Michael Hudson: Obama Said Hillary Will Continue His Legacy – and Indeed She Will!

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy

Leading up to Monday’s Democratic Party convention, Hillary chose Blue Dog Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her VP. This was followed by the Wikileaks release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail files showing it acting as the Clinton Campaign Committee even to the point of using the same lawyers as her own campaign to oppose Bernie Sanders.

The response across the Democratic neocon spectrum, from Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post to red-baiting Paul Krugman and the Sunday talk shows it was suggested that behind the Wikileaks to release DNC e-mails was a Russian plot to help elect Trump as their agent. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul lent his tattered reputation to claim that Putin must have sponsored the hackers who exposed the DNC dirty tricks against Bernie.

The attack on Trump was of course aimed at Sanders. At first it didn’t take off. Enough delegates threatened to boo DNC head (and payday-loan lobbyist) Debbie Wasserman Schultz off stage if she showed her face at the podium to gavel the convention to order. The down-note would have threatened the “United Together” theme, so she was forced to resign. But Hillary rewarded her loyalty by naming her honorary chairman of her own presidential campaign! If you’re loyal, you get a pay-off. The DNC was doing what it was supposed to do. No reform seems likely.

The Democratic machine orchestrated a media campaign to distract attention by attributing the leaks were to a Russian plot to undermine American democracy (as if the e-mails did not show how undemocratic the DNC had operated in stacking the primaries). A vote against Hillary would be a vote for Trump – and a vote for Trump would really be for Putin. And as Hillary had explained earlier, Putin = Hitler. The media let it be known that attacking Wasserman Schultz – and by extension, Hillary’s neocon policies – makes one a Russian dupe. This theme colored the entire convention week.

Endorsing Hillary’s presidential bid on Monday evening, Sanders joined in the chorus that this November will pit Good against Evil – or as Ray McGovern put it on RT’s Cross Talk, at least proxies for Netanyahu vs. Putin. Wall Street Senator Chuck Schumer went on TV to heave a sigh of relief that the party was indeed united together.

Many Sanders’ supporters felt no obligation to follow his obeisance. Many walked out after he closed Tuesday’s state-by-state roll call by throwing his support behind Clinton. Others chanted “Lock Her Up”.

VP Kaine as Hillary’s Stand-in if She’s Indicted or Seems Unelectable

The potential “Hillary Republicans” who are turning away from Trump – whose ranks include Mike Bloomberg, the neocon Kagan family (Robert and Victoria Nuland) and William Kristol – far outnumber the Sanders supporters who may stay home or vote for Jill Stein on the Green Party ticket. Hillary sees more votes (and certainly more campaign contributions and future “speaking fees”) from the Koch Brothers, George Soros, Wall Street, Saudi Arabia and the corporatist Chamber of Commerce.

Kaine recently has fought to “free” small and medium-sized banks from being subject to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. He has long supported the TPP, deregulation of Wall Street, and most everything that Sanders opposes. Appointed as DNC head by President Obama in 2008, he dismantled Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, not bothering to fight Republicans in the South and other solid Republican states. His move let them elect governors who gerrymandered their voting districts after the 2010 census.

The DNC designated these “neglected” states to come first in the presidential primaries. They were the ones that Hillary won. Sanders won most of the swing states and those likely to vote Democratic. That made him the party’s strongest nominee – obliging the DNC to maneuver to sideline him. His criticism of big donors and Citizens United threatens to dry up the source of funding not only for Hillary but also for the DNC. They are going after the money – whose chief providers are Wall Street, neoliberal corporatists and New Cold War neocons.

Bernie’s campaign targeted Wall Street and corporate deregulation (the essence of TTP and TTIP) as the key to the One Percent’s monopolization of income and wealth since Obama’s post-2008 sacrifice of the economy on the altar of rescuing banks and their bondholders. That is why the Wall Street’s Donor Class that controls the Democratic Party machine want to discourage new voter enrollment and turnout. The last thing they want is an influx of new voters advocating real reform. Millennial newcomers are more progressive, born into a generation that has no opportunity to obtain jobs and housing as easily as their parents. So it’s best to keep out independents in favor of the old-time voters with brand loyalty to Democrats.

Demonizing Trump for Saying what Bernie Sanders Has Been Saying

Trump made his quip about Russia in what actually was an eloquent and funny press conference.[1] The media took this out of context to depict him as urging the Russians to hack into our e-mails. What he actually said was that if Russia – or China, or somebody “sitting in his bed” – did indeed read Hillary’s State Department and Clinton Foundation dealings, they should do the world a favor and release them to reveal her self-dealing.

Trump is right in saying that there has not really been a recovery for the Rust Belt or for the 99 Percent. Hillary brazens it out by claiming that Obama’s neoliberal economics have helped wage-earners, despite the debt deflation blocking recovery. She promises to continue his policies (backed by his same campaign funders).

That would seem to be a losing strategy for this year’s election – unless the Democrats gain control of the electronic voting machines, especially in Ohio. But the Republicans may decide to throw the election to Hillary, who is fortunate to have Donald Trump as her opponent. Demonized as Putin’s “Siberian candidate,” he has become the Democrats’ unifying force: “Hillary isn’t Trump.”

That’s what voting for the “lesser evil” means. Hillary’s message is: “Even though we support TPP and a New Cold War, at least you’ll have a woman at the helm. Anyway, you have nowhere else to go, because the other side is even more evil!” Her logic is that (1) if you criticize Hillary, you’re supporting Trump; (2) Trump is the Siberian candidate; hence (3) Criticism of Hillary, NATO’s New Cold War escalation or the TPP’s anti-labor treaty and financial deregulation is pro-Russian and hence anti-American.

All that strategists for the One Percent need to do is fund an even worse party platform to the right of the Democrats. So the choice will be between Evil A (economic evil with ethnic and sexual tolerance) and Evil B (without such tolerance).

It doesn’t have to be this way. But Sanders gave up, not feeling up to the task. Having mocked him as a socialist, Hillary is acting as the Joe McCarthy of the 2010s, mobilizing a wave of commie bashing against her Republican opponent.

On Monday leading up to the convention, the Democratic Party’s cable channel MSNBC kept juxtaposing pictures of Trump and Putin. Criticizing Hillary’s neocon stance supporting Ukraine’s military coup is depicted as support of Russia – while other commentators followed President Obama claiming that criticism of TPP means making China the new leader of Asia. The message is that criticizing NATO’s adventurism risks being called a Soviet – I mean, Russian – puppet.

Bernie’s Dilemma – and That of Other Would-Be Reformers of the Democratic Party

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s I heard labor leaders ask whether there really was nowhere to go except the Democratic Party. Most who joined got co-opted. Instead of moving the Democratic Party to the left, its leadership machine corrupted labor, and in due course the anti-war movement and socialists who joined hoping to move it to the left.

What then is Bernie’s plan to save his followers from being forced to make one compromise after another? The party machine demonizes policies with which Hillary’s neocons disagree, and demand support of NATO escalation and Obama’s (and Hillary’s and Kaine’s) underlying support of the TPP on the pretense that this will help rather than hurt labor. Hillary has denounced Bernie’s socialized medicine on the ground that it is utopian (as if Canada and the eurozone are anti-capitalist utopias).

While Trump sent out tweets and gave interviews about how Hillary and Debbie have screwed Bernie’s supporters, Sanders made no parallel attempt to ask why progressive Democrats didn’t applaud Trump’s assertions that he would wind down confrontation with Russia, that NATO is obsolete and needs restructuring, and his opposition to the TPP. Bernie didn’t seize the opportunity to mobilize non-partisan support for their critique of neoliberal economic policies. He cast his lot with Hillary, contradicting his claim during the primaries that she was not qualified to be president.

After Sanders ended Monday evening’s opening by endorsing Hillary Clinton, the MSNBC camera crew went down to talk to his supporters. They eagerly asked the first one who she would vote for, after hearing Bernie’s endorsement. “For Jill Stein,” the lady said, explaining that there was no way she would vote for Hillary.

The next interview produced a similar result. “I just don’t trust her,” the Bernie supporter said. A third said the same thing. The MSNBC booth tried to save face by assuring viewers that everyone they talked to had said they were going to vote for Hillary. But it sounded hollow. I suspect that viewers didn’t trust the TV media any more than they trusted Hillary.

The problem facing Hillary’s rivals is that she has wrapped herself in the legacy of President Obama. Having shied from criticizing the president, Sanders and his supporters are facilitating what may be a Lame Duck session sellout after the November election. My fear is that Obama will try to “save his legacy” by joining with the Republicans to drive through the TPP, and also may escalate the New Cold War with Russia and China so as to make it easier for Hillary to sign onto these moves.

Selecting Tim Kaine as her running mate means neoliberal, pro-TPP business as usual. Hillary didn’t oppose TPP. She just said she would put in rhetoric saying that its “purpose” was to raise wages – whereas most voters have shown themselves to be smart enough to realize that the effect will be just the opposite.

