Tag: Hillary Clinton

Free Advice to Hillary Clinton on How to Attract Sanders’ Supporters

July 15, 2016 / / 0 Comments

clintoncon

To the consternation of many of his supporters, Bernie Sanders endorsed Clinton last Tuesday. While many Berners understand why Sanders’ needed to do so and are supportive of his Plan B, they are not willing to vote for Clinton. A new poll shows that only 39% of millennial Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton, and the percentage is only a little higher among Sanders supporters of all ages.

Clinton’s national poll numbers reflect that. The fact that most American voters would prefer Trump or a Giant Meteor to land and destroy America over Clinton becoming President, should give her pause.

So here is some free advice for Hillary Clinton on how she can actually convince Bernie supporters to vote for her:

Defeat the TPP

Right now, Sanders supporters are coalescing on their opposition to the TPP.  They know that Clinton supports it – she manifested her support by blocking any negative references to the TPP from appearing in the Democratic platform – and they will not vote for a President that supports doing away with labor, environmental and human rights protections through the backdoor that the TPP represents.

We all know that the current plan is that Obama will push the TPP through the lame duck session of Congress. If Clinton wants Berners’ votes, she will have to convince all Democratic Senators and Congressmembers that are planning to vote for it and who, coincidentally, are also her superdelegates, to change their positions.

If she doesn’t have the political pull to do this, then there is no reason to believe that she would honor any of the progressive planks in the new Democratic platform. Sanders’ supporters are not stupid.

Swear off militarism

Clinton is a hawk who has supported wars and coups d’etat.  She considers Henry Kissinger – a man who is responsible for committing crimes against humanity – a friend and advisor. She fought to keep a threat to militarily attack Iran in the Democratic platform. To anyone concerned with peace and human rights, the prospects of a Clinton presidency is even scarier than a Trump presidency.

If she wants those votes, she needs to give up on her militaristic impulses and swear off to war and military interventions abroad.

Detangle herself from Wall Street

Berners know that Clinton has made a devil’s bargain with Wall Street: they fill her pockets, she fights for their interests. If she wants Berners’ votes she needs to be willing to break that bargain. First, of course, she will need to acknowledge it and she will need to release the transcripts of her speeches. Then, she’ll need to say that despite their money, she will turn back on them and do what’s best for the American people.

As with TPP, part of the allure of Donald Trump is that he is actually willing to go back on his word and betray anyone he’s made a deal with – while that surely includes voters, Clinton seems to only be willing to betray voters, and keep her word to her big contributors. She needs to change that perception.

Choose a progressive VP

If she chooses Tim Kaine, it’s a nonstarter. A progressive VP will at least give hopes to Berners that there will be someone in the ticket to keep her accountable.

The author, Margarita Lacabe, is a Sanders delegate from California to the Democratic National Convention.

The FBI Doesn’t Want Hillary to Know What They Know

April 22, 2016 / / 0 Comments

hillary-fbi-2Yesterday (4/21/16) there was an interesting update on the Hillary Clinton e-mail saga.

Some time ago, Vice News filed a FOIA suit for the e-mails that Clinton had deleted from her server which the FBI is reported to have recovered. The Department of Justice filed for summary judgment against Vice News.  Generally, when you file for summary judgment, you give your reasons why summary judgment should be granted.  In this case, the DOJ could have argued that they couldn’t produce the e-mails because they hadn’t actually been recovered.  Or they could have argued that they had been recovered, but they concerned personal matters and therefore did not constitute government records or were protected by privacy exemptions.  They could have even argued that they had recovered e-mails but these e-mails all included classified information.

They didn’t do any of those things. Instead, they filed a “Notice of Lodging of Classified, In Camera, Ex Parte Declaration.”  That would be a document that only the judge in the case is authorized to read, where the DOJ explains their reasons for requesting a summary judgment.  The problem with such declarations, of course, is that as the plaintiff can’t read them, they cannot answer the arguments in them.  They are usually only used when there are national security considerations.

In response, Vice News filed a motion to require the DOJ to, at the very least, release the non-classified parts of their answer or explain why this cannot be done.  The judge granted the motion, and the DOJ has until April 26th to do so.

Now, it’s very possible that the DOJ is just abusing the system and that there is no legitimate reason to hide from the public – or anyone else – their rationale for not releasing Hillary Clinton’s deleted e-mails.  But if the DOJ is actually justified in filing this classified declaration, we can speculate as to why that is.

I think the most likely reason is that they don’t want Hillary Clinton to know whether they have, indeed, retrieved her deleted e-mails before she is interviewed by the FBI in the investigation as to her server.  While there are reports that the FBI had recovered some e-mails, these have not been confirmed and it’s not publicly known how many of the deleted e-mails the FBI was able to ultimately recover.

By now, I think it’s pretty clear that Clinton is considered at the very least a subject, if not a target, of the FBI investigation.  Unlike former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton has said publicly that she has not been contacted by the FBI.  If the FBI saw her merely as a witness – as is the case with Powell -, they would have interviewed her right away to get as much information as possible from her to aid their investigation.   The fact that they haven’t suggests that the FBI does not want to interview her until they have independently gathered as much information as possible in the case.  Then, they can trip her.

