“Why are You Voting for Clinton? A Letter to Liberal America”

by Chris Byron

“Dear Liberal America, 

I write to you confused, and melancholic. I am melancholic about Bernie’s serious losses across five states last week, and I am confused why he is losing. The simple answer no doubt is because Hillary is winning, but that only exacerbates my confusion. Liberal America, why is Hillary winning? Because you all are voting for her. But why are you voting for her? Seriously, why are you voting for her? It’s the answer to that question which is so vexing.

The standard answers I gleam from the news are that she is and always has been the presumptive nominee. But that answer is circular. Why is she the presumptive nominee, why is it taken as fact, before and during the entire race, that everyone will vote for her and why is everyone actually voting for her? Presumably it must have something to do with her policies, values, political position, etc. But ask yourselves earnestly, what does Hillary really believe, and what policies does Hillary really support? I think if you’re honest with yourself, really honest, you have to answer that she really believes she should be President, and she really supports herself as President. Beyond that, in terms of issues and policy, all you can earnestly state is: “I don’t know”. And the reason we do not know what she believes is because she both consistently flip-flops, and consistently lies.

I use the term flip-flop with all its inherent negativity. She has and will continue to change her mind on policies and values to the degree that she believes that change will garner her more power. She has flip-flopped on international trade deals (NAFTA and TPP), immigration, same sex marriage, the legitimacy of the Iraq War, arming of Syrian Rebels, raising the payroll tax, Keystone Pipeline, etc. What does Hillary earnestly believe about each of these issues? How can you know? How can you really know? If you think you do, you’re projecting your values onto her, which only reinforces the duplicitous relationship she has with her voter base. And flip-flopping is not the extent of her problems, she is also a flagrant liar.

Let me take just one very recent case to highlight this point. A case I was hoping, as I watched it, the rest of Liberal America would backlash against – instead they voted for her anyway. During her debate with Bernie Sanders in Florida she mendaciously stated: “I just want to add one thing to the question you were asking Senator Sanders. I think in that same interview, he praised what he called the revolution of values in Cuba and talked about how people were working for the common good, not for themselves. I just couldn’t disagree more. You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, you imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Let me be blunt, Liberal America, you know and I know that there is no way in hell Sanders supports the imprisonment, killing, and disappearing of people “for expression freedom of speech”. Sanders has been a consistent civil libertarian on free speech issues for as long as he has been in government. This is utter nonsense, and Hillary is doing nothing but assaulting him verbally, in front of a Miami audience, in hopes that they will believe her conscious claptrap. Moreover, notice how inconsistent her point is. She goes from the claim that Senator Sanders supported “the common good” value in Cuba, to the claim that therefore he supports suppression of expression via violence. How does suppression via violence flow from support of the common good? It doesn’t. There is no coherent argument here, she’s just pandering, and lying. And she expressly lied when she said he did not support the Auto Bailout, and she expressly lied when she claimed he supported roving militias securing our borders. There is no way her Campaign staff, funded with over one hundred and a half million dollars, lacked the resources to double check those claims before she stated them. She lied.

So Liberal American, why are you voting for Hillary? You don’t know what she really believes, you don’t know what she really supports, but you can be confident that she is a liar. You can also be confident that when she does decide to support an issue she will support the issue that allows for her continuation of garnering power. In this case she supports those who financially support her. That is not you, Liberal America, who mostly belong to the poor, downtrodden, dwindling middle class.

If your reason for supporting her is because you think she is the candidate most likely to beat Trump in the future you are either ill informed, or deluding yourself. The polls and data have been in for months. Bernie is the only candidate that is trusted, liked by over half the population, and consistently scores significantly higher than Trump. Hillary is not well liked, she is not trusted, and she does not score all that highly over Trump. So if your reason for supporting Hillary is because she is the best chance of defeating Republicans, the justification behind your reasoning is inadequate.

Hillary often asks Bernie to name a single time where a campaign donation influenced her vote. Can she not take money but still vote her conscience (whatever that may be)? There is of course a long record of Hillary changing her votes based on incoming donations, and the correlations are really quite scary for any supporter of democracy. But still, let us pretend that has never happened. The point is not that money changes her vote, the point is money is given to candidates who already support the interests of the donors. Big industries like Oil, Coal, Fracking, Rx drugs etc., know Hillary wants to be president, and they know she will use her position of power to execute policy in such a way that it allows for more incoming donations, and more aggrandizing of power. She doesn’t need to change her votes, she just needs to be a part of the ever growing corporate takeover of the state.

Liberal America, I’m scared, really f*****g scared, for the first time in my 30-year-old American life. It looks like come November, a pathological liar, will be facing off against a pathological sociopath, while the only person with genuine integrity and moral consistency is thrown into the dustbin of history because… well I still don’t know the answer to that question. I hope you’ll answer it for me. I say this seriously and not lightly, the state is, and will continue to be, a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, if you don’t vote for Bernie. Even if you do vote for Bernie it will continue to be the sorting house of capitalists interests, but at least we will have an executive who earnestly supports the working class, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. Presently, this is a country for the capitalists, by the bought off politician. And one of those purchased politicians is Hillary Clinton. So again, why do you vote for her?”

- http://www.counterpunch.org/

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