An observation and a conjecture about HRC’s health

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that 45% think she’s lying about the pneumonia, hiding something.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/13/us-voters-doubt-clintons-pneumonia-explanation-for-911-collapse-poll-shows?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Or that she’s trying to distract from calling 25% of the electorate deplorables, not real Americans, who shouldn’t be paid any mind; not specifying which 25% too particularly, so that at least 50% have the sense she meant them; and doing it in front of several wealthy, paying crowds of people who do despise at least 50% of the electorate, such that Clinton was trying to suggest – as an aside – that her paying supporters’ attitudes toward most Americans were making the election harder, not easier, to win.

Let’s leave aside the comparative transparency issue, which should favor Clinton heavily. My question is: what plausible physical health issue could either candidate have that would be a legitimate reason for a Clinton voter to vote for Trump, a Trump voter to vote for Clinton, or an undecided voter to lean toward one or the other?

CJ–if there really were a long term serious medical issue you’re asking the wrong questions. The right one would be: which conditions would have caused HRC supporters to vote for Sanders in the primary.

Although my American friends assure me that HRC is still bound to win, I am starting to worry. The sight of her keeling over on a New York Street brought back memories of the First President Bush puking into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister in 1992, and of Senator Dole collapsing from a podium in 1996. In each case, the ‘medical episode’ heralded defeat. Most of us abroad would prefer even a zombified HRC occupying the White House (with Bill C as President de facto) until Veep Kaine is ready to take over. But will the US electorate see it that way?

Mercurius: I don’t remember GHWB’s health being an issue in 1992, as I think pretty much everyone recognized that he had just had some bad sushi or something. (Not sure about Dole, who always looked a bit frail.) About HRC, I think plenty of Americans think that that she is “bound to win” is too strong. She’s ahead with 7-8 weeks to go, that’s all.

About her health in particular, I learned yesterday at the supermarket, where many fine publications are available for perusal while you wait at the checkout, that not only has she had three strokes, but that she has Alzheimer’s as well. (The accompanying photo was quite remarkable.)

Before reading this thread I was 99.9999999999% certain god did not exist.

Working under the assumption that a non existent god did not strike dead the commentator that actually wrote

‘Let’s leave aside the comparative transparency issue, which should favor Clinton heavily.’

I am now 99.9999999999999999% certain that god does not exist.

someguy88:

God, if He exists, can probably read. If so, he can compare what Hillary has already put out about her health and what the Donald has put out. So can I, so I won’t be watching out for lightning. It’s an astonishingly excellent day here without a cloud in the sky.

Everyone has chosen a side, and nobody is changing their minds about anything in this election. This is all about emotions, all the way down the line. Emotions get boring in about two days. Hillary comes on stage in the debate and the first thing she says is, “Glad I have health care! Let’s make sure everybody does!”

CJColucci ,

Please top. I am a conservative with a small c. If it was up to me I would pick the known conventional evil over a deranged Amway salesman. But every time people like you talk I have to fight off small urge to spite you by voting for the chump.

But using transparency and Hilary Clinton in the same sentence as a positive? That is like saying Stalin was more human than Hitler. It may technically be true but is still utter nonsense.

Assuming an existent god would be just, she would strike you down for what you wrote. Hence no god.

This is a long term non issue. The only people who will be talking about this in a month are the ones who keep claiming that HRC is a sociopathic murderess with a body double and a long term plan to sell us out to the Muslims on behalf of her Secret Muslim boss/patsie Obama that can only be thwarted by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who will do so with nothing more than Strength and Grit and a 100 yard stare. And 1) those people were never going to support her either way, and 2) every political argument they make becomes less credible in the eyes of the rest of the country just because they’re the ones making it.

Or TLDR certain relatives of mine will be lighting up my Facebook feed for weeks over this but who cares.

No politician, probably no human being including Mother Teresa, wants to be totally transparent. Otherwise we might walk around naked in good weather. But what with disclosed tax returns, a family charitable foundation with a searchable list of donors, three Republican special prosecutors’ investigations which found nothing actionable, and hours of testimony in front of hostile congressional committees, HRC might be the most transparent politician of all time. Odd that opponents who claim to know her innermost, evil thoughts would also claim her to be opaque.

Yes, she has so far refused to give transcripts of private, paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sach employees, as a private citizen. Nor has any other consultant or motivational speaker that I know of. We do know however, the most important facts: that she gave speeches to employees of a Wall Street business and was highly paid to do so – thanks to the transparency of her financial records.

@ BenK

She said half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable for being racists, xenophobes and misogynists. Bring out the fainting couches because somebody didn’t pussyfoot around the nastiness in the heart of the Republican base.

Jesus, we live in a country that elected a man with Alzheimer’s. His dementia was visible by 1984; many of us just chose not to see it. (This is retrospective, but I remember at least one contemporaneous article by a couple of (widely derided) neurologists http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/ronald-reagan-alzheimers-presidency/story?id=12633225)

Anything’s possible, there being no god and all.

medrawt,

Are you seriously that ignorant?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy

Again I understand that she would gleefully strip away my 1 and 2 amendment rights, personally I only care about the 1st but I respect other peoples concerns about the second, and yet if it was my choice I would pick her over the hair.

Just please stop debasing your selves and me by lying about what and who she is.

MPAVictoria 09.13.16 at 7:03 pm @ 30 —
Adams was pretty accurate in predicting the rise of Trump when most other professional commentators discounted him. A more general view of the nonrational way people vote can be found in Louis Menand’s The Unpolitical Animal. While I have not personally checked Menand’s sources, the gist of the article corresponds with what I observe in daily life, and to the extent I can observe our national political life through the haze of lying and propaganda that constitutes the official media, with that as well. Applied to the present situation, we must expect people to vote according to tradition, tribal identity, perceived immediate self-interest, the weather — and image. In regard to image, Adams noted some time ago that Trump was taking occasional potshots at Clinton’s health and physical vigor, and hypothesized that this was a well-considered tactic rather than the random burbling which is usually attributed to him, and would pay off if Clinton gave any overt sign of illness or fatigue, which he or someone on his team apparently expected her to do. They seem to have hit the jackpot, although the payoff may not be as conclusive as Adams expects. I don’t see anything ‘beyond bonkers’ in his reasoning.

someguy88 –

Apparently I seriously am that ignorant, because if I’ve ever heard anyone talk about Clinton and cattle futures, it must have been in 1994 and not since that time. So I didn’t understand your specific reference and misinterpreted it as a general statement along the lines of “how the hell did so and so become rich?” (Like: when did Denny Hastert become a millionaire? Oh, when his rich friends were improbably generous to him in the course of a semi-crooked land deal.) Oddly I continue to see and hear people cite Whitewater against the Clintons, rather than possible rulebreaking in the trading of cattle futures. I’m also willing to believe that she did, or allowed something to be done on her behalf, which was against the law.

On the other hand, there’s a mountain of public evidence suggesting that the Clinton Foundation is run on the up and up, and a growing mountain of misleadingly-headlined evidence suggesting that donations to the Clinton Foundation got pretty much nothing in the way of special treatment from the State Department. The next allegation that a Foundation donor got a meeting or a favor from the US government that they wouldn’t have plausibly gotten anyway based on their position/resume will be the first. I’m not the one combing through the data, so maybe there’s something there. In addition they’ve released years and years of tax returns. Relative to the typical politician they appear to be relatively forthcoming on these issues.

What distinguishes the Clintons appears to be not the level of dirty dealing in which they have been engaged, but the level to which they have been investigated for dirty dealing without anybody finding hard evidence. So either they’re criminal masterminds, or they’re actually not uniquely corrupt. Which doesn’t make them saints. Really, comparing them and their behavior to politicians (a widely despised class!) is too specific and plays too much into general cynicism about politicians. The Clintons are rich and influential people with rich and influential friends, and they appear to operate the way most rich and influential people with rich and influential friends do in this country. The rules are too lenient and too leniently applied to such people, but that’s a problem enormously bigger than this election.

“the excellent senior Mrs. Bush”

No

Remember “some of [the people trapped in the Astrodome during Katrina] have never had it so good in their lives”? She has the patrician horror of boorish new money taking over the country club, nothing more or less.

bruce wilder –

what was the old normal?

@ 35: Yes. Trump rudely interfered with plans for the Second Restoration and also was impertinent enough to point out that not only did George II not keep us safe, he placed us in greater jeopardy. (Trump did do the state some service in the primary season, I’ll grant him that.)

Observations from the late Louis Auchincloss, traitor to his class:

https://www.ft.com/content/1925961a-67e4-11dc-8906-0000779fd2ac

“I just think the Bushes are a big family of shits,” he says with a sibilant hiss, “they might have existed anywhere.”

MPAVictoria 09.13.16 at 8:24 pm @ 38 —
I gather that a good deal of what Adams writes is designed to provoke or annoy, and is less than earnest. For instance, his assertion that he must support Clinton because he fears that outraged Californians will otherwise assassinate him, which is clearly designed to yank the chains of progressives who believe they are inherently more virtuous and less violent than conservatives. It’s a kind of trolling, in other words. I can’t comment on his writings about Men’s Rights Advocacy or V-neck sweaters because I haven’t read them, having no interest in the subjects.

@ Anarcissie

Here are his deep thoughts on v-necks:

Perhaps the biggest unreported story of this presidential election is the humiliation of the American male. Unless I’m blinded by confirmation bias – which is entirely possible – it seems to me that the humiliation of American men is now institutionalized in the media.

Check out this commercial for dishwasher detergent. And take careful note of the American man’s v-neck sweater. That’s the uniform of a man who is owned by a woman.

In the realm of presidential politics Scott Adams endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 on the grounds that he thought Romney would be less harsh in prosecuting marijuana usage. That was after a Romney spokesman said “He opposes legalizing drugs, including marijuana for medicinal purposes. He will fully enforce the nation’s drug laws, and he will oppose any attempts at legalization.”

There are small children with a better understanding of US politics than Scott Adams.

If the best defence of him is that he is trolling or trying to provoke and annoy I’m not sure anyone needs to pay attention to his musings on the 2016 election.

“But idea that the Clintons are anything other than venal, petty, and corrupt on an industrial scale is nonsense.”

This idea of corruption comes from somewhere. Where? Which are the crimes you suspect, which lead you to this conclusion? Be specific, please.

Layman,

I was. You do not honestly turn 1ooo dollars into 100000 trading in futures you know nothing about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy

The odds are like worse than a billion to one. Honestly the global warming deniers have a better chance of being right that HRC having honestly turned 1000 into 100000. Again I prefer her to Trump.

“But idea that the Clintons are anything other than venal, petty, and corrupt on an industrial scale is nonsense.”

“Industrial scale”? This marks the comment as clueless about the scale of corruption, or obsessive about the Clintons, or (more likely) both.

lathrop,

Again I am not big fan of this incarnation of Hilary. But Bill I was ok and I prefer Hilary to the to the unhinged Amway Salesman. Everybody does it but when you sell Lincoln’s bedroom you are engaging in corruption on an industrial scale. That is how you make 100 million in America today. Why do you insist on debasing me by pretending otherwise? Serious question.

You refuse to hear the answer to your question. The answer is repeated several times, each time at greater volume. Then, you complain that your interlocutor is shouting.

Golly, the Clintons must be “corrupt on an industrial scale” because the right wing meme machine can’t have been wrong for over 25 years!

faustusnotes – good grief, its USA general election season, what do you expect??

It should also be possible to loathe Clinton and be able to give an actual reason why, rather than aspersions along with links to websites that state nothing bad happened. It should be possible to provide a critique of Clinton that isn’t obviously transparently rehashed right wing blogosphere talking points.

But it doesn’t happen.

Do you agree that nothing bad happened, or is there something bad that happened that you want to tell us? If something bad happened, why is it that we’re 61 comments in and no one can say what it is?

And what is not said cannot be heard, obviously.

Then, we consider Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record and we . . . punt.

Cool, lathrop.

We can finally legalize insider trading then. i agree. It will be all out in the open and as you said no one will bother to clutch pearls. It will also make the market more efficient and add valuable pricing signals. Everyone wins.

[Scott Adams] was (sort of) right and almost everyone else was wrong. [emph. added — js.]

This is manifestly false. Here’s a list of people off the top of my head who were right about Trump (winning the nomination). Jeet Heer and Brian Beutler at TNR, Josh Marshall at TPM, Paul Campos at LGM, Sam Wang at PEC, and I think Krugman. Again, that’s just off the top of my head; if I actually looked into it, I’m sure I could easily find twice the number of mainstream liberal columnists who were right about Trump.

I suspect the 1 in trillions number was a biased analysis, similar to creationists arguing against evolution, since, as the link said, many other people made bigger profits on cattle futures at the same time. The Wikipedia article cited in the link goes on to say,

“After the Rodham trading matter became public, Leo Melamed, a former chairman of the Mercantile Exchange, was brought in by request of the White House to review the trading records. On April 11, 1994, he said that the whole matter was “a tempest in a teapot” and that while her brokers had not required her to provide typical margin cushions, she had not knowingly benefited.[9] On May 26, 1994, after the new records concerning the larger Blair trades came to light, he said “I have no reason to change my original assessment. Mrs. Clinton violated no rules in the course of her transactions.”[14] But as to the question of whether she had been allocated profits from larger block trades, he said of the new accounting, “It doesn’t suggest that there was allocation, and it doesn’t prove there wasn’t,”[15] an assessment of uncertainty shared by Merton Miller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if her friends who were making a lot of money in futures trading (and later lost it all after HRC decided to cash out) cut her in on some of their profitable trades, with or without her knowledge, but there is as yet no proof of that and as far as I know, no allegation that those friends received any corrupt favors.

HRC so far has done nothing to make me fond of her, the way I was of my childhood heroes JFK and Mickey Mantle, who turned out to be corrupt. I won’t be as surprised and disappointed if good evidence of her corruption finally is found. It seems to be part of the human condition.

So far as I can tell the evidence that Clinton(s) are uniquely corrupt, on an industrial scale, to such a degree that to credit them with being massively more transparent than Trump and many other politicians besides is rank lunacy, is that their malfeasance is so transparently obvious that the failure to actually nail them on any of it is evidence that their corruption is so thorough that even the systems we would expect to uncover it have been infiltrated.

I am wholly willing to believe that the Clintons profited from unlawful trading in cattle futures to the tune of $100,000 nearly forty years ago (about $370,000 in today’s money). Have you met the United States Congress?

dammit. should read, “what will next week’s polls…”

I don’t understand why (strictly regarding foreign policy) Clinton is considered the “safe” choice, the one less likely to go to war.

She is aggressive towards both China and Russia; she wants more military intervention in Siria.
On the other hand, Trump is widely considered more cozy with Russia and isolationist.

If someone’s main worry is wars and he believes the above characterization, he should prefer Trump over Clinton.
(Of course there are many other things that one cares about, and one should not be too ready to believe a politician’s promises).

I regard this all as completely unimportant nonsense, but why are all the candidates so old this time. Is the US a gerontocracy?

phenomenal cat 09.14.16 at 4:32 am
…
Does anyone know of a precedent, if she were genuinely ill at this late date? Would Tim–I can’t open my mouth w/o emitting some maudlin nonsense–Kaine automatically become Jesus’s political right-hand man here on earth or what?

On John Quiggin’s blog somebody asked this question:

If Hillary bows out before November poll, is her nominated VP running mate ‘the main man?’
Or does Bill get another gig?

I gave this response:

The Democratic National Committee would be responsible for choosing a new official party nominee. They might choose Tim Kaine or they might choose somebody else; they couldn’t choose Bill Clinton, because after being elected President twice he’s no longer eligible to be elected to the position.
The closest thing to an actual precedent is what happened in 1972, when it was the Democratic National Committee that officially named Sargent Shriver to replace Thomas Eagleton as the party’s vice-presidential nominee, but in that case they were really only formally ratifying a decision actually made by presidential nominee McGovern.

In response to this follow-up question

At the back of my query was the issue …would the DNC have time to convene and determine who’s next? Unprecedented it would seem.

I made this further comment

Correct that there’s no direct precedent; it seems to me that the DNC would be very highly motivated to treat it as a high priority and act with dispatch, but we won’t know for sure until the situation actually arises. (The same applies equally to the Republican National Committee if they had to deal with a corresponding situation.)
In 1872 Horace Greeley, nominated by the (dissident) Liberal Republicans and endorsed by the Democrats, died between the casting of the popular vote and the voting of the electoral college; but the popular vote had already chosen electors a majority of whom were pledged to vote for incumbent Republican President Grant, so it made no difference who the Democratic electors voted for and the party did not designate a single official substitute candidate. The largest number of the Democratic electors voted for Greeley’s official vice-presidential running mate, some for other people, and a few for Greeley even though he was dead (the Congress, which has the official responsibility for receiving and tallying the votes of the electoral college, rejected the votes for Greeley as invalid).
Although that’s not an exactly parallel situation, it’s worth noting that Democratic and Republican candidates for electoral college positions have been nominated and those who are elected to the college would have the same constitutional right to exercise their votes even if their party did not have an officialy designated candidate for the Presidency.

Clinton’s only long-term medical condition is that she’s female. Unfortunately, for many Americans, that’s disqualifying.

84: +1

Clinton campaign, not administration. Need coffee…

In 2008 the choice between Barack and Hillary was a coin toss.

Not sure I buy this. Barack Obama ran a very good campaign, is good at politics and is pretty scandal free.

Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign, is terrible at politics and seems incapable of staying away from scandals (even by a charitable reading, the email thing was bloody stupid).

In terms of their politics they’re broadly similar save on foreign policy (where Hillary is astonishingly hawkish for a Democrat, or even a Republican).

mds — I was about to shut this down after reading your first line… well done, for about 3 seconds I genuinely thought you’d lost it!

Cian

yes, pushing through it was stupid (and the one time I pushed it too far got me uncomfortably close to hospital). And it displays an unappealing (and possibly dangerous) character trait. And I agree, obviously, it is more serious in a 68 year old. But she is extremely energetic and hardy, and manifestly so, and has and will have excellent medical care. I don’t fault the Trump campaign for making a big deal, but the press for allowing his campaign to set the agenda.

He, by contrast, seems to have a personality disorder of a fairly serious kind, and its hard to see high quality health care doing much about that. I think people’s suspicion that he is mentally unbalanced (which, of course, he may not be, but which he quite flagrantly gives the impression of being) accounts for why, despite the fact that liberals who think about it probably suspect that his attitude to intervention probably matches theirs more than HRC’s does (isolationist), she still wins hands down on foreign policy. Unless this is all some elaborate act on his part (which it might be!) the world is safer with a hawkish liberal than with a manifestly spectacularly ignorant and quite possibly unbalanced Dixiecrat.

Of course, in the long run we’re all dead, so it doesn’t matter than much!

js. 09.14.16 at 3:29 am @ 70 —
Of the stuff I read, those believing Trump would succeed in any way were definitely in a small minority. That’s why I noticed what Adams was writing; as I said, I’m not interested in the meaning of men’s V-neck sweaters.

97 comments in and still not a single direct assertion. Sebastian H: what did she do, how did her connections help her do it and how did she hide it?

There are half a dozen major scandals involving trump where very aspect of the behavior is documented with evidence. But here we are talking about a scandal which has been twice investigated and turned up nothing, entirely on the basis of a profit that other people have been shown to have made. If you can’t see you’re being played for a chump here, it’s because either you’re deeply stupid, or you want to be that chump.

@91
One can never have too much disinformation. Besides, I’m sure the ‘machine’ is more than capable of fixing Wikipedia whenever its needed. Its how Arkansas’ Red River gets its name.

#95

> The Clinton foundation gets an A rating and spends 88% of its revenues on charitable works.

This just means it spends 12% of its revenues on fundraising. What I was criticising is the way it spends that 88%.

> I’m not a fan of the charity model of social engagement but within that framework the foundation is genuinely good, and it’s work is genuinely positive.

Really? In Haiti it was a disaster. Awful, wretched. On Aids it hasn’t achieved a whole bunch given the resources available. It has allowed a fair bit of greenwashing for corporations. What are its achievements?

What it does do is create a global network of powerful people, that is controlled by the Clintons. Which is brilliant btw. As a political operation it is genius, and it greatly increases the reach and importance of the Clintons. It also provides good PR, which is what the powerful get for participating (plus to get a little of the Bill Clinton magic). In addition, it provides employment to Clinton’s people that allows the Hillary operation to keep operating when they’re out of power, as well as funding her, Bill’s and other key personnel’s non government trips abroad. Much better than your people going to universities, or think tanks.

I am in two minds about Hillary. I loathe her politics and what stands for, but I do really admire her ability as a bureacrat. She (and Bill) molded the Democrat party into it’s modern, corporate friendly, upper middle class form. In 2016 the entire party backed her, because she had manipulated the levers of power s.t. pretty much everyone either owed her, or needed her, or was one of her people. And she created a permanent team of people that she can rely upon. It’s just a shame that her core values are American corporatism.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/09/what-an-actual-scandal-looks-like

WaPo investigation of Trump Foundation. Using OPM to pretend you are donating to charity. I know of Trump from 20+ years ago from bank group in Trump Plaza, Trump Shuttle and the NJ casinos. Fun times. Better fun for Citi.

Thanks for the historical view, J-D @82.

Layman, as always, your wit and insights are deeply appreciated.

Is the possibility of death (or incapacitation by illness) while in office something that should count against somebody’s suitability for the Presidency? Anybody might die or be incapacitated by illness. At what point should it become issue? when the actuarial probability is greater than 1%? or 5%? or greater than the probability for the rival candidate? or what?

I fully understand that people will be concerned about this sort of thing; my view is that it’s a silly concern.

You might elect a President in perfect health who develops brain cancer in office and dies. Then the Vice-President would become President. That’s what you have a Vice-President for. If you think the Vice-Presidency is a bad idea, that’s what you should be worried about. (If you think the Twenty-fifth Amendment is a bad idea, that’s what you should be worried about.)

“Sebastian H: “That isn’t at all nothing to criticize.”

Yes, this is more or less the disingenuous position: We couldn’t prove a crime, but that doesn’t mean there was no crime. Tell me, when would that criticism not apply, to anyone? You, for example?”

I don’t agree. Politicians made the anti-bribery LAWS and as such they are really hard to hit politicians with. That doesn’t mean that serious corruption doesn’t happen that just means that much of it isn’t illegal.

As for Trump, he is pretty clearly even more crooked than Clinton. That doesn’t mean the Clinton’s level ought to be considered ok.

J-D @ 107

I agree. I don’t see how health is a legitimate disqualification. A lot of Presidents (and Presidential candidates for that matter) have had serious health issues. That’s what we get by electing mature mortal human beings. Maybe in the future, our corporate citizenry will nominate a self-driving Uber car, but until then we’re stuck.

I do think issues of mental acuity might become a problem, if they manifest in public. (Think of the Texas governor who went on teevee addled by pain killers — bad move for someone who wasn’t that bright sober.) Short of an undisputed public display, I do not see how raising such speculatively is any thing but a Republican dirty trick.

Chris G – thanks! Oh, no, I’ll never go back to not sleeping properly (if I can manage it). It was never really by choice, but after years of mild sleep deprivation due to children, it was very hard to relearn proper sleeping habits…

Sebastian, I don’t take statistical unlikelihood as evidence because 1) it’s not, 2) the “statistical” calculation is no longer being used in the wiki so you actually don’t even have evidence that it was statistically unlikely, and 3) Google Sally fields and get back to me with stats as evidence. There’s a reason we don’t accept statistics as evidence, especially the kind of body stats people are waving around here.

