, and Japan paid $3,713 and 10.2% of GDP. The U.S. also was tied with Brazil, Chile, and South Africa, for having the highest percentage of healthcare-costs that\u2019s paid privately rather than by the government.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, with our existing healthcare-for-profit, instead of healthcare-as-a-right, system, the U.S. ends up paying lots more than our competing nations, yet getting inferior results. (Apparently, postponing care until one is being rushed into an emergency-room is both atrociously poor care, and extremely expensive care. But it\u2019s the most profitable for the healthcare-industries.) <\/span><\/p>\n

Trump might have been referring to data such as those. If so, then he was correct about \u201cwe\u2019re going to save so much money on the other side.\u201d Hillary\u2019s statements against the European-Canadian-Japanese system \u2014 basic healthcare as a right, instead of as a privilege \u2014 are false, and she knows it, she simply lies (for money).<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary condemns Bernie Sanders\u2019 support of taxpayer-funded health isurance for all (or \u2018Medicare for all\u2019 or \u201csingle-payer\u201d health insurance). She says, “People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.\u201d (There is no \u2018theoretical debate\u2019: many of those other countries do retain a role for private insurance, but not as big a role as ours, and not the same role.) That CBS News story, 29 January 2016, by a reporter who clearly favored Hillary, was headlined \u201cHillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will \u2018never, ever\u2019 happen\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and that reporter summarized by saying, \u201cThe debate over health care underscores the difference between Clinton’s campaign pitch as a pragmatic, effecitve leader and Sander’s pitch as a candidate with vision,\u201d or, in other words, Clinton was saying, and CBS was simply assuming to be true, and not challenging at all: the U.S. must stay with its existing system, which produces lower life-expectancies and twice the cost; Bernie\u2019s belief that we can do what Europe, Japan, etc. have done, is impossible for Americans; our country is too corrupt for that, she\u2019s saying (and CBS reported without questioning or challenging). The CBS news-report continued by approvingly quoting Hillary: \u201c’As someone who has a little bit of experience standing up to the health insurance industry, that spent, you know, many, many millions of dollars attacking me, and probably will so again. \u2026 I think it’s important to point out that there are a lot of reasons we have the health care system we have today,\u2019 she said. \u2018I know how much money influences the political decision-making. \u2026 However, we started a system that had private health insurance.\u2019\u201d That news-report closed by quoting, also approvingly, Hillary\u2019s statement in 1994: \u201c\u2018If, for whatever reason, the Congress doesn’t pass health care reform, I believe, and I may be totally off base on this, but I believe that by the year 2000 we will have a single payer system,\u2019 she said. \u2018I don’t even think it’s a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single payer system will sweep the country. \u2026 It will be such a huge popular issue … that even if it’s not successful the first time, it will eventually be.\u2019\u201d Back in 1994, she was citing single-payer as being a threat<\/i> \u2014 never a goal<\/i>. Wall Street knows where she stands, even if her voters don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obamacare continues this status-quo, but adds, to it, more federal and state regulations, which make the system even more complex, and thereby further disadvantages small businesses, in their competing against big ones. Hillary Clinton likes Obamacare, and opposes single-payer health insurance<\/span><\/a>. Back in 2008, she said regarding both her own 1993 Hillarycare proposal, and her then-current 2008 campaign proposal: \u201cI never seriously considered a single payer system. … I think that, you know, there\u2019s too many bells and whistles that Americans want that would not be available.\u201d She said, \u201cTalking about single payer really is a conversation ender for most Americans, because then they become very nervous about socialized medicine and all the rest of this.\u201d However, that too was a lie. She reads polls. Just months earlier, on 14-20 December 2007, an Associated Press\/Yahoo poll of 1,523 registered voters, including 847 Democrats and 655 Republicans \u2014 about the same proportions Democratic and Republican as the U.S. population generally, at that time \u2014 asked respondents whether\u00a0\u201cthe United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and also asked them \u201cDo you consider yourself a supporter of a single-payer health care system, that is a national health plan financed by taxpayers in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan\u201d; and 65 percent said yes to the first, and 54 percent said yes to the second. The public wanted single-payer. Hillary had designed her 1993 Hillarycare proposal for the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) industry; and she designed her 2008 position for the drug companies and the private insurance companies. Single-payer would replace those big political contributors, which she doesn\u2019t want to do; she wants their money.<\/span><\/p>\n

