[NYTr] Hating Hillary and the Whole Hellacious Process

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[A sour and pessimistic column from Lindorff which is a bit over-the-top
in its own punditry and predictions, but a good counterweight to the
nitwit commentary by the talking heads on TV. Yes, Hillary's makeover as
someone with "feelings" (let's count how often she uses that new word
in the next week or so) is totally phony. No, it's not "impossible" for
her to be elected. Yes, if she is elected it will hardly be an
improvement, but it couldn't possibly be worse. Could it?

Yes, the voters who use online javascript websites to tell them how to
vote are idiots, but would their own thought process result in better
choices than a drag'n'drop substitute for citizenship? It's not
as if this time they don't have some alternative choices, even among
the [nominally] two parties  [Gravel, Kucinich, Paul].

The idea of random selection of Congress, however, is refreshing. -NYTr]


Counterpunch - Jan 9, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff01092008.html

Death by Triangulation

Bad News from New Hampshire

By DAVE LINDORFF

The news from the "Live Free or Die" state was bad. It was bad for
peace and the anti-war movement (such as it is), and it was bad for
progressives and progressive issues in general.

The two candidates who won, John McCain on the Republican side, and
Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, are both fervent supporters of
the Iraq War and of American militarism. Clinton talks of permanent US
bases in Iraq. McCain says the US will be in Iraq for a century. What
could the voters in New Hampshire be thinking?

As for progressives and progressive issues, there are two problems. One
is that Hillary Clinton is no progressive. Like her wayward husband
Bill, she is a "triangulator" who will betray every item on the liberal
Democratic agenda, in the unlikely event that she ends up in the White
House. The whole Clintonian project has been to talk like a liberal
while cutting deals with Republicans that destroy any prospects for
progressive change. Healthcare reform? Keep it in the hands of the
insurance industry. Crime? Build more prisons, keep the death penalty
machine running, and make it harder for criminals to appeal their
railroaded convictions. Abortion rights? Only if you have money and can
pay for one yourself. Global warming? Tokenism and nuclear power. Jobs?
Go back to school and retrain-we need free trade. International crisis?
Bomb it.

Fortunately, there is little or no chance that Hillary Clinton will
ever be president. She may succeed through massive spending of her
corporate dowry [sexism alert! -NYTr] of campaign bribes to win the
nomination, but she will never manage to win over the necessary
independents to beat whoever the Republicans manage to put up as their
presidential candidate-probably John McCain or Mike Huckabee. That
means we won't have to endure more progressive betrayal, but it does
mean four, or even eight more years of a Republican White House.

Almost just as depressing is the fact that we are now going to have to
endure almost two months, at least, of truly inane campaigning on the
empty themes of "hope" and "change."

I thought we'd seen the nadir of empty campaign sloganeering when I
heard Gen. Wesley Clark announce his candidacy for the presidency back
in 2003 in what sounded for all the world like a parody of a stupid
candidate speech: We need to "move this country forward, not back",
"we're going to march forward," and "we're moving out."). But between
Clinton and Obama, with their "change" and "hope" themes, we've reached
an even greater depth of vacuity.

And yet the crowds cheer and the voters vote.

I actually heard one young voter tell a TV reporter that she had
decided on her primary choice by going to an on-line site where she
could select her positions on various issues, and be told which
candidate best matched her preferences. On-line presidential candidate
dating.

` The New Hampshire primary took place in unseasonable 65-degree heat,
a reminder that there is a huge issue facing us, which the candidates
aren't even talking about. There's also a brutal war on, but that,
according to exit polls, wasn't on New Hampshire primary voters' minds
either. Never mind that the $2 trillion already committed to that
stupid and criminal conflict, and the trillions of dollars that is
spent annually around the world on war and planning for war.

What was on their minds apparently was Hillary's probably carefully
scripted tearful moment and John McCain's artfully manufactured and
illusory image as a "straight talker." (Listen to McCain snuggling up
to Bush at the 2004 GOP Convention and say "straight talker" with a
straight face.)

A fellow from Vermont, Dennis Morrisseau, wrote me yesterday to suggest
that we should rewrite the Constitution (why not? It's being ignored
almost completely now anyhow) to make members of Congress, not elected,
but rather drafted at random the way we choose juries. This sounds like
a great idea to me. Juries are highly regarded for giving us good
results and for exhibiting the wisdom of the common people. We could
use some of that these days, and it's painfully obvious that a random
selection of 435 average American citizens would be a damn sight better
at running the country than the group we elect through our current
process of corporate-funded campaigns. But I'd go Morrisseau one
further. We should also choose our presidents by random lottery. Those
who are selected for all of these federal offices should be paid
handsomely, and then, at the end of one term, whether in Congress or in
the White House, they should be sent back home, maybe with a small
pension, or with unemployment compensation that could run for a few
years to let them put their old lives back together.

For now, we're stuck with this dreadful election process, where the
ability to raise corporate cash (private money, as Ron Paul has
discovered, doesn't count) determines whether you get corporate media
coverage, and where voters seem to think they're casting ballots for an
American Idol winner, not someone to rule them and the country for the
next four years.

[Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by
Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff at yahoo.com ]