You say corruption but you can’t tell me who benefited or how. You say technically illegal but you can’t even tell me the chance that she could have made the money by chance, and you can’t give any rebuttal of the inquiries that found she likely did nothing illegal. So I sun you’re waving around an unspecified improbability you don’t even know how to calculate, of something that you claim is highly unlikely but which we know other people did, that ha been inquires into twice and found to have been okay, that used unspecified illegal strategies by unspecified people who benefited in unspecified ways through unspecified politics actions taken subsequently I pursuit of unspecified goals.

That’s not evidence Sebastian, it’s conspiracy. When you can tell me how it differs from global warming denial (a cabal of scientists are collaborating to hide data so successfully that 20 years of skeptical inquiry can’t pin anything on them) or birtherism, get back to me.

Cian: “Or take the email thing. Best case explanation. The very best case. Is that she did it because she wanted to shield her governmental emails from Freedom of Information requests. That’s no trivial thing.”

The best case explanation (and the obvious one) is that she didn’t want to have to carry two devices and she didn’t want to send personal email from a .gov account. If she had been trying to avoid FoI requests, she would have destroyed her government emails after she left office (like Bush and Cheney did with their private server, and as Powell did with his non-.gov account). She would also have made sure the people she was communicating with also didn’t use .gov accounts (as Bush and Cheney did, as Powell did in emailing foreign heads of state from his private email). Instead, she only destroyed her personal emails and she communicated with .gov accounts, exposing the existence of her account.

So your “best case” is actually the worst case and not supported by anything real, just Clinton-hate.

Chan’s best case ask allows for the real possibility of worse cases that are dark and sinister and broody (like intentional treason) as the “more likely” option.

It’s funny how so many people accept vague statistical evidence that Clinton is a monster, but reject the strongest statistical evidence that co2 is warming the planet. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but these clowns can’t even manage to be right once. Ever.

Obamas most important legacy was obamacare. As usual you failed as soon as you started.

I am not going to engage with you, Faustusnotes. I am pretty sure your moral sense is broken.

As for Obamacare, anyone can read the headlines on healthcare inflation and the planned withdrawal of the mega-insurers from state exchanges, just as they can the continual dribble of stories about big bank malfeasance.

Cian: “Really? In Haiti it was a disaster.”

Actually, I’m guessing you don’t have the slightest fucking idea how well it worked in Haiti, but that you are acquainted with a web site who describes it in the way you want to hear.

Anyone can also read about the 10 million people who got Medicaid and how it could have been 20 but for the stacked court; can read about the record low levels of uninsured, and satisfaction with plans, and the effective cost controls of the first two years; about the reduction in unnecessary hospitalization and post discharge deaths. Or we could give in to right wing scaremongering about how a couple of vindictive companies dropped out of some markets after Obama refused to give them a monopoly.

But it’s my moral sense that is adrift …

And my American (or dual citizenship now) friend here is telling me the polls are now showing Trump closing on Hillary, and that really she now wonders if she’ll ever go back …

But just keep on with the Hillary hate BW (et al) – nothing really bad could happen (could it?)

It’s not like you’ve got a candidate who’s buddying up with Putin while threatening China, or anything like that

I wonder how many of us moralists would have been the first African-American president and used that position to try to send a lot of powerful white men to jail? I wished a lot of them could have gotten their just deserts but I wasn’t surprised that PBO, who campaigned with a promise of non-partisanship, did not want to walk into that firestorm.

The percentage of uninsured recently dropped to 8.6%, compared to about 20% when PBO took office, and health cost growth has slowed. No doubt we moralists could have done a lot better, against Republican opposition.

Why do I bother to type this and submit it? It’s all common knowledge which has already persuaded the persuadable. I guess in case PBO should happen to read this thread and find one more sympathizer.

Faustusnotes @119

“It’s funny how so many people accept vague statistical evidence that Clinton is a monster, but reject the strongest statistical evidence that co2 is warming the planet. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but these clowns can’t even manage to be right once. Ever.”

To whom on this thread are you referring? The imaginary global warming denying, Clinton hating leftists?

Anyway. Clinton was in a tough situation with her health “issues”. She couldn’t acknowledge being sick or look like she was ill in any way, what with the looking back on it, pretty diabolically clever groundwork Trump and his people laid with their constant low level grumbling about her health. But she also reinforced the narrative about her trustworthiness by not being completely honest and then being put on the spot with such a dramatic incident (the pretty scary looking way she passed out). Now she looks sick and untrustworthy. In hindsight it might have been better to have been more upfront about the pneumonia from the beginning. She would have still looked sick, but at least she wouldn’t be validating the “untrustworthy” storyline.

What is scary is her campaign has been basically predicated on being the serious, trust-me-with-the-nukes, “adult” option compared to Trump. I’m in Georgia and I have seen a lot of Clinton ads (which is new for a Democratic presidential candidate, at least since I moved here in ’07) but none of them have ever, not once, mentioned anything Clinton has done, plans to do, or anything like that. Maybe that’s because in GA she is trying to get GOP voters who won’t vote Trump (the ads are mostly Republicans talking trash about Trump) to vote for her.

If she is running as the anti-Trump option rather than talking about how she will be a good Hillary, she needs to actually look better than Trump. And this last week or two she hasn’t looked healthier than Trump. She has looked just as untrustworthy as Trump in a very facile, surface kind of way (It’s impossible to be more untrustworthy). She has looked as incompetent a campaign strategist as Trump and his team.

I think they need to get to ramping up the GOTV effort and rallying the base sooner rather than later. With Trump tamping down his buffoonery and her inability to, at the moment, project competence, the focus on the soft GOP voters to be With Her as the least bad option strategy is looking less viable every day.

Val @128

If anywhere was a “safe space” to engage with Clinton without endangering her candidacy by airing dissatisfaction (however valid one might think the criticism may be) it is here.

I’m pretty sure the GOP research teams aren’t trawling left wing philosophy and ideas blogs looking for a hot take to splash on the front page of the National Review or feed to their cronies on fox news.

bruce

Your often justified indignation is overwhelming your critical sense. “The U.S. government does not run” is hyperbole. The government encompasses a great deal more than high policy, and any government – indeed any large organisation – always has patches of inefficiency or failure. A country with thousands of governments will have more such areas than most (the US has 9,000 plus police departments; Australia has 8).

In many areas the US is not doing well, in others it does a reasonable job; in many other areas (eg much local government) it has never done well, probably never could do well, and does not mean to do well, if by “well” one means working towards the welfare of all citizens.

Brutal incompetence has been the foreign policy norm since at least the 50s. A new FDR is not on the horizon and would not have the same level of political support anyway. Even the original could not deliver good government in Alabama, and doubtless traded in favours every day.

Sebastian_h 09.15.16 at 1:19 am

…
On the topic of health, for those focused on the theoretical question, you seem to be over weighting death as a concern as opposed to severely diminished capacity. (See for example Reagan). Death gets a clean transition to the VP. Diminished capacity opens up unsavory power plays from weird angles.

Actually I have already referred to incapacitating illness as well as death in an earlier comment, but I’ll repeat myself.

Is the possibility of capacity diminished by illness something that should count against somebody’s suitability for the Presidency? Anybody’s capacity might be diminished by illness. At what point should it become issue? when the actuarial probability is greater than 1%? or 5%? or greater than the probability for the rival candidate? or what?

On this point there is one historical precedent. Probably nobody knows for certain, or ever will, the extent to which Woodrow Wilson’s capacity was diminished by his stroke in 1919, or the extent to which decisions about running the country were actually made by his wife. But also nobody foresaw that situation when he was running for election in 1912, or for re-election in 1916. Somebody in 1916 who said ‘We shouldn’t vote for the candidate who might have a severe stroke’ would have had no way of knowing whether that was more likely to be Wilson or Hughes. ‘Because the candidate might have a serious illness in office’ would not have made sense as a reason not to vote for a candidate in 1916, and it doesn’t now in exactly the same way.

The Wilson precedent is part of the reason the Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted, providing a mechanism for dealing with similar situations. Possibly it’s an inadequate mechanism, but if you think so then it’s the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment which constitute your problem.

faustusnotes @137

I don’t know how you got in my head. Otherwise how would you know what I’m thinking versus what I think “people” are seeing? Are you denying the way this has played out in the media, for whatever reason, is Clinton’s health has become an issue and her reputation for being untrustworthy (deserved or not) has been reinforced?

What’s kind of a little interesting is a comparison with the the way Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Clinton here have been treated by the media, the reaction of their supporters, and the reaction to the reaction of their supporters.

Both have been been treated very unfairly with the media being biased toward negative stories and giving any tom, dick, and harry a platform to say what they want about them as long as it’s negative.

Their supporters have complained about how unfair it is, but for Corbynites the reaction of the Serious types have been “suck it up, everyone knows the media would be against him, that’s why he is such a bad candidate, and he deserves it too.” But for Clinton the “how unfair!” moaning has been treated as a legitimate complaint which reflects more on the sorry state of our media rather than on the candidate. And I’m not comparing them as candidates, politicians, public figures, their relative accomplishments, or anything like that.

In the primary (I’m probably going to regret going back there) one of the arguments was whether Clinton, with her long reputation and years of rough media treatment, would be in a sense inoculated from her reputation or media treatment getting any worse because what else could they say about the person who has had to deal with what she has dealt with and has had the type of media scrutiny she has faced over decades. Or if her long history and the years of her every move being under the spotlight would make the horse race media coverage even worse for her because of the way the past would be used to contextualize anything that happened in the present in a way that served to reinforce her negatives (which were known from the beginning).

It looks like it will be (2). Her media “immune system” hasn’t been strengthened through previous exposure. It has seemingly been weakened.

When you say “With any other candidate they wouldn’t exist, but because of years of saturation-level accusations of dishonesty and corruption, no matter what Clinton does she will look suspicious to you.” you are pretty much admitting it too.

And what does moaning about the unfairness of it all do other than maybe serve to work the refs a little (which I suppose is a legitimate strategy)?

Whether her treatment is unfair, sexist, biased, whatever, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the way she responds. Thankfully she isn’t taking a page from your book and accusing everyone who even notices how she might be being perceived as having some sort of false consciousness born from “pre-conditioning”. What’s next, is the media going to force life long Democratic voters to vote for Trump with a pre-conditioned code phrase? The Manchurian voters!

Matt 09.15.16 at 3:41 am

Let me second comments by Val and Helen here (and so indirectly second Faustusnotes, who has done good work – some others, too.) But, while there is work to do, I don’t think it’s necessary to get too worried yet – Sam Wang, who has done better work on this stuff than anyone, still gives Clinton a 90% change of winning:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/sam-wang-wants-everyone-settle-down

As I recall it, after the 2012 election Sam Wang conceded that he had been slightly out-performed by Drew Linzer, and mused publicly about getting out of the business as a result, although (as is evident) he didn’t. And Drew Linzer’s also still going, and currently giving Hillary Clinton a 77% chance of victory.

(Drew Linzer’s latest figures here:
http://elections.dailykos.com/app/elections/2016;
Sam Wang’s latest figures here:
http://election.princeton.edu/)

Clinton’s underlying condition could be trivial to non-existent, as the OP suggests. It’s the handling of the issue by her campaign and the campaign-friendly media (such as the WaPo) that leaves a taste of cover-up. (Which is perfectly compatible with a scenario in which there was precious little to hide from the beginning.) Blanket denial and accusations of right-wing tinfoilery was the party line until the latest episode, when the “me or your lying eyes” approach finally failed.

Trump has not released his medical records either, but his tight campaign schedule has been signaling that he is in good shape: short-term fitness if not long-term health.

Lynn @3 “I’ve been imagining the different spin this would have had had she been a man”. In fairness, when Sarkozy (then president and as macho and right-wing as ever) collapsed from a vasovagal syncope, he was broadly ridiculed for it in the media.

On the whole “crooked Hillary” theme, the advantage of being a foreigner is that you have a nice epistemic test. God knows that I am no fan of Hillary, to the point that I can see serious reasons (extreme hawkishness with a cynical disregard for human lives, almost absurd disregard for the most basic procedural tenets of democracy…) not to vote for there even when the alternative is so manifestly an order of magnitude worse, but until today (this thread included) I have never learned anything interesting from the proponents of the “industrial scale corruption.”

I mean, I am all for learning something about bad about her, but a link to a Wikipedia article about fishy trading to the tune of 100,000$ (probably to be said in Austin Power’s voice) that did not even lead to an investigation and which occurred before I was born? Really?

‘Clinton (William) graciously accepted a cool 18 million to act as a “honorary chancellor”, according to the article. I’m sure he earned it– or if not, the sum was surely merited.’

Former President gets paid money and given honorary title because he’s a former President. Alert the media! In other news, dog bites man.

24+ years of attacks, and still no crime discovered. What can it mean?

“I’m not attempting to insult your intelligence or doubting it. I’m simply observing that 20 years of saturation coverage of lies and insinuations changes the way you think about a person, and it’s really obvious that this is happening to a lot of people in the USA. This has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with feelings. ”

I know you can’t be held responsible for the whole world, but it is very jarring to be confronted with this argument when so recently we were vigorously hectored that we should be scared of voting for Sanders because he might have something scary the media hadn’t latched on to while Clinton had already had her past inspected so she was safer.

Absolutely Joe . But I’m not arguing here with average voters (I have argued this with my gaming group and as the election closes in they are getting increasingly angry that I am right – but they are not American). I am arguing with ostensibly left wing people, who are buying into a bunch of right wing bullshit because obamacare isn’t perfect and something something war I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Hilary is female nothing nothing at all. This just happens to be the one time in history that right wing bullshit was 100% correct …

I really don’t have any suggestions for how Americans should deal with this, but I do have a suggestion for American leftists posting here: grow the fuck up.

Sebastian, I don’t think I ever said anything about Bernies health. But if I’ did I deserve a thorough spanking.

harry b,

what’s the joke??

Another great example of what is happening in the media: manta knows nothing about trumps China policy (ha!) but has already heard that Clinton is going to invade China, having read a dishonest article in a major newspaper. I wonder how it is that this dishonest stuff always manages to leak out even as far as overseas observers…? What a coincidence that it happens to a woman who has been the subject of vicious right wing attacks for 20 years … How can this coincidence possibly have come about?

faustusnotes, please support your claim that the article is dishonest.
It seems pretty clear that Clinton is quite aggressive towards China, and not shy about it: but if you have credible sources that it is not so, please quote them.

See also http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/11/china-fears-hillary-clinton-focus-on-south-china-sea-human-rights-far-more-than-it-does-donald-trump.html

“Layman @155, read the article.”

Manta @ 157, it’s paywalled, and I assume you’re competent enough that if you’re going to reproduce a quote, it will be a representative and damning quote. If I’m wrong, oh well.

Faustusnotes @152

“(did it occur to you at any point that she might not have known?)”
Clinton’s incident happened on Sunday, 9/11.

On that same Sunday – “Several hours later, the campaign released a statement saying Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/295493-clinton-campaign-manager-dodges-on-pneumonia-timeline

She knew on Friday she had pneumonia. She decided to push through, which was an entirely reasonable decision. If she hadn’t collapsed the whole thing would have been a non-issue. Unfortunately she collapsed in a dramatic fashion that was caught on tape. She gambled and lost.

” If she hadn’t collapsed but had released her health records (as she did today) and they contianed a diagnosis of pneumonia we would be seeing all the same accusations of dishonesty and lack of transparency.”

Would we? It’s much easier to claim the pneumonia was a non issue when you don’t collapse and get literally dragged into a van by your security detail. That it’s barely worth mentioning but for the purposes of full disclosure and because Clinton believes so strongly in transparency she will. Nothing is going to placate the deplorables. But do you think WaPo would have had an article with the headline “Hillary Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign”?

The issue is the other 150 million odd registered voters and what they might do and how they might be feeling in reaction to all of this. I know that’s my frame for this conversation. I can’t speak for other people.

I will agree with you that the public perception of Clinton has been skewed by a multi-decade campaign of lies, smears, and innuendo directed at Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, as well as Buddy and Socks. So what should she do about it in this campaign in 2016?

The issue is the other 150 million odd registered voters and what they might do and how they might be feeling in reaction to all of this. I know that’s my frame for this conversation. I can’t speak for other people.

hmmm

Obamas most important legacy was obamacare.

It is not a very impressive legacy. Yes, uninsurance is down from 15.7 to 9.1%, which is far less than promised, but it’s something. But the proportion of people driven into poverty by health costs has not declined, overall health spending is edging back up, household health costs have apparently not declined due to increases in co-pays and deductibles, and every American knows the system is as complex as ever. It accomplished something but it’s hard to see that the massive Obamacare apparatus has done more than could have been achieved by targeted expansions in Medicaid and Medicare and some cost control measures aimed at e.g. pharmaceutical costs, carefully left untouched in Obamacare. More modest and targeted efforts like that would not have carried the enormous downsides of the Obamacare push, which included immobilizing the Democratically controlled US Congress during the worst of the recession and losing any hope of Democratic Congressional control for at least a decade (the House will likely not be recaptured until 2020), which utterly immobilizes fiscal policy.

In some ways, Obama’s Iran agreement was a more impressive legacy, yet it is one of the legacies most under threat from Hillary, whose foreign policy record is truly frightening.

Layman, it’s better if we agree to disagree then: people can read the articles themselves (about territorial disputes in the South China Sea) and reach their conclusions.

Manta: “…it’s better if we agree to disagree then…”

No, it would be better for you to say “I can’t produce evidence for my claim that Clinton ‘threatens China in a military way’, so I should not have made that claim and I withdraw it,” since that is the actual state of affairs, but of course that would be too much for you, wouldn’t it?

“It immediately struck me as weird and twisted, just like the politico article (which I note you haven’t responded about) was obviously a laboured attempt to manufacture evidence of nothing…I’m talking about how people interpret news and why they need to think twice about kneejerk judgments, not about whether the media reporting is unfair… I’m suggesting to you that you need to revisit the way you assess Clinton’s actions and your opinion of her in light of the constant dripfeed of negative lies you’ve been mainlining for the past 20 years.” faustusnotes @143

I referred to the Vox article b/c I had read it previously. I didn’t read the Politico article. Your last paragraph certainly may apply to any number of people–mostly those occupying the right-ish spectrum on our lovely human rainbow–but it doesn’t to me. Can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t appear to apply to others who have expressed various forms of Clinton skepticism here. Again, you are basically saying CT Clinton skeptics are ideological dupes who’ve been tricked into personal animosity of Clinton(s) by dubious and cynical propaganda–it doesn’t wash.

-I harbor no ill will toward the Clintons and never have. But I do find both of them, many of their policies, and the arc of their careers illustrative of the dominant sociopolitical order–it ain’t a good look. Layman would have us believe that an 18 million payday from a for-profit college for doing nothing is no biggie, presumably just like the Wall Street speaking gigs were no biggie. And that is also highly illustrative. There is precious little the governing class will not stand for–if the money’s right. The fundamental imbalance and grotesque inequality implied by this is one thing. The fact that Clinton or just about any other politician can’t even show the slightest inclination to stake out positions which might oppose moneyed interests or overly concentrated nodes of power means institutional capture is more or less an ontological condition at this juncture.
-Clinton theoretically could have staked out any number of semi-bold positions in the campaign. It would have intensified hard-right opposition (but who cares, that’s inevitable) and likely broadened and solidified her base of support, given current socioeconomic conditions and mood. Instead she’s thrown a few gnawed bones to the Sanders wing and primarily courted the Republican-lite vote–she’s got Robert Kagan’s and Eric Schmidt’s vote, thank god. The bathetic, conformist, status-quo protecting nature of the Clinton campaign has ensured that the Buffoonist remains within striking distance. That’s on her and her campaign–and it is also illustrative (see ontological condition above).
-Maybe systemic rot is an inevitable problem of scale as Rich P. keeps suggesting. I don’t know. I am, however, pretty sure Clinton’s lackluster lead in the polls and her tepid campaign is indicative of the utter insularity of governing class consensus. More of the same while nibbling politely on the margins is no longer an acceptable or convincing argument for the majority. Liberals and centrist boosters can continue to get on their high horse and go moralistically stampeding across the hordes of unwashed and bigoted masses, but it is a tactic that will only hasten defeat. The great political problem now is not rank partisanship, but the unquestioned consensus of the political-economic elite. Brexit was the first major signal. The potential election of Trump, the odds of which I put at over 50%, is the next.
-Really, there are signals everywhere yet the Clinton campaign has demonstrated little awareness. Why? I assume the lack of responsiveness is indicative of what pays and what they are paid to do. The cost may be very steep come November though.

@171 phenomenal cat

“The fact that Clinton or just about any other politician can’t even show the slightest inclination to stake out positions which might oppose moneyed interests…”

From what I’ve read, the Obama administration has done some decent work against moneyed interests in education (and some bad work too, though).

Bill Clinton: Hillary ‘frequently’ faints. (Did I just say on camera that to Charlie Rose? Fuck.) ‘No, not frequently, umm rarely, on more than one occasion over maaaany, maaany years..But definitely not frequently.

CBS helpfully edits out Bill’s confusion. CBS edits transcript to assist Liar 1 lie to cover spouse Liar 2, running against Liar 3. Liar 1 and Liar 2 attended the wedding of Liar 3. Liar 1 and Liar 2 routinely request cash from Liar 3, who happily forked it over, but not for influence, of course. But because back when Liar 3 was donating to Liar 1 and Liar 2, Liar 3 had a big heart. Now, of course, Liar 3 is Hitler and Liar 1 and 2 are both Mother Theresa.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2016/09/13/cbs-edits-out-revealing-verbal-slip-bill-clinton-hillarys-health

No. In the unedited tape, Bill Clinton says that every time Hillary Clinton has been severely dehydrated, she has fainted. He uses “frequently” erroneously to mean “every time”, and corrects himself mid-sentence.

If you are going to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on his many manglings of language, you are going to have to give it to the Clintons, too.

No. I’m not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, thanks, including you and your ‘everybody’ but me regards life through the prism of emotions.

Lee A. Arnold is our sole source of objective, rational neutrality. I’m surprised you feel the need to keep reminding us.

I’m not American and I don’t believe politicians, especially presidential-level prevaricators, tell the truth. In fact, I’d argue that the inability to lie effectively with a straight face is one of principal grounds for disqualification. That and an unwillingness to take money.

You want to believe that in this case Bill is telling the truth about a woman he’s involved/not involved with?

Go for it. Cause there’s clearly nothing partisan, or emotional in that kind of argument. Bill’s proven to tell the truth on the question of women, especially. All Democrats are – just as Jesse Jackson who ‘prayed’ with Bill over his zipper problem. Lying and politicians are synonymous, except to the donkey-loving dunces. Not you, of course!

You’re the exception.

Seconded.

kidneystones,
1) Bill Clinton *may* be lying about his wife health, but the evidence in the interview is pretty weak in that regard (far more damning is the fact that CBS edited the interview in the way they did: but damning about CBS and its subservience to the cause, not about Hillary health).
2) Lee A. Arnold @174 did not give me the impression to say or imply that *he* is not biased too.
By the way, about his anecdote I am a bit surprised that 3 out of 4 remarks were about foreign policy: any explanation for that?

Layman:

I got your drift, but beyond the obviousness of the problem, which you allude to, is Clinton’s seeming obliviousness. It’s why I claim that she is illustrative of elite political dynamics that are systemic. Set aside participation, just the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the obscene accumulation of wealth and power happening at the top of the pyramid is enough to royally piss off a plurality of people at this historical juncture.

And this goes to Lee’s and wilder’s field research among the natives: yeah sure, Trump’s in on the racket, but that he’s willing to take random potshots at some consensus arrangements is enough for many people. One can think that misguided or even stupid, but it doesn’t change the state of play. I’m pretty sure the Clinton campaign thought they could play it close to vest, do a little triangulating here and there, let Trump trump himself, and skate on through to the Oval Office. And maybe it will work yet. I wouldn’t put money on it though.

