But at least with Billary, I know they are taking me and the left flank for idiots, and the fact they do so with a straight face makes this arrogance far too flagrant for me to even consider bothering to vote for them.
At least with Obama, there's enough ambiguity in there to suggest there might be some hope that he isn't just taking us for a ride. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
On Israeli/Palestine issues and on health care issues, he is VERY far away from where he was just a year or two ago.
With Clinton, who has a longer (and quite frankly not impressive, I know she's your senator and you like her but I don't think there are more than two or three US senators today who, objectively speaking, can be characterized as "left," and Hillary ain't one of them) track record on these things, we know what's there. Nothing ambiguous about it, and it isn't attractive.
This isn't backlash, at least coming from the left. Billary lost this lefty in 1993. He was elected to put in universal healthcare and instead we got welfare "reform", NAFTA, a capital gains tax cut that G HW Bush campaigned on but was never able to get Democrats to sign (Bill succeeded where the GOP failed here, and that's not a compliment.) Telco "Reform". Et c. Bill Clinton was perhaps the best GOP President since Richard Nixon.
For better or for worse, Billary II is saddled with that legacy, especially as she surrounds herself with the same insider corporatist Dems as her husband (starting with Mark Penn). And I'll be damned if I can hold my nose for that. I didn't in '96, and I won't now either.
And let's face it, McCain doesn't make people recoil in disgust like Dubya does, so Billary will have a relatively harder time against him than Obama will. Not saying she can't win, but there is a reason why Obama does much better in general matchups than Clinton, and at least some of it is people like me saying we won't bother come November.
And yes, I understand that at some level, this isn't about me, that ultimately it only comes down to 50% of delegates plus one. But, there is are many layers of personal transaction cost to voting, absentee ballot mail in, going through the hassle of getting one in the first place, and then having to yet again vote against both one's real interests and one's conscience yet again for a moderate Republican parading as a Democrat in order to win the center. Personally, I've got better things to do. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
How can anyone possibly present a point-of-view when simultaneously I have to address the fact that her 1993 proposal didn't receive bipartisan support and it wasn't a universal health coverage initiative?
I mean, which point should I address? In 1993, universal coverage would have been DOA in congress.
Also, I would note that Hillary lost you because she didn't put forward universal coverage, yet you support Obama whose health care policy is far far from universal single-payer coverage.
This doesn't make any sense at all to me.
Let's face it, Bill and Hillary Clinton badly botched something they were sent to the White House to get done. Part of it is shared with "Democratic" leaders like Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But if the Democrats had been as disciplined as the GOP is, and if the Clinton's had been competent in turning around a plan they were mandated to put in place, I have no doubt we'd have health care, equitable and for all, today.
They badly botched it, and they paid a price for that in 1994.
You all can say excuse them, and excuse the Democratic leadership at the time, saying they were too fractured, or whatever. I tend to employ occam's razon on this and say the simplest explanation is the best one: most Democratic representatives are not on our side, they are on shareholders and the corporations they own's side first and foremost. And what was true then is still true: tax cuts for the rich, Iraq, bankruptcy "reform", fisa, et c.
Until the message they come up with addresses that, Hillary ain't going anywhere for people like me. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
