Politics Plus

You probably think I’m sounding like a broken record, but you’ll only have me harassing you about this for less than  a month.  In the interim, I offer no apology.  The stakes are just too damn high.  But don’t listen to me.  And don’t listen to the Reich on the Right, The Republican Reich, including their proxies brought to you by Putin.  Listen to the Reich on the Left, Robert Reich.  He admonishes progressives to vote for Hillary.

I continue to hear from many people who call themselves progressives or liberals, but tell me they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.

With due respect, I believe they’re wrong.

Herewith, their three major arguments and my responses.

Some claim she’s no better than Donald Trump. “He’s bad, but she’s just as bad,” they say.

I’m sorry, but anyone who equates Trump with Clinton hasn’t been paying attention.

Donald Trump is a dangerous, bigoted, misogynistic, narcissistic megalomaniac with fascist tendencies. If elected president he could wreak irreparable damage on America and the world.

Hillary isn’t perfect but she’s able and experienced. I’ve known her for almost fifty years and worked with her closely in her husband’s administration. She will make a good president.

There is simply no comparison… [emphasis added]

From <Robert Reich>

I shared one of the three major arguments.  Please click through to read about the other two.

You certainly have the right to vote for whomever you choose, but you ought to recognize that failure to vote strategically by voting for a candidate, who cannot win, has consequences that extend far beyond the feel-good protest value you derive from it.  If you refuse to recognize that saving this nation from Trump carries more weight than feeling good, than be prepared to accept responsibility for consequences.  At least 2000 Nader voters have one valid excuse.  They didn’t realize how dire the consequences were.  Today, it’s obvious.

"The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the golden touch, or the Midas touch.  … According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of starvation as a result of his "vain prayer" for the gold touch." — Wikipedia

Glasser: Based on what you know about his personality from having studied it and written about it, how do you see him handling the next three weeks, given that he’s now in this hole? To me, his combative behavior since the release of the tape, his lack of remorse, his going on the offense, his complaining that it’s not fair, essentially, his going to war even against his own party seems very consistent with the person that you all have done such a good job of describing. So what does he do for the next three weeks? Is there a point at which he gives up, stops fighting? How can he be a loser for three weeks before the actual election?

O’Brien: I think he is just going to wage a scorch‑the‑earth campaign for the next three weeks. And if he loses, which I think he’s going to—I think he’s going to lose badly—he’s then going to come up with a scenario in which it was stolen from him, that the election was rigged, because he’s survived by creating alternate realities. And he’ll never say to himself he lost because he had a skeletal campaign operation, which he did; that he lost because he’s unappealing to a large swath of the voters; that he lost because he’s willfully ignorant about public policy; that he lost because he’s a nasty and unappealing bigot. He’ll never, ever acknowledge any of that. He’ll just come up with an alternate reality that said, “It was rigged against me.”  …

O’Brien: Yeah. I don’t feel like I’ve seen or learned anything new about him. I think a lot of the way he’s approached this presidential race parallels all of the strengths and weaknesses of his business career, personally and professionally. He’s a profoundly narcissistic person who has been insulated from the realities of his own bad decision‑making by wealth and other people’s needs to kind of glom onto him, and I think he really did repeat so much of his past mistakes throughout this political season. He came into it with an opportunity and an advantage that he could have really built something on. But because of his myriad flaws—you know, he’s financially undisciplined, he’s emotionally and intellectually undisciplined, and he’s incapable of building teams and leading other people, profoundly incapable of those things—he blew those opportunities.

And I don’t think he really cares. I think he’s been more than satisfied to be on a big global stage and have everybody paying attention to him, and he’ll never characterize himself as a loser in this process, even if he ends up one.  …

D’Antonio: I think he’s addicted to this kind of attention and addicted to being taken seriously, or at least in his own estimation being taken seriously. So whatever he does, it will be devoted more to politics and media than what he’s done so far, and the kids are going to pick up the pieces of the real estate and branding empire. I’m working on a piece with some people who are evaluating his business, and he’s really suffered an erosion of his brand, even among the people who supported it. So the kids may have seen some of their inheritance go down the drain here.
 

From Politico

Click through for this long but interesting piece about Trump, his personality, foibles and actions and the future, as told by four of his biographers.  As I read the piece, I thought of King Midas and his golden touch.  I see Trump in a similar light.  Trump sees himself as the man with the golden touch — he'll make America great again, if you buy his press, which I do not.  But like Midas, who wanted gold and starved because of it, Trump, accustomed to getting what he wants, will starve from the attention that he does not want, the attention ascribed to a loser.

Imagine a world in which the President of the United States had paid attention when warned of an impending terrorist attack using airplanes and taken the measures needed to prevent it.  There would have been no 9/11, no Iraq War, no torture, no Bush Reich, no unPATRIOT Act, no Republican Recession and more.  We would have had that world, if Republicans had not used a third party to get close enough to steal the 2000 election.

At a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Miami, Florida, Al Gore reminded millennial voters that “every vote counts,” a slogan that applied to his 2000 campaign in the state, which he used as a cautionary tale to those considering sitting the election out.

“You will often hear people from podiums like this one say something like that at election time. I know. I’ve heard it. I’ve even said it before,” Gore said Tuesday. “But honestly, to those of you here and those who can hear my voice by whatever means, this election really matters.”

“The world is on the cusp of either building on the progress and solving the climate crisis or stepping back, washing our hands of America’s traditional role as the leader of the world, and letting the big polluters call the shots,” Gore warned. “The choice is that clear. It’s that stark. The consequences for not just our children and grandchildren and future generations but for all of us, are really quite significant.”

“So because of that, please take it from me. Every single vote counts,” he said to cheers…

From <TPM>

Move-on provided us video of that event.

Don’t forget, the Green Party accepted help from Republican operatives, who went door to door in Democratic leaning districts in FL to convince voters to shift their support from Gore to Nader. Had this not succeeded, Bush could not have gotten close enough to steal the election. Little has changed. Today the Green Party is accepting help from Trump ally, Vladimir Putin (R-RU), using his propaganda network, RT, to convince voters to shift their support from Clinton to Stein. Imagine where we might be if the Bush Reich had never happened. Don’t let it happen again.