Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee unless outside forces, such as an indictment based upon the FBI investigation, alter the situation. Clinton is trying hard to obtain the support of Sanders’ supporters. The degree of support received by Sanders, accompanies by the lack of support for Clinton among younger voters, independents, and progressives, should have been a wake up call for the Democratic establishment. Matt Taibbi warns that Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie:
If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support…
The twin insurgencies of Trump and Sanders this year were equally a blistering referendum on Beltway politics. But the major-party leaders and the media mouthpieces they hang out with can’t see this, because of what that friend of mine talked about over a decade ago: Washington culture is too far up its own backside to see much of anything at all.
Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they’ll convince themselves that, as Hohmann’s Post article put it, Hillary’s latest victories mean any “pressure” they might have felt to change has now been “ameliorated.”
The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.
This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It’s exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.
But they won’t do that, because they don’t see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.
Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn’t an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.
Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.
This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. “The Democrats should be worried they’re next,” he says.
It might not matter short term. Donald Trump’s lead over Clinton in the polls has evaporated, with Trump doing a dreadful job of transitioning from the primaries to the general election. Long term the Democrats risk a continuation of the trend towards losing in Congress and state governments, along with losing support from independents and an entire generation of new voters.
When we think of greedy and power hungry families, some of the first to come to mind are the Bushes, the Clintons, and the Lanisters. Donald Trump might not have a family history of seeking political power, but he has now joined these other power-hungry families. At least a Lanister always pays his debts. Donald Trump does not.
Donald Trump casts himself as a protector of workers and jobs, but a USA TODAY NETWORK investigation found hundreds of people – carpenters, dishwashers, painters, even his own lawyers – who say he didn’t pay them for their work…
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages…
The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.
Hillary Clinton might consider calling him Deadbeat Donald in addition to Dangerous Donald. On the other hand, Ron Fournier has provided justification for Trump’s use of Lyin’ Hillary with some examples in an article entitled Hillary Clinton’s Truth Problem for The Atlantic
There are some Sanders supporters who might be hoping to see Trump win. I hardly see Trump as an acceptable alternative, but when both choices are so awful, I’m not going to dwell on how people plan to vote in November. The important thing is that we stick together to try to keep the country from sliding further into oligarchy, and oppose the extension of the warfare/surveillance state which we will probably see with either presumptive major party candidate. While in some ways Trump is probably worse than Clinton, at least there is the potential benefit if Trump is president that many Democrats will oppose his policies while justifying comparably odorous polices from Clinton. Quick medical fact: People who die in wars started by a Democrat are just as dead as people who die in wars started by a Republican.
While the Democratic establishment and even some Sanders supporters (as Clinton supporters are anxious to report) are saying it is time for him to give up, Sanders has at least two reasons to continue the campaign. The most obvious is to continue to protest how the system has led to someone as unsuited for the presidency as Clinton now being the presumptive nominee. The second is that, despite considerable speculation, nobody really knows what is happening with the FBI investigation and whether Clinton or her top aides will be indicted.
A report from The Hill shows both how little has been released to the public and that this is not something which should be ignored:
The FBI is treating everything on the private server used to run former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email account as evidence or possible evidence as part of the federal investigation connected to the machine, the bureau said in a court filing this week.
“[A]ll of the materials retrieved from any electronic equipment obtained from former Secretary Clinton for the investigation are evidence, potential evidence, or information that has not yet been assessed for evidentiary value,” the FBI said in the filing.
Release of any of that additional information “could reasonably be expected to interfere with the pending investigation,” it added.
The FBI refused to publicly confirm other details of its investigation, and in the Monday evening filing declined to outline what, if any, laws it believes may have been broken to prompt its investigation. It also would not say who the target of the investigation is or confirm reports that multiple senior Clinton aides had been interviewed as part of the probe.
Still, the claim that all material is being treated as current or potential evidence could bode poorly for Clinton, who this week clinched the role of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Regardless of whether Clinton is indicted for mishandling classified information, the recent State Department Inspector General report verifies that she did violate the rules in effect for handling email and that her statements over the past year have been false. At very least her actions violated rules to promote government transparency, and were a sign of both dishonest and foolish behavior.
