Andrew O’Hehir:

By the time you read this votes will already have been cast in 11 states (and American Samoa!) that in all likelihood will doom us to an eight-month campaign between a vacuous, proto-fascist huckster with no accomplishments or principles and an unregenerate war hawk who represents the neoliberal global elite. Thanks, America!

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The nominations are not sewn up yet, but you wouldn’t know that by reading news media this morning.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes President, she will have the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to thank. She represents everything about the Democratic Party that progressives have been bitching about for years — she’s too accommodating to the Right; too reluctant to push for anything beyond incremental baby steps; too compromised by ties to big money donors; and, for whatever reason, way too hawkish. Yet if you point that out to people, you get reactions like this —

I am sick up to my fucking eyeballs of listening to supposed Dems call HRC corrupt. If you want to be a TeaBagger and push GOP talking points, at least be honest enough to declare yourself one of them. She’s been slandered, smeared and vilified by the Right for 30+ years. If there was dirt there to uncover it would have been found, but nothing, NOTHING has ever been found, let alone proven.

In other words, the steady drumbeat of hysterical, over-the-top animus and accusations that the Right has flung at Hillary Rodham Clinton all these years has inoculated her from criticism from the Left. Because of Darrell Issa’s idiot and dishonest Benghazi!!!! hearings, for example, the Left is closing its eyes to a real issue, which is that Secretary of State Clinton sold President Obama on policies in Libya that turned out to be disastrous.

After all we have gone through from Vietnam to Iraq, you’d think lefties would be extremely reluctant to support an obvious hawk like Clinton. But leftie groupthink has taken hold that doesn’t allow us to talk about this.

As far as corruption is concerned, I doubt we will ever find clear quid pro quos in her record. She’s not one to cross the line toward doing anything clearly criminal. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no reason to be concerned.  I’ve quoted this before, but I think Jeffrey Feldman clearly spells out what the real issue is:

While not guilty of corruption in the explicit sense of quid pro quo, Clinton not only participates in, but actively cultivates patron-client relationships with Wall Street. In the clientelism that Clinton embraces and defends, she claims the American public to be the sole beneficiary via her representation, but she refuses to acknowledge how Wall St. benefits.  And yet, in a patron-client system, both the patron and the client always benefit. Always. That is how it works. In this case: Clinton gets resources to run for office, while Wall Street gets the guarantee that the candidate they gave so much money in one place (e.g., a speech) will tacitly if not explicitly support their views of economic reality in another place (e.g., The White House). It is a long term strategy for both.

Suffice it to say that if an industry seeks to play the long game–seeks to control the rule governing financial sector for the benefit of their firm–then they are much better off seeking to build as many patron-client relationships with government as possible, rather than a few risky acts of corruption.

Do read the whole thing.

And this is why Clinton will never promote far-reaching reform in the financial sector. She’s likely to give us a few tweaks to keep the worst of the vampire squid impulses at bay, but she won’t try to change The System itself.  But if it doesn’t change, and substantially, we’re all screwed. The young folks especially.

And, of course, there’s the gender card. I said something pro-Bernie on Facebook last night and was accused of sexism. She accuser refused to believe me when I said I was a woman, and a feminist. Because, apparently, the only reason to oppose a Clinton presidency is misogyny.

I wrote last week:

Hillary Clinton has some utterly and passionately devoted supporters, many of them older women, who appear to devoutly wish for a Clinton win because, in their heads, that would be paypack for all the sleights and obstacles and disrespect they’ve suffered through the years.

And that’s why they want her to win. Issues? Income inequality? Election reform? The corruption (or, as Jeffrey Feldman calls it, “clientelism“) in government? Nope, not on their radar. She’s going to do so much for women! they gush. (If you point out that Sanders is a feminist, also, they don’t want to hear about it. A Sanders win would deny them their symbolic victory.)

I submit that a Clinton presidency would reduce sexism about as much as the Barack Obama presidency reduced racism. But it would give many women a few hours of glorious gloating, so I guess that’s all they care about.

Let’s talk about the Democratic Party. I wrote back on February 8 about the sentiment among many that we must support Hillary Clinton because she’s a real Democrat, and Bernie Sanders isn’t. Sometimes I feel that with all my years of voting for Dems and $5 I could get a 20-piece Chicken McNuggets. The Obama Administration has made a real difference, of course, and I certainly don’t want to turn the keys of the White House over to Donald Trump. And there are some genuinely progressive Dems, of course.