Yet Sanders endorsed her. Evidently he hopes to keep his position within the Party chairing the Senate Minority Budget Committee, while simultaneously trying to promote a revolution outside the Democrats. I was reminded of a Chinese proverb: When there is a fork in the road, a man who tries to take two roads at once gets a broken hip joint.

This straddle may have led Sanders to miss his big chance to make a difference. He is trying to take two roads at once, continuing to run as an Independent senator while caucusing with the Democrats without being able to block TPP and new Wall Street giveaways and more favoritism to the One Percent he has so eloquently denounced. Revolutions are a matter of timing. As a former YPSL he might have recalled what happened when Trotsky shied from breaking from Stalin after Lenin died early in 1924. Soon it was too late, and all Stalin’s opponents were purged. The moment was not seized.

Bernie has been an effective catalyst in this year’s election campaign. But as in chemistry, a catalyst is not really part of the equation. It merely helps the equation take place. Sanders didn’t say, “Thank god for Wikileaks. It shows that I was right and the DNC needs radical reform.” He left it to his supporters to hold up anti-TPP signs. His new message was “trust Hillary.” But even so, she will not forgive him for being against her before he was for her. He may still end up being marginalized in 2017.

I had hoped that in addressing the convention, Sanders would have said that its aim was not only to elect a president but congresspersons and officials all down the line. He could have mentioned the people he is supporting, starting with Wasserman Schultz’s opponent in Florida’s House race (supported by Obama as well as Hillary).

Bernie’s supporters who walked out on Tuesday have been duly radicalized. But he himself seems akin to be an American Alex Tsipras. Tsipras thought withdrawal from the eurozone was even worse than capitulating to austerity, while Sanders believes that withdrawing from the Democrats and backing a political realignment – perhaps electing Trump in the interim is even worse than Hillary’s pro-Wall street Obama-like agenda.

Matters were not improved when Bill Clinton gave a hagiographic biography of Hillary emphasizing her legal aid work to protect children, without mentioning how the 1994 welfare “reform” drastically cut back aid to dependent children. Madeline Albright said that Hillary would keep America safe, without mentioning Hillary’s promotion of destabilizing Libya and backing Al Quaeda against Syria’s government, driving millions of refugees to Europe and wherever they might be safer.

The many anti-TPP signs waved by Sanders delegates on Wednesday saw Hillary say that she would oppose TPP “as currently written.” This suggests that a modest sop thrown to labor – a rhetorical paste-on saying that the TPP’s aim was to raise living standards. This simply showed once again her sophist trickery at lawyering, giving her an out that she and long-time TPP supporter Tim Kaine were sure to take.

Obama’s brilliant demagogy left many eyes glazed over in admiration. Nobody is better at false sincerity while misrepresenting reality so shamelessly. Probably few caught the threatening hint he dropped about Hillary’s plan for corporations to share their profits with their workers. This sounds to me like the Pinochet plan to privatize Social Security by turning it into exploitative ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Programs). The idea is that wage withholding would be steered to buy into the company’s stock – bidding it up in the process. Employees then would end up holding an empty bag, as occurred recently with the Chicago Tribune. That seems to be the great “reform” to “save” Social Security that her Wall Street patrons are thinking up.

One might think that the Democrats would see the Obama administration as an albatross around their neck, much as Gore had Bill Clinton around his neck in 2000. Gore didn’t want him showing his face in the campaign. Yet Hillary presents herself as continuing the Obama policies with “business as usual,” as if she will act as his third term.

Voters know that Obama bailed out the banks, not the economy, and that Hillary’s campaign backers are on Wall Street. So this year would seem to have been a propitious time to start a real alternative. Hillary is mistrusted, and that mistrust is spreading to the Democratic Party machine – especially as the Koch Brothers and kindred backers of failed Republican candidates find neoliberal religion with Hillary. A third party Green/Socialist run might indeed have taken off – with Sanders stealing Trump’s thunder by pre-empting his critique of TPP, free trade and NATO, adding Wall Street and Citizens United campaign financing.

This Fall’s Presidential Debates

Hillary and even Bernie assured the Democratic convention again and again how much President Obama has revived the economy from the “mess” that Bush left. While Trump centers his disdain on the TPP (much as he knocked Jeb Bush out by saying that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake), he can reply, “What recovery? Have you voters really recovered from 2008?”

Hillary and other speechmakers at the Democratic convention criticized Trump for saying that “things are bad.” But according to the July 13 NBC/WSJ poll, 73% of voters believe that the country is going “off on the wrong track.” If Trump shifts his epithet from simply “Crooked Hillary” to the more nuanced “Crooked Wall Street and their candidate, Crooked Hillary,” he’ll score a ratings spurt.

Debt deflation and shrinking markets over the next two years do not provide much hope for increasing the minimum wage – which wouldn’t help much if one can’t find a job in the first place! By 2018 the continued stagnation of the 99 Percent may lead to a midterm wipeout of Democrats (assuming that Hillary wins this year against Trump), catalyzing an alternative party (assuming that she does not blow up the world in her neocon military escalation on the borders of Russia and China).

The problem with Trump is not mistrust; it is that nobody knows what policies he will back. The media are giving him the same silent treatment they did with Bernie, while accusing him of being in Putin’s pocket. He did admit selling some real estate to Russian nationals. Perhaps some of these gains fueled his presidential campaign …

The solution is not to save the Democratic Party, but to replace it. The debate reminds me of that about the Soviet Union in the 1950s: Is it a degenerated workers’ state, or a Stalinist bureaucratic mutation going the opposite direction from real socialism?

I wonder how many years it will take for Hillary to end up booed so loudly that she has to leave hotels and other speaking venues via their back alleys, much as Lyndon Johnson had to sneak out to avoid the anti-war booers leading leading up to the 1968 election.

___________

[1] Available on https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHWou0h1kk). This should be seen as an antidote to most media coverage. For a run-down on Russia-Trump accusations see Lambert Strether, “Hoisted from Comments: Can We Even Know Who Hacked the DNC Emails?Naked Capitalism, July 28, 2016.

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105 comments

  1. ewmayer

    It seems the article is missing some trailing material: I see “…anti-war booers leading” on the last line above the —- divider, nothing after that.

    —————

    “I wonder how many years it will take for Hillary to end up booed so loudly that she has to leave hotels and other speaking venues via their back alleys, much as Lyndon Johnson had to sneak out to avoid the anti-war booers”

    That kind of well-deserved non-ignorable odium still hasn’t driven the likes of Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan from the public eye, so I am sorry to say I harbor scant hope of it ever happening to Hillary. Please let me be proven wrong on this point!

    If she wins in November, my one hoped-for consolation – again, assuming she doesn’t end up setting off WW3 – is that I lay better than even odds of another global-economic meltdown in the next 4 years. Much better for it to land in her well-deserving-of-it lap than Trump’s. In the meantime I continue to derive hearty and almost-daily enjoyment from The Donald’s gift for sending the corrupt establishment – in both major parties as well as the loathsome MSM – into conniptions. I mean, seeing the likes of drone-boy Leon Panetta yesterday blustering about “beyond the pale”, “treason” and “inviting a foreign government to meddle in our electoral process” (not like the CIA et al. ever meddled in any other nation’s electoral process, right?) after Trump called for Russia (or anyone else) who might be in possession of the disappeared SoS e-mails to release them … priceless.

    1. Harry Pollard

      Michael,

      An excellent piece. I am independent. At the polling booth (in California) I said I wanted to vote for Bernie. My neighbor friend was there and she said I had to vote with a special form. I understand that you are supposed to ask for the form, or you don’t get it, but I didn’t know that. Presumably other Bernie voters who didn’t have the advantage of a neighbor running things didn’t get it.

      I handed it to her and she put it through the machine, which promptly rejected it. She tried 3 more times without any luck. So, she placed it on a pile of forms.

      Afterwards, I wondered what happened to those forms. Were they Bernie votes? Were they counted? In any event, Hillary got her California win.

      I understand that many young voters in New York couldn’t vote because they weren’t registered. They were told they should have registered in October. Anyway, another big win for Hillary!

      Poor old Bernie. He didn’t have a chance.

      Harry Pollard

  2. Pavel

    Excellent piece. I confess this is the first place I read what is apparently Trump’s full comment re the DNC leaks and Russia:

    Trump made his quip about Russia in what actually was an eloquent and funny press conference.[1] The media took this out of context to depict him as urging the Russians to hack into our e-mails. What he actually said was that if Russia – or China, or somebody “sitting in his bed” – did indeed read Hillary’s State Department and Clinton Foundation dealings, they should do the world a favor and release them to reveal her self-dealing.

    A far cry from the “treasonous” call reported ad nauseum in the MSM and at the convention.

    And yes, those are typical Clinton weasel words regarding the TPP (“as currently written”). Vote for Hillary! — more drones, more wars, concessions to Wall Street, and TPP… Obama’s third term indeed.

