Clinton is, at root, a pragmatist who is focused on making the most of the current political atmosphere rather than pinning her hopes on transforming that atmosphere to make more expansive change possible. She works within the system. She doesn’t propose totally overhauling the way it does taxation; she proposes tweaks and nudges and expansions of existing programs.
Because Hillary Clinton is a woman, she is judged too harshly for doing what most politicians do—hedging sometimes, waffling sometimes, evading sometimes. Politicians are ambitious; they have to be. Yet for Hillary Clinton, ambition is often an accusation. She is held responsible for her husband’s personal failings, in the gendered assumption that a wife is somehow an adult and a husband a child.
To put it more succinctly, Donald Trump is a lowlife degenerate with the temperament of a 10-year-old and the moral compass of a severely wayward teen.
There is no way to make a vote for him feel like an act of principle or responsibility. You can’t make it right. You can’t say yes to Trump and yes to common decency. Those two things do not together abide.
An open letter from The Globe and Mail, a newspaper in Toronto, urging America not to vote for Trump:
This U.S. election, unlike any since the Second World War, is white knuckle time for the rest of the world. Foreign governments don’t want to interfere in your democracy, so they can’t say what they really think about Trump. But we can. We’re terrified.
We can’t believe that given a choice between one mildly flawed candidate and another peddling an explosive combo of bad ideas, no ideas and zero self-control, you’re having trouble choosing.
Trump is not normal. Nothing about him is. One need only look at his rallies, track the rhetoric they offer and the vengeful orgy of hatred and misogyny and racism they induce, to see just how different he is. His followers are not, shall we say, there to root on their favored libertarian in his pursuit of free-market solutions to vexing social problems; they are there to scream insults and cry havoc on their (mostly imaginary) enemies, to revel in the riot of misogyny and racism that Trump has finally given them license to retrieve from the darkest chapters of our past. (“Not politically correct” means openly brutal to minorities and women.) A ten-year-old screams, “Take that bitch down!” to laughter.
We need to stop his craziness.
Hate Rising with Jorge Ramos is a frightening documentary on how Donald Trump and his presidential campaign have given white supremacists the license to hate. Only six days to go and Trump must be stopped. He simply cannot be our president. This country will be further divided if Trump wins. If you are considering voting for Trump, please watch this film before casting your ballot. America needs love, not hate.
“Clinton’s public record is long, deep, scrutinized, and hacked,” writes Ezra Klein, “Trump’s record is thinner, shorter, and protected by secrecy and NDAs.” He points out the irony of openness:
There’s an irony to Clinton’s relationship with the press, Aftergood observes. “She tries to keep things secret, and that leads to their ultimate disclosure. People make accusations against her, and the effort to refute them leads to more disclosure.” The result is someone who seems secretive — who perhaps is secretive — but who has ended up divulging more information about her personal life, her political operation, her policy process, her daily schedule, and her financial dealings than any candidate in memory. Yet we react less to the information we get than to her reluctance to release it and her demeanor when she does — we prize the performance of openness more than the openness itself.
It’s all about perception. When you act secretive, people will assume that you have something to hide. When you act openly, they don’t question your secrecy. I hope this lesson won’t cost Hillary the election and our country four years of nightmares.
Robin Lakoff on Hillary’s Emailgate:
Clinton has repeatedly apologized, but apparently not enough for her accusers. In fact, her apologies were her only mistake. By apologizing she acknowledged guilt. But that’s what women are supposed to do (because women are always guilty of something). Several members of her own staff sent emails grumbling that she was a recalcitrant apologizer. But her instinct was right: apologizing has only made her weaker. Her opponent never apologizes, not really. So accusations slide off his back like water off a duck’s.
Louis C.K. explains eloquently why we need the first mother in the White House:
It’s really exciting to have the first mother in the White House. It’s not about the first woman, it’s about the first mom… A mother just does it. She feeds you and teaches you, she protects you, she takes care of shit. We’ve had 240 years of fathers: Bald father, fat father, every kind of father. Fathers are OK. A great father can give a kid 40 percent of his needs—top. Any mother, just a shit mother, just a not even trying mother—200 percent.
He concludes:
We need just a tough bitch mother who nobody likes. If you vote for Hillary, you’re a grownup. If you vote for Trump, you’re a sucker. If you don’t vote for anybody, you’re an asshole.
You heard it right. Don’t be an asshole, and definitely don’t be a sucker. You know what to do.
KKK National Director Thomas Robb writes:
While Trump wants to make America great again, we have to ask ourselves, “What made America great in the first place?” The short answer to that is simple: America was great not because of what our forefathers did – but because of who our forefathers were. America was founded as a White Christian Republic.
Trump earned this endorsement.