What she had said in 1994 about Hillarycare needing to be passed into law because of the danger that \u201cby the year 2000 we will have a single-payer system,\u201d was being said by her in private to the top people at Lehman Brothers Health Corporation<\/span><\/a>. She knew that single-payer was popular and would become more so. Consequently, when she said to the public, in her 2008 Presidential campaign, that \u201csingle payer really is a conversation ender for most Americans,\u201d she was just blatantly lying. Her real<\/i> masters are clear: it\u2019s not<\/i> the public. She instead treats the public like suckers. (Trump just has a different way of doing it, and evidently not so clearly a malignant<\/i> purpose for it.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, she\u00a0implicitly has condemned the Canadian and other nations\u2019 single-payer healthcare systems by saying<\/span><\/a>, \u201cWe don\u2019t have one size fits all; our country is quite diverse. What works in New York City won\u2019t work in Albuquerque.\u201d (In 2015, according to the OECD, in 2015<\/span><\/a>, the U.S. spent 16.9% of its GDP on healthcare, and Canada spent 10.2%. Canada also has higher life-expectancy<\/span><\/a>.) Her presumption was that what works in Canada or some other large single-payer country cannot work here \u2014 that local control must trump everything in order to fix what\u2019s wrong with American health care. She was implying that our healthcare system delivers superior healthcare at a lower cost than those single-payer countries\u2019. However, as we\u2019ve shown, that too is a lie: we pay more, and get less, and she knows it; she lies.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is how the Clinton scam works: most of the Democratic Party voters are either totally ignorant of it, or else in denial about it. They think that because she\u2019s not nominally a \u201cRepublican,\u201d she\u2019s less right-wing than Republicans are. That\u2019s the reason why she won the votes of enough Democrats to become the nominee: they are fooled by her public rhetoric, and don\u2019t know about her actual record in public office, which is simply atrocious.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Washington Post<\/i> interview published on August 11th, was titled \u201cThe Donald Trump interview that\u00a0should terrify national\u00a0Republicans\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and the questioners there were shocked at the extent to which Trump\u2019s economic proposals reflected Democratic and not Republican economic policies \u2014 far more so than Hillary Clinton\u2019s do. Trump in this interview made the distinction between the U.S. government borrowing money at record all-time-low interest rates such as now, versus when interest rates are high, and he said that in a time like this, the repairing and rebuilding of our infrastructure will repay maximum returns for the future, because of those record-low interest-rates. He was proposing to more than double the amount that Hillary Clinton is proposing to spend to restore America\u2019s crumbling infrastructure up to world-class standards, because doing this now will reduce instead of increase costs long-term. \u201cRoads, tunnels, hospitals. I mean,\u00a0everything. We have to fix the airports. Our airports are like third\u00a0world countries.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The health of the public is America\u2019s human-resources infrastructure (notice that he included there \u201chospitals\u201d), and Trump \u2014 not<\/i> Hillary \u2014 is the candidate who recognizes this fact, and who thinks in this way. It\u2019s something that the great Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the creator of Social Security, and of the Works Progress Administration), recognized and put into practice starting in 1938, and immediately the U.S. economy boomed<\/span><\/a>, from then on. The FDR boom didn\u2019t start on December 7, 1941, with World War II; it started when FDR first came into office in 1933, and really sped up in 1938 going full speed ahead with Keynesianism. (Keynes\u2019s theory wasn\u2019t even published until 1936.) Trump is correct to say (in effect) that now is the time for FDR2 \u2014 not<\/i> another Herbert Hoover (or, since Hillary is corrupt, Warren Harding).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