    1. Kris Alman

      These accusations against Trump pale to how the Clintons interceded in the sale of Uranium One.
      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

      This letter requesting the FBI and FTC investigate the Clinton Foundation comes from Republican Congressmen.
      https://www.scribd.com/document/319409151/Clinton-Foundation-July-15-Letter

      It will be dismissed as partisan politics. But it is illustrative of how “nonprofit” philanthropies have become the tools of the Elite United.

      A life-long Dem, I will NOT support Hillary. Jill Stein should break the glass ceiling of becoming the first female president.

  3. clarky90

    I became interested in Donald Trump after Scott Adams (The creator of Dilbert) described Trump as “The master persuader”. So I started watching Trumps speeches and press conferences out of curiosity. I really liked what he was saying and how he was saying it (with humor and genuine (authentic) good will and common sense. I don’t agree with everything he said, but you never do. However, everytime I google searched Trump; the blogs, the editorials and the reports, were either virulently negative (he is a fascist etc) ranging all the way to halfhearted (he is the lesser of two evils etc). No mainstream commentators were unashamedly Pro-Trump. How can this be?Watch his press conferences. He answers all the questions, he is charming, he doesn’t pull his punches (he says what he thinks, not what he is supposed to think). He is this legendary American Character (like Davy Crockett, Joe Hill or Paul Henry IMO) and yet, the chattering press despise him??? They all love Hillary or Bernie?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHWou0h1kk

    This is what I think

    Scott Adams said
    “Some of you watched with amusement as I endorsed Hillary Clinton for my personal safety. What you might not know is that I was completely serious. I was getting a lot of direct and indirect death threats for writing about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and I made all of that go away by endorsing Clinton”.,,,,,, Writing about Trump ended my speaking career, and has already reduced my income by about 40%”.

    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147247313346/when-persuasion-turns-deadly

    The people (managers), one step down from the Ruling Class, are not allowed to be pro- Trump, at the risk of their salaried employment, or demotion, or of being shamed or of getting death threats (Scott adams said he got death threats).

    However, and Thank God, The People are welling up, are rising up………… I think that Trump will win by a landslide.

    It has happened before. It is the subject of thousands of years of His-Story and Her-Story.

    1. m

      I started watching Trump for same reason and in many ways he makes more sense than Hill-Bill. Yes at times hard to take him serious, but his is very funny. I would vote for him for 4 years of disruption.
      I have a friend that works in government and last election begged everyone to vote for Mitt. This person was hired under Bush & said under Obama everyone is expected to spy on each other.
      Where is crazy US going?

    2. clarky90

      Merle Travis – Sixteen Tons (original version) from 1947
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I15_KUsOzs

      “According to Travis, the line from the chorus, “another day older and deeper in debt”, was a phrase often used by his father, a coal miner himself. This and the line, “I owe my soul to the company store”, is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers which could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.”

    3. polecat

      It’s difficult for a man’s betters to understand something….when said betters maniacal power/wealth depends on him not understanding it….

      with apologies to the late Sinclair Lewis

    4. Yves Smith Post author

      He’s made way too many racist dog whistles and still has yet to denounce white separatists who say they like him. That has a lot of people of color worried that those far-right groups will feel empowered if Trump wins and will declare open season on them. His Muslim ban is another proposal that he refuses to drop for which he’s been savaged, and rightly so.

      His attack on Megan Kelley was offensive and he didn’t back down. Ditto his Pocohantas label for Elizabeth Warren, which is also tacky since the one time Warren ever used her Cherokee ancestry in an official context was when Harvard Law School was trying to play up its diversity chops for some sort of marketing purpose. She was already tenured by then, so she got no career advantage.

      He’s also said a lot of things that are shooting from the hip so much that he regularly comes off as ludicrously uninformed to experts, and on very important topics. So he comes off like a blowhard who has no idea of what he does not know and has no interest in learning and is willing to take stupid risks and do destructive thing out of ignorance or whim.

      And he lies a ton, like denying he knows Jerry Epstein, a sexual predator, or saying he made a huge amount more on a project than he did, or saying he has strong ties with Wall Street when he deals with mid-tier banks. He lies way way way more, and more obviously, than politicians do (and that baseline is very low).

      And he changes his positions so often that you have no idea what he stands for, again way way outside political norms. He seems to be making stuff up as he goes along.

      1. Pearl

        Yves, you pretty-much sum up my feelings, as well.

        Bill Maher was on with Chris Matthews about a week ago and referred to Trump as a racist; a statement which Chris Matthews made him (Maher) clarify. Maher walked it back a bit and rephrased his point with something to the effect of (just paraphrasing here) “Yeah, but if you’re a racist and you happen to be looking for a political party this year–the GOP is it….”

        Donald Trump may not be a racist at heart, but he certainly doesn’t seem to mind getting the racist vote. How can I ignore that?

      2. Cry Shop

        Lies like a ton would be both candidates, Trump is just more bold faced about it. Hillary has lied directly and indirectly to protect her investment (in Team Clinton).

        Bill Cliton has had far more exposure to Epstein’s pedophile/blackmail operations than Trump, yet Trump’s is getting a lot more press in the USA.

        Changing positions could be Clinton too, although her switching tends to be much slower and usually dressed up in equivocating language to make it more palatable.

        She’s also much more sophisticated about lying, but does it at nearly the same volume. Trump does it publicly, She does it using closed door affairs, and now white noise machines to hide those equivocations, as well as her assurances to her owners that those equivocations are just necessary political lies to the peons.

        Practically every evil, including racism, can be laid at both doors, it’s just the Clintons look and act a better game.

  4. EndOfTheWorld

    I predict Trump will win also. If it’s obvious that the dems win by rigging the voting machines in certain battleground states, Trump won’t lay down and take it quietly, like John Kerry did. Although I’m not sure there is anything he could do about that. We’re at the point where even a respected professorial type like Hudson is assuming that rigging the vote count by controlling the voting machines is likely. Yet I don’t know if there is a viable appeal process is you are defrauded by computer.

    1. Science Officer Smirnoff

      They do it differently in Germany (2005):

      . . . Paul Lehto, a U.S. election attorney and Constitutional rights expert, summarized the German court’s unambiguous, landmark finding:
      “No ‘specialized technical knowledge’ can be required of citizens to vote or to monitor vote counts.”
      There is a “constitutional requirement of a publicly observed count.”
      “[T]he government substitution of its own check or what we’d probably call an ‘audit’ is no substitute at all for public observation.”
      “A paper trail simply does not suffice to meet the above standards.
      “As a result of these principles, . . . ’all independent observers’ conclude that ‘electronic voting machines are totally banned in Germany’ because no conceivable computerized voting system can cast and count votes that meet the twin requirements of being both ‘observable’ and also not requiring specialized technical knowledge.

      1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

        There will never be a fair election ever again in this country until every last one of the electronic voting machines is scrapped for their rare earth metals and all of our votes are marked on paper ballots, properly verified, audited and stored for eternity (for historians or any challenges that may arise).

        This should’ve been a top priority for Berniecrats and if opposed by anyone, used as a bludgeoning talking point against which there is truly no good response if the politician believes in free and fair elections.

        1. aab

          I agree. Brand New Congress, Our Revolution, the Green Party, et al., are all useless if the Money Party, either R or D division, can just program the machines to change the votes. Stalin’s line comes to mind, about how who votes doesn’t matter; it’s who counts the votes.

          We need to push that before anything else, and hard.

    2. Big Mike

      I work in Washington D.C. and live in the adjacent Maryland suburbs. One thing I have noticed, the number of cars with “Bernie” bumper stickers has been off the chart. The number of cars with bumper stickers for Hillary, however, are still few. (Many fewer than the Obama stickers from a few years ago). I haven’t heard 10 people say they support her (in a government town). My prediction: Its going to be a landslide for Trump.

      1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

        Who voted for her in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, then?

        I’m being serious. I’ve felt the same thing everywhere I’ve gone and I keep “hearing” that there is this vast underground, conspicuously invisible, yet deep support for her. Yet I never see it or hear it IN PERSON, ANYWHERE. In fact most of it seems to be online, which some of it is parroted talking points from David Brock and that ilk or in the corporate media.

        The few people I’ve ever even seen that are pro-Hillary are like the audience of the DNC–very fiery, but usually veiled in an identity politics aura devoid of nearly any nuance on real issues.

        If the media and political class has been overstating (and faking things — maybe ballot stuffing, matching exit polls to vote totals) the support of her and downplaying (and whiting out ballots/throwing out ballots/rigging voting machine tallies) the support of Bernie…don’t you wonder what the REAL numbers are out there?

        1. paintedjaguar

          “If the media and political class has been overstating… and faking things”

          If anyone doubts that this is a reality, all one has to do is go back and review the period after the Nevada Dem Convention, when every major print and video outlet in the country, plus the Democratic leadership was pontificating about events that literally never happened.

