Letter 2 America for April 26, 2016

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We vote here in Connecticut today, and my family is all in for Bernie Sanders, but I can't help feeling a sense of despair relative to the process as a whole.  I like Sanders, and for that matter, I even find Clinton appealing, albeit to a lesser degree.  But the contest between them has descended to the Republican level.  And as to the Republican field...well, as to Republicans in general I always feel despair.  What makes me most despondent is the similarity of style and lack of substance to which the Democrats have reduced themselves, separating themselves by more and more slender margins from the Republicans as each election occurs.  I expect Republicans to be crass, hyperbolic and ad hominem in their discourse, but I always hope for more from my party.  I suppose that Hillary Clinton is just reverting to form, although she becomes more and more restrained, it seems, as the race between here and Sanders gets closer to being over.  But Sanders' slide into the Republicans' low-integrity mode bothers me, not that it really makes a difference.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but when he announced his candidacy, his professed goal was to elevate the debate within the Democratic Party, and to bring the systemic changes that have crept into American economic and political life to the fore.  The sub rosa text of his announcement was that he had no illusions about winning, but that a vote for him in a primary was a vote for redirection of the party back toward its traditional progressive creed.  He wanted to be the populist who didn't necessarily govern, but who embodied the impetus toward true egalitarian social structure in this country--a modern gadfly like Socrates--what the Republicans say they are while they actually do all they can to foster the opposite with their supply-side polemics, attacking the Democratic ethos rather than defending their free-market uber alles fixation; one can say that he wants everyone to have an equal chance for success, but if he thwarts every effort to control rapacity and kleptocracy in our society, his actions speak louder of maintenance of the deplorable status quo than they do about noble change.  But Sanders seems to have forgotten his initial purpose and plunged head first into the politics of the past and present on the advice of his campaign professional staff: negativity is what sells, they hiss, and the serpent once again prevails.  That's the problem with trying to win: you'll eventually do anything, even what you profess to abhor, to do so.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't regard Bernie Sanders to be one of those odious career politicians who will say anything to get or stay in power.  It's not that Sanders is a demagogue or a charlatan.  But for the past month or two, he has stooped to conquer, so to speak.  He has resorted to vituperation of his current opponent rather than fulmination in favor of his own ideas without concern for the deleterious effect such tactics might cause in the general election, endorsing the thinking of his own politicos that you have to knock the other guy down to win; standing tall isn't enough.  Clinton has done the same, what with her constant reference to Sanders' positions on guns and gun control, but as I said, she is just reverting to form.  But Sanders purported to be something different, and now he has tainted himself by being just more of the same...at least in the strategic sense.  He listened to experts whose only goal is to win instead of cleaving to his own creed and being guided by his inner good man.  In his defense, he seems to have recognized the electoral denouement that is upon all of us and come to his senses.  He still alludes to what he decries about Clinton and the other establishment candidates, but he has stopped calling her out by name and he has instead resumed directing his attention to big banks and unseemly wealth, which is where he started out to go.  To his credit, Sanders has obliquely acknowledged that his role is to elevate the dialectic that will occur in the general election by sensitizing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, to the need to get back to basics and stop compromising before anyone has asked her to.  He now focuses on reiterating the points he has wanted to make all along...just to remind Clinton about the impetus by which she should also be motivated: true egalitarianism, not some semblance of it that serves only to mask social injustice now with the pretense of intending to address it when it's convenient.

My guess is that Clinton will be nominated without much more rancor, and that Trump will prevail because moral corruption masquerading as piety is what sells to Republicans.   Then, Clinton will win in the general election, though not by the margin that seems to prevail now, and we will go on to another Clinton White House.  That's when the real worry will begin.  Everyone loves Bill Clinton, but when you truly analyze his "accomplishments"--welfare "reform," NAFTA, a balanced budget--you see that he was governed by pragmatism rather than principle.  Thus, if the second Clinton administration follows the path of the first, we are just in for more of the same.  The real key will be who prevails in all the congressional races in November, so that's what I fret about the most.  I always have to have something to fret about, and thanks to politics in America, I am never lacking it.

Your friend,

Mike  

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This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on April 26, 2016 11:36 AM.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on April 26, 2016 11:36 AM.

Letter 2 America for April 12, 2016 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for May 4, 2016 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

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