My vote for Trump will be the first Republican vote in my life, and I hope that this will be the only time in my life when the Democratic candidate is so abysmal that I\u2019ll have to do this. It\u2019s not because I like Trump; it\u2019s because he\u2019s vastly better than the Democratic nominee, whom I consider to be by far the worst Democrat ever. To me, choosing between Trump, who has no political record, and Hillary, who has the worst record in public office of any Democrat ever<\/span><\/a>, is easy. On all other ballot lines, I shall, as always, vote Democratic. In fact, that will be the best way to block from getting to President Trump\u2019s desk the Republican bills that he\u2019ll likely be wanting to sign, such as any bill to eliminate the estate-tax. But I don\u2019t expect that Democrats will at all oppose what might be his boldest progressive<\/i> initiatives, such as, perhaps, a European-style healthcare system. If Democrats would block something like that, they\u2019d then be killing their own Party (and cursing their country), and there aren\u2019t many Democrats who are (like Hillary Clinton would be) corrupt enough to carry things quite that far in the conservative direction, as to persist in sustaining healthcare-by-corruption. (As former President Jimmy Carter says of today\u2019s U.S.: \u201cNow it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president.\u201d<\/span><\/a>) Perhaps a President Trump would get so many congressional Democrats and Republicans to vote for a single-payer health insurance proposal, that such a piece of legislation could be signed into law much likelier than if a President Sanders (who would be voted against in Congress by virtually every Republican member) were to be pushing for exactly the same type of legislation and getting only some congressional Democrats (and no<\/i> Republicans then) to vote for it. Indeed, we all might even turn out to be surprised to find that a President Trump will be the most effective progressive President since FDR. If Democrats control Congress, then he might turn out that way, and become widely revered \u2014 and the neoconservatives, who are America\u2019s fascists, will then have to become curses upon some other land, perhaps Israel, because they wouldn\u2019t be able, any more, to make life hell for Americans (such as by our invading Iraq and Libya). They\u2019ll then be like the Soviet Union\u2019s die-hard communists were, after communism ended: failed \u2018prophets\u2019 without a country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton\u2019s constant refrain against Trump is that he\u2019s a racist. However, as the progressive John V. Walsh argued, on 29 December 2015, in a superb essay, \u201cWho Is the Arch Racist: The Donald or Hillary?\u201d<\/span><\/a> the answer to that question is clearly Clinton, not clearly Trump, despite Trump\u2019s frequent use of racist rhetoric in order to hold enough of the Republican base to be able to win the election. Anyone who believes what either of the two candidates asserts<\/i> is believing a confirmed and persistent liar, but only<\/i> Hillary is a consistent liar for the biggest-money interests<\/i>. With Trump, we really don\u2019t know what his policies would be, because he has no record in public office, but with Hillary Clinton, we do \u2014 and it\u2019s truly horrific. <\/span><\/p>\n

John Pilger said<\/a><\/span>, \u201cTrump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.\u201d (Pilger\u2019s disgust against liars and hypocrites such as Obama, reflects his extraodinarily pure progressivism. Obama has been the most effective \u2014 and effectively closeted<\/i> \u2014 Republican President; he has been the ultimate deceiver. For example, Blacks have actually lost wealth under Obama, the most of any ethnic group<\/span><\/a>, yet they constantly support him the most of any ethnic group.) And anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton would be less conservative than Barack Obama has been, is in for a sore disappointment if she becomes the next President. By contrast, a President Donald Trump could well surprise strongly on the upside, because, unlike Hillary, whose record in public office makes clear that she would be horrifying, Trump has no such record at all, and the people who are demonizing him are themselves individuals whose records in public office (or else as journalists) are as despicable as Hillary Clinton\u2019s record is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both sides in this election are concentrating on personal attacks against the other, but the ten issues that have been discussed here are vastly more important than, for examples, whether Donald Trump (and\/or Bill Clinton) is a rapist (or whether Hillary Clinton hired thugs to make life hell for Bill\u2019s rape-victims), or whether the Trump University scam from which Trump profited, is worse than the Laureate International Universities scam from which Bill and Hillary Clinton profited<\/span><\/a>. At the economic top in America, is unimaginable corruption and rampant psychopathy; and, so, one can reasonably question whether this nation is still a democracy at all, but the scummiest people have funded Hillary Clinton\u2019s career, vastly more than Donald Trump\u2019s. Hillary owes a lot of billionaires a lot of money on their investments in her. Trump does not. <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to be placing this country into the hands of either Hillary Clinton\u2019s enemies, or else Donald Trump\u2019s enemies, and the latter group are by far the worse of the two. Not to vote, in such a situation, or else to vote for a \u2018protest\u2019 candidate and so throw one\u2019s vote away (even if the voting-machine will only be programmed to misreport it), is irresponsible. If America is not a democracy, then, still, a voter\u2019s obligation is to do whatever he or she can in order to maximize the chance that it might become one. As between the two viable options here, Clinton is the clear police-state option, but Trump might possibly fight to restore America\u2019s democracy. The choice of Trump over Clinton is easy to make, because, even in the reasonable worst-case scenario, the damage Trump would likely cause the country (and the world) is vastly less than the damage \u2014 nuclear war against Russia \u2014 that Clinton would likely cause. This is certainly no \u2018Tweedledee, Tweedledum\u2019 election. Not even close to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