    3. aab

      I read that Cliff Arnebeck went to court and got the FBI to actually watch the returns in 2012 in Ohio, to prevent the kind of batch flipping that we saw in Kentucky this year. Supposedly, that’s what led to Karl Rove’s tantrum on air. He’d paid for a good fix, and he wasn’t getting what he paid for.

      I don’t see how that would stop fractionalized voting, but I admit I haven’t researche the details of all these different types of election theft. It’s too painful. There’s also the problem that presumably, calling in the FBI would just put another thumb on the scale for Clinton.

      And yet, I will vote, and hope (and pretend?) that it has some small marginal utility.

    4. TheCatSaid

      Trump hired Paul Manafort to head his campaign. Manafort was said by election lawyer Cliff Arnebeck to have rigged the Ukrainian elections. He said it was a test run for the US elections. Manafort was indeed in Ukraine doing lots of advisory work for many years.

  5. EndOfTheWorld

    Merle Travis was very good at singing, fingerpicking, songwriting, and he even played in a few movies. Unfortunately had trouble with alcohol and pills.

    1. m

      If Obama starts a war or signs TPP he is ensuring people vote Trump. There are more people that hate trade agreements & more people ruined by false wars of Iraq/Afghanistan. No one trusts big media or big gov from either party.

      1. John Wright

        The TPP will not be pushed by Obama until AFTER the elections in the lame duck session.

        So I believe the TPP will pass in the lame duck session, with overwhelming Republican and Blue Dog Democrat support (especially retiring Blue Dogs viewing the revolving door).

        It is Obama’s parting shot showing he determined that bi-partisanship means giving the wealthy and the Republicans exactly what they want.

        HRC can assume the presidency, crocodile tear up about the harmful TPP that was passed before she was elected, while stating it can’t be undone..

        My only hope is one of the other nations throws a wrench in the TPP works.

        For a hint of the actions of the future imperial presidency of “well-connected mediocrity” Hillary Clinton consider these two events:

        1. Sleazy, corrupt DWS resigns, only to be rescued by a new job by a grateful HRC
        2. The non-binding Democratic platform did not get a zero-cost to Clinton anti-TPP platform plank,
        True hippie punching, as HRC stays on message for the TPP.

        The Democrats really threw their low dollar supporters/foot soldiers under the bus with this ticket. If HRC is impeached/becomes incapacitated then Tim Kaine is installed to pursue the Neolib agenda.

        I don’t believe the Democratic party can be reformed.

      2. Praedor

        If Obama has a chance to sign off TPP it will NOT help Trump. It will occur AFTER the vote is already over in the lame duck congress. He will present TPP as fait accompli to Hillary who will be more than pleased to say, “I was opposed to TPP but it’s now out of my hands. Oh well, just have to live with it.”

    2. EndOfTheWorld

      Merle Travis played a cameo role in From Here to Eternity, in which the 1ST SGT, played by Burt Lancaster, makes out with his company commander’s wife on the beach, a risque scene at the time. Frank Sinatra won an Oscar for jumping into a fist fight with the immortal cry: “I ate my Wheaties!!”

  6. allan

    “The potential “Hillary Republicans” who are turning away from Trump … far outnumber the Sanders supporters who …”

    It was striking throughout the convention that the speakers from Clinton on down focused their criticism almost exclusively on Trump, not on Republicans in general. The fact that the GOP as a whole has gone bat-sh*t crazy over the last 15 years, fueled by Radio Rwanda in the form of Fox News and right-wing radio, went unmentioned. Presumably because the campaign will spend all of its energy and resources going after the `moderate Republicans’, who will turn out to be as numerous, and as reliable, as the `moderate opposition’ in Syria.

    One last thing: I was running errands last night and caught Gen. Allen’s chant-fest on the car radio. It was as if I were trapped in an episode of the Twilight Zone, having gotten into the car and entered an alternate universe where the Dems of 2016 had become the GOP of 2004. All that was missing were the Purple Heart bandaids. God help us all.

    1. DanB

      The name never mentioned at the DEMOCRATIC Party convention was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was such a utopian by today’s DNC standards.

      1. Pat

        He was mentioned by Hillary, sadly to quote “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” all within a speech riddled with fear the scary Trump.

    2. PlutoniumKun

      On a purely anecdotal basis, I think many even moderate Republicans have a visceral hatred of the Clintons that goes beyond their politics. I strongly suspect that many who would be persuaded to vote a blue dog would find themselves just unable to vote for HC, even if they hate Trump. I do wonder if the campaign has built this into their strategy. I’ve a feeling that many of the type of old style Republican voter the Clinton campaign is relying on will simply not vote or vote Libertarian instead.

      1. Carla

        Greens and Libertarians should be able to make some real progress in this election. Bill Weld running for VP on the Libertarian ticket is expected to draw some traditional Republicans. I hope the Greens will start running people for local offices and begin acting like a political party… this is a great opportunity.

      2. jrs

        Yea a visceral hatred of Hillary AND of the Dem party (liberal pinkos that they are – hahaha). She is barking up the wrong tree. Disgusted Rs will just not vote, vote libertarian, or hold their nose as tight as they can and vote Donald Trump because they are afterall R’s (that’s what Bob @#$# Dole said he would do). The moderate rebels in Syria is an apt comparison, moderate Republicans, haha, if they haven’t already joined the Dem party, they aren’t moderate Republicans.

        And she doesn’t even realize (or doesn’t want to) that throwing a few bones to Sanders supporters would actually get more votes than chasing that phantom. You and I may not believe whatever bones she threw but it actually is better strategy, as she’d convince more than the dead end she is pursuing.

    3. RUKidding

      During the Gen Allen war rant, I felt like Alice through the Looking Glass, esp when all the hideous “USA! USA! USA!” chanting went on, replete with Allen chanting alongside. I later heard that the chant was planned and choreographed in advance to drone out the Sanders delegation who apparently were chanting either “No More War” and/or “No More Drones.”

      Sad to say that several purportedly “left wing” blogs today were resoundingly spanking the protestors and hecklers.

      Egad. That was one big old slick slick slick show filled with hype spin lies and bullshit. Hard to take. And freakin’ hard to accept that THIS is the so-called “Democratic” party, which has literally co-opted just about every rightwing GOP talking point out there: shining city on the hill (BARFARAMA), exceptionalism, blah de blah.

      And all the so-called “lefty” blogs are in paroxisms of delight over this development.

      Does. Not. Compute.

      When do I awaken from this nightmare?

      1. TedWa

        Well Said !! No kidding RUKidding. Watching the news praising and slanting the news in favor of the neoliberal neocons makes me feel like I’m existing in some sort of parallel universe! What the heck is going on. It’s getting so I can’t stand to watch the news anymore, it’s so perversely slanted to one extreme view or the other, as if an in-between never existed.

        1. TedWa

          Add to that, why did people vote in Wall Street (in the form of HRC) when they KNOW Wall Street is the corrupting influence destroying our financial security and sovereignty and seeking to make us into serfs, when we had the perfect candidate running on our money and running for us??!! It boggles the mind… Can Americans really be that dense that they would prefer more abuses from Wall Street?

  7. John Candlish

    The value of the Trump smear leads me to question its impact on Google and Facebook’s recent strong quarterly results. If there are payoffs for skewing search does that count as ad revenue?

  8. flora

    Probably few caught the threatening hint [Obama] dropped about Hillary’s plan for corporations to share their profits with their workers. This sounds to me like the Pinochet plan to privatize Social Security by turning it into exploitative ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Programs).

    Oh! Thanks for the heads-up.

    1. RUKidding

      Yes. Thanks for that.

      Let us never forget that one of HRC’s favored advisors is none other than that bastard of evilness, Henry Kissinger, who also aided and abetted Pinochet.

      No coincidence.

  9. JaaaaayCeeeee

    This article castigating Bernie depends on some big assumptions we know aren’t true.

    Bernie promised he wouldn’t go 3rd party and promised he would support the primary winner, so you’re mapping out forks in roads that never existed. You also ignore that supporting Hillary Clinton maximizes Bernie’s ability, getting help from progressives like Sen. Warren and Rep. Keith Ellison, to prevent Clinton, Chuck Schumer, etc. from doing even worse than Obama did, the minute she’s inaugurated. Both legislatively and in appointing worse than Rubinites. He’s also positioned himself most strongly to keep TPP from being passed in the lame duck, which alone is such a game over scenario that it’s hard to disagree with Bernie’s choices.

    A few other things that are worth considering: Bernie, a good negotiator, has left himself the most possible options. Not only has he kept his donor list, but remember that only Bernie Sanders had the progressive record and the platform to challenge Hillary Clinton, our entire media and all the big donors, and to educate voters who only hear from these sources. Now, because of his success in the face of total media and party opposition, whomever he endorses in the future won’t need as long and progressive a record. Also, if Bernie really can keep activists for multiple needs working together, Bernie will start undoing some of the damage that Tim Kaine and then Debbie Wasserman Schultz did to the party, the fastest way possible.