I would put money on the strategy–coordinated or not–of corporate and government elites emerging from the woodwork to say, “trust us, you’ve got to vote for Clinton” being a guaranteed loser. Just further evidence of their extreme insularity and incapacity to sense, let alone properly assess, prevailing socioeconomic conditions and mood.

Manta:

I know very little about what Obama’s done re: education policy. I will second what others upthread have said about his FP. He’s done moderately well in his second term parrying the lunatics that would have the U.S. invading Syria, bombing Iran, and ramping up to a good long fight with Russia. Too bad he didn’t show more initiative on that front in his first term, but I think it’s very difficult to overestimate the concentrations of inertia and power located within the FP establishment and military-industrial complex. I always got the impression he was not really prepared for what he encountered in that arena and was led around by the nose for a while as a result.

183 1/ Agreed. You’re right to point to the editing to remove the damning adverb ‘frequently.’ The cause of her collapse, of course, matters. That she ‘frequently’ faints when dehydrated points to a more troubling pattern of ignoring basic health requirements, especially considering she was hospitalized in the past and has suffered at least one concussion. The CBS is colluding with the campaign to edit interviews is not in the least surprising, and perhaps a more reliable data point than any other in explaining the success of both Sanders and Trump.

2/ Lee deserves credit for making commenters here aware of Trump early on. He’s not free from bias. I’m not that curious about his interactions with Trump supporters other than to know (same for BW) whether he actually announces his preference for Clinton (tribal antipathy towards Republicans) at the outset of his own discussions. I make my own pro-Trump biases clear in almost all cases. But I’m not really interested in why people vote for Clinton, so I don’t ask.

Re: the foreign policy questions? My guess is that Lee was attempting to ‘demonstrate’ to Trump supporters that he’s likely to be every bit as reckless as HRC. Trump indeed may.

But, as I discussed with my son last night, Trump has yet to bomb anyone. HRC, on the other hand (who I liked) has left a bloody trail of broken bodies and destroyed societies from Libya to Mosul, and that’s after ‘realizing the error’ of supporting interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump may become the candidate of the donor class and the neocons. The former SecState is and has been the candidate of the donor class and the neocons. Trump is not particularly ideological, or honest. The first is a plus, and the second goes with the territory. He’s capable, at least on some level, pragmatic, and clearly a keen student willing to adapt and learn on the fly.

There’s ‘We came, we saw, he died’ and another candidate. That candidate isn’t Ted Cruz, or Jeb Bush, so for a neutral who opposes bloody regime-change there’s not much to discuss. I also think African-American urban communities should be able to choose charter schools without fighting their Dem rulers. But that’s on the domestic side.

To conclude: she tips over and on at least on occasion her ‘fainting’ led to severe concussion and hospitalization. She’s 68, stubborn, arrogant, and secretive by nature.

No wonder she’s so popular.

@ 186 Thanks for the clarifications.

I don’t think we get a choice about emotional investments, for the most part, or about tribalism, or theologies. You claim the power to master all three.

Kudos!

Kidneystones #187: “preference for Clinton (tribal antipathy towards Republicans)”

They know my preference for Clinton — and that I do NOT have antipathy to Republicans! Half of my close friends are Republicans! But I am fascinated by the etiology of the tribalism on both sides.

Oh yeah, the link via Salon: http://www.salon.com/2006/04/05/matthews_13/

Kidneystones, the reasons why you would think that everybody will think like you may remain an eternal mystery.

Back here in Reality, citing the Matthews-DeLay snorer as indicative of Hillary’s problem is only indicative of you, once again, being an emotional idiot. Beyond that, citing DeLay about anything is crazy.

Taking a nap is exactly what will not fix any of these problems.

Kidneystones #196: “You’re making a huge leap from a 2006 set of responses to HRC and my own views.”

No, YOU made that leap. The rest of this comment #196 is more explanation, justification and defense of your emotions. The only people who care, who will find it intellectually valid, are trapped in the same emotions. Otherwise it is all palpable nonsense.

Just to add a mild addendum to fn’s wholesale condemnation (is it needed? Oh well) the thing that amazes me, as a non-American, is that much of the criticism of Hillary is about her being too close to corporate financial interests. Which is, ok, fair enough, I can see the problem but have you noticed the elephant candidate in the room?

He isn’t ‘too close to’ corporate financial interests etc etc – he is a corporate financial interest. As the recent investigations (from the Washington Post? But they are appearing in the Guardian as well) show, much of his income is now coming from licensing arrangements with developers and construction companies in places like India or the UAE. The whole thing is an absolute example of high corporate capitalism – you have extremely low paid construction workers, often like a form of indentured labour, and profit taking corporations using them, and then Trump Corp takes the easiest profit whack of all by the licensing of the ‘brand’. It is high, global, corporate capitalism at its most blatant, and yet somehow, for some people here, Hillary is the one who’s ‘too close’ to financial interests.

I’m not saying she isn’t too close, just as I agree she’s too hawkish, but if you’re really worried about global corporate capitalism, then perhaps opposing global corporate capitalism should be the main game?

Faustusnotes #198: “Rather than waffling on here about “I don’t know whether Trump would introduce a public option,” you can check his healthcare policy and you’ll find it doesn’t include any such thing, and is actually just a classic republican non-plan.”

Trump has been in favor of a single payer or something like that in the past. Rather than waffling on here about what Trump says he will do on his website as a guide to anything at all, you might have noted that in your very next paragraph, you will go on to point out that he is a pathological liar: So, is he telling the truth on his website, or not?

How can anybody know? What we do know is that he is an unpredictable and unprincipled commercial real estate debt & bankruptcy artist whose subcontractors take a bath while he gets out with millions — a veritable poster-boy for the financial crash, willing to consort with racists, unfit in temperament to be in the Oval Office.

Lee, why would I believe something a liar says over something a liar writes?

kidneystones 09.15.16 at 11:30 pm
… The cause of her collapse, of course, matters. …

Of course? No, it doesn’t.

It is possible that people’s votes will be affected by concerns about her health, but it’s silly for them to be so affected. See earlier comments, mine and others.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for this. Nothing wrong with lost causes. I just spent a few days in a community of people who absolutely reject a wide swath of what passes for ‘accepted wisdom’ in your neck of the woods. No justification for military aggression for ‘defensive purposes’ or to meet FP objectives, and no affirmative action without ensuring those on the receiving end have all the skills they need to succeed. California sounds like a great place for some real dissent. You’re right to be frightened, given her track record and the lunatics lined up to help her win. She sounds normal, but acts crazy. I see Trump as the opposite. I fear many will never forgive Trump for hiring women in the construction industry when no others would and other transgressions. It’s all about what he says.

For many, actions speak far less eloquently than words. That’s not good.

LAA: Because Trump is a pathological liar, we can’t exclude the possibility that he is a secret socialist planning to introduce socialized health care? Yeah that sounds about right.

And 198 kudos fn for taking up with this.

Faustusnotes@198:

Because right now running for president we have a competent woman who is mildly left wing (by America’s pathetic standards), who is serious about doing things to help women and poor workers, and who is basically human; and a radioactive turd in a suit who is a pathological liar, a known fraud and con artist, a failed business man, an out-and-out-racist and probably stricken by several florid personality disorders. If you can’t tell the difference in honesty, integrity and commitment between these two people, you have serious problems making any political judgments at all.

Many people do. It’s a propaganda saturated environment, and it is hard to think clearly in it. On the left, a lot of us think too hard, and complicate a simple choice. There is not a fault that Hillary Clinton has that Donald Trump does not have in yuge, and yet Clinton’s faults are thought large, and The Donald’s, small.

@161: Trump had over thirty public events in August vs. Clinton’s dozen. The public doesn’t get to observe secret donor meetings: it can only judge candidates’ stamina from their public appearances at physically demanding events such as rallies. In that respect, Trump has done his signaling pretty competently. It doesn’t mean he’s genuinely healthy, of course, although he might as well be.

Likewise, Dr. Bornstein’s letter is consistent with both the hypothesis that Trump is virtually as healthy as humanly possible for a 70-year-old man and the hypothesis that Trump is hiding some serious condition so far undetected by the public. On the other hand, the Clinton campaign’s approach to medical disclosure does not fit well with the assumption that it has nothing to hide. Sometimes it makes sense to keep innocent facts private because the public is bound to misconstrue them and no amount of honest explaining will help. But sloppiness is not a virtue and vagueness may hurt more than help.

Consider Dr. Bardack’s statement. The internal contradiction in the CT/CTA line was most likely caused by a typo. But it’s the kind of typo one should avoid because it gives rise to all sorts of suspicions.

The “non-contagious bacterial pneumonia” diagnosis prompts the question: “how do you know it’s non-contagious?” One obvious answer is that it’s possible to estimate the degree of contagiousness when more information is factored in – the info apparently missing from the release. Again, this lays fertile ground for speculation. Why wasn’t the “non-contagious” label omitted altogether? It would be easy to explain, later on, that bacterial pneumonia does not transfer nearly as easily as its viral cousin and that antibiotics all but kill the chances of contagion.

Reading through comments and got to this, which made me gag…

“He’s done moderately well in his second term parrying the lunatics that would have the U.S. invading Syria, bombing Iran, and ramping up to a good long fight with Russia. ”

OK for the first two, but on the last, Obama *is* the one who ramped the U.S. up for a good long fight with Russia. Ever since Russia refused to hand over Snowden to the Americans, Obama has made Russia enemy number 1, and it’s his actions – and no one else”s, not even Putin’s – which has the world lurching to a second cold war.

@57 Faustnotes
>>someguy88 you pasted that cattle futures link twice, and it contains nothing. Can *you* tell us what crime Clinton committed in making 100,000 in 10 months?<<

It works like this Faustnotes. You are a broker. You want to bribe the Clintons, but you want to plausibly cover your tracks. You say, "Give me $1,000 and I will invest it for you". You, the broker, take both sides of a contract. The winning contract you park in Hillary's account. You do it again, and again and again and again ($1,000, $2,000, $4,000, $8000, $16,000, $32,000, $64,000, $128,000). In eight days Hillary has gone from $1,000 to $128,00 thanks to her broker parking the winning bets in her account and eating the losing bets for himself. There were no computers back then. Everything was written down in spiral notebooks. Impossible to pin on the players, but anybody with half a brain can figure out what went on. Hillary Clinton is rotten, corrupt, degenerate individual. She is responsible for hundreds of thousands dead and displaced persons. She is a wretch. Liberals will still vote for her, because liberals are thoroughly corrupt in their souls. You deserve all the bad stuff that you will get if she becomes president, and things will be very bad.

dax @217 and @218 and seems right to me.

Unfortunately, Hillary seems to be quite more hawkish than Obama (which deserves great credit for his handling of Iran and Cuba): in FP, she takes the most belligerent positions of the Obama administration as the starting point.

Ok, once more with feeling – Hillary Clinton is too close to global, corporate, high capitalism – yeah, I don’t disagree with that. But Donald Trump IS global, corporate, high capitalism. He makes a lot of his money from licensing agreements with developers and construction companies who are exploiting pretty much indentured workers from poor countries – and Trump creams his profit off the top, because that’s the way high capitalism works now – it’s the BRAND.

I feel like some people here are in theory opposed to global capitalism but actually have no fucking idea what you’re actually talking about – because you would never focus on Hillary Clinton if you were really concerned about that. You would focus on Trump. Know your enemy, people.

(Ravin Onthill, thank you. You may be right but I have to keep trying. By your own posts, you feel the same. It matters, we have to try. After the election, if Hillary wins, do everything you can to shift her to the left. But now, defeating Trump is what matters. Best wishes to all engaged in this effort.)

Jesus christ you people. Now dax is an armchair doctor, who has been prompted to the question “how do you know it’s not contagious?” Which question of course is absolutely the most important thing we must know about this election (hint, pneumonia is caused by S. pneumoniae, which is almost always non-contagious, or sometimes as a consequence of contagious viral infections). Now everyone is second-guessing a doctor on a common and medically well-understood phenomenon, because whaddyaknow, even a bacterium becomes a suspicious and non-transparent corrupt entity once it gets into Clinton’s orbit.

And as for not a war-monger … Trump not only supported the war in Iraq but he “wished they had done it properly the first time.” i.e. he wanted to create ISIS back in 1991.

Are you people paying any attention to how completely ridiculous you sound?

What continues to both amaze and frighten me, is that so many people can not distinguish their emotions from intellectual argumentation.

It is possible to support Clinton (I do) and to think that Trump will be bad for the country (I do) — while separating a discussion of that, from the requirements of logical argument and of proper admission of evidence. But it surely is not common, even in comments under an intellectual blog like Crooked Timber.

@ 226 Better take a hammer to every mirror in your house.

Oh wait, you don’t actually use mirrors.

Also, using the word “prices” to mean “prejudices” doesn’t make you look smart and being a Bayesian doesn’t make you cool.

What voters think: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/democrats_agree_candidate_health_important_but_not_hillary_s

Pretty much everyone agrees that the health of a major candidate is a legitimate concern, except Democrats on the question HRC. Only 17 percent believe HRC tipping over merits attention. Independents and Republicans disagree.

Brave Sir Lee seems to have left the field.

Lee, better to do what I do and skip all of kidneystones comments. If I was less lazy I would get a kill file (do they exist for phones?)

@dax:

Obama *is* the one who ramped the U.S. up for a good long fight with Russia. Ever since Russia refused to hand over Snowden to the Americans, Obama has made Russia enemy number 1, and it’s his actions – and no one else”s, not even Putin’s – which has the world lurching to a second cold war.

How so? It was Russia that annexed Crimea and provoked the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine. Obama’s cabinet responded with sanctions, but not nearly as harsh as the Iranian sanctions: Russia was not disconnected from SWIFT and its oil and gas exports were not affected at all. Someone in the Kremlin said, “if you cut off SWIFT, we’ll treat it as a declaration of war,” and Obama backed off. He could have paralyzed the Russian economy overnight but didn’t want to take the risk. Two and a half years after the Russian takeover of Crimea, it’s still Russian and there’s a frozen conflict in the East of Ukraine. With the benefit of hindsight, Obama’s response was the least he could have done and, unsurprisingly now, it also achieved the least.

@ 233 Thanks Lee! I was so waiting to be called a ‘deplorable.’ You make a lot of sense on occasion, but lamenting the sloppy argumentation practices here seems a waste of time.

There’s always a lot of straw-manning etc, talking past one another, and name calling.

It’s all good fun. I thought you’d gone for your nap. TM, I fear, won’t care much to be lumped in with me.

That was cruel.

Kidneystones #238: “That was cruel.”

I’m not buying it. This is your known M.O.: You write reprehensible crap and accuse people (including commenters here) of all sorts of things, and then after that, you write like you’re hurt at what somebody else writes about you. Then, you write more reprehensible crap. Due up next, from you: reprehensible crap.

@ 237 You’re no Holbo, that much is painfully obvious. Or, should be.

In addition, attributing error to the ’emotional priors’ of others leave you badly exposed given your unfortunate habit of making provably false and illogical claims.

“If one of you “deplorables” addresses me or quotes me at the top, of course I read! Otherwise, no!”

Granted, you make your declaration @233 afteryou responded to my @177 both by reading the comment and by watching (it seems) the linked video. But my 177 makes no reference to you, thus rendering your 233 false.

So, once again we have you hurling yourself face first into a pile of your own crap.

Like I give a damn.

Give it up TM, we passed the point where factual background is required at comment 2 and there is no going back. Obama attacked Russia and 9/11 was his fault.

TM #241: “still be able to make inferences”

Faustusnotes’ inferences at #198 as stated are emotional, not logical, and led immediately to the suggestion that I believe something that I do not. I don’t care about me — but what it implies is that #198 ain’t worth reading (unless we want to learn about somebody else’s emotional status), and that an interesting series of views on the election (interesting, sans Kidneystones) has gone astray.

It’s no secret that elections are about emotions, and it’s no secret that (as I wrote way up there at #18) this election is all about emotions, all the way down the line. So, I suppose it was inevitable:

198 was a response to 186 which was a response to 184 which was a response to 174 which was a response to 171.

It’s ridiculous to ask anybody to re-read them, so here are the points that interested me, in forward order:

–Phenomenal Cat’s observation (#171) that Hillary Clinton played it safe in the primaries and is now suffering in the polls on account of it. True.

–my observation (#174) that on Trump’s side of the ledger, his policies have become immaterial to his supporters. True (for most of them).

–Faustusnotes’ observation (#184) that at least Hillary Clinton was bold enough to support a public option for healthcare. True.

–my observation (#186) that Trump’s statements on healthcare or anything else are contradictory anyway (in addition to being immaterial to his supporters). True.

–& then Faustusnotes’ observation (#198) that I was waffling on the certainty of Trump’s healthcare policies and therefore cannot judge politicians.

Okay, so this made logical sense to me until #198.

So (reading further down the comments), I pointed out in #201 that #198 is based on illogic (and avoided mentioning that it is emotional).

It wasn’t until after Faustusnotes’s comment at #203 & your comment at #209 that I pointed out in #225 that you had both gone emotional on the lefty side, like Kidneystones on the righty side.

After the election, if Hillary wins, do everything you can to shift her to the left.

If Obama is the relevant precedent, “everything” will be a lot excuses and denial, just as it has been in this thread.

What was it the man said about staring into the abyss? The trouble with supporting a candidate or a Party is that support moves you, not the candidate, not the Party.

The trouble with American politics is its domination by an irresponsible economic oligarchy with global ambition and scope. Hillary Clinton has done everything she can over more than a dozen years to make it crystal clear she is with that oligarchy and to draw that oligarchy into alignment with her. That oligarchy is ambivalent about Clinton and partly in its self-interest some in the oligarchy work pretty hard before and after elections to make sure Clinton’s are constrained to remain in alignment on policy that matters to the oligarchy. The Clintons never feud with their billionaire tormentors and use the Media’s Clinton Rules to their advantage, to conserve with popular sympathy their own base of popular electoral support against the evidence of their policy and fundraising record.

There are no good choices on the America ballot in November. I cannot predict the future well enough that I feel comfortable identifying one of the major Party candidates as lesser evil. I do predict the future well enough that I remain confident Clinton will win.

No individual’s vote matters much. Thinking that it does practically is delusional. First, there is the math. Second, what part of oligarchy did you miss? American politics is responsive only to the interests of large business and the very wealthy on the issues they care about. That is not my impression only; political science confirms as much with detailed measurement.

Letting yourself be mobilised by Clinton does more damage morally to you as a person than it does to meliorate in any degree the politics of the system. Vote as you will; it does not matter. But, don’t invest your faith and twist your moral judgment into knots.

There may come a time when you can join with others and be politically effective if you are available. Be available. Detach yourself from this politics now. It does not need you or want you — that is what is wrong with Clinton’s politics: it does not need you to do anything except to acquiesce in continuing and extending the status quo, a status quo that is slowly destroying civilization to make a few of the rich, richer. It is an ugly, depressing truth, to admit powerlessness in the face of such evil, but it is the truth in this political moment, and as the man said, the truth shall set you free.

I want to be deplorable. Is that deplorable?

Put another way, is he really deplorable, or does he only want to seem deplorable?

Anyone who wishes to do so should feel free to hop into Hillary’s basket (the first basket, the one with the deplorables, not the second) if that is his or her pleasure. There’s an open spot right next to David Duke.

Failing that, Trump’s campaign, ever ready to flog more campaign swag to the suckers, is now offering appropriately labeled T-shirts.

When someone asks me to vote for Supreme Court, Layman, I will let you know.

Meanwhile, . . . you might consider the millions affected by dozens of other policies and appointments and votes.

There has been a grave reluctance on the left to admit the extent to which Obama legitimated and extended the Bush Administration. I am not willing to relitigate any of that now. If you cannot see it, you are not going to see why Clinton is so distressing a prospect to me. With friends like Obama or Clinton, the left does not need enemies.

The left’s best moves are often idealistic critiques, but the left has been reduced by support of Obama and Clinton into highly selective memory and normalizing practices it should oppose.

I do not care if you vote for Clinton and rationalize that mumbling about the Supreme Court. There is no good choice on the ballot — I will vote for Jill Stein, but do not think a no-hope Green Party protest vote is a “good” choice either.

What does disturb me is pretending that there is no evidence that Clinton is an unethical, corrupt war-monger and liar or insisting that this level of irresponsible corruption is nothing new, nothing worthy of concern.

The abyss has been staring into Hillary for decades, and still she soldiers on. If and when her gladness does finally come to pass, less ambitious mortals will have every reason to be amazed. Fortunately for her, if not for us, IBGYBG when the trunkless legs of stone bit makes its inevitable appearance.

“When someone asks me to vote for Supreme Court, Layman, I will let you know.”

That’s just silliness masquerading as gruffness. There are choices on the ballot, as there were in 2000 and 2008, and there are predictable consequences. It suits you to pretend that there is no difference, but no one else should take that seriously.

I think you should know by now that I’m not someone with a ‘grave reluctance to admit the extent to which Obama legitimated and extended the Bush administration’. This gimmick of arguing with a theoretical person rather than your actual interlocutor is a cop-out.

As for this: “What does disturb me is pretending that there is no evidence that Clinton is an unethical, corrupt war-monger and liar or insisting that this level of irresponsible corruption is nothing new…”, the thing that comes first to mind is a great Paul Newman line, from Road to Perdition: “There are only murderers in this room!”

I agree with Bruce Wilder about the problems the USA has, but I don’t think it means we are at some extraordinary low point in history. I think that, except for some consequences of technology, we have always had such problems (or would have had them in other generations if they had our technologies) – along with others, some of which we have left behind. The only way I see such problems going away is by one small step at a time, always making the best choice available. For me, that seems to be HRC, mainly due to her experience. As Niels Bohr said, “An expert is someone who has made every possible mistake in a narrow field.” (And so may not make those mistakes again.) That accords with my philosophy that we learn mainly by trial and error. HRC learned from the Rwandan genocide what happens when powerful countries do not intervene against injustices, and from Kosovo, Iraq and Libya (which are not identical cases) what can happen when they try to.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit into evidence LBJ, a very corrupt politician who gave us the Civil Rights Act and some anti-poverty legislation, thanks to his political experience, and got mired in the Vietnam conflict along with a Secretary of Defense and generals who did not understand the situation very well. (The Domino Theory, like most theories which aren’t well-founded on experience, was a trial that erred.)

Anarcissie, it’s more that one faction of what you call the ruling class has lost control. But Trump is part of the most reactionary and dangerous faction: remember that he is actively seeking the white supremacist and misogynist vote, and he has adopted many of the policy proposals of the extreme right.

Bruce Wilder, Two of the best public poll analysts, Sam Wang and Nate Silver, say that Trump has a significant chance, and his chance is improving. All signs point to a close election and so we need the participation of all. I would rather be morally damaged by supporting Clinton and have prevented World War III or a new global depression than be morally damaged by complicity in bringing them about by opposing Clinton.

@261:

Merrick Garland looks like William O. Douglas next to any conceivable Republican nominee, not to mention the murderers’ row of reactionaries that Trump proposed early in his campaign to placate suspicious conservatives.

Leaving that aside, Garland was chosen this time around because of the Republicans’ blanket refusal to accept any nominee put forward by Obama this year. Under ordinary political circumstances, Garland is indeed too old and too centrist to be a likely Democratic nominee in the current party environment. He was chosen precisely because he’s such a white-bread middle-of-the-road pick in an attempt to embarrass the GOP. You can argue about the political smarts of that decision, but there are reasons why Garland spent so many years on the short list without being selected.

