Politics Aug 3, 2016 at 4:00 am

Get with the Program, Gloomy Gus! She’s the Only Thing Standing Between Us and Donald Trump.

Comments

1
That's one take. Here's another: https://itsgoingdown.org/feeling-bernt-o…
2
Who's gloomy? Vote Jill Stein!
3
^ Both making the Donald very happy...
4
She'll always be the president(M or F or ?) that all they had to do to be president was beat Trump. Oh the glory! Write a song about it.
5
Woot! I'm on board. I hung out with a bunch of 70 and 80 year old women on Friday, and hearing them talk about their decades of political activism, enthusiasm for HRC, and getting to meet her throughout the years of doing hard, hard, thankless political work got me all excited. She's shown up, year after year, and helped moved the ball forward. I'm far too lazy and scared to do that work. So she's got my vote. Happily.
6
Right! Because who gives a damn about her economics, her war-n-policy, or the environment. Vote with your vagina if that's your focus, but you may just find yourself lost in that Bush.
7
Now that's what a call a well balanced piece. My compliments and respect Megan! While you erred on the side of leniency for her deadly foreign policies, you argued very effectively that she is by far the lesser of two evils, and we'd all rather see "business as usual" (as unacceptably horrible as that is) then a neo fascist megalomaniac who makes Hitler look like he had a capable hair stylist. I am a boy, but I will indeed be voting with my vagina this November.
8
Thanks for the well written article.
Bernie folks would be helpful if instead of hiding in Republican states, get the republicans out of their legislature. Most offensive laws voted in since George 1 have been in Red states where it looks like many stay away to complain, instead of getting the job done, piece by piece... the progressives need to stand up for the heat month by month like Hillary has done for us- what a wonderful president she will make with our help.
9
No need to get excited. Just vote for her to stop the psychopath.
10
You guys realize we live in Oregon where our vote for president doesn't matter at all, right? Even if Trump takes Oregon (...uhh, unlikely) it will still make little difference. The chances of Oregon tipping the election in one way or another is around 1.5% at this point, according to 538.
11
I didn’t think the Merc/Stranger’s pro-Hillary articles could get any worse after you published Dan Savage's ridiculous flowchart a few weeks ago, yet here we are with this one.

I am sure many, many people will (rightfully) point out to you that Hillary’s policy “blind spots” have included: supporting wars that got thousands of American killed, policies that lead to mass incarceration of black men in America, and finally to her sitting on the board at the biggest and most union hating company in America and standing by as Walmart fought their workers right to organize for better wages (none of those are regurgitated GOP talking points btw). No need to expand on those or any others. My issue is with the 3rd point or “vote with your vagina” point. Or a point that is more at home on a MRA message board on why women would vote for Hillary.

Millennial women overwhelmingly choose Bernie over Hillary (more so than millennial men actually) because he supports policies like: $15 minimum wage, free public college tuition, and universal health care. Things that would actually help women (and men) and curb income inequality. Hillary supports none of those things and has spent the last week campaigning with billionaires and millionaires who bankrolled her campaign. How is she going to fight income inequality when the super rich who depend on it back her? The answer is she won’t. To tell Bernie supporters to ignore that and just “vote with your vagina” is beyond insulting. Cat callers show women more respect.

Of course this shouldn’t be a surprise coming from a Hillary supporter like yourself. From “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other” and “the boys are with Bernie, so therefore that’s why the young women go with him”, Hillary supporters have been outright sexist and insulting to any women who would dare not support her. The Merc should stick to crappy flowcharts that are slightly less offensive than this article.

A vote for Hillary is vote for the status quo. A vote for continued appalling income inequality at home and continued involvement in the forever war in the Middle East. A vote for the wage gap and wage stagnation for those of us not in the upper income brackets.

Don’t vote for Hillary.
12
Damn it. I am not too happy at the moment with the Portland Mercury.
My work keeps me fully cognizant of current political and social welfare issues, so I rather look forward to my weekly brain dump (or a complete empathy douche) which has, up to now, been faithfully facilitated by Portland Mercury! However, Megan Burbank’s article: “It’s Time to Cheer Up About Hillary Clinton” was not only insightful and well presented, but it was—damn it again!— important. Are you recruiting from Rolling Stone or New Yorker now? Why did you have to do that?
Sure, Trump is threatening our very existence with his campaign rhetoric. And, the Bernie Bros—most of whom I’m sure have never invested any real time for a social cause, like Hillary (Ms. Burbank, too)—are monkey wrenching a prospective Democratic Party slaughter with their temper tantrums. But, I need my mental down time! Get with the program over there, PM!
I suppose I’ll have to just not read past Ann Romano’s column until after the election is over.
14
For starters, here's a three-sentence HRC criticism: "We came. We saw. He died." Followed by laughter.