    I share your wish that Bernie go 3rd party, because of the power of the presidency to decide in whose name laws are enforced, audit the Defense Department, run the USTrade office, appoint across the entire administration’s departments and to conduct foreign policy and our military, let alone use the bully pulpit. It would have made such a difference, so quickly. But as Bernie Sanders often said in his presidential campaign, you shouldn’t count him out.

    1. Jeremy Grimm

      I agree with you regarding the larger wisdom of Bernie Sanders in endorsing Hillary and stepping back.

      One thing Bernie Sanders campaign accomplished was placing the corruption of the DNC and of our political system in undimmed sunlight. I recall a slogan from the 60’s and 70’s something to the effect “change the system from within.” The Sanders campaign showed just how possible that really is. Third Party efforts in American Politics have a long history of going down in defeat. Even if a Sanders-Stein ticket “won” the Presidential election I wonder whether they would be allowed to take office.

    2. paintedjaguar

      “whomever [Bernie] endorses in the future won’t need as long and progressive a record”

      Well, that was certainly true until recently. Now that he has given arch neoliberal Hillary Clinton not just grudging support, but his full-throated endorsement… maybe not so much. Which is a shame since that trust gave Bernie genuine political influence. I wonder if he really thought about that before choosing his current course of action.

  10. grayslady

    We have truly reached a new low in this country with the nomination by a major party of an unindicted felon. I don’t see how anyone with a scrap of moral conscience could vote for Hillary. The political revolution truly begins when we kick this “vulgar and terminally unethical” couple (thank you Bob Herbert) out of D.C. for good.

  11. Arizona Slim

    Hudson nailed when he said that Sanders gave up. And that happened well before his Clinton endorsement.

    I could see signs of it during the debates. He seemed like he was deferring to Hillary.

    Likewise, during his rallies. I went to three of them.

    First two, he was on fire. Third was so low energy. I could not believe that I was hearing Bernie Sanders. And I was so disappointed that I left early.

    1. PlutoniumKun

      I’d wondered about that. He’s not young and he isn’t a particularly fit and healthy man for his age. A lot of younger, fitter people would wilt under the stress of a campaign. I wonder if he simply ran out of steam physically and mentally.

    2. mad as hell.

      The aha moment came when Sanders said.

      “Let me say something that may not be great politics. The Secretary is right. The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”

      That was the warning to me that Sanders was not interested in taking down her majesty. I knew right then without a doubt he was not fully in it to win it. This was the revelation much like when your spouse gets a call late at night and the conversation is in hushed tones or your child comes home for the first time with a glazed look in their eye or you hear that a relative has just been hospitalized but not to worry because it’s nothing serious.

      You know something ain’t just right and that things are probaly going get worse real soon!

      1. Russell

        He needed Tulsi Gabbard earlier than traditional to guard his flanks and negate his culturally acquired deference to women.
        It was a tragic mistake that he put Jane forth instead of being seen with Gabbard.
        Gabbard acted all along like whom they would all be if they weren’t sellouts etc.
        More broadly the US Empire is Rome as in end of Republic on to Emperors. Wrestling is for older women and so is the new party G C D gee C Dee HOP FORGET IT spellcheck

  12. aronj

    This article and the commentary appear to suggest Naked Capitalism has been taken over by the pro-gambling crowd, now led by crazy Donald Trump.
    Actually, using a private e-mail server is no worse than the government servers which have been hacked many times and sensitive information downloaded by unfriendly parties.
    Do a Google search on Significant hacks of government e-mails.

    If not Bernie, vote for Trump is no solution to our nation’s problems. Get real!
    Please cancel my long standing financial support
    Aronj

    1. John Wright

      You suggest:

      “Actually, using a private e-mail server is no worse than the government servers which have been hacked many times and sensitive information downloaded by unfriendly parties.”

      HRC was the head of the state department, with a $50.3 billion dollar budget.

      One could suggest a leader of a branch of the government who knew their department’s email server was not secure would immediately show wise leadership by getting the problem fixed on the government server.

      This is truly a dereliction of duty as HRC, allegedly knowing what she did about government email servers, should have made it a high priority to secure the state department server for national security reasons.

      Further compounding this dereliction of duty, HRC continued to allow her state department employees to use a server she viewed as insecure, and rolled her own system.

      Did she warn her employees about using the government server?

      1. aronj

        Dear John,
        You obviously did not check out the dates for most of the hacks in the Google search. They are recent and government wide, not just in the state department servers. Anyone thinking the problem is fixable obviously doesn’t understand how difficult this is.

        Your hate of Hillary even though she is the lesser of evils illustrates a the current Republican thought process.

        Incidentally, I am still a member of an seriously endangered species- Eisenhower Republicans. Ike Eisenhower represents the last time I voted for a president rather than for the lesser of evils.

        1. flora

          The issue with the private server when Hillary was Sec.of State is that:
          :”WASHINGTON — The State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.

          …”The inspector general found that Mrs. Clinton “had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business” with department officials but that, contrary to her claims that the department “allowed” the arrangement, there was “no evidence” she had requested or received approval for it.”
          http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/state-department-hillary-clinton-emails.html?_r=0

          and
          “Although Hillary Clinton and her allies may be claiming that her private e-mail system is no big deal, Hillary’s State Department actually forced the 2012 resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Kenya in part for setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail system. According to a 2012 report from the State Department’s inspector general, former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration set up a private e-mail system for his office in 2011….”
          http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/05/hillarys-state-dept-forced-the-resignation-of-an-ambassador-for-using-private-e-mail/

          and this:
          ” The policy, detailed in a manual for agency employees, adds clarity to an issue at the center of a growing controversy over Clinton’s reliance on a private email account. Aides to Clinton, as well as State Department officials, have suggested that she did nothing inappropriate because of fuzzy guidelines and lack of specific rules on when and how official documents had to be preserved during her years as secretary.

          “But the 2005 policy was described as one of several “clear cut” directives the agency’s own inspector general relied on to criticize the conduct of a U.S. ambassador who in 2012 was faulted for using email outside of the department’s official system.

          “’It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [Automated Information System], which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information,” the Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states. ‘”
          http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/state-department-email-rule-hillary-clinton-115804

          The point is that Hillary surreptitiously violated her own dept’s security rules without permission. Violated policies that others were dismissed for violating. Warned subordinate State Dept employees against using private email servers for their govt communications. Had State Dept techs temporarily disable State’s email server security measures to find a glitch in her private email system. The point is that Hillary violated policy and security measures. That is an order of magnitude different than the blythe disclaimer that “all servers get hacked, so what’s the problem.”

            1. MaroonBulldog

              Why just fix the spelling when one can fix the whole word?

              “Blithe” i(“light-hearted and cheerful”) is suggestive, but it doesn’t carry the strong connotation needed to describe this “disclaimer”: I would have preferred “cavalier” (“given to off-handed disposition of important matters”) or even “light-minded” (“frivolous”) .

              Another word I expect to see a lot this election season is “specious” (“superficially plausible but deceptive’). That could be an additional modifier to “blithe”, but not a substitute, in regard to this “disclaimer”.

              1. flora

                I’m using the second definition of “Blithe”:

                “2. Lacking or showing a lack of due concern; casual: spoke with blithe ignorance of the true situation.

                Which agrees with your point. ‘Cavalier’ may be the stronger word since it refers specifically to matters of importance. Thanks.

        2. shinola

          Again, this time around it’s not just LOTE, it’s about the Lesser EFFECTIVE Evil.

          Which of the two evil candidates is more likely to be able to push their (evil) agenda through?

    2. cm

      Do you feel she did her duty in turning over all e-mails in compliance with FOIA?

      Did she cooperate with Federal investigators?

      Do you disagree with State Dept reports of her shoddy handling of the records?

    3. jrs

      Even if it’s no more secure, I.T. policy is policy and you follow it. People like Clinton wouldn’t be able to hold a job in the real world. She’d be fired so fast she wouldn’t know what hit her.

    4. oh

      Did it ever occur to you that Hillary used her private e-mail server to circumvent FOIA? BTW, the so called sysadmin who set up her server charge only $5,000. She got what she paid for. If you like Hillary so much I can suggest Huffington Post or many other shill sites for you. NC is the best site for the truth unless you don’t want to know the truth or can’t handle it. Good bye!

  13. simjam

    The key will be the debates. Will there be any? I can see Hilary “negotiating (stalling)” up to the election.

    1. two beers

      If HRC stalls out on the debates, the Orange One would be well advised to go ahead and debate the Green and Libertarian candidates. It would get yuge ratings, make HRC look like a coward, and finally expose third party ideas to the mainstream. The MSM would be in a pickle: do they go ahead and broadcast a non-HRC debate and anger the Queen of Chaos, or do they pass up the yuge dollars such debates would earn?

  14. Dr B Gerard

    Excellent article. However, having said that:

    “The problem with Trump is not mistrust;”

    Really? Do I trust Trump to give the keys to 6970 nukes, 10 carrier strike groups, and a $1Trillion/yr military-industrial complex to a bigoted, sociopathic liar. NOT. I still do remember what it was like the first time I gave my car keys to my 16-year old son. Give the nuclear keys to Trump – ABSOLUTELY. NEVER.