But the party as a whole, going back decades, time and time again hasn’t given us what we need from them. We vote for them mostly because the alternative is worse.

Yet this is the party we’re supposed to support, just because it’s Our Home Team? Or something? There are people I have personally heard badmouth wishy-washy Dems for years who suddenly think Hillary Clinton can do no wrong and we must be loyal to her because she is a real Democrat, and Sanders is not.

Well, bleep that.

It is because of corruption in the Dem Party that Clinton is Miss Invincibility. Back in August Martin O’Malley accused the DNC of rigging the primary system in Hillary Clinton’s favor. And now we can see at least one reason why — obviously, Clinton worked out a deal with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that helped solve the DNC’s financial crunch while it funneled PAC money to Clinton that she has been able to count as direct donations.

With inept news media that does nothing to inform voters about candidates — except who is winning, and who isn’t — we’ve got a perfect storm of derp going on. Voters support Hillary, yes, but for the wrong reasons.

In other words, Dem voters have not been real allowed input into the process of choosing our candidate. And we’re all just supposed to support the candidate we’re told to support.

One more time — bleep that.

Sanders isn’t done yet; he’s saying he will stay in the race until all states have voted, or until he stops getting donations, whichever comes first. I’ve said earlier that the primary calendar in April and may gets friendlier for him, and if I were him I wouldn’t quit yet either.

But I acknowledge there is very little hope that Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t be the Dem nominee for the presidency. Between her and Trump, it’s like a choice between a quick death or a slow one.

Update: One more thought — it occurs to me that, given the lack of analysis and debate actual issues, American voters are viewing the presidential campaigns as morality plays. Your perspective of who is the hero and who is the villain rests on your own social-psychological wiring, of course.  The fact that HRC has been the victim of many lunatic witch hunts has given her a veneer of innocent righteousness in the eyes of many people who are not wingnuts. But the real world isn’t that simple, and just because she isn’t the evil bitch queen the Right thinks she is doesn’t mean she deserves your vote for President.

Also, too  — the Apartment Fund fundraiser is close to the halfway mark! Just because you are reading this post doesn’t mean I deserve donations, but I’ll leave that to your judgment.

I am literally getting out of a sickbed to write this, as I have a stomach flu, but you know nothing rouses me like being pissed off.

So I’m huddled in bed reading political commentary and social media on my Kindle. And it’s pissing me off. I read one thing after another saying, oh, Walter Mondale lost in 1984 and Mike Dukakis lost in 1988 — most of ’em don’t go as far back as my first presidential candidate, George McGovern, who lost in 1972 — and because we lost then we must choose a very safe candidate and not anybody too radical because the Right is all-powerful and very mean and they will beat us to death, or something.

I remember the words of my favorite dead white guy, Ulysses S. Grant. During the Battle of the Wilderness, an officer came to him babbling anxiously about what Robert E. Lee would do to defeat them. And the General said,

“Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”

None of the weenies seem to remember that we all settled on John Kerry in 2004 because he seemed to be the “safe” candidate. I don’t recall that he won. But that was then.

Nixon is dead and Reagan is dead and Lee Atwater is dead. Karl Rove is out howling in the wilderness raising money for a Super-PAC that can’t elect candidates. Fox News and the National Review threw everything it had at Donald Trump, to no avail. The Republican establishment has completely lost control of the process, and IMO none of the current GOP front-runners could be elected POTUS if you spotted them 50 electoral college votes. And I can’t wait to see the train wreck that will be the GOP National Convention.

It ain’t 1972 any more. It ain’t 1980 or 1984 or 1988 or 2000. Lots of stuff has happened. The national mood is very different now. The electorate is very different now. The GOP is very different now.

Most of the hand-wringing is coming from people who assume Hillary Clinton is electable, but IMO that is an untested proposition. She’s doing best among a demographic that probably will turn out for the Republican — old rich people. She’s expected to win primaries in a bunch of solid-red southern states that she will not win in the general. So how is she electable?

As my friend Jeffrey Feldman wrote on his Facebook page,

I’m fascinated by this argument that it’s necessary to NOT vote for Sanders now because he cannot win in the general. There’s a broader logic at work, but in its most basic–it is saying: you must vote for the candidate who cannot win this primary election because that is the candidate who can win the general election. The loser must win for us to ultimately win. Totally bizarre to be on the receiving end of this attempt at persuasion.