While not as devastating as an indictment, the facts of the email scandal could be damaging in a general election campaign. This might not matter against a candidate as weak as Donald Trump, but it is not even certain that the presumptive Republican nominee will actually get the nomination. With Republicans fearful about what Trump might say next, there is increased talk this week from some Republicans and conservative pundits of changing the convention rules so that delegates are not bound to Trump on the first ballot, leaving the possibility of choosing a different nominee.
At present we have what could be the two worst options in history presented as the presumptive nominees. With choices this bad, it would be great if something happens in each party to disrupt the idea that the media’s presumptive nominees are the inevitable nominees.
Hillary Clinton was declared to be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party by the news media yesterday, on a day when there was no voting taking place. The Democratic establishment probably will get their candidate, but in the process risks losing a generation of voters and alienating independents.
That the Democratic Party nominating process is declared to be over in such an uninspiring, secretive, and elite-driven manner is perfectly symbolic of what the party, and its likely nominee, actually is. The one positive aspect, though significant, is symbolic, while the actual substance — rallying behind a Wall Street-funded, status quo-perpetuating, multimillionaire militarist — is grim in the extreme. The Democratic Party got exactly the ending it deserved.
This is an unprecedented, historical moment as Hillary Clinton becomes the first major party nominee who is under FBI investigation and embroiled in major scandals. There was a time when political parties might have cared about this.
Multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been requested for Clinton’s email from when she was Secretary of State. There was hope that we might learn more about the person likely to become the next president before election day. Don’t hold your breath. The Hill reports:
The State Department said it would take 75 years for the release of emails from top aides to Hillary Clinton from during her time as secretary of State.
Lawyers said it would take that long to compile the 450,000 pages of records from former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan and Patrick Kennedy, according to a court filing from last week, which was first reported by CNN.
“Given the Department’s current [Freedom of Information Act] workload and the complexity of these documents, it can process about 500 pages a month, meaning it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to complete the review of the Mills documents, 33-and-1/3 years to finish the review of the Sullivan documents, and 25 years to wrap up the review of the Kennedy documents — or 75 years in total,” the State Department said in the filing…
“The volume of FOIA requests received by the Department has tripled since 2008. In fiscal year 2015 alone we received approximately 22,000 FOIA requests,” Trudeau said. “The requests are also frequently more complex and seek larger volumes of documents, requiring significantly more time, resources, and interagency coordination. While we have increased staffing for our FOIA office, our available resources are still nonetheless constrained.”
This includes requests from both the right and the left. David Sirota requested Clinton’s State Department correspondence regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership in July 2015. He initially was told he would receive the documents in April 2016. He has now been told this is being delayed until November 31, 2016. That is not only after the election, but on a day which does not exist. (Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November…).
Considering Hillary Clinton’s long standing opposition to transparency and open-government, I expect that if she is elected there will be a lot of information held for November 31 in future years.
Bernie Sanders has tried to stick to the issues when campaigning, despite a dishonest Rovian-style campaign from Clinton. While there should be no place in a campaign for the types of lies used by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, discussing an opponents actual record is fair game if done honestly. Sanders decided against making use of the email and other scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton. Of course he also said that the investigations were being conducted and, while he did not use the scandals against Clinton in the campaign, he never exonerated Clinton for her actions (even if Clinton supporters cherry-pick quotes to give that impression). Sanders is finally changing course.
The Hill reports on Sanders making references to the Foundation scandals when interviewed on CNN. While he has mentioned other conflicts of interest involving Clinton and her paid speeches, I am not aware of him discussing this until now.
Sanders hits Clinton Foundation over foreign donations
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from foreign governments in an interview aired Sunday, calling it a conflict of interest.
“Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships?
“Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
When host Jake Tapper asked if he thought it was a conflict of interest, Sanders said, “I do.”
CNN reports that Sanders also took his criticism of Clinton’s militaristic foreign policy views further than his previous criticism on her Iraq vote:
Bernie Sanders unleashed a sharp attack on Hillary Clinton over foreign policy on Sunday, casting her as too eager to use U.S. military force and saying her family charity’s acceptance of foreign countries’ contributions could be a conflict of interest.