    Which is not to say that I am totally thrilled with neocon hawk Hillary. Number 1 on my list of the 9 reasons why I voted for Bernie rather than her in our Primary is that she voted for Bush’s Iraq War and my son did six tours.

    “The solution is not to save the Democratic Party, but to replace it.”

    True enough, but that will not happen between now and 08 November.

    We have a binary choice on 08 Nov – I do not think a replay Nader in FL in 2000 is a particularly smart option.

    1. jrs

      Why can’t the choice be that noone should have the keys to the nukes? That’s assuming anyone does single handedly which is almost certainly false anyway. You think senile old Reagan did? Really you really truly believe that do you?

    2. John Wright

      From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Codes

      “Should the president decide to order the launch of nuclear weapons, they would be taken aside by the “carrier” of the nuclear football and the briefcase opened. Once opened, the president would decide which “Attack Options”, specific orders for attacks on specific targets, to use. The Attack Options are preset war plans developed under OPLAN 8010, and include Major Attack Options (MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). The chosen attack option and the Gold Codes would then be transmitted to the NMCC via a special, secure channel. As commander-in-chief, the president is the only individual with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons;however, the two-man rule still applies. The National Command Authority comprising the president and Secretary of Defense must jointly authenticate the order to use nuclear weapons to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The order would then be transmitted over a tan-yellow phone, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Alerting Network, otherwise known as the “Gold Phone”, that directly links the NMCC with United States Strategic Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.”

      So there are some checks to prevent Donald Trump or HRC launching a nuclear strike in a fit of temper..

      The “nuclear football” is a briefcase, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football

  15. fosforos

    For the first time this week I actually saw a certain name, thanks to Michael Hudson: “One might think that the Democrats would see the Obama administration as an albatross around their neck, much as Gore had Bill Clinton around his neck in 2000. Gore didn’t want him showing his face in the campaign.” So was it that the Clintons didn’t want him to show his face in Philadelphia, that Gore wanted no part of the Clinton, or that both were the case? I strongly suspect the latter.

  16. TomDority

    Hilary likes to redefine terms. ‘We are the most progressive platform ever’ she likes to say but, in one of her debates with Bernie she redefined “progressive”
    She said that we are making lots of progress on different issues. Therefore, her logic goes, she is ‘progressive’
    So, instead of universal healthcare being progressive, we are mandated to pay for health insurance (not healthcare) in order to insure corporate healthcare insurance profits (the rentier fire sector) —-………..this is Hilary’s definition of progressive and, it is how she uses it when speaking and policy making.
    Beware her definitions… a re-working of the definition of is

  17. Betina

    This is some irresponsible stuff. For all of Naked Capitalism’s concerns with Clinton’s neocon tendencies, you neglect to understand that we are terrified of Trump here in Europe, and as a Brazilian, I do not know a single person from my country who would prefer him as President. 2016 Democrats are not “neoliberals,” even as they operate in a neoliberal structure. The only thing any of this indicates is Trump has is that he has *no record* – Hudson thinks that every last thing that happened under the Obama government was out of the President’s personal desire to make it so. If Trump had a political career, he would be no better, if not much worse. Trump’s career in business does not support Hudson’s optimism, at all.

    1. RUKidding

      I do agree with you. I have many friends in Europe and Australia who are literally begging me to vote for Clinton – and they don’t like her much either.

      I love NC, but I disagree with the fawning acceptance of Trump as somehow fit to be President. He’s a racist, bigoted, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist jerk with no really good plans in place. The so-called “ideas” or “plans” that he has do not pencil out and would bankrupt this country should they ever be implemented. I agree that Clinton is awful and was well nigh disgusted with the DNC convention (but expected nothing less or different).

      But voting for Trump is irresponsible in my opinion. I just cannot go there. Yet and still in this nation today, you are free to vote for who you want.

      1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

        Very confused here.

        You would rather vote against the egomaniacal, sexist, xenophobe, who is willing to downshift international military interventions, lessen spending on NATO, work WITH the Russians on ISIS, possibly exit trade neoliberal trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO (while not adopting the TPP), etc…

        …and vote FOR the person who voted for the invasion of Iraq, supported NAFTA and the undermining of universal health coverage in support of private insurance companies/managed care, was likely the deciding factor in overthrowing the Libyan government, was instrumental in supporting multiple dictatorships in Haiti (good pieces linked to that on NC recently), was possibly instrumental in and for sure responsible for the support after the fact of the coup in Honduras, was a founder of what might go down in history as one of the largest fraudulent charities ever (with those tentacles doing the very same things the DNC is accusing Putin of doing), has a history of quid pro quo dealings with predator international investment banks and vulture capitalists (which Elizabeth Warren has identified in speeches that are available on Youtube)… one could go on and on, but basically the candidate who has never met a nation state or corrupt business dealing that she didn’t want to stick herself in the middle of the dealings with…

        I would think the xenophobe might look more attractive to non-passport holders of the American empire simply based upon a cursory reading of history. But nothing should surprise me anymore.

        1. sharonsj

          You can’t rely on anything Trump says because he can contradict himself in the same sentence. Also, since he knows nothing, he has surrounded himself with ultra-right-wing loonies (like Mike Pence) who will be the real powers behind the throne. That said, I’m still not voting for Hillary.

          1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

            I grant you that you and I can’t rely on anything Trump says, but so then why are the traditional backers of the Republican party running to Hillary?

            Who do THEY believe?

      2. Yves Smith Post author

        There were some newbie walk-ins at the top of the thread who were keen on Trump, which I agree was creepy.

        But aside from our relentless jgordon, no regular LIKES Trump. The ones who say they will vote for him weigh that choice against Jill Stein. They see themselves reluctantly voting for Trump as the “less effective evil,” that as an outsider, hated by his own party, he won’t get much done. Think Jimmy Carter cubed. The other reasons for being willing to consider Trump are that Hilary clearly wants a hot war with Russia, and that she will push for the TPP, which is a dangerous and irrevocable deal.

        1. aab

          As someone who consistently advocates here for Trump being the lesser evil, I want to chime in behind Yves. I do not like Trump. I just consider putting him into the Presidency to be a far safer choice than enabling Clinton into power, and I recognize that however I choose to vote, one of those two people will be President. I also value highly the possibility of weakening the hold of big finance and corporations over the Democratic Party by purging the Clintons and leaving the party too weak to be of much use to its current owners.

          Fundamentally, I am Anyone But Clinton, a handy catchphrase that captures my perspective exactly. I will probably end up voting for a socialist third party no one ever discusses here, because why not support the party closest to my own values and policy desires? But if Stein OR Trump actually got enough traction to possibly take my state, I’d add my vote to that pile, happily. Well, “happily” in that I would feel I was making the best possible choice with whatever tiny amount of agency my vote represents. But the next four years are likely to be quite grim, no matter what.

        2. John Wright

          As I live in CA, which is assumed to be in the bag for HRC, my vote against her is only of import to me.

          This election is akin to someone who desperately needs a tricky surgery and their choice of surgeons is limited to two with long records of malpractice but with good media advertising campaigns.

          When I visualize a President Hillary Clinton, my only hope is that once she has successfully climbed the Presidential mountain she has so doggedly pursued (as her faux “namesake” Sir Edmund did his), she might realize she should serve the people, not the elite.

          But my hope in the original trademarked “Hope” candidate Obama dissipated rather quickly.

          And Hillary has a lifetime record of serving herself, her family and her ambitions, not the people.

          I also view Trump as the LOE

    2. pretzelattack

      i believe you will find that today’s democrats are indeed neoliberals. your characterization of hudson is way off the mark, too; he is properly critical of obama for his many sellouts of progressives, which he freely chose to do.

    3. Dave

      Who cares what foreigners think about our election?

      Only people with financial ties to the outcome of the election can be expected to really care. Goldman Sach’s tentacles are worldwide.

      I love those old cartoons from the 1890s that show the reformers smashing the monopolists. Envision Trump with an axe, chopping off the tentacles of the vampire squid which screams in agony and bleeds to death.

      I’m reminded of the buttinsky old woman from Austria who is always lecturing me on how we treat our “Africa-Americans.”
      I respond with , “So, how do you treat the gypsies in Austria?”
      ” Oh, that’s different!” she shrieks.

      1. oh

        The last time I checked it was the foreign outfit that doled out the Nobel Peace Prize to the Droner-in-Chief. So much for listening to the foreigners. We’re the ones who’ll suffer most from a neo-liberal win.

    4. low integer

      Look, I live in Australia and the msm Clinton bias verges on is ridiculous. Why is Europe more terrified of Trump than Clinton? The media? I understand Trump is problematic, but do you know Hillary’s history? Looking forward to a hot war with Russia?