"some of the reasons you’re a little cold on HRC are the same things that have helped her (and Obama) make it this far. " Those would be, first and foremost, unmitigated corruption. Both Obama & Clinton are ALL about the corporate dollars. During the 2008 campaign, Obama first promised to filibuster a bill giving immunity to the telecommunications companies that helped W spy on the country without warrants, and then voted for it. That early it was clear that he was a tool of corporations, something reinforced by the (un)Affordable Care Act, which turned our for-profit health insurance system from de facto to de jure.

That fall of 2008, just before the election, I was at the JFK Library & Museum, where they had a display room that looked like the Oval Office with videos relevant to JFK's foreshortened administration.

One of them was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I watched that video and started crying because, after 45 years--and I had been at the March--our country was still so racist. I already knew I wasn't voting for the first African American corporate president because his vote for corruption had already happened.

HRC has the identity, but she has almost nothing else. Would Berta Cáceres, the indigenous Honduran leader assassinated by Obama's and Hillary's junta believe Clinton's vagina was enough? I don't think so.

What about the thousands of women who've died or become sexual slaves in the vast chaos that her vote for the Iraq war and her warmongering ethos as SoS helped create?

While the times have changed enough since MY first vote in 1968 that the Republicans are even worse than Nixon and his Southern strategy, I am not sorry I refused to vote for HRC's neoliberal progenitor, Hubert Humphrey.

The answer is probably for your generation, perhaps with some pointers from mine, to do what Barry Goldwater's supporters did to the Republicans: take over the Democratic party from the bottom, slowly, utterly, and completely.

But one thing you should back away from is the idea that lesser-evilism is EVER acceptable.

Come up with a well-written essay about bringing down HRC and EVERYTHING she represents, including politics that are about nothing more than identity.

IOW, fuck you and the vagina your riding on if you do nothing more than vote out of fear and don't organize the complete end of everything HRC, BHO, and the corporate political structure they represent.

READ those emails. Understand how inexcusable they are, and don't be so complacent & self-satisfied.
15
This might as well be cut and pasted from The Official Democrat Apologist's Guide To Selling Your Terrible Candidate

-Political Blackmail (Check!) - In other words, "If you don't vote for Hillary, look what happens! Look what you did by not voting for Hillary!" a hilariously backwards and totally ignorant way of passing the blame buck away from the Democrats, who have nominated a wall street owned war criminal and placing the blame on anyone who doesn't get with the program.

-Oh Grow Up (Check!) - Hey flower child! The 60s are over! Don't you know that being a grown up and mature adult means giving up your ideals and coming to the same dead inside, cold, meaningless truth as everyone else who's ever traded in values and human decency for a nice stock portfolio and a month off in August? More meaningless, boring, repetitive nonsense.

-She's a woman! (Check!) - Surely a little tongue in cheek, to show the lighter side of war crimes, but still a totally viable and valuable page in the Democrat book of excuses. In fact it's probably equally to do with Hillary's massive connections and money as well as the Democrats pissing themselves over the notion of having the first black and first female president back to back in their fund raising pamphlets from here on out.

-Hey Every Politician Has a Past, dig? - Ah yes, another gem! It's true! Politicans do have pasts, but for some reason I feel like not all of them have a past that is literally littered with war crimes. Kind of an offshoot of the "Grow Up" excuse (b/c it's saying, "I'm mature enough to be able to look sensibly at a candidate and say, Ah, I see, well if I acknowledge that hey no one is perfect, I can cast a blood soaked ballot in November and still feel good about myself at dinner parties.")

-She's not perfect. (Check!) - See above.

So really, poor show all around. This would be eye rollingly insipid if it was published in a college newspaper, but in a publication that's ostensibly supposed to be a little more than that, it just looks and sounds ridiculous. Congratulations on handwashing away the blood of Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, etc..etc..etc.. Congrats on the Goldman Sachs Candidate of 2016. If we get the government we deserve, you certainly deserve a liar and a criminal.
16
I'm sure thrillhouse, michtom, and Ell_As_in_L will revolutionize the entire political order with their bold, principled stances any day now!