The Vermont senator told CNN’s Jake Tapper the former secretary of state is too quick to “rush in” and remove dictators and he criticized Clinton’s approaches to Iraq, Libya and Syria.
“I worry about that, yeah, I do. I think her support for the war in Iraq was not just an aberration,” Sanders said of Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq War, in the interview that aired on “State of the Union.”
“I think that her willingness to kind of push President (Barack) Obama to overthrow (Libyan leader Moammar) Gaddafi and lead to the kind of instability that we’re seeing now in Libya — not inconsistent with her other views on Syria, where she wants a no-fly zone, which I think can suck us into never-ending conflict in that area,” he said.
I wonder whether he would have done better if he had criticized Clinton on these topics from the beginning of the race. Unless he can change the votes of those in the Democratic establishment who created a system which tilted the nomination towards Clinton from the start, Sanders cannot win enough delegates to win the nomination. Despite this, Sanders supporters remain firmly behind him, and nobody knows what he will do next. It should be tempting to remain in the race, both to push his views and to remain an alternative if Clinton’s scandals do force her from the race before the convention. While it is unlikely she will be forced out, it is still a possibility as she does remain under investigation by the FBI, in addition to having a very negative report on the email scandal from the State Department Inspector General.
Sanders might also feel more free to continue to criticize Clinton with Donald Trump looking less likely to win. Sanders repeated his criticism of Trump earlier today in California:
One day before the California primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called it “absolutely imperative” that voters turn out to defeat Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday and cast himself as the candidate best positioned to beat Trump.
“It is absolutely imperative that we defeat Donald Trump as a candidate for President of the United States. I believe I’m the stronger candidate,” Sanders told reporters in San Francisco, highlighting polls that shows him performing better than Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton against Trump.
“If the turnout is high tomorrow, we will win. If the turnout is very high, I think we will win by big numbers,” Sanders said.
He also called it “incomprehensible” that the presumptive nominee from a major political party is launching racially-charged attacks targeting a federal judge.
“[Trump] is essentially running his campaign on bigotry, on insulting Mexicans and Latinos, on insulting Muslims, on insulting African-Americans, on insulting women,” Sanders said. “It is clear to me that we have got to do everything that we can as a nation to make certain that Donald Trump does not become President of the United States.”
While Clinton has been doing poorly in the polls against Trump, she continues to have the Democratic advantage in the electoral college, and Trump is showing he has a lot to learn. He has very little campaign organization and continues to create controversy with racist and xenophobic remarks. He ignores facts and treats the campaign like a reality show, where “reality” can be altered to make the show more dramatic. If Clinton cannot move out to a large lead over Trump by the time of the convention, this would be another reason to question whether she should be the Democratic nominee.
With only three episodes to go, Jonathan Nolan was free to do almost anything for the 100th episode, and he did. Major spoilers ahead. Those who were behind this season might not even have been aware that Elias was still alive but in hiding. His actual death this episode was overshadowed by the far more significant death of Root. At least she lives on in some manner with the Machine choosing to make her voice her own.
TV Line discussed the episode with Jonathan (Jonah) Nolan and Greg Plageman. Here is a portion:
TVLINE | For starters, why Root? Why was she the big loss entering this final salvo of episodes? GREG PLAGEMAN | Root has always implored Harold Finch to make his machine more assertive in this war, and now, faced with what they’re up against, Root ultimately is the one who makes the sacrifice to save the father of The Machine, and that’s Harold. I think it’s true to Root’s character — her first love was The Machine. She always believed people were “bad code,” and more than anything she wants Harold’s machine to win this war. Her going down in this matter seemed apropos.