For example, the FBI could ask her: “Did you delete or cause to be deleted any e-mails related to your work as Secretary of State other than those you handed to the Department of State? ”  If she says “yes”, she has just admitted at destroying government records.  But if she says “no” and it turns out that the FBI had uncovered such deleted e-mails, she can be prosecuted for lying to the FBI – a felony that carries a maximum five year prison sentence.   If Hillary knew for sure that the FBI had not recovered the deleted e-mails, then she could probably feel comfortable in lying about this.  If she knew for sure that they had recovered them, then she might decide that her best bet is to tell them the truth or – more likely – not meet with the FBI at all.  But as long as she doesn’t know what they have, she can’t really know how best to play this.  That’s what the FBI is counting on.

FBI Director James Comey said today that the FBI will not necessarily have concluded their investigation by the time of the Democratic convention.   That should concern all Democrats, a post-convention indictment (or, what’s more likely, a mere recommendation for indictment) could very well serve not just the Presidency but many other offices to the Republicans.

Note: This article has been edited for clarity

 

Who is Dayani Crystal?

November 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

dyaniMovie recommendations: Who is Dayani Crystal? A documentary that tries to find out who one of the many men found dead in the Arizona desert was. It’s available on Netflix streaming now.

I tend to make light of Donald Trump, I’m amused at how he has repackaged the far-right’s talking points into plain talk.  He has scared the hell out of the Republican establishment which figured they could use the rhetoric of xenophobia to command the votes of that part of the electorate whose feelings of financial insecurity – as Hitler described in Mein Kampf – make them easy targets for any sort of chauvinistic messaging.

There is some sordid pleasure in seeing the Republican establishment being bit on the butt by the monster they created.  And I honestly don’t think that Trump means anything he says. I think he’d just as likely to say exactly the opposite if it’d got him the same adulation – but liberals are not as easily fooled (or at least I hope we are not, Hillary Clinton notwithstanding).

But then I go back and think about the men and women who have died in the desert because the US government spends so many resources trying to keep desperate people looking for jobs out. I don’t think Donald Trump is Hitler nor do I believe most Americans would condone a genocide. And yet, isn’t this how it starts? By saying – through our votes – that it’s OK to establish policies that will kill people?  Indeed, by tacitly determining that there are people whose life does not matter?

Watch the documentary, then come back.

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Now that you’ve watched it, did you find it a little discomforting to have Gael García Bernal standing for the dead man? I love García Bernal, I think he is one of the best and most revolutionary actors of his generation.  But he also has such an upper class Mexican accent, speaks so eloquently (he’s an actor after all) and is so good looking and famous, that it makes me wonder if the impact of the documentary is that I cannot possibly imagine a man looking and sounding like García Bernal, dying in the desert. That tragedy has greater impact because it’s unexpected, but it is not “Dayani Cristal”‘s tragedy.  As much as I appreciate the fact that García Bernal got this movie made, his presence in the film ultimately looks as misery tourism.

It’s Open Season on Hillary Clinton

September 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Hillary-Clinton-1200I’m starting to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton.  It looks like the Obama administration is throwing her under the bus (justifiably, mind you) with the full complicity of the media.  I anticipate that Biden will be announcing he’s running for President very soon.

Meanwhile, Hillary is finding enemies on all sides:

1 – Two days ago, CNN released a poll that had Hillary at 42%, Sanders at 24% and Biden at 22%. The headlines everywhere were about how Hillary was widening her lead. Today, a Bloomberg poll shows Hillary at 33%, Biden at 25% and Sanders at 24%. The two polls are within the margin of error of each other. However, the headlines today were all about how Biden is competitive with Hillary, how this is a 3-person race or, specially in the conservative press, how Hillary is on the outs.

2 – Meanwhile, for no apparent reason, the State Department decided to clarify that they asked Hillary specifically for her e-mails when they noticed that they didn’t have them, and only later they asked other former secretary of states. The story is sold as Hillary fibbing/lying as to the timeline of what happened.

3 – Soon after, we find out that – as expected – the FBI has recovered some of her deleted e-mails. The headlines are that these are deleted “personal and work e-mails“, though no details of what work e-mails were deleted have come out.  Of course, if she did delete work e-mails that would mean that she both lied and broke the law.  And I think we can all be sure that she deleted work e-mails because that’s the only reason why anyone would get a private server in the first place.

4 – Meanwhile, the court chastises the State Department for not turning in even more Benghazi related e-mails.

5 – As if this was not enough, online tabloids are all excited about a new book to come out next week with all sorts of nasty details about Hillary – including the suggestion that she yelled at Obama and told him to “call off his fucking dogs”.  The writer of the book is described as a former Newsweek editor – but it turns out that it’s been decades since he’s done serious journalism and since then he’s been writing pulp books about politicians filled with disgusting claims. Not helping their case, Clinton’s spokesperson’s response was to call the claims “bullshit”.

6 – Trump, a genius at seizing the moment, is going on a rampage blaming Hillary for “birtherism”.  Hillary has to come out and defend herself against what seem to be plain false accusations.

7- To add insult to injury, it’s left to Republican Carly Fiorina to express empathy for Clinton.

And I thought that House of Cards and Scandal were fiction!  Personally, I just hope that Hillary and Biden mutually destroy each other and leave room for Bernie Sanders​.

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