It’s my hope that Obama will withdraw the nomination if Clinton is elected and also my hope that she chooses someone else. She will certainly be under pressure to do so and I think it will be her inclination to make her own selection as well, depending on how the Congress looks.

The Roberts Court had a lot of plans for 2016. The nation dodged several bullets because of, and only because of, the timely demise of Antonin Scalia.

Val, Suzanne: thank you. This election seems to be coming down to the women men don’t see vs. the fascists, and I can only hope that there are enough like you.

Faustusnotes, you continue to be a voice of reason. Thank you. I do perhaps suggest that not being drawn into personal disputes is best. Jumping into the fight in the gutter is a fine way to get yourself unprofitably covered with muck.

It’s the gamers and the women and one cranky old bird vs. the crazies. Did any of the Greeks say that sometimes madness can cloak itself in logic?

William, In a close election, every vote matters, and every bit of support matters, and all indications are that this will be a close election. You will probably see at least the beginning of the carnage. If Trump wins, I expect disaster in some form or other and it will be relatively quick, within a two years. We are going to have carnage even if Clinton wins: the demons that Trump has raised will not be easily laid.

Raven Onthill: Bruce Wilder, Two of the best public poll analysts, Sam Wang and Nate Silver, say that Trump has a significant chance, and his chance is improving. All signs point to a close election and so we need the participation of all. I would rather be morally damaged by supporting Clinton and have prevented World War III . . .

My feeling is that polls sell newspapers (and attract eyeballs to new media) and therefore the people who pay for polls always want the polls to show how close an election is going to be. Nobody has a stake in polls that show the other guy is in a hopeless position. Trump’s chances are being exaggerated in a news Media that gets a huge payoff (as in beaucoup bucks) from campaign advertising.

This election may turn out to be different, in a “past experience is no guarantee of future performance” kind of way. I do sense that legitimacy issues loom larger this year than usual, but that’s just an extension of my cyclic argument. It would shock me if those issues mature fast enough for enough people to drown Clinton before the election almost as much as it would surprise me if they don’t contribute to drowning her Presidency afterwards.

My argument is not an argument against voting, or against voting for Clinton even, if that’s what your preferences or judgment dictate.

Even if a vote for President wasn’t swallowed up in the math of millions of votes, it would still be an impossible existential choice. You simply cannot project the ultimate consequences of such a choice. Even if you were the only one voting, I would not have confidence that you could possibly understand the consequences of your choice.

That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in democracy. I do, very much, as a good (American social) liberal. Mobilizing people behind a political program or candidate can be a vitally important device for coordinating behavior and expectations in a large-scale society. The existential uncertainty problem gets buried under civic ritual and solidarity; it is not about the person of the candidate, so much as the collective exercise of the franchise, which enables elected officials to rely on political solidarity to enable and support necessary political choices made subsequently.

I am arguing it is not good to be herded in this case by these oligarchic shepherds. The oligarchy does not need the “participation of all” to achieve Clinton’s election. They want the “participation of all” to legitimize that election and the policies that follow. They don’t need your vote so much as the pernicious rationalizations and emotional arguments dampening cognitive dissonance and critical assessment.

I am fine with holding your nose and voting for Clinton as the best of a bad lot. I am against not-holding-your-nose and pretending to yourself and others that she doesn’t stink.

If you think voting enthusiastically for Clinton is going to prevent WWIII, you have not been paying enough attention to who Clinton is. (Yeah, yeah, I get it Trump is volatile and in over his head; don’t disagree.) Clinton is the scariest major party candidate since Barry Goldwater. Her belligerence and bad judgment is staggering.

She may well want to go to war or create provocations. Remember, the post-WWII economic and political order is crumbling — that’s a real thing that’s happening and not a choice she makes. This isn’t Reagan in a peaceful world facing a decrepit Soviet Union waiting for Granada to demonstrate his manhood. Clinton will see the U.S. challenged across the globe and China, the next hegemon, in economic turmoil. These are really, really dangerous times and Clinton does not have a record of good or foresightful judgment. She just doesn’t. The Republicans make a scandal out of the wrong accusations, because they are idiots, but that doesn’t redeem her.

If the left feels it has to defend Clinton as a “normal liberal” President, one of their own, I think that may, in the inevitable crises to come, prove to be a major mistake, a trap, as it has been a trap during Obama’s Administration for so many left aspirations. So, vote for her, if you feel that’s best, but please do it with all the enthusiasm you would muster for Tricky Dick Nixon if you can remember him. Because it may not that far in the future when the “participation of all” may well be necessary to stop Clinton from taking us to the apocalypse.

Trump didn’t raise these demons. He’s a symptom, not a cause. So also are Hillary and Bill, the Bobbsey Twins of go-along-to-get-ahead. You could argue that winning in today’s political context requires a vast influence-peddling and money-laundering machine like the Clinton Foundation, that it requires cozying up to bankers and generals, that it also requires castigating the unnecessariat, winking at mass incarceration, profiting from rent-seeking in the privatization of public education, bombing peasant weddings, etc., etc. This, we’re told, is realism, this is what it takes to win.

And after your nest is feathered, after you win, then what? You remember suddenly that you’re supposed to be the steward of our common destiny? Eye of the needle stuff, if you ask me, not that you did. Mind you I don’t blame Hillary for this. She does what she has to do, given her imperatives. It’s her imperatives that I question…and the system which makes them imperatives in the first place.

Bruce, Sam Wang doesn’t even have a job as a journalist. He is a disinterested amateur with a day job as a neuroscientist. No interest in “horse-race” journalism at all. Silver is a journalist, but one with a good record on poll analysis. And, no, I don’t know the outcome of a Clinton victory, but we can be pretty sure that the outcome of a Trump victory will be disaster. That’s enough for me. Clinton is at least not courting the white supremacist vote.

William, the rest of the Republicans started the ritual, sure. But Trump’s the one who has actually stood up with the staff in his short fingers, stepped into the pentagram, and is chanting the final invocation. And there is no indication that the Clinton Foundation is a money laundering machine, and every indication that the Trump foundation is.

After we win the election, if we do, we keep fighting, what else?

Trump supporters http://www.macleans.ca/politics/why-im-voting-for-donald-trump/

“We need to get off the words African-American, Hispanic-American, as we are all Americans. My physicians mostly come from Damascus, Syria. Awesome, I love them.They are legal immigrants.”

Macleans is the media voice of ‘traditional’ Canadian values: pro-efficient civil service, pro-immigration, pro-aboriginal & lgbt rights, very pro law and order. Whilst the NYT is currently running scare stories of Americans moving to Canada, few probably know that Canada’s legal stance on immigration is much, much closer to that of Trump, than of HRC.

The core principals of ‘peace, order, and good government’ are right at the center of ‘Canadian’ values. BW may see this as a love of authority. Perhaps, he’s right. But many Canadians choose Canada because they come from nations where the civil service, the judiciary, the police, doctors, and the politicians are all for sale.

I like Sam Wang. I have obsessed over polls in past elections and I respect him as one of the best. And, Nate Silver also.

The LA Times had a big front-page article a few days ago comparing polls under some sort of “Trump catches up; disaster looms” headline and there was no there, there. Clinton was doing fine.

I don’t think there’s much information in headlines, ever. By design. They want you to feel that lack of information badly enough to click-thru after all.

All the serious research on U.S. Presidential elections says they are eminently predictable from months out. All the campaigns ever routinely accomplish is to cancel each other, letting incumbency, demography and economic conditions do their usual work. In this case, Trump barely has a campaign with little effective GOTV anyone has been able to detect, so no surprise there is likely.

Presidential elections have rarely been too close to call and this one isn’t now, no matter how motivated Clinton’s campaign may be to make you feel otherwise. And, when it really is too close to call, as in Gore v Bush or Hayes v Tilden or 1824, the fix is put in, so when your vote actually could matter, it isn’t allowed to matter, which really ought to tell you something.

News organizations finance really cheap polling because, frankly, they want noise, because it helps the “exciting” horse race narrative and because they don’t have a lot of spare cash to spend. It is kind of a mathematical miracle that you can get an extremely accurate measurement from a poll of a 1500 people out of an electorate of well over 100 million. Random is random and by chance any one poll may be very, very wrong, but properly and carefully conducted and stratified polls are more narrowly accurate than an ideally random draw and an ideally random draw is pretty good. Cheap polls are aren’t as accurate as they could be, but they are still valuable to news organizations and campaigns raising funds. People like Sam Wang and Nate Silver can distill good information from combining a lot of variously bad polling, which is what they do, insofar as it can be done.

Here’s the dirty secret about modern polling: it is the feedback loop in a process of manipulation and control. The people who devote serious resources to polling (and focus groups and the rest of modern market research) are the campaigns. You don’t get to see their polls. Which in this case means Clinton’s own polls, nor is there much reporting on what the campaign is doing with those polls to get the result they want. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, please.

Obama’s election in 2012 was a monument to precision campaign strategy. He won by an historically narrow margin for a two-candidate race but never ran much of a risk of losing, as Nate Silver’s real-time narrative analysis in the course of the campaign showed.

Clinton doesn’t have some of Obama’s advantages and the staleness of incumbency is working against her though Obama has been using his power to deliver “good news” on economic statistics and policy that makes good arguments at the water cooler (expanding the scope of required overtime pay for example is very good — people understand the politics of policy that puts cash in their pockets, however cynical I might be about a guy who waits for year 8 to do it).

But, Clinton doesn’t have Obama’s reasons for wanting to win narrowly, though she has reasons of her own for not having coattails that might drag too many liberal Democrats into the House or Senate. But, she’s taken care of business as far as that’s concerned, so she’s free to boom some big guns late in the campaign and GOTV.

I could be completely wrong — I have been before. I have watched that Dilbert guy, Scott Adams. He makes some good points and he’s funny, so an entertaining read. He’s selling a book and he’s wrong about Trump in a way that sells his book. Clinton is not a good candidate, not in the way Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were. But, neither is Trump. Trump is a gift to Clinton whose appearances are as likely to lose votes as gain them, because Trump generates even bigger negatives.

I still say it is not healthy to hyperventilate over an election you will personally have no discernible impact on.

“And just to clarify, Trump as an American Berlusconi would be a disastrous scenario for the left, but a Hillary Clinton presidency would be too, for all the reasons leftists keep harping on about.”

Just to clarify, Will G-R, you’re going to get one or the other. It does no good to say that Trump will be a disaster, but Hillary will, too, because it leads nowhere. Decide which one you’d rather see, and why, and make an argument.

More exhausting bullshit here, as William Timberman joins the deplorable Wilder in airing conspiracy theories:

You could argue that winning in today’s political context requires a vast influence-peddling and money-laundering machine like the Clinton Foundation

Yes, you could argue this – if you were full of shit, didn’t understand how foundations work or what the Clinton foundation does, were happy arguing ludicrous ideas without evidence, and were doped up to your eyeballs on right wing myths and Clinton-hatred.

Or you could argue something sensible and realistic. And step back and take a look at how you’re judging events in this election, and wonder if maybe you have a problem with your own judgment.

And Deplorables and Irredeemables respond…

Trump says one thing, then he says the opposite, he denies the facts, he lies — and it doesn’t matter. His supporters do not care what he says. They are supporting him because he’s their guy, and they hate Hillary. It’s the in-group phenomenon of “motivated social cognition”, the modern tribalism in which facts are secondary, dismissible. It was always active in politics on both sides of course, but the GOP has been basing their message on an increasing number of lies for a few decades now, and Trump has laid it open, and they don’t even care.

If Trump is elected, it will be very bad for the country because he is teaching kids that it is all right to lie.

Lee A. Arnold @ 287

The lying is deplorable.

What if Ohio votes for HRC in the end ? K’stones will be covered in prognosticatory (if that’s a word) glory.

Speaking of Trump’s lies, I’m reminded of

“These lies are like their father [Falstaff] that begets them — gross as a mountain, open, palpable.”
1 Henry IV, Act II, sc.4

“Walking pneumonia is really not a big deal any more. I’ve had it maybe 10 times”

Did you ever collapse in public and were it not for the several people physically supporting you, the several Secret Service agents forming a perimeter, and waiting rescue van, you might have seriously injured yourself?

Bruce, why didn’t you stop with “I like Sam Wang. I have obsessed over polls in past elections and I respect him as one of the best. And, Nate Silver also.”

And last week, Sam Wang give Donald Trump a 1 in 6 chance of winning and Silver a 1 in 3. Trumps odds are better now, but the new state polls haven’t come in yet. 1 in 6; those are the odds of losing Russian roulette. Care for a game?

@Raven Onthill

Obviously B. Wilder doesn’t care which of the two main candidates wins. He’s made that clear here for months, in comment after comment after comment. So what Wang and Silver say is not going to move Wilder in the least.

Note the past tense in Wilder’s comment: “I have obsessed over polls in past elections.” Not now, is the implication.

js@299: I fear that is accurate. The actions I described @297 will affect privileged white men and perhaps for that reason they are disbelieved.

And of course President Trump will be Commander in Chief, empowered to order a nuclear strike.

But I guess that doesn’t matter any more.

Kidneystones, you’re quoting f’in Breitbart.

Raven @302 — Well, resentment’s not particularly rational, I suppose. And more importantly, the defeat of Clinton would feel like a moral victory to them, which I guess is what they care about.

——

LFC @303 — I guess I missed that. It seems manifestly unfair to me given that 50+% of CT comments these days are mealy-mouthed defenses of white nationalism. But I guess that’s where CT is heading. They should probably ban me too—after all, this more and more seems like a place for white dudes to discuss white dude problems, so I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here.

@ 306 There are two news organizations clearly identified in the comment: the Daily Caller and McClatchy and you managed to miss both.

“McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher has backed up Trump’s version of events, saying he was personally pitched the story by a Clinton surrogate in 2008”

Here’s a link to the kind of Pulitzer quality reporting James Asher supervised for McClatchy. http://www.mcclatchy.com/2015/04/20/3690/mcclatchy-washington-bureau-reporters.html

Surely there must be some other kind of prize for your own reporting/reading.

William Timberman

This dude lives in what might end up being a swing state this year, if I remember correctly. But what the fuck does he care about the Latinos, women, etc. in his state and the country that would be harmed by a Trump presidency?

The actual tweets are given here: http://www.mediaite.com/online/journalist-says-that-clinton-ally-blumenthal-once-spread-the-birther-rumor-to-me/. They are ambiguous at best (did Blumenthal perhaps want to see those charges refuted?), and in any event the Clinton campaign didn’t lead the birther movement; that was Trump.

Put it away.

@ 314

Here’s Asher being ‘ambiguous’ in his response to

Hillary Clinton ‏@HillaryClinton Sep 15 (2016) President Obama’s successor cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period.

@HillaryClinton So why did your man #sidblumenthal spread the #obama birther rumor to me in 2008, asking us to investigate? Remember?

And here’s Asher again, doubling down, on his accusation that Clinton confidant explicitly claimed Obama was born in Kenya:
@jimasher#CNN says #Hillary team in 2008 never raised #birther issue. #SidBlumenthal, long-time #HRC buddy, told me in person #Obama born in #kenya”

James Asher is explicitly challenging and responding to Hillary’s tweet re: birtherism. The use of ‘so’ is the marker.

Given that Asher supervised two Pulitzer finalist investigations, one into CIA torture, and the second into Goldman Sachs and the financial meltdown, as Washington Bureau chief of one of America’s best news services I’d say Asher is a credible source with a professional’s command of the English language.

I’m glad, however, you spoke up because now we know you can’t read, or think.

Thanks!

William, Your good name doesn’t matter if Trump wins.

Kidneystones, so? Trump is the major figure who kept birtherism alive, not Clinton or any of her staff.

Here’s McClatchy’s own account of the birtherism matter:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102354777.html

Blumenthal says no, Asher says yes. No idea who is right, or if both person’s memories have faded. What is clear is that birtherism was never central to the Clinton campaign, which everyone here I expect remembers. Sorry, no, that was and is Trump.

Yes, WT, you have commented on CT long enough and I have read your comments for long enough, and that’s why I always had immense respect for you. I’m genuinely sorry that it’s fast evaporating. I hope you’ll enjoy 4-8 years of Trump, if it comes to pass.

It’s not an accusation William, it’s an attempt to find an explanation for your irrational insistence on believing every lie and slur against Clinton and ignoring every serious fact about trump. I mean, now you’re quoting wiki leaks, an organization that recently outed a bunch of gay citizens in Saudi Arabia for no reason. An organization that obviously hates Clinton and is run by a rapist (hmm why does this anti feminist hate Clinton I wonder). If you’ve got a better explanation for why the dudes on here hate Clinton and believe every lie and slur about her, while ignoring facts about trump, I’m all ears. Until then I’ll use the explanatory method presented as irrefutable by Sebastian upthread: statistical likelihood.

Boom. And here’s Hillary herself pushing the ‘secret Muslim’ garbage live on 60 Minutes:

KROFT: “You said you’d take Senator Obama at his word that he’s not…a Muslim. You don’t believe that he’s…”

CLINTON: “No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.”

As far as I know…

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough also confirmed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind mainstreaming the birther theories. “For Hillary Clinton to come out and criticize anybody for spreading the rumors about Barack Obama when it all started with her and her campaign passing things around in the Democratic primary,” Scarborough said. “Now, listen, the Republicans are wrong for doing what they’re doing. But it started with Hillary Clinton. And it was spread by the Clinton team…

Bloomberg’s John Heilemann—the co-author of the 2008 campaign book Game Change—and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough also confirmed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind mainstreaming the birther theories.

There’s actually more. A lot more. Because the above mentioned Heilemann confirmed on MSNBC that the Hillary campaign was behind the birther rumors and that Hillary knew about it, and that Heileman apologized to the Obama people for pushing the smears.

I watched clip. It’s not ambiguous. Asked a direct question on air in 2008: “Was the Hillary campaign behind the birtherism smears?’ Heilemann responds ‘Yeah, the Scarborough-Brezinski version of events is correct.’

This is going to bite.

Raven Onthill, my good name is as evanescent, as mortal, as I am myself. If the last century proves anything, from Goebbels to Stalin’s show trials to the industrial-strength character assasination Hillary’s been subjected to for the last 25 years, it’s that no one’s reputation is immune to assault. As public figures — and we’re all potential public figures in the age of Facebook — our existence is largely virtual, and as such, vulnerable to anyone who considers us an impediment to their own interests, and figures that the end justifies the means. It’s enough for me to know who I am, and when called upon, to give an honest accounting of my actions. Like it or not, the rest isn’t up to me.

My opposition to Hillary isn’t governed by any animus except a distaste for hypocrisy, and the perception that the cleverest among us have outsmarted themselves, that the means have become detached from their ends, have in fact come to dominate those supposed ends completely. I shouldn’t have to say, in this company particularly, that none of this makes me a supporter of Trump, but I’ll say it anyway. Whether faustusnotes or js. or you believe it is your affair, not mine.

Look, man, it’s about saying you’re not a supporter of Trump. You either do (at least) the minimum to defeat or you don’t. Your words (like mine) count for shit.

TFW you forget a negation and your comment makes no fucking sense.

js. not to worry, I got the point. I’l add useful-idiotism to the list of my crimes against the future. Needless to say, I think you oversimplify the options available. As I once said about Obama, Hillary is at best a placeholder, at worst a part of the enemy’s baggage train. Trump is a commedia dell’arte villain with the potential to become the latest lightning rod for a lot of long-festering, and hence familiar nastinesses eager to have yet another go at our fragile civil society. Perhaps fortunately, a resolution of the underlying political incompatibilities, those which the country has wrestled with since the Articles of Confederation, won’t depend exclusively, or even primarily, on either one of them.

Also, and I am really sorry for all these comments, when I say that I really really respected people like William Timberman (etc.), I really mean it. I don’t argue, and never have argued, against idiots like—well, I hope you can guess. This is why this hurts. I really always thought of you as allies.

How hollow all this “words-of-wisdom-from-an-ol’-timer” shtick becomes, in an existential choice. The elders all appear to be juvenile enough to think that their own votes should remain Pure! They must vote “for” something or someone, as opposed to “against” another. Otherwise it’s not philosophically credible or something, or else it will belie the lessons from the previous sad experiences of history.

Let’s get something straight. Anybody with a Muslim family has every right to object to Trump’s comments and to oppose him for just that reason. Trump is using all the dog-whistles and appeals to xenophobia exactly as his critics have charged. The sad part of the birther debacle is HRC used precisely the same tactics and O played upon African-American homophobia to win black votes from Hillary.

I support Trump. Should Trump fail to act in a responsible manner towards minorities, especially Muslims and Hispanics, his particular targets, it’s on everyone who wanted to see Trump win. I wouldn’t support Trump for a moment if I believed he wants policies any different from those in place in Canada and Australia, not perfect, but tight enough to ensure that the authorities have a pretty good idea who is coming into the country and why. It’s on Trump to prove he’s not the bigot he’s made out to be.

HRC is not sick enough to be disqualified from running for President. Period. But her health is a legitimate topic for discussion. I disagree, btw, that the world is especially dangerous at this point in history. The dispute in the South China sea has the potential to become much more dangerous, but right now corporate elites are making far too much money to disrupt the cash flow. Lee Arnold is right when he notes that whoever wins will have to rule under severe constraints.

Imagining the worst about others is something we could well do without. But that’s me.

I remind people that there is also the global warming issue.
Obama has been relatively good (not good enough in absolute terms, but much better than his predecessor, and probably better than the republican alternatives)..

I assume that both candidates will behave as standard members of their respective parties: i.e., that Clinton will at least keep Obama legacy, and maybe improve on it, while Trump will probably try to backtrack on O. promises and surely will not try to build on them : but I welcome corrections from people who have followed this issues more closely.

The Democratic Convention recently improved the climate change policy with a commitment to hold some sort of talks about it after the election, and a war time mobilisation strategy. It’s a pretty good climate change policy now.

One of the former Australian Labor Party people said after the Democrats did that, the Labor Party here will change their policy to a war time mobilisation response too, and it was a question not if if, but when.

From https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/economic-vision

“[Targeted for review and likely repeal]
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which forces investment in renewable energy at the expense of coal and natural gas, raising electricity rates;
The EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, which gives the EPA the ability to regulate the smallest streams on private land, limiting land use; and
The Department of Interior’s moratorium on coal mining permits, which put tens of thousands of coal miners out of work.

…

4. Energy reform—

Rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
Save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
Ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
Make land in the Outer Continental Shelf available to produce oil and natural gas.
Cancel the Paris Climate Agreement (limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.
…
Obamacare repeal and replacement—Obamacare will cost the economy 2 million full time jobs over the next decade. Hillary Clinton would expand Obamacare and create fully government-run socialized medicine.”

It’s not hard to find this stuff if you’re actually interested in policy, rather than how much you hate Hillary.

You have a choice, as faustusnotes says, between a mildly left wing Democrat candidate, and a reactionary Republican candidate who will pursue discredited trickle down economic policies, refuse to acknowledge or address climate change and repeal the most basic environmental protections. According to other statements he has made, he also intends to authorise torture, persecute Muslims and deny women the right to abortion in any circumstances.

Why people here refuse to acknowledge all this is beyond me. It’s frightening.

William Timberman: “I live in Arizona, and that was less a question than a provocation.”

I understand you offered this in response to a direct statement about where you live, but it is amazing to me how often those who offer what they call the principled argument against voting for HRC eventually come around to admitting they live in a state where their vote for President is more or less irrelevant.

js. @308

I’m going to vote for HRC, as I’ve said before; I view her as flawed but much preferable to Trump, for reasons many of which have been set out by others here.