The progressive journalist Bill Blum put the case succinctly:<\/span> “I would vote for Trump.\u00a0My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the\u00a0greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And\u00a0when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster.\u00a0From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse\u00a0place because of her; so much so that I\u2019d call her a war criminal who\u00a0should be prosecuted.”<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

By voting for Trump, you add 1 vote to him, and 0 vote to Hillary, and so that\u2019s a real action in the real world of electoral politics: it puts Trump up 1. By voting for Hillary, you add 1 vote to her, and 0 vote to Trump, and so that too is a real action in the real world of electoral politics: it puts Hillary up 1. Either vote is a real vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

The real world of electoral politics is the foundation of democracy, without which it can\u2019t function at all. Fantasy votes are not votes that can even possibly participate in democracy. For example: by voting instead for Jill Stein, you add 0 vote to each of the two real-world contestants, just the same as you would be doing by staying home on Election Day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding the question of whether voting for Jill Stein is at all rational:<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Presidency is determined in the Electoral College, in which each state\u2019s entire delegation votes the given state\u2019s Election-Day choice, winner-take-all for all of that state\u2019s electors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither Nader nor Perot won even one state, neither of them came even close<\/i> to winning even a single state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jill Stein definitely<\/i> won\u2019t win even one state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Voting for her is nothing but a sucker-punch<\/span><\/a> on the ballot there.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Nader ran, and received 2.74% of the nationwide vote at his peak in 2000, he was on the ballot in 49 states, yet still<\/i> he won not even a single state. Instead, because he drew off more than enough Gore voters in both New Hampshire and Florida so as to throw NH to Bush and to cause FL to be so close that the outcome there was decided by the 5-4 Republican-majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, Nader made George W. Bush President. If Nader hadn\u2019t been on the FL ballot and drawn 97,488 votes there, Gore would have won FL decisively; Bush\u2019s \u2018537 vote win\u2019 couldn\u2019t even possibly have occurred, because Gore\u2019s winning margin there would have precluded any recount at all. (Gore would have won FL by around ten thousand votes.) There would have been no invasion of Iraq. The problem of global warming wouldn\u2019t have been shunted off to the side, as it was by Bush.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, Nader also threw NH to Bush, and Gore would have won the Presidency even if only one of those two states, NH and FL, hadn\u2019t been thrown to Bush by Nader.<\/span><\/a> Bush needed both<\/i> of those two states in order to eke out his 271-266-vote win of the Electoral College, and that\u2019s what Nader\u2019s participation in the contest handed Bush \u2014 both<\/i> states. Nader sucked away enough voter-fools, most of them to the left of center, so as to move the electoral result (the electoral advantage) far to the right of center<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a Presidential system such as the U.S. (though not in a parliamentary system), only fools vote third-party. These people are either so ignorant they can\u2019t count, or so stupid they think that to \u2018register a protest\u2019 is somehow more patriotic than to register a vote that might make an actual difference in the resulting winner, the resulting President.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stakes in the current election are actually huge: the Tweedledee Tweedledom argument certainly doesn\u2019t apply here (neither did it apply in 2000) to excuse a voter from really participating in the ultimate outcome. It\u2019s our duty to vote only for candidates who might possibly win, even if the electoral system is rigged (such as it is in Iran, to eliminate from having even a real chance<\/i> to win the Presidency, all candidates who are so good they\u2019d pose a threat to the behind-the-scenes dictators). If the electoral system is rigged, voting is the only way to protest, that has even a possibility of being effective (unless a violent revolution might improve matters, which seems unlikely here).\u00a0To be a fool is never<\/i> good. It harms everyone. It\u2019s certainly not an ethical choice, if anyone actually chooses it. (Of course, if the person is too stupid to be said to \u2018choose\u2019 it, then one can\u2019t blame the person, but merely feel sorry for his unintended victims.) <\/span><\/p>\n

