Donald Trump is so despicable
that no one is paying attention to what Hillary Clinton actually stands for. Elizabeth
Schulte and Alan Maass think that should stop.
[…]
On enforcement, Clinton joins
Republican and Democratic politicians alike in calling for tougher border
controls. In 2013, she supported legislation that included a path to
citizenship, as she said in the debate--but on the condition that billions of
dollars be devoted to new surveillance equipment and fencing (otherwise known
as a wall) along the Mexican border, along with 20,000 more border agents.
The consequences of these
policies are deadly. Since January, officials say that fewer people attempted
to illegally cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico, but more have died
trying to make the journey. According
to the Pima County medical examiner in Arizona, 117 bodies have been
recovered along migration routes in southern Arizona so far this year, an
increase over last year.
This is the true face of
Clinton's promise to "protect our borders"--death and misery for
people fleeing persecution and poverty.
Clinton supporters focus on
the nightmare of a Trump presidency for immigrants. But the nightmare is
already happening. Trump may have blustered about the actual number, but it's
true that Barack Obama has presided over the
deportation of well over 2 million people, more than all the presidents of
the 20th century combined.
And forfeiting immigrant lives
in the name of border security is hardly unique to the latest Democrat in the White
House. It was Bill
Clinton who imposed "Operation Gatekeeper" in 1994, pandering to
the right wing by pouring more millions into border enforcement and, yes,
wall-building.
With friends like
these...well, you know the rest.
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What Clinton Told Goldman
Sachs
Okay, okay, the real news
story is how WikiLeaks got hold of e-mails from Clinton
campaign chair John Podesta and transcripts of Clinton's paid speeches, not
what was in them. Clinton herself said the most important question of the final
debate was whether Trump would condemn Russian espionage to hack her e-mails.
But hey, bear with us.
It's not news that Clinton has
deep ties to Corporate America going back decades. But with Clinton touring the
country and telling her supporters that America is "already great,"
it's worth remembering who America is really great for.
In a speech at
Goldman Sachs three years ago, Clinton did everything but apologize for the
weak banking regulations imposed in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.
"More thought has to be given to the process and transactions and
regulations so that we don't kill or maim what works, but we concentrate on the
most effective way of moving forward with the brainpower and the financial
power that exists here," Clinton pandered to an audience of banksters.
Explaining that Dodd-Frank
bill was passed for "political" reasons, Clinton assured the
investment bank aptly
referred to in 2010 as "a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face
of humanity" that she believes the best overseers of Wall Street
are...wait for it...Wall Street itself.
"There's nothing magic
about regulations--too much is bad, too little is bad," Clinton said, and
one assumes that she emphasized the "too much is bad" part.
For all the working-class
families who bore the burden of underwater mortgages during the housing crisis,
Clinton has signaled, if anyone was still wondering, whose side she's on--the
parasites on Wall Street.
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The Return of Roe
Remember reproductive rights?
It was pretty shocking to hear the words "abortion" or
"Roe" and "Wade" uttered in last night's debate. So far
this election, we've heard precious little about this essential health care
question for women.
It's not for a lack of things
to talk about--Texas shuttering its clinics because of punitive legislative
restrictions, an Indiana woman facing murder charges for having a miscarriage, congressional
Republicans smearing Planned Parenthood with fabricated video.
But you wouldn't know about
any of that from the two presidential candidates, including the Democrat who
says she supports a woman's right to choose.
Last night, Trump admitted that
he would nominate Supreme Court justices who would, without doubt, overturn
legal abortion. By comparison, Clinton seemed, well, actually human. But as a
result, the limitations of her defense of the right to legal abortion, now and
in the past, were overshadowed.
Clinton
helped perfect the modern-day Democratic strategy of searching for
"common ground" with conservatives on the issue of abortion--an issue
on which any sincere defender of women's rights shouldn't find common anything
with the right. She helped coin the slogan of "safe, legal and rare"
as the goal of pro-choice Democrats.
The "common ground"
arguments haven't saved reproductive rights--instead, they've given up
ideological ground to the right and made the pro-choice side weaker.
If you want to know how
important reproductive rights are to Hillary Clinton, look at her vice
presidential choice Tim Kaine. In 2005, he ran for Virginia governor promising
to lower the number of abortions in the state by promoting abstinence-only
education. The
state's chapter of NARAL withheld their endorsement because he "embraces
many of the restrictions on a woman's right to choose."
But of course, nothing is
getting in the way of the mainstream women's organizations backing the
Clinton-Kaine ticket to the hilt this year. They don't care if reproductive
rights are part of the debate. But a lot of women out there do--and many
of them are fed up with the way the Democrats take them for granted at
election time, and don't lift a finger to stem the attacks when they come.
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Remember the $15 Minimum Wage
and All That Socialist Stuff?
It's almost obliterated from
our memory, thanks to the monstrosity that is Donald Trump, but during the
Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton had to talk about some of the issues that
supporters of the Democratic Party care about
The socialist message of the
Bernie Sanders campaign put these questions in the spotlight and forced the
most corporate of Democrats to address them--and also answer for her own
terrible record on a number of things that didn't come up at the debate. For a
time, the brewing anger at corporate greed and the corrupt political status
quo--given expression in grassroots movements like the Fight for 15 and Black
Lives Matter--found a voice in the political mainstream.
With a few weeks to go before
the election, that seems like a long time ago.
Part of the reason is Hillary
Clinton, but another
part is Bernie Sanders. He's stopped his sharp criticisms of Clinton and
tells his supporters that now is the time to stop Trump, not make demands on
Clinton. In the debate, when Trump repeated one of his routine sound bites
about Sanders saying Clinton had "bad judgment," Clinton smiled
smugly and pointed out that Sanders was campaigning and urging a vote for her.
There were many issues that
Clinton had to address this year only because people mobilized to make sure
they couldn't be ignored--like anti-racist activists who made sure she was
reminded of her support for Bill Clinton's crime bills, or Palestinian rights
supporters who confronted her support for Israeli apartheid.
Those issues were invisible at
the October 19 debate, but so were many others that people care about. They
don't come up within the narrow confines of mainstream politics in the
U.S.--where the politics of fear of what's worse forces voters to settle for
what's hopefully less bad.
The two-party duopoly is
organized to squash political debate and dissent outside the mainstream--which
is why it's up to us to raise both, before the election between Clinton and
Trump is decided, and especially after.
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