TVLINE | She did go down in a blaze of glory, after making one of the sickest kills in TV history. JONAH NOLAN | Yeah, I was holding onto that one for a movie, but I decided Amy Acker was worth it…
TVLINE | In the million months since you filmed this episode, a controversy arose about TV shows killing off LGBT characters. But I think that in your defense, Root was a richly realized character, over four seasons. And as you have said, she died meaningfully. NOLAN | Thank you for that. We haven’t seen these other shows [that killed LGBT characters], so I can’t speak to that, but it’s really just about characters getting their due and not feeling disposable, and not feeling like the audience’s investment in a character is being used against them, or that they’re being set up for it. This was always the end of Root’s story, this was always where we were going. It became clear at the beginning of the season that this was the end of the ride for us… and Root’s journey has always been getting ever closer to The Machine, so the end of her story was always basically becoming The Machine. That’s another thing I thinks separates this from the pack, and this is how Root feels about it — it’s an evolutionary step. We’re not trying to sucker-punch the audience. PLAGEMAN | We’re aware of the objections now to that [“Bury Your Gays”] trope, and I think we circumvent that in many ways. This is a real relationship between [Root and Shaw]. Not only was it consummated but there are real feelings there in subsequent episodes. Not to mention, as Jonah said, we’re heading down the final stretch here. This is not the only loss that Team Machine is going to encounter.
TVLINE | On the topic of consummation, although what we saw a few weeks ago was just a simulation, did I read somewhere that you said Root and Shaw actually first got “together” in Season 3, Episode 6…? NOLAN | We definitely implied as much at various moments. Look, we’re on CBS, there’s only so much we can show, a lot of that is left to the imagination…
TVLINE | Elias similarly went out as a hero. How important was it for you to “resurrect” him and get back Enrico Colantoni, if only for a short bit? NOLAN | Enrico Colantoni is a f–king magnificent actor, and has been such a fun collaborator for us over the years. We’ve always managed to make it work, when he’s available, and he’s had some great moments here. It was always the plan to fake his death and bring him ever closer to our team. If there’s one thing about the season I regret it’s not having a little more time to play with relationships like these, and spend a season with him on our team. But again, we’ve had to get to the end a little sooner than we wanted. We wanted to spend a little more time with Elias all the way inside the team, though we’d have to be careful with that — Elias isn’t much of a joiner! [Laughs] But that relationship between him and Finch has been so much fun to develop over the years, from the sort of chess conversations to really bringing him all the way in. The idea in this episode was that it’s almost like an avalanche of grief and loss bearing down on Finch, and the cumulative impact of it for Finch is watching as this set of decisions that he’s made, this sort of plan that he has held into all of these years, comes literally to grief with the death of two of his allies and friends.
TVLINE | The Machine actually speaking at the end, springing Harold from jail…. I almost feel like that’s Rocky getting up from the mat before pummeling Apollo Creed. Is our team about to rally? PLAGEMAN | I got chills, man. One of the things that Elias really served to do…. When a character with that power says to Harold Finch, “You’re the one that people should be afraid of,” he gives that a certain weight and heft that we understand something’s coming for Harold Finch, because Elias told us so. NOLAN | And at Comic-Con three years ago, when asked, “When will The Machine get a voice?,” we did say, “Someday, but you won’t like how it happens.” I think we fulfilled that mandate.
I was suspicious of Felix’s sister Adele when she showed up on the show, suspecting she worked for Neolution or some other group. After this week’s episode, she just might be what she seems. She filled a needed role of an attorney Donny and Alision could call on. She also had one of the best lines of the episode when she met Alison and noticed how she looks so much like Sarah, “with less anger and more hygiene.” Next week Helena returns. I’d love to see Adele’s take on her.
Gillian Anderson has had some major genre rolls, including The X-Files, The Fall, and Hannibal. She will be working with Bryan Fuller once again on Amerian Gods. Variety reports:
Anderson will play Media, the mouthpiece for the New Gods, functioning as their public face and sales representative, by taking the form of various iconic celebrities. She lives off the attention and worship that people give to screens — to their laptops, their TVs, to their iPhones in their hands while they watch their TVs. Ever the perky spokesperson, and always in control, she spins stories in whatever direction best suits her.
The attack of the White Walkers on the cave was one of the most memorable scenes on Game of Thrones recently. The above video discusses the making of that scene.
Outlander has been renewed for two additional seasons. This will also make it possible to have less of a delay between seasons. Homeland has been renewed for three additional seasons by Showtime, who will also be doing a series based upon Jonathan Frazen’s novel Purity. Amazon has renewed Transparent for a fourth season.
TV Line has news on next season’s big bad on Arrow:
Arrow‘s latest evil mastermind is heading to Star City by way of Baltimore. TVLine has learned exclusively that the CW drama’s upcoming fifth season will introduce a new villain loosely inspired by Idris Elba’s Wire drug kingpin Stringer Bell.