I think neither of our Dem front-runners would have had a prayer in 1980, 84, 88, 00, or 04. If the financial collapse hadn’t happened, I don’t know how 2008 would have gone. In 2012, the Republicans ran their “safe” candidate, Mitt Romney.

So much for “safe” candidates.

The hand-wringers are telling us we have to modify our views and run the allegedly safe candidate, because the Evil and All-Powerful Right can be expected to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Frankly, I don’t think they’ve got it in them this year.

Yes, down-ticket elections. Why are we thinking about electing someone who turns off nearly every demographic? Don’t you want a bunch of enthusiastic leftie voters to actually, you know, show up at the polls? Do you think leftie, progressive voters are going to get confused and vote for right-wing Republicans down ballot? Duh.

Let’s stop modifying our views and negotiating with ourselves and running scared because we’re afraid of what those other people are going to do. What are we going to do?

If you plan to vote for Hillary Clinton because you sincerely believe she is the best candidate for the job, and because you agree with her positions on issues, that’s fine. But stop claiming we all have to vote for Clinton whether we want to or not or the sky will fall. I’m not seeing it.

Let’s listen to another great American who won a tough election in 1948 —

“Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.”  — Harry S Truman

One of the objections to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy that I keep reading on social media is that “he’s not even a Democrat.” People who say this appear to believe that it’s vitally important to be loyal to the institution of the Democratic Party as the last and only bulwark against the rising tide of insanity and chaos that the Republicans have become. And I’d like to address that.

For lo these many years — at least a dozen, maybe more — we liberal/progressives have been promised that some day demographics will turn the tide and make our policies viable again. Some day the knee-jerk right-wing voters will die off.  Some day voters will stop responding to racist dog whistles. Some day cultural conservatism will stop driving troglodytes to the polls to vote against their own economic interests. And when that happens, my dears, progressive policies can finally be enacted. But in the meantime, we must modify our positions and negotiate with ourselves and meekly propose only those milquetoast little baby-step policies that we might be able to sneak past The Right-Wing Beast.

This kind of thinking hamstrung the early years of the Obama Administration. Granted, he may have done about as well as anyone could have done passing the Affordable Care Act, given that even many Democrats in Congress were working against him and fought to water it down. But anyone who has been paying attention these past several years ought to have known there’s no working with foaming-at-the-mouth wingnuts. Attempts to be conciliatory will fail. To them, either you are avowedly 100 percent pure Hard Core Right, or you are the enemy.

So, we’ve been told, look to the young folks. They will save us. But younger people are notoriously bad about voting, especially in mid-terms. So The Beast owns Congress and and a large portion of state governments.

Enter the Democratic National Committee. For some reason beyond my comprehension, Decisions Were Made some time back that Hillary Clinton would be the Dem standard-bearer in 2016. No one else need apply. The establishment and the money people said so. Actual progressives were not consulted. I railed about this a couple of years ago. Why aren’t we having an ideological discussion on the future direction of the Democratic Party? (And yeah, I said back in 2014 that Sanders would be un-electable in a general election, but I’m less sure about that now. Depends on whom the Republicans nominate.)

But we had no discussion, and Hillary Clinton was presented to us as the nominee-presumptive. Without a big media build-up and the support of the establishment, Martin O’Malley probably was doomed. He should have just gone on the road with his Celtic rock band, O’Malley’s March.

I am hugely — should I say yugely? — ambivalent about HRC. No question she is very smart and very knowledgeable on both foreign and domestic policy. No question she knows how to work the buttons and levers in Washington. I do trust her on issues involving women and minority rights, so if she is the nominee she’s got my vote.

And, of course, the Right has been trying to pin something criminal on her for 25 years, and they always fail. I assume Benghazi! and email-gate are more empty issues that have been spun to look criminal, and when the dust clears nothing will come of either one. Just as nothing came of the Travel Office thing or the Vince Foster thing or Whitewater or anything else The Beast has been howling about all these years.

However, the Right has done a bang-up job persuading the average American who is not a news-politics junkie that she must be guilty of something. That’s not fair, but it’s the truth. And, to me, that would make her a lot less electable than a lot of other Dems the public never got a chance to know. And damn Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

My primary objection to HRC is that she’s the queen of self-negotiation and incremental baby steps. That might have been necessary in the 1990s, when the Right was on the ascendancy. But right now, the Right is in chaos. It is falling apart. It has never been so vulnerable. Yet the DNC and HRC seems stuck in self-negotiation, baby-step, kick-the-can-down-the-road mode.