I do understand where you’re coming from on this, but I’m not sure it’s that useful or accurate to imply a Trump admin will hurt only or mainly non-whites. There are not simply “white dude problems” (whatever that means exactly) and other problems.

Also, look at it this way: If someone came onto a thread like this and suggested that you, js., don’t care at all about blue-collar workers who have lost jobs in rust-belt or similar areas because you aren’t a blue-collar worker, you might reply that one doesn’t have to be X or have X experiences in order to imagine X’s situation. Similarly one doesn’t have to be African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic, Native American etc to understand the particular concerns of those groups. It’s a different sort of understanding from first-hand, but not impossible. After all, the civil rights mvt of the ’40s through ’60s received a lot of support from white liberals and leftists. I know you know this intellectually, but comments implying that white males esp. can’t understand the concerns of non-whites — that if you are not at personal risk of having your arm burned when you walk down a street in NY, you cannot understand or imagine what it might be like to be in that situation — seem to me to contain the poss. of alienating people who might otherwise agree w your position. True, you’re not going to convince, say, Timberman or Wilder, but I mean others who might be reading. (OK, it’s just a comment thread, it doesn’t really matter. But thought I’d mention anyway.) Sorry for length of this. I’m going to have to be offline for a while now.

Marc, nastiness? We have a commenter here suggesting some kind of conspiracy in which Clinton is infecting her staff with pneumonia and hiding it. We have people saying she enjoys killing people. Who exactly is being nasty?

Raven Onthill 09.16.16 at 7:17 pm:
‘Anarcissie, it’s more that one faction of what you call the ruling class has lost control. But Trump is part of the most reactionary and dangerous faction: remember that he is actively seeking the white supremacist and misogynist vote, and he has adopted many of the policy proposals of the extreme right.’

I consider the most dangerous faction of the ruling class (that I know about) to be the neocons, who have mostly supported Clinton (or so I read.) Trump has spoken of his desire to commit war crimes, so there is not a lot to choose from. In this area at least, however, there is no indication that Clinton is the sane one, if sanity excludes sociopathic indifference to human life.

William Timberman: “As for Layman, Val, faustusnotes, Lee A. Arnold and the rest of the convinced Hillary supporters, suffice it to say that I disagree with you about what a vote for Hillary represents.”

Anyone who reads me as a ‘convinced Hillary supporter’ is not paying close enough attention to be offering an opinion on the matter. At least, that’s the charitable view.

Marc: “It’s amazing that heaping abuse on people counts as effective political persuasion for some. ”

What’s really amazing is how tendentious your comment is. We’re not arguing with undecided people here; and the suggestion that we are is, well, dishonest.

My frustration stems from the fact that I want Clinton to win, and that I wish that Clinton supporters could engage in ways that were, if not more effective, at least not actively counterproductive. I say that even though I’m markedly unenthusiastic about her candidacy. I live in the state of Ohio, and people here have to think tactically about what their vote means. I agree with Clinton on most things and with Trump on virtually nothing, to the extent that I believe that he even has policies to disagree with.

I also try to understand the motives of people who disagree with me, and that’s where I think that the left side has gone completely off the rails. If you’re reading the absolute worst motives into people you’re precluding even the idea of dialog; anyone who isn’t scum agrees with you, and the others are outside the pale. And then you look up and see 45-45 polls and wonder how that’s possible.

I think that Trump is a vile demagogue who is trying to appeal to the worst instincts in people, in particular bigotry and xenophobia. It serves his ends to treat his supporters as some undifferentiated mass. Universal appeals, which imply the possibility of redemption (we’re better than this) are the way to go both tactically and strategically.

To people on the left, Clinton is far more likely to respond to pressure from us than Trump ever would; he’d probably do things with the express intent of pissing us off, actually. A George Bush II sort of slow-rolling disaster is a far more likely outcome than the Glorious People’s Revolution. To people on the right: you’re being taken for a sucker by a con man. He’ll screw up things that you care about, as in he could be reckless enough to trash everything from your safety to your retirement income or health care. And you can’t believe a word that he says.

There is always something that’s a bridge too far for some people, and I respect their boundaries even if I don’t agree with them. But taking this election seriously means that I have to take seriously the idea that being effective in my advocacy is more important than indulging myself.

Layman @ 357

I can’t look into your soul, only into your comments. On this thread, at least, they seem mostly concerned with debunking criticisms of Hillary. My apologies if this is an abstract rather than partisan interest on your part.

Faustusnotes @ 358

A misquote. What I actually wrote was as clueless as ANY of the rest of us. Yes, I would include you in that number, despite your expressed certainties.

@ William Timberman, I think you’d be hard pressed to find much support in this thread for your description of your interlocutors as seeing HRC as ‘a benevolent and dedicated liberal politician who feels the pain of the dispossessed on the other.’

As for me, specifically, I refer you to to 174, 262, 284, as indicators in this thread of my own view, often offered in other threads as well, that HRC is a terrible candidate who merely happens to be by far the lesser of two evils.

This isn’t prescience, William, it’s basic reading comprehension.

My 2 cents

(1) Hillary is not that bad. Not overly inspiring, perhaps, but certainly not Bruce Wilder’s pandemic of neoliberalism.
(2) Neoliberalism isnt (a)that bad (b)really a thing at this level of generality, and the 50s wasnt so great.
(3)Trump isnt going to start deporting ‘people of colour’, harassing Muslims etc. He would probably end up a slightly dumber bog standard Republican. Might encourage the retrograde elements a bit, but fascism isnt coming to the US.
(4)The United States is a developed, first world democracy. It’s not going to revert to failed state, totalitarianism, strongman rule, whatever. Democracy and the rule of law would survive Trump.
(5) All of this reminds me of the post 9/11 atmosphere. People were initially (obviously) genuinely worried about the future, but then something else took over. A realisation that politics wasnt boring anymore, and we could all live vicariously through worse case hypotheticals and hyperbolic claims of civilisational collapse. The desire to escape the drudgery of normal politics led to worse outcomes than the actual, objective threat.

Faustusnotes 09.17.16 at 2:48 pm @ 357 —
I don’t think either of them is sane in the sense I specified. I think the problem is more serious than personal corruption, lying, and other occupational hazards of the politician trade. So, how can one deal with that? My personal choice is to refuse to submit to the terms of this cynical game.

Ronan@368:

Trump isnt going to start deporting ‘people of colour’, harassing Muslims etc. He would probably end up a slightly dumber bog standard Republican. Might encourage the retrograde elements a bit, but fascism isnt coming to the US.

What is to stop him? He has promised to deport all undocumented aliens in the USA, who are largely Mexicans. If elected, he can, on his own authority, order exactly that; Homeland Security is an executive department and reports to the President.

As Mr. Trump called for shutting down mosques in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks and the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California in December 2015, anti-Muslim attacks initially tripled with nearly half of those attacks directed against mosques. – http://bridge.georgetown.edu/when-islamophobia-turns-violent-the-2016-u-s-presidential-elections/

There is every reason to believe he would do it. And, as for this:

The United States is a developed, first world democracy. It’s not going to revert to failed state, totalitarianism, strongman rule, whatever. Democracy and the rule of law would survive Trump.

You haven’t met our militia crazies. But words like this were heard in Germany in the early 1930s. I don’t think the USA will fall quite that far, but the radical-right policies that Trump embraces have been put into practice in Kansas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and in every case have been disastrous. You’ve heard about the water in Flint, surely? That is probably the most egregious single example, but there is much more. All of those states are insolvent or nearly so. They are selling off state property, gutting their universities, and tearing up their social safety nets. The USA, under Trump Republican neo-fascism, would become a much harsher place.

In other words, Ronan, what are you talking about?

“What is to stop him? ”

Politics. International and domestic law. Institutional checks and balances, inter party and Electoral restraints. etc

“You haven’t met our militia crazies.”

Please. Your militia crazies are a walk in the park compared to the remnants of Irish paramilitarism, and the only ones who think this negates Ireland’s status as a first world democracy and/or poses an existential threat to Irish political institutions are a handful of overwrought contrarians.

Trump can be an unfortunate development without being a threat to humanity, just as Clinton can be a bog standard democrat without being neoliberalismrunwild

No, explain to me how he follows through with his wicked plans. The burden is on you to show the mechanisms that make this happen, and by extension negating 90% of the relevant political science.

Seems pretty simple to me. He orders Homeland Security to focus efforts on identifying, locating, arresting, and deporting illegal immigrants. Over to you, Sherlock.

So asked to spell out what the Trumpapocalypse would bring, you give me:

“He orders Homeland Security to focus efforts on identifying, locating, arresting, and deporting illegal immigrants. ”

And what would this achieve? Do you believe there are no political limits on how many could be deported? No practical or institutional limits ? Do you imagine Trump himself will be driving the illegals across the border? Or are you saying he would be worse than Hillary on this? If the last, then obviously. But how bad would he actually be.

You’d have to assume the Dept of homeland affairs wouldn’t want to commit significant resources to deporting 11 millions people, or deal with the logistical nightmare of such a policy choice. You’d have to imagine the same is true for a lot of local police forces. So the demand comes down from Fuhrer Trump, and then what happens? Internal debates and pushback within the Depts. Political pressure from Democrats (and some Republicans), challenges from civil society organisations and in the courts, political blowback from moderates in the electorate, international opprobrium.
So what gets through this morass, in laymanland? I dont deny there’s room “for escalating misery.” Who could argue with such a trite point? I’m asking what specifically are the consequences here that justify the hyperbole above?

His deportation policy, last i looked, didnt even have majority support among Republicans.
Here are 2 random articles Ive found from reputable sources

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/27/donald-trump-deport-11-million-migrants-is-that-even-possible

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-many-presidents-does-it-take-to-deport-11-million-people/

Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. — Kissinger, A World Restored (1957) quoted by Paul Krugman

Jesus, these comments deteriorated into a run-of-the-mill Democratic Party circlejerk rather quickly.

Just to clarify, Raven, I’m genuinely terrified of American nationalism and the racism and xenophobia that come with it. I’m terrified because it’s had almost two and a half centuries to fester on the soul of humanity like an open wound, with a powerful ruling class egging it on and a chain of historical events that’s never brought it to terms with what should be the obvious fact that nationalist myths are myths. I’m terrified that when the inevitable time comes and US nationalism is finally forced to confront its own historical mortality — the way various Balkan nationalisms have been throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, or the way German and Turkish nationalisms were after WWI, for example — all this bullshit about Founding Fathers and manifest destiny and shining cities on a hill and all that (which even some of the people denouncing Trump on this very thread no doubt still buy into) will lead to a genocidal fury the likes of which the world has never seen in the history of modern nationalisms. This is something we, and by “we” I mean all of humankind, are right to be terrified about.

But… what I’m not terrified of is the specific figure of Donald J. Trump himself as some kind of postmodern American Hitler. Raven, you’re absolutely right that Trump has “called out” the people who when the time comes probably will be the brownshirts of American fascism, and he’s called them out without many of the dog whistles Republican candidates typically use in calling them out, but he’s not really their guy and it’s not really their time. It’ll take an economic and political crisis deeper than anything the US has ever faced, deeper than the Great Depression, and even the potential US fascist currents of the ’30s were nothing a little Keynesian economic duct tape and a little “safe” nationalist war fever couldn’t force back under the surface. I have no doubt that a crisis big enough to is some combination of possible/likely/inevitable, especially since neoliberalism seems to have learned approximately nothing from the crisis of 2008, but we’re not in it yet and probably won’t be for a while.

You even tacitly admit this yourself, Raven, in that the rest of your complaints against Trump @ #297 are pretty much without exception the exact same complaints that could be and have been thrown at just about any Republican presidential candidate of the past 40 years. They’re not incorrect complaints either, even if a bit overexaggerated. (No, a return to the gold standard isn’t seriously on the agenda; no, Trump isn’t going to get the US into any wars not already planned by the neocon foreign policy “Blob”; no, he’s not actually going to deport undocumented immigrants by the millions unless it’s in the interest of the people and businesses who rely on their labor.) But either you argue that Trump is something exceptional among GOP figureheads as an actual maker of policy and not just as a bright flashy neon Vegas sign, which seems questionable, or else you’re trapped in the same problematic as Romney vs. Obama, or McCain vs. Obama, or Bush vs. Kerry, or Bush vs. Gore, or Dole vs. Clinton, or Bush vs. Clinton, and so on, which boils down to the simple question: at what point does choosing the lesser of two evils ever conceivably lead to a situation where the choice itself is less evil?

Bruce @ [formerly 248, now 250] had it exactly right in his last paragraph: it’s depressing to admit that this system isn’t offering us a choice that will actually avert the slide toward fascism, but that’s the truth. Short of letting ourselves be duped by the Democratic Party because it feels good, and sliding into fascism anyway, the only option is to search for choices this system isn’t offering us.

@383 Why exactly do you think it’s likley enough in both House and Senate would support it. Your comment about the popularity of Trump’s agenda (which seems questionable) implies congressional support *because* of popularity.

Are you assuming the US is a functional democracy in which their is a strong correlation between policy and popular will? Are you assuming that the non-democratic political and economic incentives that drive policy are at all compatible with Trump’s agenda?

@386 A stern warning from Kssinger via Krugman. We have reached peak Hillarism.

Krugman should not be quoting Kissinger, no matter the context. No one on the (vaguely or otherwise) progressive side of things shd be quoting Kissinger now. (Or ever, most probably, but esp. not now.)

If Krugman wants to read A World Restored in the privacy of his study because Krugman has suddenly developed a burning interest in Metternich, that’s one thing. But find someone else to quote to make his pts.

I was worried when GWB was elected, because he seemed like an idiot (by my personal definition: not with an IQ below 100, but someone who has no realization of his cognitive limits), but I reassured myself that there were plenty of experienced advisers and administrators who would keep him on track. Then I got 9/11 (which he dismissed warnings of), supply-side economics, the Iraq invasion, an attempt to destroy Social Security, SC Justice Alito, and the Great Recession. And I if I had to chose between him and Trump I would chose him – with very great reluctance.

Look, I saw this over and over at GE: most of the nicest people don’t want to be managers; the worst all do. You have to hope you at least get someone who knows the product, knows the systems, works hard, and wants to be effective.

You should get the mods to ban me. Because of course, pointing out evident indifference to violence against minorities is what’s really nasty.

There are no grounds whatsoever for banning js.

(Although js. shares some of RNB’s views [as did/do I, come to think of it], js’s commenting here is very different from that of RNB, who was, among other things, personally very insulting on more than one occasion to someone who happens to be a front-page poster and thus had power to ban him. Which, predictably, is eventually what happened.)

js, what if I was a woman or person of color who doesn’t happen to be lucky enough to live within the borders of the United States of America? What if I was a woman/POC who lives in China and works for Foxconn assembling the computer you’re typing on? What if I was a woman/POC who lives in Bangladesh or Vietnam and stitches the clothes on your back? What if I was a woman/POC in India who endures everyday racist violence at the behest of the US-sanctioned Hindu nationalist Modi government? What if I was a woman/POC from India who migrated to a Gulf Arab oil state for work and still endures everyday racist violence at the behest of a US-sanctioned misogynist/racist monarchy while I work off the cost of the return trip before my employer will give me my passport back? What if I was a woman/POC who lives in Honduras facing death squads at the behest of a US-sanctioned military coup regime for organizing against hydroelectric projects that would drive my people from their homes? What if I was a woman/POC who lives in Yemen getting my home blasted to pieces by US-made bombs, bought with money from the gas in your tank by some Saudi prince who clinks cocktails with Bill and Hillary at their Foundation shindigs? What reason would I have to give a rat’s ass about the difference between Clinton and Trump then?

Honest question and I’m genuinely curious to see your answer, because if you don’t have a good one and you’re relying on the premise that people outside the United States of America are somehow beyond the same kind of concern you show for people within the US, then the ideological difference between you and Trump’s “deplorables” is a matter of degree, not kind.

Accusing people of not caring about anything that doesn’t touch “white men”, in a forum where a good chunk of the participant are not from USA , is a bit silly. I hope that js can forgive those of us non-Roman-citizens living in the periphery of the empire that don’t give much of a fuck about the distinction among patricians and plebeians.
Strangely enough, different people have different priorities, and yours are no better (or worse) than others; but I suppose that without accusing others of not being passionate enough about one’s pet issues is the mark of a true leftist.

As for me, the only part of the policies of the candidates I care about are FP (including commerce treaties) and global warming. On global warming, Clinton is the better candidate. On international commerce, Trump is the better one (from my point of view). On wars, they are good or bad for different reasons (e.g., Trump is less likely to go to war with Russia, Clinton with Iran).
(The usual caveats about not believing a word a politician says apply).

Will G-R @399 — That’s a fair response. A few points:

1. Of course if you were someone in one of the positions you describe in the first paragraph, you wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the US election. Why would you, and why would anyone expect you to? But if you are a relatively comfortably off person in the US who is adopting the mantle of caring about the Foxconn worker to absolve yourself of doing a tiny little bit to help vulnerable groups in your own society, then I find that deeply unpleasant and deeply problematic. In fact, under the guise of anti-imperialism, you’re adopting a deeply imperialist attitude whereby it’s the responsibility of the white man to solve the problems of benighted people in far flung lands (which you honestly can’t do much about) while neglecting oppression closer to home where you could make a *marginal* difference.

2. The US is an imperialist country which fucks over poor people across a lot of the world. This fact would continue to be true whether Trump, Clinton, Sanders, or anyone else became president. (a) If you think that with a Trump presidency, this would somehow be dissolved and we would all come out better on the other side, I think that is laughably naive. All that’s on offer under a Trump presidency is more and harsher oppression, at home and abroad. (b) If you think that simply by not voting while you continue to live in the US (assuming you do) and enjoying the material fruits of US imperialism—that simply by not voting you can stop being implicated in US imperialism, that is again laughably naive.

[I got one more point, but I need a short break.]

There’s several people on this thread who seem to be ignoring the points I made (based on evidence) about Trump as an exemplar of global, corporate high capitalism and about Trump’s policies on environment, health care, economics and abortion. Now you may have legitimate reasons for that, I don’t know, but what it looks like is ‘I don’t care what some stupid woman has to say about this debate’.

Tends to reinforce the points js is making, I’d say.

There’s several people on this thread who seem to be ignoring the points I made . . .

Isn’t that pretty much universal, Val? If I’ve successfully ignored your comments, I do not even need to comment myself to feel I’ve struck a blow for sense and sensibility. I imagine ignoring you is a source of quiet satisfaction to untold legions of lurkers.

Also…

LFC — Thanks for the vote of confidence; I still think banning RNB was manifestly unfair.

Val — Sorry, kind of have my hands full here; but do agree with what you’re saying. And yes, that is what I was pointing to. I linked to the full report so no one could say I was cherry picking.

Manta:

The usual caveats about not believing a word a politician says apply

There’s good evidence showing this is false. I’m sure you can find it :)

“Then I got 9/11 (which he dismissed warnings of), supply-side economics, the Iraq invasion, an attempt to destroy Social Security, SC Justice Alito, and the Great Recession.”

This leaves out so much. Torture. Katrina. Emboldeningment. Scooter Libby and outing a CIA agent. Swift-boating. Putin’s eyes and soul. Merkel-rubbing. Vice-Presidential face-shooting. Harriet Myers! Is it really possible all this happened?

These days CT threads are like Platonic dialogues, if every character were really Thrasymachus and every character believed they were Socrates. No, that’s not it. These days every political conversation…

“You’d have to assume the Dept of homeland affairs wouldn’t want to commit significant resources to deporting 11 millions people, or deal with the logistical nightmare of such a policy choice. You’d have to imagine the same is true for a lot of local police forces.”

Why on earth would you have to assume anything of the kind? What happened the last time a President gave an agency it’s new marching orders? Why, they tortured people to death, then destroyed the evidence and got off scott-free. They bugged every cell phone they could find, and still do today. They kidnapped people on the streets of foreign cities, and disappeared them more or less forever. They developed a scheme for killing people using flying robots. They killed an American citizen for the crime of talking. You think they’re somehow reluctant to use new-found authority and power? Don’t be fucking naive.

bruce wilder 09.18.16 at 12:34 am
“There’s several people on this thread who seem to be ignoring the points I made . . .

Isn’t that pretty much universal, Val? If I’ve successfully ignored your comments, I do not even need to comment myself to feel I’ve struck a blow for sense and sensibility. I imagine ignoring you is a source of quiet satisfaction to untold legions of lurkers.”

The points I made were based on evidence, but don’t let that bother you. Why worry about evidence or truth, when you have the chance to be a complete arsehole to someone in the Internet.

That was really incredibly nasty. Maybe I’m a demon for punishment, but let’s see if there’s anyone who wants to support you on saying shit like that to other commenters?

“There’s several people on this thread who seem to be ignoring the points I made (based on evidence) about Trump as an exemplar of global, corporate high capitalism and about Trump’s policies on environment, health care, economics and abortion.”

Because, Val, dissatisfaction with Clinton does not thereby entail a defense of Trump.

Moreover, I don’t really buy the “Trump is an exemplar of global, corporate high capitalism” bit either. Sure, he’s (purportedly) a billionaire with similar economic interests to others equally wealthy, but he’s not an exemplar. He’s a jumped-up New York real estate developer who markets marketing. To call him an exemplar in a room full of actual exemplars would induce schoolboy giggling. You think Jamie Dimon or even Lord Vader of right-wing corporatism himself, David Koch, are voting for Trump? Please. As I’ve said before, all the corporate and government elites swooning at the thought of Trump and pleading for Clinton is a tell. If you or others can’t see it for what it is then I’ll leave it to someone more eloquent than me to explain– and, by the way, the educated and the enlightened may not notice the quasi-class dynamics at play in the elite disdain for Trump, but the peons do.

On the other hand, Clinton has operated deftly and comfortably at the transnational super-nexus of corporate/government power for the last 20 years. You think she’s made all that dough by chance, by dumb luck, or b/c she is just that good? You think the ginormous donations made to the Clinton Foundation by the globally connected are indicative of the altruism of the parties involved? Trump is an uncouth, Bronx hustler who is viewed similarly by those you’re claiming he’s an exemplar of. He’s an outsider– a usurper–in the life and death micropolitics of the global .0001%. Clinton networked and techno-managed her way into that circle after her husband became president. Trump W.C. Fielded his way in b/c of disillusionment with the Republican establishment.

Which one is exemplary?

As for the rest of the Trump litany: there’s nothing there to defend, support, or explain so far as I’m aware.

And for everyone’s benefit, hoisted from a 9/2/2016 post by B Delong (formerly of the W. Clinton Administration) on JQ’s recent After Neoliberalism post. To wit:

“Must-Read: Speaking as a card-carrying neoliberal and as a proud member of the Rubinite wing of the Democratic Party, I say that back in the early and mid-1990s we had a theory of why (major increases in top marginal wax rates, the expansion of the EITC, and the push for universal health insurance aside) we prioritized growth over (further) redistribution: we thought that slow growth would further empower right-wing identity politics, while fast growth would create a more generous and cosmopolitan electorate.
I still think it would have worked, too, if not for the Supreme Court electing George W. Bush 5-4. O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, you have a lot of explaining to do. And the circumstances of the late 2010s and very different from those of the early 1990s. So I think John Quiggin is wrong when he says that the left needs to “assert their dominance… within the centre-left coalition of leftists and soft neoliberals”. To the contrary, the left needs to cure itself of its herbal teabaggerism and to think hard about what are smart things to do, and how to do them.”