The only realistic choice that is offered is either Clinton or else Trump. Even if it\u2019s a choice between two bad candidates, one of them is far worse than is the other. With Trump as President, there is a realistic possibility<\/i> of getting a reasonably good President, someone who won enough independents and fooled enough Republicans, to enable him to win the Republican Party\u2019s nomination. With Clinton as President, there\u2019s a realistic possibility of nuclear war with Russia, but a virtual certaintly that this nation will be ruled behind-the-scenes, by-and-for America\u2019s international corporations. That is the real<\/i> choice we have, if we have any at all. Fantasists have the freedom to stay with their fictions, but realists are obliged not to. Realism is a prerequisite<\/i> to progressivism. Trump is the clear, and the only reasonable, choice for progressives in this election.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our choice, Bernie, didn\u2019t make it to the finals. (Hillary and her big-money people beat him \u2014 sometimes cheated him.) We are stunningly fortunate that the voters in the other Party\u2019s primaries ended up giving us (for once) a realistic chance to have, as the next U.S. President, a person who is at least no worse than, and is on many of the most important issues far better than, the atrocity (Hillary) that is being offered to us by the Democratic Party. How often does the Republican Party provide the better candidate? In the opinion of this Bernie-supporter, such a thing has never happened since the time of Abraham Lincoln. Donald Trump might not be another Abraham Lincoln, but he might be another Franklin Delano Roosevelt \u2014 the greatest progressive of them all. Thank you, Donald Trump, for having given us this opportunity \u2014 the realistic possibility to salvage, for America, a progressive future. It couldn\u2019t have happened without you \u2014 if it does happen, at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

On September 16th, the conservative Ramesh Ponnuru headlined an op-ed at Bloomberg News, \u201cTrump Throws Out the Republican Litmus Tests\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he wrote about what The Wee<\/i>k magazine titled \u201cThe End of Republican Dogma?\u201d Ponnuru said:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOver the span of two days, the Republican nominee for president has proposed new child-care subsidies, new mandatory benefits to be provided by business, the removal of millions of families from the income-tax rolls, and an increase in tax rates on single people making from $112,500 to $190,000 a year. Oh, and he put in a good word for Medicaid too, leaving the impression with many people that he favors expanding it. \u2026 None of these positions seem to be costing him any of his supporters, just as his opposition to entitlement reform and free trade did not keep him from winning the Republican nomination. \u2026 He has exercised more [ideological] freedom than Republican politicians dreamed they had. For years, they have been complaining that purists had imposed a series of litmus tests that kept their party from winning elections or governing well. \u2026 That stranglehold now appears to be broken.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump is rapidly moving America\u2019s political center in the opposite direction from the direction that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, did, which was toward conservatism, away from progressivism: those conservative Democratic Presidents and (now) would-be President, have moved America\u2019s political center considerably toward the right (the international-corporate agenda<\/span><\/a>). A President Trump would reverse the political direction that this country has been heading in ever since 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we progressives don\u2019t help Trump to do that, we shall be throwing away the only such opportunity that the U.S. oligarchy<\/span><\/a> (slipped-up and) allowed us to have. A President Hillary Clinton would have the support of almost all congressional Democrats no matter how right-wing her proposals are, and her big-money financial backers will buy enough congressional Republicans<\/span><\/a> to make her the most effective most conservative Democratic President in decades if not centuries. The prospect is chilling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Zuesse Sometimes, things in politics are the opposite of the way they seem. The Presidential contest between the \u2018liberal\u2019 Hillary Clinton\u2019 and the \u2018conservative\u2019 Donald Trump is perhaps the most extreme example of this \u2014 for ten reasons that will be documented here. I have never voted Republican in my life, starting with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":270728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[115,30,27,96,535,698,38,907,1023,753,524,754,92,6257,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-270727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-bush","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-iraq","16":"tag-isis","17":"tag-nuclear","18":"tag-police-state","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-trump","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-usa-news","25":"tag-warfare","26":"tag-white-house","27":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}