    5. Luciano Moffatt

      As an Argentinian, I urge you to vote for Trump.
      As bad as Bush was for you and for Middle East, in Latin America we enjoy the possibility of finding our own ways to develop, as Bush did not care about us.
      Once Obama got to office, the wave changed starting from the Honduras’ coup, followed by Paraguay coup. Now, the only countries resisting are the ones that reformed its constitution: Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
      Policies of Democrats to Latin America, from some reason that I do not comprehend, have been particularly bad for Latin America. The only exception I remember is the active policies of Jimmy Carter against the violation of human rights in Argentina.

    6. EoinW

      Not surprised by the European take on Trump. I’ve caught bits and pieces of CBC coverage(can’t stomach much of it) and they make CNN look objective! Trump has been neatly inserted into the bad guy role and all coverage assumes the viewers only care about one thing: stopping Trump. You’d think they were still covering Iraq and talking about Saddam, not Donald. I can’t call the CBC’s coverage of Trump juvenile because it’s barely infantile in its simplicity. Other Canadian media outlets are pretty much falling in with the CBC narrative. After all, you think pro-neocon/pro-war Sun Media is going to give Trump and his anti-war rhetoric any chance?

      To put it simply: Canadian media is a captured entity. No surprise as Canada has always done what it takes to have a presence in the imperial court(even if it’s a spot in the far corner). This is Canada’s reason for being: to kiss the imperial ass. First the British Empire and now the American Empire. As a good loyal supplicant, we’ve now stepped forward to combat the latest imperial threat: Donald Trump.

      The irony is delightful. Part of the national narrative here is how much better educated we are than those ignorant Americans. I’m sure Europeans share the same conceit. Yet we are the ones swallowing all the establishment propaganda while Americans are seeing through all the media lies, are engaged and demanding change. I guess this makes sense. After all, Americans have run the world, while Europeans are the “has beens” and Canadians the “never have been at all”!

      1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

        If I’m not mistaken I believe that it’s already been debunked that Trump supporters are ignorant as it is. The corporate media will always quote the crazies when it suits them and ignore any inconvenient truths, statements or memes. (An older NC link had even noted that Trump supporters had the highest average income, not that I’m saying that’s important, but it may be from a managerial class perspective).

        That would be hard to believe anyway after seeing the true believers in the audience of the DNC last week.

    7. Jeremy Grimm

      I don’t see what optimism Hudson manifests about Donald Trump in his essay. Mildly put he shows a lack of optimism about Hillary as well as disgust at Sanders capitulation.

      Here’s my penny’s worth of a two cents — how I see our choices in the upcoming election:

      Trump has some very skivy friends and associates. The Bill Moyers website posted a review of Donald Trump’s business associates and friends http://billmoyers.com/story/donald-trump-story-youre-not-hearing/ [not sure if this has already been referenced in the past — if so sorry]. Trump is in a business very close to the “legitimate” side of organized crime — casinos and large scale real-estate development. Trump makes outrageous statements I’ve seen described as explicit statements of the coded statements the Republican party rolled out to draw the South into their party. Trump also makes a lot of statements with a ring of truth seeming to “talk truth to power.” Several people I’ve discussed politics with favor Trump just because the people who run our show have displayed such plain distaste for him.

      Hillary Clinton’s email server fiasco would land most ordinary holders of government clearance in prison or at very least put them back on the streets with a large blackball next to their name. But I consider the email server affair a minor breach compared to her ties with big money and big Corporations, her actions as Secretary of State and her efforts on her Healthcare plan during Bill’s reign.

      Trump says a lot of the right stuff — but so did Obama — and Hillary tries to say the right stuff. The difference between Trump and Hillary is that enough is known from Hillary’s past actions to leave little doubt about her mendacity. Trump’s business associations and his handling of his businesses only suggest he too just mouths the right words.

      I perceive Trump as a representative of the local big money and power centers, the people who run the show in state houses and county freeholders — people rooted to specific locales. I view organized crime as relatively respectful of eachother’s turfs. Trump is the friend to people who build highways to nowhere and use eminent domain to take over beach areas for their developments in places like Atlantic City.

      I perceive Hillary as a representative of jet-set big money and international corporate interests with a willingness to support all their most destructive activities including wars.

      I can’t offer any specifics or solid reasons for why I have these feelings and perceptions about the candidates.

      We have no good choices here. I am terrified of Donald Trump and of Hillary Clinton. I could never vote for either one of them and I don’t regard Jill Stein or the Greens as viable alternatives. I plan to renew my passport and lie low someplace away from large urban areas if possible. I can salve any concerns that not voting for Hillary is a vote for Trump with the forlorn hope that should Trump win he will at least tend to keep the destruction within our borders.

    8. fajensen

      There is no “we” here. After the mess in Ukraine, Syria and Libya we now know that a continuation of Obama’s policies will basically destroy Europe.

      The odds are that our leadership will simply go along with less US stupidity when it’s coming from Trump, while they will certainly follow Hillary to whatever end.

    9. voxhumana

      I will never vote for Trump. I don’t believe him anymore than I believe Clinton. But I can not ignore the fact that he helped to undermine, in important ways should they stick, the traditional Republican Party and its traditionally egregious platform… and, most importantly, he stopped, indeed embarrassed, the Bush dynasty. Schadenfreude on steroids for some of us, whatever happens in November.

      And then there’s the fact that if not Trump than who… Cruz?

      If the USA (and the world) should have to suffer a GOP victory, better Trump than the other buffoons? I also think both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress could join to take a stand against his agenda – for different reasons, certainly – resulting in stalemate and, as Lambert says, stalemate isn’t the worst we can hope for these days.

      But I won’t vote for Trump.

      1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

        You make an interesting point here. Even if Trump has an only marginally effective presidency (take this to mean whatever you would like, lol) and the constituencies that vote for him feel that he is better than Hillary would’ve been or the other Republican clown show that he beat in 2016, it pretty much means Ted Cruz’s political career is history as Trump (or a hand-picked successor) will be running as a Republican again in 2020.

        Trump going down this year means we are going to see and hear 4 years of Cruz campaigning. And with the $hill as president there will be A LOT to campaign against. Yuck.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          No, Cruz will never be the Republican nominee. You guys didn’t pay attention to the Republican primaries (they were painful, I admit). Cruz is hated even more by the press and party than Trump, and is sorely lacking in his skills for self-promotioin.

          1. Treadingwaterbutstillkicking

            “You guys didn’t pay attention to the Republican primaries (they were painful, I admit).”

            Since this seems to be addressed to my comment I have to ask: where did I say that Cruz would ever be the Republican nominee or that he was even liked by the media or a plurality of the Republicans?

            I simply noted that without Trump Cruz’s quixotic political career will continue and that he’ll have a lot of ammunition to use. My reading of the Republican primaries was exactly what you said–he is both hated by large swaths of the party but also has a strong base that will let him keep running in the future. Besides Trump, he appeared to me to have the largest following nationally or maybe I wasn’t seeing the primaries correctly?

            With the exit polls matching the actual primary results (without all the “adjustments” used for the Dems) on the Republican side, I’ve also been led to believe they are probably a more truthful reading of that electorate as well.

  18. Jim

    The reality of the Democrats consists of a party with significant constituencies that increasingly support a militarized foreign policy as well as economic/cultural policy that is anti-growth, anti-working class and pro-ethnic/race identity– in essence–more and more classically reactionary.

    Modern Democrats have also increasingly merged with and identify primarily with upper-middle class professional/managerial/bureaucratic power centers as well as with key sectors of Big capital and Big Finance.

    This party now stand completely against that average citizens interest in rising living standards, equality of opportunity and the strengthening of democracy.

    What was once progressive has become terminally reactionary–what was once considered left has become terminally right.

  19. Booneavenueboy

    I write from Lyon, France. I will be voting for Jill Stein, but rooting for Trump. The anti-Trump bias in the American media is beyond belief, matched only by its hatred for Putin. No one has mentioned how a Trump victory would undermine the two-party duopoly, a huge gain for America.

  20. sharonsj

    You know, the light bulb over my head went on when Hillary said she was against the TPP “as currently written.” Political speak for: she’ll fiddle with some words, pronounce it fixed, and pass it. And while she and Kaine claim now to be against the TPP, her surrogates extol her penchant for “free trade” and are sure she will support it.

  21. Karl

    Bizarre post. Obama bailed out the banks? Most of the bank bailout money from TARP was spent under the Bush administration after TARP was enacted in October 2008, before Obama took office, and the bulk of the remaining money spent under TARP after Obama took office was for the auto industry rescue. I’m no Hillary fan, but get your facts straight even if they don’t fit your narrative. I used to love Naked Capitalism, but it has gone off the rails recently with its authors’ bizarre assertions — Krugman a necon, Kaine a Blue Dog Democrat, Hillary soliciting donations from the Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the one hand (both big fans of hers, I hear), and George Soros on the other — and conspiracy theories (Diebold in league with the DNC to fix elections — evidence, please). And let me know when the remake of the “Siberian Candidate” (sic) is released to theaters so I can catch it before your seemingly preferred candidate Trump — that pacifist who thinks nuclear proliferation is a good thing and won’t rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS, and that man of the working class who proposes yuuuge! tax cuts for the top 1/10th of 1% — bans such subversive material.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      You suffer from a reading comprehension problem, so you should read another site.