It says it all really. To beat down the right-wing crazies Neoliberal restructuring was deemed necessary and sufficient–and it would have worked had the right-wing crazies not gotten in the way. Boggles the fucking mind. Yet what is even more boggling is 20 years later we’ve got another Clinton as the D nominee and the same rationale, more or less unchanged, trotted out as to why we must elect her: the right-wing crazies. Forget fair distribution of wealth and power, we don’t have time for that. We’re in a state of emergency with a lot of hard, extended, careful thinking to do what with all the ghouls and zombies that need killing and all the cosmopolitans that need protecting.

No need for change. Just hold the line for a while, keep the status-quo intact, the smart people need some time to think.

No one really need wonder why Clinton is neck and neck with a 5th rate Cesar Borgia. But for the slower among us I’ll leave a hint: it’s not 1996. We’re living in the aftermath.

Will, unions are the strongest advocates for labour, and this includes overseas labour and supply chains. It’s much easier for unions to operate in the interests of foreign labour if they aren’t being crushed domestically, and if their members are secure and empowered. The NLRB is important to that struggle, as part of a complex of labour rights. I know you knew this and are just playing with cheap gotchas.

Of course there are some people here who would like to see this whole apparatus dismantled so that the working class is forced onto a full war against the boss class. Trump might give them their wish but I suspect they won’t be in the class of labour era or the strata of American society who have to suffer through (and ultimately lose) that war.

I was thinking over mass deportations, and I realized that, given the powers of the Presidency and funding from a complaisant Congress, yes, it could be done. The Federal immigration authorities do not need the support of local law enforcement, so all that would have to be done is hiring enough people and getting people to turn in the immigrants, and there’s always someone who wants to be the bully and someone else to snitch. Millions in the basket of deplorables; some of them would love a government salary.

And when they’re done with the immigrants, they can start protecting the rest of us.

Phenomenal cat @ 419

… I don’t really buy the “Trump is an exemplar of global, corporate high capitalism” bit either. Sure, he’s (purportedly) a billionaire with similar economic interests to others equally wealthy, but he’s not an exemplar. He’s a jumped-up New York real estate developer who markets marketing. To call him an exemplar in a room full of actual exemplars would induce schoolboy giggling.

The Newsweek article is here http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html

And, finally, to js. Wow. This has been an eye-opener. During Sanders candidacy, so many people of color told me he was only focused on economic issues, to the exclusion of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. I knew he wasn’t (it took some digging, but the evidence is there) and wondered why. But now I see why. There are leftists who think that way, enough of them to be noticeable.

Add this to the basket of deplorable things I wish I didn’t know.

Thanks JimV that balloonjuice link was good.

i know a lot of people don’t vote on policy, but you would think CT commenters would be prepared to look at the policies of the two candidates.

The Democrats have got a good climate change policy now, and Obama is having a international leaders conference on refugees this weekend to go with the UN Summit. I think they are going really well on policy, and economic policy apart from really macro questions is something for State and City government as much as Federal government. The climate change policy will effect economics anyhow since its calling for action on the scale of WW II levels of mobilisation which changed the US economy then.

Will G-R #416:

Wilde: “the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.”

Wilder: “Be available. Detach yourself from this politics now.”

No. This is a continuing fallacy. There is no reason that you cannot do both, and many people have done both, and improvements in social conditions have become more possible, and have been realized in some areas, over the last 200 years. I love and studied Oscar Wilde, but he certainly had a fatuous side.

If you want to insist that it hasn’t been a faster change because it is thwarted by people being of two minds — or equivalently, that a more perfect emergence is at hand but is continuously thwarted by lesser intents — then you had better come up with a genuine theory of how and why that happens. Beware of dangers:

You can exclude the theory that voting for someone who is compromised, will then distort or prevent your knowledge that a better future should be the goal.

You can exclude the theory that the only way to ensure real change, is to allow conditions to become worse, so that people will rebel, and then change everything suddenly for the better.

You can even exclude the theory that neoliberalism successfully perpetuates and strengthens itself by the very act of electing a neoliberal candidate who occasionally ameliorates its injustices and horrors. Because even if neoliberalism is the problem, the rest of that does not automatically follow.

However, you might include a provision in your theory for how and why some people who write with the attitude of having wisdom, still continue to fall into these traps.

Ronan(rf): “I really couldn’t be bothered arguing this with you anymore though, so you can have the last word”

What are you, 12?

You might stop to consider that torture and kidnapping were in fact crimes, while deporting illegal immigrants is the opposite of a crime. If Federal agencies were in fact willing to undertake crimes, why would they be unwilling to undertake enforcement of the law?

Under the current administration, Homeland Security has focused (in recent years) on deporting violent offenders rather than searching for illegal immigrants among the broader population. A reversal of that policy and a new emphasis on finding and deporting all illegal immigrants would have a big impact on millions of people over 4 or 8 years of the next administration. Nothing more would be required than that change in emphasis, and no checks, balances, or existing laws would stop it. That’s the truth.

http://thehill.com/latino/293861-deportations-under-obama-could-hit-10-year-low

Christ. Your link makes my point. It says trump is already softening his stance to get moderate republicans uncomfortable with with his racism on side. So again, what is it you’re saying ? He might up deportations and behave like a particularly bad rep candidate ? Who disagrees with that ? Say something specific about what you think is going to happen; you’re implying (by pointing to rendition/torture) that there’s a possibility for a huge break with policy. Ravens saying it’s not ott to compare the threat of trump with hitler. But all you’re offering is arguments that he’ll behave like a republican, while also dismissing the constraints that will prevent him behaving like a maniac.

I’ve expanded on the point since that throwaway line at 374. To repeat, there are two main options. (1)Continue the deportation regime as is, or (2) expand it. I’m saying there’s not much political space to expand it even beyond Obama’s policies 4-5 years ago.
I linked to an article making this point:

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-many-presidents-does-it-take-to-deport-11-million-people/

“Any plan to deport all undocumented migrants would involve an inconceivably massive expansion of the current deportation program, which since 1996 has already experienced significant growth. The highest number of people ever deported from the United States in a given year is 237,941. That was the number of “interior removals” reported by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2009. A removal, by the way, is a deportation that involves a court process, while an interior removal is a deportation involving a person who is arrested inside the United States and is not a recent border-crosser.

Keep in mind that those 237,941 undocumented immigrants expelled from the country represented a far higher number of deportations than had ever previously been experienced. Before 1995, there were never more than 50,000 total removals (including people caught crossing the border). Only in 2003 were figures for interior and border removals reported separately, at which time there were 30,000 interior removals. A concerted effort in the years that followed would translate into a sevenfold increase in the number of interior removals during the Bush presidency.

When President Obama took office in 2009, he topped the Bush numbers, overseeing record deportations and keeping interior removals steadily above 200,000 until 2012. Then those numbers began to decline, dropping to a still hefty 69,478 interior removals in 2015. For his early deportation record, Obama earned the title of “deporter-in-chief” from immigration activists, as well as the ire of the Latino community. Perhaps due to pressure from that community, he has in recent years rolled back deportations, in addition to issuing an executive order that grants temporary authorization to stay and work in the United States to immigrants who came here as children. He also issued another executive order that would grant the same protections to their parents, although it is still held up in the courts.

Now, for the future: the promise to deport all 11 million undocumented migrants in, assumedly, two four-year presidential terms would mean the deportation of 1,375,000 people annually, or six times that all-time high of 237,000. In other words, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would have to almost match Bush’s sevenfold increase in deportations on a truly monumental, essentially inconceivable scale. The more realistic question in the grim world of deportations would be: Could one of them even get back to the 237,000-a-year figure? It’s far from clear that any president could actually restore such record-high deportation rates today (forget the promise of millions).

As it happens, ramping up deportations again would require cooperation from local criminal law enforcement, which is unlikely. In reality, local police departments have been moving away from such cooperation over the past few years, in part due to criticism that such programs encourage racial profiling while diminishing trust between communities and the local police.

The dramatic increase in deportations under President Bush relied heavily on increased cooperation between local police and ICE, due to real limitations on the ways in which immigration laws can be enforced. Whereas local police officers are empowered to patrol the streets and arrest people suspected of committing crimes, immigration law–enforcement agents are not authorized to pull people off the streets simply because they suspect they might be undocumented. An important reason for this: There is no way you can figure out a person’s immigration status simply by looking at them.

Only Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents are authorized to rely on “Mexican appearance” when deciding whom to interrogate and they can only operate up to 100 miles from the border. Interior immigration enforcement is mostly carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with the help of local police officers who can indeed inquire about someone’s immigration status, but only after such a person has been stopped on reasonable suspicion of committing a crime.

There are currently about 5,000 ICE agents in the country. Their capacity, with limited cooperation from local law enforcement, seems at the moment to be about 70,000 deportations a year, as evidenced by 2015 numbers. To get those deportations back above 200,000 would involve gargantuan and expensive efforts and a restoration of the frayed relationship between ICE and local police departments.”

I’ve said there’s practical, logistical problems ramping it up significantly (not enough resources, little will at a local or departmental level)
Political problems (both from democrats and as your link notes from moderate republicans, as well as little electoral support)
And institutional (within the organisation’s who will have to carry it out, within the political systems and his party, from legal challenges)

Your response is to not state explicitly what you think will occur, and wave away the logistical and political constraints with some nonsense about FISA courts and the NSA.

Ronan, the current limit in deportations is appropriations from congress. Faced with that limit, Obama made an executive order to prioritize spending the money on deporting convicted felons, enabling law abiding undocumented migrants to stay. All that is needed to increase deportations is more money. If trump wins the senate and the presidency you can expect that money to be forthcoming very quickly, as republican deficit terrorism gives way to their usual crony capitalism. The only checks and balances then will be the personnel limitations – and trump is all about making new jobs for Americans …

I really think it’s dangerous and naive in the face of 20th century history and the specific history of the republicans to think they won’t do something beyond the pale. The October surprise, the invasion of Iraq, and the expansion of the security state over the past 15 years should all serve as warnings of what can happen. There’s no reason to think that they can’t do something extreme and repulsive – the man says he will, and republicans will support horrific things, so why not?

Sigh.

Le sigh.

@Faustusnotes

Obama made an executive order to prioritize spending the money on deporting convicted felons, enabling law abiding undocumented migrants to stay.

From the perspective of this side of the border, most of those deported to Mexico have been Central American women and children who entered the US during the past year and a half. Of those “returned”, most have been for traffic violations, such as driving without a license, who have lived in the US for ten years or more. That is the reality. The “convicted felon” bit is just propaganda to make a reversal of the US’ immigration policies more palatable to its population.

Why Central American women and children and people with a broken taillight who have resided in the US for a long time ? Who knows. Easy targets? Americans love their drug smugglers and need the liquidity to keep their banks afloat?

Layman, it’s frankly hard to imagine you have so little imagination. Yes, Gorbachev ended it. The point is that Reagan failed to prevent him from doing so.

What happens if Trump becomes President and can’t in practice deport as many illegal immigrants as he claims he will? Well look at what’s happening to us Brits. We voted to leave the EU because people wanted to “control immigration” in the future. And immediately there was a spike in hostility to those immigrants already here (including non-EU ones) ranging from being told to go home, to violent and even lethal attacks on them. If Trump doesn’t deport enough illegal immigrants to satisfy the racists among his supporters, what’s the betting that some of them aren’t going to try dealing with “the rapists and drug-dealers” themselves and attack any non-whites they take a dislike to?

In general, I agree with the ‘Clinton-boosters’ here that Clinton should be supported against Trump, both because of his xenophobia and authoritarianism, which are unusual even for a Republican, and because of the usual implications of a Republican presidency for environmental issues, healthcare, the Supreme Court etc. For me, even Trump’s more dovish stance on Russia and Syria and more anti-neoliberal stance on trade are not enough to compensate for these things. However, what I do object to is the efforts to present Clinton as a good gal overall (@201), to defend her even on issues on which she is, in fact, terrible (notably FP), to insist that even justified criticism of her should be auto-censored until after the election (@431), and to accuse anyone who criticises her of being motivated by misogyny (@154) or racism.

There is Hillary Clinton’s call for a no-fly zone in Syria where the Russians are the ones flying. This is the same wise and considered judgment that she could ignore medical advice and walk off walking pneumonia and no one would have to know; she could ignore military advice, and she could have her no-fly zone and it would never come to shooting down a Russian plane. And, when she made her proposal, no NATO ally had shot down a Russian jet . . . oh wait . . .

Lupita @ 450

Your goalposts are moving around so fast, it is making me seasick.

Which is it? Broken taillights or driving without a license? (They had insurance, right? and passed the drivers’ test?) . . . been here ten years or less than a year and a half?

Just a brief addendum: it’s true that, as js. has pointed out, many people here aren’t non-white or women and would not be harmed by Trump’s policies as much as non-whites or women would. This may influence their judgement of the relative importance of the various drawbacks of each candidate. However, in the same way, many people here aren’t inhabitants of a place where Clinton is likely to start or intensify a war, and many people here aren’t blue-collar workers likely to have lost or to lose a job because of Clinton’s policies. This, too, may influence their judgement of the relative importance of various drawbacks of each candidate. CT, like other Anglo-Saxon ‘left-of-centre’ sites, is mostly a Western upper-middle-class bubble. Again, I think Clinton is, in fact, preferable to Trump and should be voted for, but people here should be more aware of their biases.

@461 is hilarious. It’s like you completely missed what I meant by “50+%” of the population and went off on an irrelevant rant. But like I said, we really have nothing to say to each other.

@ bruce wilder

Your goalposts are moving around so fast, it is making me seasick.

Good morning to you too. I will take your comment as you asking me to expand on my interesting post.

Most Mexicans deported say that it was for traffic violations, such as driving without insurance, without a license, or with a broken taillight. Most of those removed, have been Central American women and children. At least that is what these people say when interviewed in Mexican border cities or in Mexico City which is where they are being sent. Many also say that they lied about being Mexican in order to not be deported to Central America, sometimes they have fake documents to buttress their story, or that they are from a border city in order not to be sent to Mexico City. The part about people residing more that ten years in the US when they were deported, returned or removed seems to be true since they have lost fluency in Spanish, which is difficult to fake. It’s complicated. My point was that only “convicted felons” are being sent across the border does not stand up to what we are hearing here.

@ LFC, if you want to stake out the position that Trump hasn’t campaigned on a promise to deport all illegal immigrants, or the position that he has but we simply shouldn’t believe he means it, you are welcome to that position.

Especially when the speech is more or less compatible with what he’s been saying all along: They’re dangerous rapists and criminals, and he’s going to systematically deport them. I don’t see any backing away from that premise in this speech.

Actually the speech distinguishes betw “dangerous rapists and criminals” on one hand and the universe of “all undocumented immigrants” on the other (tho the distinction didn’t stop him from parading endorsements from various relatives of people killed by undocumenteds). That anyway is my distinct recollection from listening to it. I suppose I shd check my aural memory vs. the transcript, but I put the link up as a matter of general interest.

Obvs I am opposed to his general approach to immigration, and I’m not suggesting there was a huge softening, but I wd not be surprised if there are some tensions in the campaign betw Bannon and the pollster he named as director (whatever her name is, Kelly Ann Courtney? — sorry, too many names in the cognitive circuits).

Anyway, didn’t mean to derail things… too much.

I am not sure what one is supposed to get out of campaign websites. The incoherence of Trump’s speechifying is easy enough to observe.

It seems to me the harder work is to try to understand what Trump’s audience hears. What’s the point of resonance? What’s the implied counterpoint to impression left by Obama or Clinton? Or, the counterpoint to the usual rhetorical noise that has flowed from Republicans on immigration over the last decade or longer?

What many left and Democratic partisans have emphasized as the point of resonance is racism, but with the implication that that is the whole and entire explanation that should be entertained and nothing more should be said. Thus irredeemable deplorables.

Trump, himself, in his egotistical way, seems to be saying something about competence and against the excuse, “it’s complicated”.

You can read “the Wall” as a promise to keep out the Other, but you can also read it as, “this chronic problem can be solved and the law vindicated” if there’s just the will to do it. These are not mutually exclusive readings: one doesn’t have to be false for the other to be true.

But, it is politically interesting that the Democrats are always volunteering for conversations about race, but rarely about (elite) competence.

@462: That sounds all very reasonable and evenhanded, except for the part where one candidate is an imperfect but highly qualified and experienced politician of a moderate to liberal bent and the other is a reality show sleazeball with a vivid background of racism and dishonesty who has moved on from exploiting the aspirations of the gullible to exploiting the fears and resentments of the bigoted and economically vulnerable. I know, he hasn’t bombed anyone yet. Give him time and a few bombs.

(Not that I would feel much better about Jeb! or Rubio or any of the other GOP “hopefuls” Trump blew away. It’s true that Trump is uniquely horrid, but his party provided fertile soil for this grotesque blossom. The Democrats should be hitting this point harder IMO.)

@454: I am worried by such a prospect, too. If Trump loses and it’s close, it could still happen. Putting the genie back in the bottle, etc.

Val @475
He says he will: return/deport all who try to cross the border without papers; deport all who have been imprisoned for criminal offences; make visa overstaying a criminal offence (which involves tracking, and would also lead to deportation via the previous measure); not give visas to those born in US or their parents (which would presumably lead to deportation then).

This mostly comports w my recollection of the emphases in his Sept 1 speech. The only odd, in terms of his general platform, thing here is “not give visas [?] to those born in the US”. People born in the US are automatically citizens, so unless he wants to completely rewrite a basic tenet of US citizenship law, this doesn’t make sense. Anyway, the word “visas” doesn’t make sense in the context of that clause anyway. But the rest matches the emphasis in the speech: his first priority, he said, wd be removal of those undocumenteds w criminal records and visa overstayers. And then there was ambiguity about the residual categories, w him saying at the end there cdn’t be a discussion about that until the atmosphere had changed after the govt had gotten serious about the previously outlined measures, etc.

ICE = Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

BTW, immigration is only one of many issues one which Trump and the Tea Party Republican-dominate House would like to do something awful. There’s a lot of bullets in that magazine, and who knows how many the USA can dodge.

LFC
Sorry about not giving the visas to those born in US – that would be my misreading I think – can’t stand the thought of going back to check, but he probably was just talking about their parents.

“People born in the US are automatically citizens, so unless he wants to completely rewrite a basic tenet of US citizenship law, this doesn’t make sense.”

Repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the post-Civil War law that, among other things, created birthright citizenship within the USA. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment was written to reverse Dred Scot and grant citizenship to African-Americans. There is a faction within the Republicans that advocates repeal of the 14th amendment. It would require a 2/3s vote of both House and Senate and concurrence of 3/4s of the states, so it’s not too likely.

Wish Trump would do a position paper threatening to lock up all long winded white male middle class pseudo-lefties – that would sharpen the focus of some here I think.

Except they wouldn’t recognise themselves – they’d be all ‘Trump’s position on white male middle pseudo-lefties may sound alarming to those concerned primarily with identitarian politics, but Hillary Clinton did something, so we all focus our criticism on that’.

Then when Trump wins and the guys in the van come to pick them up, they’d be all ‘What are you doing? Not ME. This stuff doesn’t happen to ME’.

For fear that my satire might accidentally appear to take in a few of the good guys, I should come out and say it’s mainly directed at Bruce Wilder, with a sideswipe at Will G-R.

But I know that fights between commenters can get boring, so I’ll try to make that my last. I won’t attack Bruce’s invisible army of lurkers who also hate me because I haven’t seen any evidence they exist outside his head, though I was reminded of this image (sorry lurkers no offence intended, anyway the image probably won’t work knowing my usual skills)

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRtBZVBRAkGHpwDjW37ZGVWowyUVQkF_1hTSkN0RYVDYCXtnaES04GizSM5Nw

Cue “The Lurkers Support Me in E-mail.”

“I frankly hold Dick Cheney in really high regard in his role as vice president and as an American,” Pence said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Apparently this is the time when history will repeat itself as farce.

“an actual Trump administration would be a creature of the same bourgeois interests as every other US administration to date”

The point I’ve been making, over and over, is that it will not be that. When the “bourgeois interests” themselves say it will not be, say they are worried, I think it’s time to listen up.

It’s not just his rhetoric, it’s his temperament. And then think that he will be in charge of the most powerful military in history, of the DOJ, of the US Treasury.

Do you wonder that knowledgeable people are scared? It amazes me that more here are not.

“what actual institutions does Trump have independent from those of the GOP?”

Aren’t those bad enough, Will? They have been steadily corrupted. And then there is the army of deplorables and a hundred-million or so rifles. We have gone from the sort of conservatives who at least would keep things running (as long as everyone knew their place) to the sort of radicals who speak of deporting people in the millions, starting wars over trivia, and blowing up the global economy to get their way. And Trump might do it, might do any of these things out of pique or arrogance. As President it would be within his lawful power.

You are thinking too much, and using the thinking to stop you from acting. (Philosophers have old words for this, but I don’t know them.) This is not a time to be planning grand strategies, but rather to be down in the mud, fighting the fight.

Returning to the OP. The rabidly pro-Trump NYT reports that the Clinton medical team omits key details necessary to determine the severity of the pneumonia. The assessment does quote Bill on Hillary’s head injury: “…Accounts of how long it took for Mrs. Clinton to recover from symptoms of the concussion are discordant. Dr. Bardack said they had resolved in two months. But former President Bill Clinton said his wife’s concussion had “required six months of very serious work to get over.”

Bill probably spoke ‘erroneously’, and really meant that his wife’s concussion was really not very serious at all and that she was up and about in no time.

“I’m really fine.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/us/politics/hillary-clinton-health.html?_r=0

Let us consider Bruce Wilber’s comment at (currently ) 474 as a canonical example of its class. He starts with this plea to ignorance:

am not sure what one is supposed to get out of campaign websites

which I guess is supposed to show a kind of sophisticated cynicism and above-it-all understanding that this whole thing is a game played by elites or liars and everyone on both sides is up to some kind of con. But what it actually shows is that Bruce wilder is an incompetent political analyst who cannot infer policy frameworks from summaries for lay people, and cannot predict what a politicians (inevitably compromised) actions will look like from their pre election policy statements. An alternative interpretation is that BW is engaging in a faux-cynical “both sides do it” approach, which would make him precisely as smart (and as honest) as David brooks.

Bruce wilder finishes with this rhetorical flourish:

democrats are always volunteering g for conversations about race but not abou elite competence

And thus shows that he either is living in or wants us to live in a fantasyland of his own making. Clinton, Obama, Kaine, and Warren have all been hammering trump on his competence from the get-go – he doesn’t have the knowledge or background to be president, he’s a bad businessman, he went bankrupt four times, etc. Yet BW – wise campaigner against identity politics and old hand who is exhausted by the focus of modern youth on race and identity, it’ll be the end of the left don’t you know – would have us believe that every conversation about trump is one about race. This is “politically interesting,” whatever that means.

Once again I have to say – if you want to offer any kind of useful analysis of trump and the modern GOP from the left, you have to start with an honest and clear assessment of reality. This means ne’er standing what politicians are going to do, understanding their limits, inferring their program from their statements in order to understand what they will do when reality hits, and having at least some hint of a clue about what is actually happening. Bruce has none of these things, but wants us all to accept his left wing critique of Clinton and the dems.

Why would we?

BW 413: “The first clue that this gain in median household income, the largest since the series began in 1967, might be artifactual is that the gains for men are 1.5% and women, 2.7%.”

Do you understand the concept of household income? Here’s a clue: median household income depends crucially on the number of earners per (median) household, more than on the average wage level.

Ronan 370: “The United States is a developed, first world democracy. It’s not going to revert to failed state, totalitarianism, strongman rule, whatever. Democracy and the rule of law would survive Trump.”

This is historically illiterate wishful thinking and it’s dangerous. American liberals need to get out of their bubble more. Their fascist opponents aren’t joking, they are dead serious.

