Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders confer during a break in their debate in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 17, 2016. (photo: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock)
ear, particularly irrational fear, can be its own path to mayhem.Hillary Clinton is many things, and is nothing if not determined. However nothing can be accomplished if she is painted as abjectly evil. That she is not. But there are problems. Those problems can be clearly defined. By defining the problems they can be understood and addressed.
Progressives are angry at this stage. A real progressive candidate mounted a historic bid for the presidency. He was railroaded by a system and by a Democratic Party that sees progress and justice as a threat to their power.
What fuels the anger more than anything else is a sense that the voice of progressive-Democratic voters was subverted by the DNC and the corporate media. It’s a lot to be angry about, and righteously so.
In fact the Republican process was, in totality, actually more democratic by default, owing to the failure of the RNC to derail their insurgent candidate, Donald Trump. Although try they did.
Nonetheless anger, its origin not withstanding, can be a powerful driving force. However as a core strategy for achieving progress and justice it will certainly be a failure.
Hillary Clinton will be the 45th President of the United States. Donald Trump’s campaign will fail, ultimately because he is Donald Trump and that will prove insurmountable. That and the fact that Hillary Clinton is far more qualified and emotionally stable.
Now would be an excellent time to begin the process of understanding Hillary, light and dark, and what she is likely to do and not do. Hillary Clinton is not the devil. She is a corporate Democrat. Who incidentally clings to the notion, despite all evidence to the contrary, that she is a progressive. Which could prove quite a useful delusion.
The question on the table is do you want progress and social justice? Further, would you sacrifice your anger to achieve those goals?
The first big material problem with Hillary Clinton is her willingness to accept the dictates of America’s wealthiest, most powerful, and most corrupt. Typically referred to as “Wall Street barons” or “the 1%,” they are in fact evil, even if she is not.
Think of Wall Street as a marketplace for everything that is wrong with humanity.
Essentially Wall Street commodifies everything. War is not a blight on humanity; it is a commodity to be bought, traded, and most importantly profited from. It’s all a big numbers game. There is no line in the spreadsheet for suffering.
The same formula applies for the broadcast industry, the healthcare industry, and in fact every publicly traded company in the world. It’s all bottom-line driven, regardless of the consequences.
So step one to commandeering Hillary Clinton’s presidency will be to drive a wedge between her and not just the overlords of Wall Street but the entire ideology of Wall Street. She has to think and act independently of Wall Street.
She has to be challenged early and often. Not with childish insults but with facts, evidence, and viable ideas. Throwing your hands up in disgust or absolving yourself of responsibility because Hillary Clinton did or did not do what she should have done won’t get it.
Denigrating Hillary Clinton is pointless. FDR famously admonished progressive activists who would lecture him on what steps he needed to take. His reply was, “Now go out there and make me do it.” Ad hominem attacks accomplish nothing. If there is a policy she must pursue, we must make that unavoidably clear.
Hillary Clinton is not just going to wake up on the morning of January 21st and decide that progressive policies are really the best after all. But she can be made to act.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
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