The character, tentatively named “Anton Church,” is a ruthless crime lord who sets out to fill the sizable void left by 960Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E. The initial casting notice describes him as an “apex predator” who “cuts his way through the shadows” by taking down “the biggest threat first.” (Um, he’s looking at you, Ollie Q.). While the role is being likened to Elba’s classic Wire baddie, the breakdown also references ex-Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa as a physical prototype.
Arrow had a great big bad last season, but sure didn’t conclude the story very well. Hopefully the quality of Arrow will get back to what we saw the first two seasons.
Here’s something for fans of both Doctor Who and Marvel. David Tennant of Jessica Jones does Ask Marvel in the video above.
In other Doctor Who news, Steven Moffat recently revelaled that the role of The Doctor was once offered to a black actor, but it didn’t work out.
There have been a lot of changes in both the Marvel and DC comics over the years. After the last two Captain America movies showed SHIELD to be infiltrated by Hydra, and now has Captain America and other Avengers on the run, there is an even more radical change in the comics. Steve Rogers is apparently an undercover Hydra agent. Of course, in the comics, this could be a trick, or just something to go on for a while until they reboot again.
Here is a review of the DC Universe Rebirth from Nerdist and additional spoilers from Bleeding Cool.
Rose McIver discussed the season 2 finale of iZombie and what might be coming in season 3.
Defenders of NSA surveillance have tried to discredit Edward Snowden by claiming he there were official channels he could have gone through, and denied that Snowden had made such attempts. Email received through a Freedom of Information Act request from VICE News verify that Snowden had attempted to tell the NSA about the illegal surveillance being conducted:
Snowden’s leaks had first come to light the previous June, when the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman published stories based on highly classified documents provided to them by the former NSA contractor. Now Snowden, who had been demonized by the NSA and the Obama administration for the past year, was publicly claiming something that set off alarm bells at the agency: Before he leaked the documents, Snowden said, he had repeatedly attempted to raise his concerns inside the NSA about its surveillance of US citizens — and the agency had done nothing.
Some on the email thread, such as Rajesh De, the NSA’s general counsel, advocated for the public release of a Snowden email from April 2013 in which the former NSA contractor asked questions about the “interpretation of legal authorities” related to the agency’s surveillance programs. It was the only evidence the agency found that even came close to verifying Snowden’s assertions, and De believed it was weak enough to call Snowden’s credibility into question and put the NSA in the clear.
Litt disagreed. “I’m not sure that releasing the email will necessarily prove him a liar,” Litt wrote to Caitlin Hayden, then the White House National Security Council spokesperson, along with De and other officials. “It is, I could argue, technically true that [Snowden’s] email… ‘rais[ed] concerns about the NSA’s interpretation of its legal authorities.’ As I recall, the email essentially questions a document that Snowden interpreted as claiming that Executive Orders were on a par with statutes. While that is surely not raising the kind of questions that Snowden is trying to suggest he raised, neither does it seem to me that that email is a home run refutation.”
Within two hours, however, Litt reversed his position, and later that day, the email was released, accompanied by comment from NSA spokesperson Marci Green Miller: “The email did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse.”
Five days later, another email was sent — this one addressed to NSA director Mike Rogers and copied to 31 other people and one listserv. In it, a senior NSA official apologized to Rogers for not providing him and others with all the details about Snowden’s communications with NSA officials regarding his concerns over surveillance.
The NSA, it seemed, had not told the public the whole story about Snowden’s contacts with oversight authorities before he became the most celebrated and vilified whistleblower in US history.
Hundreds of internal NSA documents, declassified and released to VICE News in response to our long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, reveal now for the first time that not only was the truth about the “single email” more complex and nuanced than the NSA disclosed to the public, but that Snowden had a face-to-face interaction with one of the people involved in responding to that email. The documents, made up of emails, talking points, and various records — many of them heavily redacted — contain insight into the NSA’s interaction with the media, new details about Snowden’s work, and an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the efforts by the NSA, the White House, and US Senator Dianne Feinstein to discredit Snowden.