TM: IIRC, Ronan is Irish, which makes his remarks even stranger. “The English are civilized people and would never do that” is an argument that ought to chill any Irish person.

Will: HG Wells, Britain, early World War II: “Behind that screaming little defective in Berlin there is nothing of the sort… Yet our military ‘experts’ discuss the waiting phantom.”

Kidneystones, the New York Times highlights has been highlighting Hillary Clinton’s every flaw for decades. Concussion recovery is variable; you are grasping at straws. And we still have no solid medical data on Trump, who does not appear or sound healthy.

Trump, it turns out, believes that vaccines cause autism.

If he becomes President, he will choose the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Let us add plague to the possible risks of a Trump Presidency.

Seconded. Trump’s argument rather seems to be that it is complicated, so much so that only someone like him can solve it. He’s the winner, and he’ll do so much winning! Not like e.g. those loser generals we have now.

Come on Ronan, by any standard the US is closer to a failed state than any western democracy. It has massive police violence, huge inequality, crumbling infrastructure, doesn’t even have universal health coverage. What planet are you living on?

The task for Clinton campaign just became considerably more difficult with the news that the bombings on the east coast and the knife attack in Minnesota appear to have been carried out by lunatics claiming to be acting in defense of a particular faith. I saw one snap of Hillary reacting to the news and she looked like she was sucking on about a million lemons.

50 days is a long time, but there’s a palpable fear among the advocates for her majesty that suggests some, at least, feel the race is slipping away. Polls are fluid but it seems that Obama stepped in this week with his assertion that any African-American voting voting for Trump ‘insults’ his legacy. Well, we can’t have that, can we?

Trump’s claim that ‘everyday an illegal immigrant victimizes, or kills, an American’ is designed to do two things. Win headlines, because the media just has to tell everyone Trump’s latest outrage, and in doing so help Trump seed the ground for his appeals to African-American voters. Obama speaking so strongly and so directly to African-Americans suggests that Hillary is not going to get anything like the level of support O enjoyed.

“Donald Trump is gaining support among African-American voters, while support for Hillary Clinton has crashed 20 points, a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California daily tracking poll shows. The survey, last updated Sunday, puts Trump’s support among black voters at 20.1 percent – up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10.”

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/poll-trump-gains-african-american/2016/09/18/id/748860/#ixzz4KhlEfnHh

Utterly meaningless, grasping at straws.

Noted without comment

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_States_Index

“I’ve a comment in moderation linking to the LA Times poll that has Clinton tanking among African-Americans and Trump up to 20 percent from 3.1 just a week before.”

If you had any sense, you’d suspect that result.

Ronan, to some extent US federalism masks the issues. Look at Wisconsin, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The only reason those are not failed states is because they are part of the USA, and supported by its financial institutions and social insurance programs.

That is what Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party would do to the rest of the USA, given the chance.

The LA Times Daybreak Poll results are interesting, because they show what seems to be a response to the reports of Clinton’s illness. But, as the header of the poll says,

We update the data each day based on the weighted average of poll responses over the previous week. That means results have less volatility than some other polls, but also means the poll lags somewhat in responding to major events in the campaign.

So there was a spike in response to reports of Clinton’s illness, but it’s not clear how persistent that is. That poll also clearly show class, race, and gender divides.

I really would prefer we not elect a Presidential candidate because of apparent physical health.

To second Ronan’s point, all these privileged-white-guy lectures are remarkably disingenuous coming from commenters who seem to have no concept at all of how stable and affluent the US still is relative to the kinds of countries that have currently and historically seen actual, fully-developed fascism problems. “Donald Trump courts fascists more openly than any other major candidate I’ve ever experienced in my country in my lifetime, therefore we’re a hop skip and a jump from opening New Auschwitz in Montana” is about as narrowly privileged a perspective as one could bring to electoral politics, and trying to keep my privilege in check is precisely why I’m not worried about the Hitlerian apocalypse to come on January 21, 2017.

This isn’t to deny that plenty of groups have it bad in the US, especially the undocumented, but that’s a normal aspect of well-functioning liberal capitalism and doesn’t necessarily distinguish it from fascist capitalism. (Raven brings up the English history in Ireland as if the UK-inflicted famines and repression hadn’t been administered by classical fucking liberals, no fascism required.) If anything, a truly fascist capitalism would need fewer of these duplicitous ideological concealing mechanisms — instead of needing to keep the undocumented in the administrative shadows in order to treat them as less than fully human, for instance, it would have fewer ideological qualms about openly documenting them as less than fully human. I wouldn’t be surprised if for many of the Roma exterminated in the 1940s (an aspect of the Holocaust that disturbingly many Europeans, even allegedly respectable tolerant liberals, consider a less severe crime against humanity than the extermination of political dissidents and Jews) the concentration camp records were the first and last official state documentation of any kind to bear their names.

Actually Will G-R, I grew up in a city where entirely stable seeming relations between religious communities descended into localized communal massacres at the drop of a fucking hat. Nothing about the US suggests to me that it couldn’t happen here. So you can fuck the right off.

Js, of course you should be alarmed by that. I (personally) don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said on the thread (going by memory) just the claims of some others.
Raven, fair points. I’ll get back you later when not on a phone

Right—electing Hillary Clinton is what’s going to cause hate crimes against Muslims. Please keep talking, you’re making the case way more convincingly than I ever could.

js, I would consider myself flattered, if being more convincing than you was any real accomplishment…

Don’t we have this discussion every US election cycle, where electing the wrong guy will lead to the apocalypse?

People say this, but here’s the thing. There were fairly epic threads on CT leading up to the 2012 election. I, e.g., took part in them. You can, if you’d like, see what I was saying then and whether it’s the same as what I’m saying now. (Obviously, I’m only going to speak for myself.)

Layman: “Sell that shit to a few million Iraqis.”

Well no shit! But Dem partisans seem to have some issues getting their story straight as to whether Trump is something new and exceptional, or whether he’s basically just like the old institutional GOP except slightly more so. The dynamic seems to be that when Democrats are criticized for their role in implementing neoliberalism alongside their Republican counterparts, Trump becomes an exception, while when Republicans are criticized for their role in implementing neoliberalism without necessarily mentioning that they do so alongside their Democratic counterparts, Trump becomes a continuation. As I see it, this kind of confused, contradictory rhetoric indicates a deeper ideological deadlock for which the menacing figure of Trump is a convenient externalization — which ironically enough is the same critical framework through which one can interpret the confused, contradictory rhetoric of Trump’s very own supporters around the menacing figure of the foreign migrant, all the stuff about lazy job-stealers and terrorists fleeing from terrorism and all that.

Also, Layman, it takes some real chutzpah and/or obliviousness to use that particular example on behalf of Hillary Clinton in an election where the actual neoconservative architects of the war are more or less unanimously #WithHer.

“yet not even he managed to end the world”

And he had the help of some pretty dedicated and cunning ideologues like Cheney and Wolfowitz, who were brilliant at working in the shadows and bending the rules.

So I think this returns us to my earlier question, how likely is it that a know nothing narcissist clown who doesn’t give a fuck will carefully pick an administration of cunning dedicated ideologues who will help him successfully pull of an apocalypse?

It’s possible, by why think it likelier in this case than former awful republicans?

To my mind the issue of ideology is crucial. Great evils are just never committed without committed ideologues, great believers in their own virtue devoted to ridding the world of evil. Trump has no ideology. He’s not even intelligent enough to be evil in the usual historical way. His racism is one of indifference and casual, uncommitted vilification (rapists murderers or whatever) not even real hatred or paranoia. Though he surely appeals to racists of the more committed kind, can a Beavis or Butthead really the next Hitler?

And isn’t a portion–not all, just a small but not trivial bit–of the visceral hatred we have for him due to this highest of his crimes: his lack moral indifference, his lack of ideology and moral righteousness in this most ideological and righteous of ages, nous actress victoriens?

@ Anarcissie, note that I’m responding not to a claim that Bush’s actions were not predictable(*), but instead to a claim that they didn’t after all end the world. Note also the strange fact that you object to my response to that claim, but not to the original claim itself. Maybe you ought to think about that, since the dead Iraqis can’t speak up for themselves.

@ Manta, in fact for many people, Bush did end the world. That he did not end the world for us survivors is manifestly true, but I can’t really grasp the point of making such a claim. Do you mean to say that we should expect Trump to be no worse than Bush? Are we meant to be consoled by that constraint, never mind how you manage to deduce it? Would you say, in similar vein, “…having a certain Georgian fellow as general secretary of the USSR was quite bad (for all the many reasons exposed here, and probably more that were forgotten); and yet not even he managed to end the world?” Would you say the same of a certain Austrian chancellor of Germany? If not, why not? Both are equally amenable to your defense of the original.

@ Will G-R, it is increasingly hard to grasp the point of your posts. It seems to me that this is something of a game for you, in which you take the hyperbole offered by one person and compare it to that of another, for the purpose of pointing out the contradiction between the two, as if some greater insight emerges. In the end, though, nothing is changed by the points you think you’ve scored thereby. Still we will have either Clinton or Trump; and history makes it quite clear which will be the greater calamity.

(*) As to predictions, it is manifestly clear that one should not give great power to churlish, bigoted, anti-intellectual egotistical dunces (like Bush and Trump), and that calamity will be the likely result, even if one can’t predict the form it will take.

Lupita, the language of imperialism conceals how interdependent the international economic order is. It is also rather ramshackle, sort of like a car assembled from parts by a backyard mechanic without a good understanding of mechanical engineering. Continuing the jalopy analogy, imagine that it is running flat out and that the road is getting rougher.

2008 was a bump in the road. Suppose, now, a tire blows out. What do you think would happen in Mexico under such conditions?

@539 js.
“So it seems pretty clear that for several of you, if it’s not a total apocalypse, if it’s just widespread violence against vulnerable communities, there’s really nothing to worry about. It’s nice to know who I’m dealing with here.”

It seem that even with the NFTRI, someone still pretends not tu understand.
Let’s be honest: Trump will not bring fascism to USA; this does not mean that he may not be a quite bad president (just as Bush did not bring fascism to USA, and yet he was a quite bad president).

js: it isn’t just going to be violence against vulnerable communities.

Manta: “Don’t we have this discussion every US election cycle, where electing the wrong guy will lead to the apocalypse?”

Remember that this is slow-motion. It started with Reagan. W. Bush was part of the process. But also things can happen in the space of a few months: mass deportations, financial crashes, wars started.

Raven, you should also add Obama to the top of the list:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-numbers/story?id=41715661
“According to governmental data, the Obama administration has deported more people than any other president’s administration in history.
In fact, they have deported more than the sum of all the presidents of the 20th century.”

Raven@506: coming in a bit late, but when you say ‘Ronan is Irish, which makes his remarks even stranger. “The English are civilized people and would never do that” is an argument that ought to chill any Irish person’ I don’t know whether you are American or Australian, in which case much should be forgiven you, or Irish where the case is otherwise.

Minor point: if you think that the past Irish/British reciprocal hostility was entirely down to the English, I would advise you to summon up the ghosts of St Patrick, Henry VIII Tudor, and David Lloyd George and enquire their opinions. If you think there has been, and is no Scottish hostility, Ronan can no doubt inform you of the past and present state.

As for what the British have done, or not done, in recent centuries: have you ever considered what a genuinely fascist regime (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) would have done in the circumstances? Or a genuinely socialist regime (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot)? Feeling chilled yet?

Er, “…placate the Republicans…”

Will, oh, putting in Trump will work so well so well for vulnerable communities.

Stephen, consider the Raj. For that matter, consider the Great Hunger. It is a nationalist myth that the English were better than various other countries as a colonial power.

@539 “So it seems pretty clear that for several of you, if it’s not a total apocalypse, if it’s just widespread violence against vulnerable communities, there’s really nothing to worry about. It’s nice to know who I’m dealing with here.”

Do you really believe anyone here thinks that?

Perhaps every CT thread through November should start with the disclaimer: “Attention: probably no one on this blog with the exception of Kidneystones supports Trump or thinks Hillary’s awfulness is equivalent or close to that of Trump. Please be sure to carefully construct all straw men to imply otherwise. Thanks, the management.”

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Kevin Drum is a toady, only that certain blockheads here might think that he is.

“Minor point: if you think that the past Irish/British reciprocal hostility was entirely down to the English, I would advise you to summon up the ghosts of St Patrick, Henry VIII Tudor, and David Lloyd George and enquire their opinions. If you think there has been, and is no Scottish hostility, Ronan can no doubt inform you of the past and present state.”

Good grief! Is it ‘reciprocal hostility’ when conquers and enslaves the other while the other resists said conquest and enslavement?

“As for what the British have done, or not done, in recent centuries: have you ever considered what a genuinely fascist regime (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) would have done in the circumstances?”

I’ll bite. Let’s start with Kenya, shall we? Which genuinely fascist depredations did the plucky Brits manage to resist through the sheer force of their white-bread goodness?

Layman 09.19.16 at 5:41 pm
@ Anarcissie, note that I’m responding not to a claim that Bush’s actions were not predictable(*), but instead to a claim that they didn’t after all end the world. Note also the strange fact that you object to my response to that claim, but not to the original claim itself. Maybe you ought to think about that, since the dead Iraqis can’t speak up for themselves.

I didn’t object to your claim; by implication I approved of it, and extended it logically. I take it you believe that, in spite of her record, Clinton is less likely to start a war and kill a lot of people than Trump. But that’s just a shot in the dark. My equally benighted guess is that it’s 50-50. Some, as reasonable as you or I, have argued that Clinton is the worse war freak. So I’m still wondering what your plan is.

“Manta’s dismissal of the scope of Bush’s butcher bill ”

You still seem to be talking to people who live only inside your head. You should really see a doctor about those voices.

@ Manta, if you can’t grasp the fact that, for a dead Iraqi, Bush did in fact end the world; and as a result, comprehend how grotesque your dismissal was, then so be it. But did you really intend that we would be consoled by the idea that Trump probably couldn’t be much worse than Bush?

But, Will G-R, “She worked her heart out”!!

The sequellae of George W Bush’s election (I really want to use scare quotes) have been brought up to remind us that elections have consequences. But, Bush policy had to be enabled and legitimized and extended by the opposition, to do as much damage as it did. So, here we are staring at Clinton, who is just fine with the status quo Bush wrought.

” . . . again, it ought not be a complex decision not to choose the candidate who might start a war on a whim . . .”

As a first-order choice, you would be voting for a third-party candidate, which might mean giving effective albeit indirect support to one of the major Party candidates, either of whom might reasonably be judged belligerent in foreign policy.

Layman keeps saying, choose! I am saying, you are not choosing. You are being manipulated, herded, managed. Notice.

Kevin Drum:

“. . . Clinton is clearly doing worse among millennials than Obama did four years ago. . . . virtually all of the defection is in the 18-24 age group. . . . So what’s the deal with this very young age group? . . . I reserve most of my frustration for Bernie Sanders. He’s the one who convinced these folks that Clinton was in the pocket of Wall Street. She gave a speech to Goldman Sachs! He’s the one who convinced them she was a tool of wealthy elites. She’s raising money from rich people! He’s the one who convinced them she was a corporate shill. She supported the TPP! He’s the one who, when he finally endorsed her, did it so grudgingly that he sounded like a guy being held hostage. He’s the one who did next to nothing to get his supporters to stop booing her from the convention floor. He’s the one who promised he’d campaign his heart out to defeat Donald Trump, but has done hardly anything since—despite finding plenty of time to campaign against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and set up an anti-TPP movement.”

So, no praxis? I guess I should just trust Hillary to be the champion of campaign finance reform. She made a speech soundbite about Citizens United after all. Pay no attention to her using the DNC to bypass existing limits — the real issue there is Putin qua Watergate burglar revealing private email; damn Russkies interfering in our sacred Democratic processes. Pay no attention to how much Goldman Sachs paid for that little private chat or that the content remains a big secret. Pay no attention to the $21 million total she squeezed from such talks in the brief window between SoS and Candidate roles.

People always say that no one ever changes their mind as a result of arguments on the internet. But I have to say, this election-related series of threads over the last several months has led me reevaluate and change my mind about some fairly important things (admittedly—maybe not in the way my interlocutors would’ve preferred, but take what you can get, right?). So you know, good job, people!

“Layman keeps saying, choose! I am saying, you are not choosing. You are being manipulated, herded, managed. Notice.”

…and by refusing to choose, you still choose. Notice, o sensei.

@BWilder
Pay no attention to how much Goldman Sachs paid for that little private chat or that the content remains a big secret.

I think BW has gone off the deep end here (well, likely in general, but esp. here). These were speeches she was pd these huge sums for, for heaven’s sake. Speeches, not small, intimate mtgs. While the content may remain “secret,” it’s pretty obvious the content was banal, predictable, boilerplate, ego-massaging stuff about what a great job Goldman and like firms do [insert boilerplate about making capital available for innovation blah blah blah] and the challenges of [insert boilerplate about a globalized economy blah blah], w maybe a few personal anecdotes from her time as Sec of State thrown in. What the fu*k else wd she have said in a speech at Goldman Sachs? If there were going to be nefarious promises made, one doesn’t do that in a speech.

None of the clowns saying we should “devote our energies to opposing Clinton” (i.e. Helping trump) have yet said a word about global warming. I think we may have tapped a rich seam of global warming denialism amongst the socialist duebros on CT. Will they prove me wrong by actually mentioning this dreaded topic? Or will they do what will did and dismiss all of clintons policy statements as a list of “wants”?

I am with js. when he or she talks about losing arguments on the Internet. I’ve long been suspicious of how trustworthy and reliable my older, more hard left colleagues are but this election has really made me aware that, at least on the American left, socialist dudebros have no solidarity with anyone except their own rich selves, and their much vaunted Marxist analytical skills explain nothing and help no one. America’s poor will advance despite these arseclowns, not because of them.

And I think I will add “neoliberal” to my list of empty buzzwords. As soon as I read that word as an explanation for anything I know I’m dealing with someone who is shying away from actual analysis.

What is all this socialist dudebro business about? Am I not a socialist or do those launching these epitaphs not aware that I am not a dude? Whether it is sexism, racism, or xenophobia, I am being made to feel excluded. The PC terms are dude/tte and bro/sis.

Donald Johnson, do you despise Obama?

Faustus — it’s he. Anyway, glad you’re around on this thread (also TM and Raven and LFC and others).

Lupita, part of that may be my fault… I introduced “brocialist” in this conversation as an ironic shorthand for Clinton toadies’ misogynist/racist efforts to deny the agency of radical women and/or people of color, and they’ve seemed to pick up the rhetorical baton and run with it unironically. Also at one point I chastised js for ignoring the existence of radical critiques articulated by women/POC “in similar terms to the ones you’re seeing here”, which would imply that the people articulating these critiques here are entirely white guys — when in fact this was only true in js’s liberal (in the political sense and the “taking liberties” sense) imagination. For my role in perpetuating that erasure, I apologize.

Faustusnotes, just in case a bolt of lightning strikes you between now and when you read this comment, and you develop some intellectual honesty, I was just recently chatting with Rich Puchalsky about global warming at CT here. The relevant bits are at #144 and then #151-#155, but the short version of my take: it’s a serious problem, and trying to solve it with the mechanisms neoliberal global governance is able to provide (i.e. voluntary multilateral negotiations like Kyoto, Paris, or Copenhagen) is like trying to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest wiiiiiith… a herring.

Which come to think of it, also makes a good analogy for trying to achieve freedom, equality, social justice, and all that other good leftist or left-ish stuff wiiiiiith… the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. Go ahead and slander those of us who refuse to join you in this futile task as Trump supporters, possibly to distract your troubled political minds from the very futility of what you’re doing, but when you’re done slandering us the futility will still be there, haunting you like the damn Babadook or something. And you can try to block the bad feelings by shunning the very idea of political thought the way Raven did @ 496, but least in refusing to dedicate our political energy to the causes of evil people like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we’ve stopped digging our political selves deeper into the ditch and are trying to think of how we might get out of it.

Lee Arnold gave a list from Kevin Drum of good things HRC has worked on. (Kevin Drum is dying of cancer and has no reason to say anything but what he believes.) On the other side of the ledger we have:

a) HRC is a politician and uses compromise, quid-pro-quo, and focus-group-test tactics. Since all or most who have done this are evil, she must be or probably is evil.

b) She gave speeches for pay to financial-services companies, as a private citizen with experience in global affairs. Since all or most … etc.

c) Her family has a charitable foundation, rated more highly than the Red Cross. Since all or most … etc.

d) She has been an interventionist – a believer in the use of American force to prevent genocide. The article linked-to below gives her history in this regard, I think fairly. Since all or most … etc.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-regrets-her-iraq-vote-but-opting-for-intervention-was-a-pattern/2016/09/15/760c23d0-6645-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html

e) Neocons prefer her to Trump, probably because they also are interventionists, although not necessarily for the same reasons. Since all or most of the people neocons prefer to Trump are evil, yada, yada, yada.

Any or all of these conclusions might turn out to be correct, but I feel there is room for doubt. I don’t have any doubts about Trump, except that he might do something good by accident.

Faustusnotes,

“It’s not “a serious problem” it is THE most serious problem and this election is our last chance. If a republican is elected it sets back action 8 years and stacks the Supreme Court. If a dem is elected we get action – a “war footing”. Those are not neoliberal measures.”

Yes, the Democratic Party policy on climate change has just jumped ahead by a huge margin.

I wish the Hilary Clinton campaign would focus more on their climate policy, and on other positive policies they have for the future, for the closing weeks of the campaign. Obama focused more on positives and he brought people out to vote.

There was a recent piece in the New York Review Of Books saying that “vanquishing Donald Trump would be no sure thing; that given the unmoored, truly transgressive nature of his candidacy, it could prove to be the heaviest, most important challenge she’d ever be called on to confront in her exceptionally long run as a national political figure…. stopping Trump could still be viewed as her most important achievement”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/09/29/hillary-vs-donald-the-benefit-of-the-doubt/

But I think that’s not the most inspiring thing for people to vote for — stopping Donald Trump winning.

I am not American so I don’t know all the Democratic policies, but the climate change policy is a really good one, Obama starting to focus on the refugee issue is really good — they should be running on positive policy in the last weeks of the campaign.

The more they keep focussing on how terrible Trump is, the more they reinforce his messages, and the more they allow him to set the agenda.

You could make the opposite case: that were it not for a system in which relatively poor public servants like the Clintons could find ways to make tons of money, they’d be at even greater disadvantage in trying to fight the plutocracy. It will be all right, though: if the US elects the commercial real estate debt & bankruptcy artist who has left subcontractors holding the bag as he got out with millions, well then, the rest of us can complain about it over the back fence, while we pull the weeds and chaw on tobaccy.

Influence-peddling as the only way a pore girl can get ahead. Yeah, I suppose that’s one way to dilute an oligarchy. Worked in Byzantium, right? Should a serious theorist of democracy consider this a feature or a bug? We report, you decide….

William, you don’t suppose that the influence can go both ways, because?

Manta: “Is that some joke, or are you really expecting at this late stage that people believe this kind of propaganda?”

It’s pretty clear that Clinton’s justification for supporting military intervention is and has been, by and large, the notion that some humanitarian good would come out of it. That was her motivation with the former Yugoslavia, with Libya, and with Syria. I happen to believe she’s wrong – it’s difficult, nigh impossible, to help people by bombing them – but she can be both sincere and wrong at the same time.

I suppose the alternative is that she supports intervention because she likes killing people. You can believe that if you like, but it strikes me as a pretty stupid position to take, all things considered.