I look forward to hearing their effective plans of action beyond just whining and pooping their diapers every presidential election cycle. I am sure they have some point-by-point strategies in the coming 4, 8, 12, and 16 years to gain control of the giant American political machine.

If we just got hundreds of millions more voting Americans to similarly shout into the void, stomp their feet, and poop their diaper like these three, surely things will magically change into the future utopia we have all been promised!
17
In the interest of grown up mature public debate Flavio, expressing an opinion about a political leader isn't a call to arms or the founding of a revolutionary parliament. It's one of those wacky things that all Americans are supposed to do, you know, speak.

Speaking only for myself, acknowledging that I (and many others) have standards and don't find it that easy to overlook thousands of dead civilians overseas in the interest of belonging, isn't some kind of bold vision for the future or 5 Year Plan.

It's just having standards and basic human values.

And yes, if we did get more people to see beyond the two party system, things might get better, if people stopped repeating tired, 20th century platitudes like "Well they'll never win so why bother?" maybe some things would change for the better.

I didn't mention a "future utopia" because "utopias" aren't real, that's kind of in the name.
And if you think a future where our elected leader doesn't drone bomb women and children in the name of defense contracts, throw people who expose war crimes in jail or sell out our natural resources to energy companies is a "utopia", you have a seriously low bar for acceptable existence.
18
the GOP is a shrinking party(ahem) of fragmented numbers, is in disarray, in the midst of a public internal civil war. It is indeed odd that their chosen standard bearer is DT, who's nothing more than a carpetbagger from NYC that will say anything. Historically, conservative white men love to keep their women under control, that notion is a long standing inbred one, indoctrinated from birth. It's like watching an old black + white movie about the USS GOP TITANIC, with all of them inside hoping the new Captain DT will guide them to happiness, even though he has no experience(or track record) of doing so, unaware that the ship is about to get rolled over by a giant tidal wave of voters of all kinds from across the Country, since they have alienated So Many obediently(kinda sorta) following their new leader. We're already witnessing many republicans heading for the lifeboats, grabbing political life preservers. There will be many circular firing squads in the aftermath for the GOP. GOP numbers are shrinking as members flee to their political lifeboats not knowing what to do. Obstructionism does not work anymore, and yes, people of all stripes want change for the better beyond conservative hate dogma.

This indeed will be a historic moment for the USA when Hillary Clinton wins....and it will be a Tidal Wave of political change with equal opportunity and equal rights for all regardless of race, or sex.

19
Step 1: Vote for Hillary. Step 2: Slap yourself in the face. Step 3: Do everything in your power to reinstate the true democracy that we were raised to believe in, fight for, and die for. Repeat. You have four years to complete.
20
Here's an idea! We can all pull the money out of our checking accounts and demand a replacement primary, on the grounds that Drumpf is now brandishing legitimate fascism, and the realization that Clinton, the DNC, and the media not only systematically rigged the primary in her favor by intentionally targeting Sanders, but may very well have received a decent number of her votes fraudulently. Tin foil hat right?

Ok...ask yourself why NOT ONE media outlet has mentioned anything about the fact that the CEOs of the two largest ballot machine and voter software companies in the country (ES&S and Dominion) were discovered as a result of the DNC hack to have donated MILLIONS of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, the Ready for Hillary PAC, and the Hillary Victory Fund PAC.

Let that sink in for a second. The CEO's that control 80% of the voting machines we use were quietly, INTENTIONALLY concealing that they were donating to Clinton's PACs and non-profit. It would be like if a panel of Olympic judges JUST HAPPENED to be secretly sponsoring one of the athletes in an event, who then JUST HAPPENS to win a gold medal.

Remember those exit polls? Did you know that NONE of the exit polling for the republican primaries in ANY state was outside of the margin of error, but on the democrat side they were off by an average of 9% in 22 different states, and ALWAYS in favor of Clinton? But exit polls aren't reliable right? The media told me so!

In the Olympic scenario, would we consider that shady? A conflict of interest? Fuck yes we would!!! So why the hell are we not even bringing it up for the race that will determine the next President? Because, "STFU! Don't bring up damaging things or the low-info idiots might not voter for her and Drumpf will destroy the world!" lesser of two evils right?

A funny thing about that...choosing the lesser of two evils, is still choosing evil. While I would love it if Clinton was secretly pulling a Kennedy all along (take dirty money, and then give the finger to the financial backers), I think we all know that's not gonna go down. At this point, our only option is to push for a do-over, because I cannot bring myself to vote for a person I KNOW is against my interests, just out of fear that someone worse is the alternative.

Please wait...

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