The trove of more than 800 pages [pdf at the end of this story], along with several interviews conducted by VICE News, offer unprecedented insight into the NSA during this time of crisis within the agency. And they call into question aspects of the US government’s long-running narrative about Snowden’s time at the NSA.
There is considerably more information in the remainder of the article and attached pdf.
The Freedom of Information Act is a valuable means to find out the truth as to what the government is doing. There is a reason for the open-government laws which Hillary Clinton violated when Secretary of State.
Bernie Sanders responded to yesterday’s speech by Hillary Clinton much as I responded in greater detail yesterday. We both agreed that, while Clinton’s criticism of Trump’s policy as dangerously incoherent was accurate, Clinton’s own foreign policy views have also been rather dangerous. Sanders put out this release:
“I agree with Secretary Clinton that Donald Trump’s foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible. But when it comes to foreign policy, we cannot forget that Secretary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history, and that she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences.
“We need a foreign policy based on building coalitions and making certain that the brave American men and women in our military do not get bogged down in perpetual warfare in the Middle East. That’s what I will fight for as president.”
In my post yesterday, I discussed Clinton’s dangerous foreign policy views further, including regarding Libya and Syria. I also included several tweets from others which point out the contradiction in someone as militaristic as Clinton warning about the views of someone else.
While Sanders had a sensible response to Clinton’s speech, Donald Trump responded by denying saying what Clinton accused him of saying in her speech. It was rather simple for Clinton to then respond by giving links to show what Trump has said in the past. Of course Trump appears to just make things up as he speaks, and nothing he says should be taken as having any further meaning. Even when he admits to something he has said previously, he now claims it was just a suggestion.
Hillary Clinton had a strong take down of Donald Trump’s foreign policy today. She is right that his policy is incoherent and dangerous, but a dangerous warmonger such as Hillary Clinton is not the best one to deliver such a message. Common Dreams noted the “dangerous contradictions” in her speech.
But that was just one of several statements that raised observers’ eyebrows, in a speech that some said was full of fundamental contradictions—and hinted at Clinton’s own hawkish positions.
After all, as journalist Robert Parry wrote in April, “If Clinton becomes President, she will be surrounded by a neocon-dominated American foreign policy establishment that will press her to resume its ‘regime change’ strategies in the Middle East and escalate its new and dangerous Cold War against Russia.”
They cited several comments on the speech from Twitter:
Awkward: Hillary to give a speech on the very thing Dem pundits have spent a year desperately trying to ignore: her foreign policy.
As some of these have suggested, Hillary Clinton is making a strong case to be the mainstream Republican candidate against Donald Trump. Neoconservatives have already been indicating their support for Clinton over Trump, and a DLC Democrat such as Clinton is practically a Republican. As Jeffery Goldberg pointed out, this was more or less a Rubio speech.
We will have a terrible choice in November if the general election does turn out to be between Trump and Clinton. Clinton is right that “it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.” On the other hand, President Obama has described how hawkish Clinton was on Syria, and unwilling to accept a compromise to avoid war.
For some foreign-policy experts, even within his own administration, Obama’s about-face on enforcing the red line was a dispiriting moment in which he displayed irresolution and naïveté, and did lasting damage to America’s standing in the world. “Once the commander in chief draws that red line,” Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and then as secretary of defense in Obama’s first term, told me recently, “then I think the credibility of the commander in chief and this nation is at stake if he doesn’t enforce it.” Right after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”
This is a classic example of Clinton’s poor judgment. We should go to war only based upon security considerations, and only as a last resort when diplomacy will not work. To make someone who thinks we had no choice in such a situation Commander In Chief is a terrifying prospect.
The bombing of Libya which Clinton pushed for was also a catastrophe. Obama described how “it didn’t work” in the interview linked above, and in another recent interview called it the worst mistake of his presidency. Both Libya and Syria demonstrate that Clinton did not really learn from her mistake regarding Iraq.
There is certainly a considerable risk that Donald Trump could blunder his way into a war. There is also a considerable risk that Clinton will follow her own policies and get us involved in more wars, along with resuming the Cold War with Russia, if not starting another world war.