William, I love mystical theology, and I love Yeats, but you probably know that the beast has been slouching since long before he wrote, and that the apocalyptic mode is an individual psychological condition that becomes a metaphor for political reality, without proof that it is political reality, and that the problems in the world (injustice, poverty, war, ecocrisis, climate) may dealt with on different schedules, and not necessarily in one swoop. So am I trying to figure out why your battle charge is “Absolutism or Bust!” Don’t we have enough religious fundamentalists around?

Lee, my apocalypsos may not rhyme, but they are always mindful of the accidental qualities of our existence. Faustusnotes, nothing is so depressing as being miscast as a moral monster in someone else’s impoverished psychodrama. The field is yours.

William, I heartily endorse any call to mindfulness whether the call is poetical or prosaic but my own Yeats-quoter was Bateson who wanted intellectual clarity thereafter. And that isn’t automatic upon waking. Here there are no commenters who think that either Clinton or Trump are all good or all bad. Therefore, writing as if people don’t already know this, may serve to inhibit mindfulness among them. The intervening comment perhaps is a representative.

I didn’t call you a moral monster William, just pointed out that you don’t care. And the only psychodrama going on here is amongst those people who think their vote has some special magic power that can both inform Clinton of the reason they withheld it, and pollute their souls if they give it away to the wrong girl.

Lupita 09.20.16 at 1:58 pm @ 604:
‘What’s wrong with good old imperialism? ….’

Or, it’s just business, in the Mafia sense.

@590: Agree generally with what you say, but — she isn’t a terrible candidate by any means. She is a flawed one (like pretty much every other candidate to one degree or another, even the Big O). Her strengths are largely ignored, even by some who say they will vote for her.

Layman and LFC, you seem to be having some reading comprehension issues so I’ll make the point explicitly: whether or not a person believes they’re doing good says nothing whatsoever about whether they’re actually doing good, or at least close enough that “nothing whatsoever” is usually an OK approximation, and moreover everybody or almost everybody believes they’re doing good anyway. JimV appeared to be arguing that Hillary’s faith in the goodness of bombing poor Third-World brown people is some kind of reason to support her, although it’s hard to tell underneath all those layers of smarm, and Layman pushed back against Manta’s description of this argument as “propaganda”, maybe because it wasn’t clear whether Manta was objecting to Hillary’s belief in her goodness or to her actual goodness. So the question is, do you agree with the argument JimV appeared to be making or don’t you?

Just to try to make a remotely serious point, this is one of the problems with liberal individualism, an impenetrable fog of confusion over the distinction between individuals’ stated identities and intentions on the one hand and their actual roles in broader social systems on the other. It should be totally commonplace that explicit ideological declarations often serve to conceal implicit beliefs and practices that we may not want to admit even to ourselves, yet this observation is constantly interpreted as either an awe-inspiring revelation or a bizarre conspiracy theory, depending on the situation. Social scientists on the other hand generally take pains to examine the different ways social systems can function despite or even because of people collectively knowing something without saying it, or saying something without believing it, or believing something without knowing they believe it — which probably has to do with why even many allegedly left-liberals like Jonathan Chait often dismiss this kind of social science with a “PoMo Cultural Marxist academics and their obscure wishy-washy jargon” type of anti-intellectual tone barely distinguishable from the alt-right.

Except it seems to me that Manta was describing as “propaganda” JimV’s entire line of rhetoric: Hillary’s belief in her own goodness plus this belief as itself a reason to support her (or at least a reason to be smarmy toward those who don’t). On some level it’s an important distinction, but on another level, either way the appropriate response to “you should support Hillary because she thinks she’s the bee’s knees!” is Manta’s “not this shit again”.

Lupita, some huge fraction , perhaps 30%, of Mexico’s economy depends on international trade, and that is not even counting the Mexicans working abroad and sending money home. If the networks of trade collapse, there will be a lot of Mexicans out of work. And then there will be Trump’s deportees, also needing work. That will be unemployment on a scale not seen since the 1930s. A vast depression and who knows what the outcome would be? I do not wish that on any people!

The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless. — Alan Moore

Bad news for those above plugging the idea that Clinton started birtherism:

There are 2 cases:
1) either Clinton is lying about her motivations for bombing people and invading countries
or
2) Clinton is sincere about them

I really hope that case 1) is the truth: because in case 2) we will have a dangerous fanatic as next POTUS.

Manta: “There are 2 cases:
1) either Clinton is lying about her motivations for bombing people and invading countries
or
2) Clinton is sincere about them”

@ Will G-R, I rather think you owe me an apology.

And, as I said, I hope that Hillary is more in the mold of Bush Sr. than of Bush Jr.: a run-of-the-mill cynical imperialist, and not a fanatic that believes her own propaganda.

@ Raven Onthill

Lupita, some huge fraction , perhaps 30%, of Mexico’s economy depends on international trade, and that is not even counting the Mexicans working abroad and sending money home. If the networks of trade collapse, there will be a lot of Mexicans out of work. And then there will be Trump’s deportees, also needing work. That will be unemployment on a scale not seen since the 1930s. A vast depression and who knows what the outcome would be? I do not wish that on any people!

If Mexicans depend on international trade and remittances from emigrant workers, it is because much of the population was made superfluous by NAFTA. You may not wish the reversal of this situation, but the Zapatistas do, as does the Mexican left.

The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless. — Alan Moore

I wrote imperialism, meaning American hegemony. Are you and Alan Moore saying that the world order is not centered on American control of global financial and political institutions and the world’s strongest military? Is Pax Americana just a figment of the fevered imaginations of the 3rd world left?

@609: If all the members of the political establishment who voted for the Iraq resolution were cast into outer darkness, there wouldn’t be many left. (Also, for the record, Clinton was more ambivalent about the Iraq war resolution than you give her credit for being.) Yes, she was slow to apologize. I tend to attribute that in part to a female candidate’s legitimate concern about appearing weak, in addition to a certain stiff-neckedness that seems to be part of her character. However, Clinton’s been given a lot more grief over this than, say, former presidential nominee John Kerry – who has actually tried to claim that he didn’t support the invasion — and I don’t think it’s because people think he apologized for his vote more convincingly and abjectly than she.

Donald Johnson, I agree with most of what you say @ 609. And most like 80+%, not 51%. I myself have mentioned on here several times that Clinton’s foreign policy hawkishness is the most distressing thing about her by far (some other things I give less weight to for reasons I could explain another time—and have in the past, for what it’s worth). I asked you about despising Obama because I was curious about the potential contrast with Clinton—and based on the response, I am sort of curious why not extend the same “hate the sin, not the sinner” courtesy to Clinton.

I could say more about this, but I respect and understand entirely your desire not to engage, so I’ll almost stop here. I will, as a general matter, again add that I think people pay too much attention to individual candidates and not enough to (the current state and direction of) parties.

“JimV appeared to be arguing that Hillary’s faith in the goodness of bombing poor Third-World brown people is some kind of reason to support her, although it’s hard to tell underneath all those layers of smarm”

Sorry about the smarm, but to clarify I wasn’t giving reasons to support HRC, except by referring to Lee Arnold’s previous list, I was listing my understandings of the reasons some people here have given for not supporting her, indeed for hating her guts, albeit adding my own slant on some of them. (I missed a few, such as HRC talking to Kissinger, who used to be a regular guest consultant on the PBS News Hour, but perhaps is no longer – I stopped watching due to all the he-said/she-said.) I ended by admitting that some or all of those reasons might be valid, but I thought there was room for doubt, i.e., that someone could do all those things and still be worth a vote. I don’t think any of us has not made mistakes, and mistakes can be good learning experiences, if they did not produce the effects that were intended.

As to why HRC has supported interventions, I did my research, and found the most complete and in-depth history at the link I gave, which I think is worth reading.

The thing I have seen here which bothers me the most (apart from all the rudeness and uncharitable readings, but those are venial crimes of passion) is Bruce Wilder’s mentioning that HRC called for a no-fly zone in Syria when only Russian planes are flying there. I need to do research on that. On its face it sounds like a bad mistake, but I can imagine additional facts whose existence might be exonerating (e.g., if it was to be a negotiated result), so I need to rule them in or out, if I can.

Raven @631,

Obviously your comments weren’t addressed to me and Lupita will respond as she pleases. However, I want to highlight your question re: NAFTA b/c it is emblematic. Despite being well documented, it is a brute fact that Americans know nothing about the near total ruination of Mexico’s rural, small-holding and cooperative, peasant-farmer population as a result of Nafta. In simplified terms, the Noah’s Ark deluge of American corn and other commodities which flooded into Mexico in the mid-90’s is directly linked to the counter flood of Mexican immigrants crossing the border to find work over the last 20 years (see also, Mexico’s rise to bloody narco-state if you have the stomach for it).

In general, Americans know nothing about these dynamics and the precious role “free trade” and the free flow of capital has played in instituting them. Pretty much the same with Pax Americana over the last 2 centuries, but go to Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, Ecuador: they’ll gladly tell you all about it and in great detail.

And while there if some random stranger on the sidewalk yells out, “Oye, gringo!”, in a way that seems, well, a little off somehow; a little aggressive or disdainful or resentful or angry or something that you can’t quite put your finger on, and you’re thinking, “What was that about? I didn’t do anything, did I?” The answer is no, you probably didn’t, but Pax Americana probably did.

@ Raven Onthill

Pax Americana is a play on Pax Romana. It means “empire”.

Nafta is the direct cause of the exodus of peasants from their communities to cities and agribusinesses in northern Mexico and the US since its implementation required the privatization of communal lands, ejidos, and the dumping of American subsidized corn on Mexico which, I may add, is of a different variety from Mexican corn and is useless for making tortillas that do not turn into mush. Nafta was a blow directly to our heart, to our indigenous communities, to our cuisine, our culture, our civilization, our soul. This is why, on January 1, 1994, the Zapatistas rose. Forget about the USDA economic research service.

US military dominance is more of a chimera than a real thing in the economic sphere.

President Fernandez from Argentina had to use commercial flights instead of her presidential plane because the US, with the backing of its military, diplomatic, and economic power, was set to impound it due to the non-payment of some bonds. President Morales from Bolivia had his plane diverted also thanks to American power. So yes, there is a direct link between American hegemony and the national dignity and sovereignty of many 3rd world countries. No matter how wrong-headed, the US can bark an order and many of its allies jump. Witness Blair. That is power on a global scale.

The post-World War II financial order was created by the USA and Western Europe, and is now under no single organization or government’s control.

When has the IMF been headed by a non-European and the World Bank by a non-American? Or is the catch the word “single”? OK, let’s say “Western hegemony”. How’s that?

The big international banks, the government central banks, major resource, manufacturing, and service corporations, and factions of the very rich all participate, but no single faction is in control.

Great, there is some infighting and rivalry among the .01%. It must make those Davos meetings a bit awkward at times.

it makes it hard to organize positive international policies

Hard, but not impossible. China and South American countries have already organized independent regional financial institutions and many countries, like Russia and Brazil, have paid off their debt to the IMF and vowed to never again fall under their sway, no matter how desperate. The WTO is practically dead because of Brazil and its allies, Brazil now produces generic AIDS drugs despite the US’ efforts to impose its intellectual property rules, and Obama sits silently while Latin American heads of state lecture him on Americans’ drug habits.

If none of this is true, then why worry about Trump? There is nothing he can destroy, or accelerate its demise, since there is no alternative to the current global world order, it being like a force of nature.

A brief note on “smarm” (mentioned by Will G-R up-thread. Fwiw, I agree with WG-R on most things, as I do in this case: i.e., that “smarm” is basically the default mode of discourse of “serious” commenters on this blog, and has been for some time):

The word appears to be a recent back-formation from the adjective “smarmy”, which appeared sometime in the C17, but is of otherwise unknown origin.

What I think is kind of cool is that it could almost be a contraction of “school-marmish”! It’s not, apparently, but it pretty much captures the essence of the term.

Carry on, as you were, etc., etc.

@Lupita: “Pax Americana is a play on Pax Romana. It means “empire”.”

Actually, no, it means a harshly enforced peace, or subjugation, in the context of empire.

I think the words derived from empire (imperial, imperialism) have pretty much gone the way of “fascism”: i.e., they are employed so often in ideological cant they have lost most of their meaning.

I don’t know if American Hegemony is really all that, but I’m sure it gives Davos Man and those of his ilk a thrill to hear that it is.

JimV@663
Russian planes are not the only planes flying in Syria. Syria has its own air force, which has been bombing pop. centers and hospitals and committing completely brazen (i.e. they appear not even to attempt to hide it or excuse it etc) crimes. (U.S. planes are also flying in parts of Syria, primarily targeting ISIS.)

William Berry, I have said I was sorry for my smarm, but personally I thought Will G-R’s response (quoted in my last comment) was as smarmy or smarmier than the comment he was referring to.

Perhaps in hindsight a better way of expressing myself would have been something like,
to say the Clinton Foundation must be a bad, money-laundered slush fund because the Clintons founded it, and therefore HRC is evil is a circular argument. I have a feeling that version would have been perceived as smarm also, though. Anyway, it was not my intention to offend people other than by showing how their reasoning was being perceived (which should not be a legitimate cause for offense, but often does cause it).

Now I wonder if everything in this comment will be seen as smarm. I guess the only way to avoid it is (demonstration follows)

JimV, just as William Berry is getting at, I linked the word smarm to the widely-discussed Scocca essay to invoke his sense of smarm’s distinguishing trait: a defense of “insiders” against vulgar criticism from “outsiders”, basically the go-to rhetorical weapon of what Jay Rosen calls The Church of the Savvy. Your game of listing presumedly ordinary ruling-class behaviors and beliefs each followed by a sarcastic “Since all or most who have done this are evil, she must be or probably is evil”, implying that a straightforward assertion of that sentence would be ridiculous on its face, is such highly enriched smarm that it might need a nonproliferation treaty. So here’s a straightforward assertion: the Clintons behave as fairly ordinary members of the ruling class, and behaving as an ordinary member of the ruling class is evil.

As far as Pax Romana/Americana and the confusion as to what is or isn’t imperialism, a useful conceptual bridge between “empire invades and kills people with an army” and “commercial trade treaty leaves people impoverished and starving” is structural violence: the omnipresent implied potential for violence by an oppressor against the oppressed, conditioning every aspect of the relationship between them and preventing the oppressed from demanding what might otherwise be regarded as basic material and social needs. It shouldn’t be hard to understand that the “peace” of Pax Romana/Americana is a signifier for the structural violence embodied in the Roman and US militaries, or that structural violence is the implied subject of every argument about the definition of peace in relation to justice, from Martin Luther’s “peace was not made for the sake of justice but justice for the sake of peace” to Martin Luther King’s “there can be no justice without peace and no peace without justice”. But since defining structural violence as nonviolence is a core premise of ruling-class smarm (e.g.) and especially since an obvious omnipresent case of structural violence in today’s world is the very institution of capitalist private property, it’s a concept many people go to great lengths to reject.

Will G-R #646: “it’s a concept many people go to great lengths to reject.”

Almost everybody commenting here accepted it a long, long time ago! The next question is, what do you yourself intend to do about it.

Will G-R, I’ve read you with a great appreciation for your thoughtful diligence. You’ve put your shoulder to the wheel with a long-suffering patience I know I couldn’t manage. I truly hope that you’ve been persuasive.

I continue to be impressed by what Lupita’s asking of everyone – that we think of the world beyond that bounded by our narrow affinities and electoral cycles, that we go beyond race and gender in our imagination of solidarity and justice.

It is understandable that horror and defensive action against Trump/Cruz/Bush may justify taking up bad choices, but it oughtn’t be difficult to concede that these are indeed terrible choices with predictably horrible outcomes – forced on maybe well-meaning people by defective political systems.

To actively celebrate these bad choices and to denounce others for their different perspectives and calculations, for their incapacity to endorse the entirely predictable destruction of actual lives is reprehensible.

With a commentator above, I find it hard to believe that not one of the bolshie identitarians knows of the active, reasoned anti-Clinton (even anti-Obama) sentiment among those constructed as color people or women. Except, the politics of taxonomy is useful not for care and solidarity, but for herding and policing.

What lesson can we learn from this quadrennial defence of the Democratic Party? For me it is that liberals are themselves racist, misogynist earth-destroyers. The patriarchal liberal racists refuse to pause, or to reflect, to learn from experience. They cannot bring themselves to sympathise with or see far away others. A commentator above mentions the parliamentary report on the destructive Libyan adventure. Here, a cheerful case is made for an unrepentant, laughing advocate of war and accumulation.

We live in the world of the liberals’ triumph, so it makes sense that they cannot understand or respect alternatives. Instead they’ll preach inclusion, sustainability, innovation, and resilience; reserving their rages for bad lefties who won’t do the right thing.

* I hope the site administrators will discourage such insults as ‘lunatics’, which the non-deplorables love to lob at their adversaries.

When I first encountered the word “praxis” it was during the Vietnam War, and the question was, what to do about it. At that time the answer was resistance and demonstrations. But that only works if you have a crisis that brings a lot of people out onto the street.

At the current time, the mental conditions are quite different. There are several components to this: people feel that the problems ought be solved without having to organize; people aren’t subject to the military draft; the information media landscape has become diffuse so that there is no longer a monolithic narrative to easily categorize and oppose; and so on. There other things which you may think of.

(Here is one more, that has been growing: The right-wing socio-emotional cognitive bias has found a pseudo-intellectual framework: the Hayekian-libertarian bafflegab. This framework is so seemingly convincing that a lot of other people — including some economists! — suppose that, maybe, it is true. It immediately benefits the interests of the plutocracy, and so, it is pervasive in the pop media that gets the most eyeballs.)

Anyway, then there is the next question of how change happens, must it be drastic, or can it be piecemeal and ameliorative? I see evidence of both, and praxis has to play it as it lays. This is the biggest thing I learned from working with people from the old War Resisters League and from the American Friends Service Committee. You figure out the next pressure point, and you push.

Indeed there has been change in most people’s preferences, for the better, since the 196o’s upheavals: war cannot be the answer, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and so on. It seems to me that, until there is another crisis that brings everybody else out onto the street, we cannot do much but push piecemeal in the right directions, no matter how imperfect the instruments, because that always changes a few more preferences and expectations in the direction of a better world.

So to me, the solution is in most cases a watchful attitude, and a tactical attitude, because strident rhetoric simply does not work on most people if they don’t already feel an imminent or existential crisis. In the US, Sanders didn’t get the votes, so that means getting Hillary elected to push right back into the face of the worst haters, to make it unacceptable — and then if that works, we have to push Hillary. On the other hand if Trump wins, that means another set of tactics. This never ends!

‘I readily concede it. Now, can we get on with it?’

What’s stopping you?

Wow the patriarchal liberal racists are using identity for herding and policing, and are the real earth-destroying misogynists. Have we reached Peak Guardian here at a CT thread?

If you want to see earth destroying, let trump in and watch global temperature burst through the guardrail. Then we can all sit back and cheer that at least we weren’t the “real earth destroyers” as our entire civilization goes to hell in a hand basket.

@650 — On the contrary, the favorite opinion here seems to be ‘Clinton is bad, but Trump is so much worse that we have to vote for and support the election of Clinton.’ I don’t know what you’re complaining about. In any case, unless there is a hidden kingpin of American politics reading this, your audience here is not going to change the outcome of the upcoming election.

Anarcissie #660: “On the contrary, the favorite opinion here”

is no proof that “many people go to great lengths to reject” the concept of “structural violence”, as Will G-R claimed at the end of #648. (If this is what you are referring to.) I’m not sure that there are many people on either left or right who reject that concept at all. Although of course the right doesn’t choose “the very institution of capitalist private property” to be their structural villain, they’ve got another structural villain.

Thanks for the link, Foundling.
I am greatly relieved now, that I know we are/will not be governed by humanitarian fanatics, but only by old-fashioned imperialists.

“Thanks to Anarcissie for immediately demonstrating the point of my #659.”

Feeling left out, Will G-R makes a bid to be a better example. Can bruce wilder be far behind?

Lee, there are people here smarming all over the characterization of US foreign policy as imperialism, or of those who administer it as imperialists — I referenced Layman and faustusnotes, and others like Raven seem perfectly willing to ignore what people actually mean by “imperialism” before earnestly dismissing it on the grounds that the US flag doesn’t fly directly above the Haitian flag on a flagpole or whatever. The obvious background premise is that absent direct territorial annexation, the rubric of imperialism couldn’t possibly apply to any other aspects of a relationship between a wealthier country and a poorer country as long as the poorer country has some sort of formal freedom to refuse it. But to make this distinction seem self-evident one has to ignore the importance of structural violence, especially the all-purpose structural violence of private property, as a way of inscribing imperialist domination into the global capitalist order and making the formal freedom to refuse it irrelevant. Just because someone may be willing to utter the words “structural violence” without it being part of a 2-hour YouTube webcam rant about PoMo SJW cucks, doesn’t mean they can’t ignore it in practice all the same.

Will, Your characterization doesn’t cover the most recent major example: The US removed a dictatorship (Saddam) that had been enabled by lines drawn under British imperialism, then the US withdrew from the country and left it in the hands of the best friends of Iran — putatively a US enemy. So, you either must expand the definition of “imperialism” to include something which would make it a useless term to historians, or else, provide that the US is a pretty piss poor example of an empire! And now, the US is heavily focused upon making various coalitions throughout the Middle East which include a dozen and a half actors, many of whom clearly have NO intention of honoring the “global capitalist order” except on their own terms. None, zero. Therefore, it might be better to study what is really going on, without using prior categories from political and historical description as if they are reified explanatory principles.

Iraq clearly did not end up being a vassal.

Manta, part of what structural violence means is the potential for explicit violence, so of course relationships of domination built on structural violence will sometimes be reduced to plain brute force. But if you ignore the context of structural violence you can’t properly contextualize any particular act of bombing or regime change or whatever in relation to the broader strategic interests of empires, which opens up ideological space for a callow humanitarian “we just want to stop genocide!” type of narrative like the one JimV parroted above.

Lee, two ways in which one might criticize the 2003 Iraq war are that it was incompetently administered to achieve the objectives it sought, and that the objectives it sought were a function of US imperialism, neither of which precludes the other. As far as the broader point, yes US imperial strategy involves various proxies whose stated ideologies are in various ways anti-imperialist. In fact you’d be hard-pressed to find any political movement with mass support in the developing world that doesn’t frame itself as somehow anti-imperialist, because the structural violence of imperialism breeds obvious resentment and being explicitly pegged as an imperial proxy is an easy path to popular illegitimacy. Part of the normal functioning of imperialism in the “postcolonial” era is to channel as much popular anti-imperialist sentiment as possible through ideological currents whose surface-level anti-imperialism conceals a deeper acceptance of imperial hegemony, perhaps the most obvious present-day example of which is the “War on Terror” with its various groups of sometimes-proxies sometimes-“terrorists”.

This may be a bit farther of a reach, but I suspect this is part of why Trump is so especially alarming for the direct administrators of US empire, the foreign policy establishment currently lining up behind Hillary: in at least some ways Trump is reminiscent of the same faux-anti-establishment pattern also embodied in a Western imperial frenemy like Osama bin Laden (who also started off as heir to a family real estate and construction business before branching out into reactionary politics!), and openly admitting the need to play the same dangerous game among their own “domestic” underclasses that they play with “foreign” ones — stoking the fires of reactionary pseudo-rebellion to forestall actual revolution — means accepting one less barrier between them and the angry mob.

JimV, what evidence would you need to call the Libya bombing evil (or not-evil)?
To me the evidence seems pretty convincing that it did not happen for “humanitarian” reasons (see the article linked above http://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/)

Lee: empires get defeated sometimes. Rome lost in Parthya.
But if you disagree that Iraq’s invasion aim was not making it a vassal, I’d like to hear your opinion on its motivations.