Worse, HRC herself doesn’t seem to Get It. See, for example, “Hillary Not Truthful About Wall Street Speaking Fees.” Do read the whole thing; there’s a lot of really shoddy stuff going on with her regarding her Wall Street connections that she needs to come clean about now, but you know she won’t. This is just the executive summary part:

But the boarder reason may lie in the fundamental relationship between the Clintons and their wealthy friends and benefactors. Hillary, Bill and Chelsea (whose husband is a hedge fund partner) believe that Wall Street is a vital part of economy, composed mostly of very bright, honorable and talented people, like their classmates at Yale and Stanford. Sure, every now and again there are a few bad apples, but the barrel is fundamentally sound.

How could she be so politically tone deaf on this issue?

It’s because she still lives in world surrounded by so many of the best and brightest in and around Wall Street. Attacking them would be like attacking her community of friends and financial supporters. How could taking money from such decent, talented and productive people be wrong?

Maybe that isn’t what she really thinks, but it sure as hell looks as if that’s what she thinks, and if so, we can count on a Clinton II Administration to be a big defense of the financial sector Status Quo. And that means the fundamental changes that we really need to move forward as an actual, functioning democracy and not an upscale banana republic will not happen in a Clinton II Administration.

What Clinton and the DNC don’t get is that it isn’t just the future of the Democratic Party, and the United States. It’s the future of capitalism. The day when a politician had to be 100 percent rah-rah on capitalism is, um, passing. And HRC and the DNC don’t see this.

See, for example, American capitalism has failed us: We’re overworked, underemployed and more powerless than ever before. Again, do read the whole thing. I just want to say that this exchange quoted in the article just plain disgusted me.

One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone — not the profit of a few — so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans.

But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” Well, there’s no denying that. She praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians do that, too, and with much higher rates of success.

The truth is that almost a quarter of American startups are not founded on brilliant new ideas, but on the desperation of men or women who can’t get a decent job. The majority of all American enterprises are solo ventures having zero payrolls, employing no one but the entrepreneur, and often quickly wasting away. Sanders said that he was all for small business, too, but that meant nothing “if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.” (As George Carlin said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”)

See also Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s debate over capitalism, explained.

Young people are getting the short end of the stick, and all but the most privileged know it. Young people are not buying what the DNC wants to sell them. See Charles Blow, Hillary Has Half a Dream.

One of the most striking statistics to come of the Iowa caucus entry polling was the enormous skew of young voters away from Hillary Clinton and to Bernie Sanders. Only 14 percent of caucusgoers 17 to 29 supported Clinton, while 84 percent supported Sanders.

On Thursday, I traveled to the University of New Hampshire, site of a debate between Clinton and Sanders that night. Before the debate, I mingled on campus with people rallying for both candidates, with the Sanders rally many times larger than the Clinton one. The energy for Sanders at the school was electric.

For the actual debate, I went to a debate-watching party for Clinton supporters at the Three Chimneys Inn, just off campus. There were more heads of white hair in that room than a jar of cotton balls.

The two scenes so close to each other drove home the point for me: Hillary Clinton has a threatening young voter problem.

Young folks are facing a warming planet, exploding student debt, stunted mobility, stagnant wages and the increasing corporatization of the country due in part to the increasing consolidation of wealth and the impact of that wealth on American institutions.

Young folks are staring down a barrel and they want to put a flower in it, or conversely, smash it to bits. And they’re angry at those who came before them for doing too little, too late. They want a dramatic correction, and they want it now.

From this perspective, the difference between Clinton and Sanders is that one will try to change the system and the other won’t. Maybe Sanders will try and fail, but Clinton won’t try at all. She’ll just tweak it so that it’s slightly less pernicious.

And in four, or eight years, the Right may have self-corrected and be stronger than ever, and the can will be kicked down the road some more.

Let me add that I am a 64-year-old feminist. I have no illusions that Sanders will have an easy time of it, but I do hope he would make effective use of the bully pulpit and persuade America that we don’t have to put up with this crap.  And I have no illusions that he be an easy sell in the general. Yes, I remember the 1972 McGovern disaster. I voted for McGovern in that election. But we are living in a very different world now. I think too many Dems don’t see that.