Many people hope that Hillary Clinton will be prevented from receiving the Democratic nomination, but I would have taken this prediction much less seriously if it wasn’t from a former adviser to Bill Clinton. Douglas Schoen writes, Clinton Might Not Be the Nominee.
A Sanders win in California would powerfully underscore Mrs. Clinton’s weakness as a candidate in the general election. Democratic superdelegates—chosen by the party establishment and overwhelmingly backing Mrs. Clinton, 543-44—would seriously question whether they should continue to stand behind her candidacy…
Another problem: In recent weeks the perception that Mrs. Clinton would be the strongest candidate against Donald Trump has evaporated. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Mrs. Clinton in a statistical tie with Mr. Trump, and recent surveys from ABC News/Washington Post and Fox News show her two and three points behind him, respectively.
Then there is that other crack in the argument for Mrs. Clinton’s inevitability: Bernie Sanders consistently runs stronger than she does against Mr. Trump nationally, beating him by about 10 points in a number of recent surveys…
Mrs. Clinton also faces growing legal problems. The State Department inspector general’s recent report on Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state made it abundantly clear that she broke rules and has been far from forthright in her public statements. The damning findings buttressed concerns within the party that Mrs. Clinton and her aides may not get through the government’s investigation without a finding of culpability somewhere.
With Mrs. Clinton reportedly soon to be interviewed by the FBI, suggesting that the investigation is winding up, a definitive ruling by the attorney general could be issued before the July 25 Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Given the inspector general’s report, a clean bill of health from the Justice Department is unlikely.
Finally, with Mrs. Clinton’s negative rating nearly as high as Donald Trump’s, and with voters not trusting her by a ratio of 4 to 1, Democrats face an unnerving possibility. Only a month or two ago, they were relishing the prospect of a chaotic Republican convention, with a floor fight and antiestablishment rebellion in the air. Now the messy, disastrous convention could be their own.
There are increasing rumblings within the party about how a new candidate could emerge at the convention. John Kerry, the 2004 nominee, is one possibility. But the most likely scenario is that Vice President Joe Biden—who has said that he regrets “every day” his decision not to run—enters the race.
Mr. Biden would be cast as the white knight rescuing the party, and the nation, from a possible Trump presidency. To win over Sanders supporters, he would likely choose as his running mate someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren who is respected by the party’s left wing.
It is unprecidented to have a party embrace a candidate such as Hillary Clinton who is involved in such major scandals. It is as if the Republicans had nominated Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal broke.
So far Democrats do not seem all that concerned about nominating Clinton. If there weren’t enough reasons for the party to keep Clinton from being the nominee, the State Department’s Inspector General report should have put an end to her campaign.
Yesterday I noted a poll showing that seventy-one percent of Democras think Clinton should remain in the race even if indicted. While exact numbers from Rasmussen have to be taken with a grain of salt, I have found that many Democrats do continue to defend Clinton and have no doubt they would continue to do so if indicted, or even if she was videotaped kicking puppies and babies.
While the chances are low, the possibility of stopping Hillary is far greater than in 2008, when Clinton speculated that Obama might not receive the nomination due to assasination. Sanders should continue to fight for every possible delegate to maximizes the chances that if Clinton is stopped he can win the nomination. In making the argument to both voters and superdelegates as to why he should be the nominee instead of Clinton, he should also stop limiting his campaign by refraining from talknig about the scandals.
Chris Cillizza refers to Sanders’ decision to not talk about Clinton’s email as the biggest mistake of his campaign:
That’s not to say that if Sanders had aggressively raised questions about Clinton’s email practices, he would have beaten her for the nomination; he still might not have. But rather than trying to seize on a primary in Pennsylvania or New York — both of which he lost — as the game-changing moment in the race, Sanders might actually have been able to prosecute a longer-term case against Clinton in a spot where she was (and is) clearly vulnerable.
Large majorities of the public — including the oft-touted independent voter — believe that the words “honest” and “trustworthy” don’t describe Clinton. The email story — even with Sanders virtually ignoring it — has helped erode those numbers over the past 14 months. The email controversy plays directly into many of the things that people — including Democrats! — don’t like or are wary of when it comes to the Clintons. The sense that the rules don’t apply to them. That they believe the world is out to get them. That they only keep people close who slavishly repeat back to them what they want to hear.