Politics in the U.S. being what they are, it’s likely HRC will prevail and be the nominee. My fear is that the Democratic establishment will win a battle but lose the future. Good luck getting them ever to persuade the young folks to support them, no matter how awful the Right gets. Because if the demographic promise is ever going to come true, the Dems have got to offer something more than “we’re not as awful as those other people.”

The two Dem candidates were asked spiritual/religious questions yesterday, and IMO their answers spoke volumes about how they see themselves and their campaigns.

This is from a CNN town hall meeting last night, a question asked by Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett, of Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, NH:

Rabbi Simcha Bunim taught that every person has to have two pockets, and in each pocket they have to carry a different note. And the note in one pocket says the universe was created for me. And in the other pocket the note says I am just dust and ashes.

I want you to take a moment and think about what you would tell us about your two pockets. How do you cultivate the ego, the ego that we all know you must have—a person must have to be the leader of the free world—and also the humility to recognize that we know that you can’t be expected to be wise about all the things that the president has to be responsible for?

This is a great question. It comes close to being a koan. And may I say it’s so refreshing to glimpse a bit of mature spirituality in mass media.

Anyway, Clinton’s answer — which you can read in the CNN transcript — focused on her desire to be of service, and on the relationships she has with clergy. Here is part of it:

I have friends who are rabbis who send me notes, give me readings that are going to be discussed in services. So I really appreciate all that incoming.

And the final thing I would say, because again, it’s not anything I’ve ever talked about this much publicly, everybody knows I — I have lived a very public life for the last 25 or so years. And so I’ve had to be in public dealing with some very difficult issues and personal issues, political, public issues. And I read a, um, a treatment of the prodigal son parable by the Jesuit Henri Nouwen, who I think is a magnificent writer of spiritual and theological concerns. And I — I read that parable and there was a line in it that became just a lifeline for me. And it basically is practice the discipline of gratitude.

So regardless of how hard the days are, how difficult the decisions are, be grateful. Be grateful for being a human being, being part of the universe. Be grateful for your limitations. Know that you have to reach out to have more people be with you, to support you, to advise you, listen to your critics, answer the questions.

But at the end, be grateful. Practice the discipline of gratitude. And that has helped me enormously.

This is an excellent answer. It reveals more genuine spirituality than all of the Bible-thumpers in the GOP put together.

And here’s a question aimed at Bernie Sanders:

COOPER: You know, I want to follow up, because Jason also mentioned faith, which is something you’ve spoken a little bit about. You’re Jewish, but you’ve said that you’re not actively involved with organized religion.

What do you say to a voter out there who says — and that who sees faith as a guiding principle in their lives, and wants it to be a guiding principle for this country?

SANDERS: It’s a guiding principle in my life, absolutely, it is. You know, everybody practices religion in a different way. To me, I would not be here tonight, I would not be running for president of the United States if I did not have very strong religious and spiritual feelings.

I believe that, as a human being, the pain that one person feels, if we have children who are hungry in America, if we have elderly people who can’t afford their prescription drugs, you know what, that impacts you, that impacts me.

And I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, it doesn’t matter to me, I got it, I don’t care about other people.

So my spirituality is that we are all in this together and that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me. That’s my very strong spiritual feeling.

I would have liked Sanders to respond to the rabbi’s question also, but this was good, too.

Both candidates stressed concern for the well-being of others as a religious motivation for running for President, which to me reveals a more sincere and mature level of spirituality than the nonsense spewing from the likes of Ted Cruz about how God wants him to be President in order to make America the country God wants it to be. If the great host of dead Christian theologians going back to Augustine — indeed, maybe Paul as well — could rise up and speak, they would denounce such presumption. Probably most of the rabbis would, too.

Clinton also spoke to how religion strengthens her and helps her keep going. And that’s fine, in the Christian tradition. Sanders, however, didn’t speak about himself as much as about the great interconnection of human beings.  What happens to one, happens to all of us. This is closer to a Buddhist perspective.

I read a few days ago that a big difference in the two campaigns is that Clinton tends to emphasize her resume and how she is battle-tested and ready to do the job. Sanders rarely refers to himself at all, and instead speaks of the problems we face and change he wants to see.

And if there were some way to combine those two qualities, boy howdy, would that be a great candidate.