      Obama whipped for the TARP. His support as President presumptive at that point, was essential for its passing (and I have that directly from Congressional staffers). Obama appointed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, who refused to nationalize any bank, even when, in early 2009, even only mildly left of center economists like Paul Krugman were calling for nationalization of Citi and Bank of America. Shiela Bair’s book Taking the Bull by the Horn details how Geithner fought her.

      Geithner was also the architect of the second, stealth bank bailout, that of letting the banks out of massive liability for violating their own mortgage securitization agreements, which we described long form here for the better part of two years, and shorter form in a New York Times op ed. The National Mortgage Settlement of 2012 was a massive get out of liability almost free card for the banks, and Obama refused to require bank servicers to make principal modifications for viable borrowers, which would have greatly lowered both investor losses and foreclosures. The liability here was hundreds of billions of dollars when the banks had not rebuilt their balance sheets, so this was most assuredly a bailout.

      As for your other arguments, you seem to have a fondness for fabrication. We’ve never posted on the Kochs and the Clintons, but a highly respected political reporter, Lee Fang of the Intercept, has on how the Clinton campaign has deep ties to Koch lobbyists, so you seem unable to remember where you read things. We’ve repeatedly called Krugman a neoliberal because he is one. While technically Kaine cannot be a Blue Dog, because as a Senator while the Blue Dogs are a House coalition. But Hudson finessed that by calling him a Senate Blue Dog. If you Google the term, it is used both specifically to refer to the House coalition, but also generically to describe conservative Southern Democrats.

      And while Clinton boosters like The Nation and FiveThirtyEight in recent days have tried denying that Kaine is a Blue Dog, more detached media outlets like the UK’s Sun have used that precise term to describe his politics. Now that the anti-regulation, pro-business Blue Dogs in the House have been largely turfed out, they appear to have been redefined as being further right than they were to Kaine’s benefit. They were “pragmatic” and pro-corporate, which hews to Kaine’s pro free trade, pro bank deregulation stance. And did you miss that he is also anti abortion?.

      Nor have we said anything re Diebold being in cahoots with the Dems. As for Trump’s tax cuts, with Federal spending at 18% of GDP, he can’t cut taxes much, as he’s finding out. You seem to have missed that he’s had to go back to the drawing board on his plan, and is already messaging that the cuts for the rich would be way lower than he originally contemplated. If he wants to lower taxes for the rich, he’s going to have to raise taxes elsewhere, and he’ll rapidly find out that all those “somewheres” have lots of lobbyists protecting them.

      We don’t have a position on Trump but we have pointed out at length the way the media is not merely cheerleading for Hillary but distorting things Trump said and/or taking them badly out of context, the latest being his joke about Russia turning over Hillary’s e-mails. If you look at what Trump actually said, he said no one knew who did the hack (and computer forensic experts confirm that is true) and then said if Russia were behind the hack, it would be bad, and next said something like, “Hey, China, Russia, or whoever in your bed, if you have Hillary’s missing e-mails, it would be great if you turned them over. I’m sure you would be rewarded handsomely by our media.”

      More broadly, what seems to offend you is that we and our readers, to borrow Glen Ford’s expression, are willing to consider that Trump may well be the less effective evil. We think both are dreadful candidates, but Trump, who would be even more of an outsider than Jimmy Carter, is more likely to get little done. And let us not forget that Carter had Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, and was not despised by his own party, as Trump is.

      You seem to be attributing many remarks made in comments to the Lambert and me. Readers argue a lot of positions we don’t agree with, like pro gunz and the Tory PR that the EU will roll over in Brexit talks to preserve their exports to the UK. I gather you’d rather have us censor comments so they reflect only your views.

      Shorter: better trolls, please.

  22. anonymous

    One would hope that in time, shorter the better, we will come to abandon the euphemism of “neocon” and replace it with its more accurate label; zionist. One needs but look at the Kagan/Nuland?PNAC cabal (Nuland HRC’s SOD and Cheney’s girl?) to get a clear view of the degree to which HRC is bought and paid for by the israeli entity. This is a monster in our body politic that is completely obfuscated by the well funded and ubiquitous zionist hasbara machine. In fact, the only common ground between Trump/Clinton/Sanders is blind allegiance to the israeli entity. Yet, it goes unspoken that this blind allegiance is to the leading proponent of state terrorism (ok, US and Saudi, too) in the world. Notice not a word said in the campaign regarding the israeli entity’s chronic violence against Palestinians, Bedouins, North African Blacks. All cleverly disguised in all media outlets and political campaigns under the misnomer of neoconservatism by the vast hasbara machine. Step one in the quest for a more equitable, just and peaceful world is the elimination of the israeli entity’s disproportionate influence (indeed, hijacking) of US foreign policy. HRC, if anything, is nothing but the business as usual. Stop with the neocon and start with the zionist and support BDS

  23. Jack Davis

    but Trump, who would be even more of an outsider than Jimmy Carter, is more likely to get little done
    I don’t see how you draw this conclusion. Republicans control at least House & Senate and would almost certainly obstruct everything Hillary does.

    but Trump, who would be even more of an outsider than Jimmy Carter, is more likely to get little done. And let us not forget that Carter had Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, and was not despised by his own party, as Trump is.

    Carter wasn’t quite as unpopular with his party as Trump, but he wasn’t liked by them. O’Neill and Byrd Congressional leaders went out of their way to criticize him.
    I urge everyone to read Liberty Under Siege by Walter Karp; the book details the Democrats’s constant obstructionism of their president, culminating in Kennedy’s primary challenge.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      1. Carter had a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. He famously got little done because he came to DC with a team of outsiders. That was the big reason he went over badly; he came in on a post-Watergate “reform” wave and took his own PR way too seriously. His team was ignorant of DC protocols and processes and was arrogant about learning the ropes.

      2. Unlike Carter, Trump is hated (and hated is not too strong a word) by many in his own party, most importantly, Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House

      3. Unlike Carter, Trump does not have the foggiest idea of how the legislative process works

      4. Unlike Carter, Trump seems to think that being the head of an executive branch is like being a CEO of a private company, where you can order people around. Presidents have to kiss a lot of ass if they want to be effective.

      5. Both candidates are so hated neither will have much if any coattails (the much better liked Obama has had negative coattails). Many of the seats the Dems lost in 2010 the Senate were on small margins. The independent experts I know think the Dems have good odds of taking it back.

      6. The record of celebrity governors is poor. Reagan was a former union head and had also had a political radio show for years where he researched and wrote his own scripts, so he was not a newbie. By contrast, Arnold Schwarznegger, who has infinitely better interpersonal skills than Trump, as well as Maria Schriver as his wife, exhausted the limits of his star power in about six months. Jesse Ventura fizzled even faster.

      1. Cry Shop

        Bravo, Exactly.

        The following is my poor effort to extend it. In my estimation FDR was the most effective presidents(1933 to 1945). HIs coattail was very long, and he extended it nearly every 2 years, particularly in 1934 & 1936.

        The man came out of the NY Senate to be Sec. of the Navy, a failed VP candidate, then Gov. of NY State. Thanks to this training, his family upbringing and connections, as well as his bland personality and conspiratorial nature, he excelled at every aspect of politics that many now decry. In an era where Obama decide he had to run early while still (relatively) untarnished by his own history (as a corporatist/land developer stooge) my guess is FDR would probably be almost un-electable today. An unknown by his nature can have no coattail.

        The system as it is now can only generate an effective presidency when the candidate can apply the power of lobbyist to whip through legislature. Hillary Clinton will probably be a deadly effective president by modern standards, as she is in the thrall of the lobbyist; Bill learned this lesson fairly quickly in his presidency and all but changed party by throwing himself onto the puppet strings of K-Street.

        Trump’s flicked nature probably will result in total chaos, unless there exists an Svengali equivalent to Obama’s Valery Jarrett. Jarrett is so capable, so at home with stroking Obama’s ego that she can direct actions without him being overtly aware. However, Obama brought Jarrett with him from his early life in Chicago; does Trump has a similar character, and is this character plugged into Washington?

        1. Cry Shop

          Correction: Trump’s flickled nature… (and I should have added and prickly to fickled).

  24. Zenobia van Dongen

    Nice article. The criticism of Hilary was accurate but incomplete. Michael Hudson neglected to mention Hillary Clinton’s tacit alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, parallel to her subservience to Israel. State department behavior during the coup against Morsi in 2013, the fact that Hillary’s top assistant has an Islamist and MB background, like many Obama officials, are clear indications. How can a smart cookie like Michael Hudson fail to draw the proper conclusions from those facts?

    1. zzzzz-lisous

      I knew their would be a Z in there somewhere. It’s in the name field!

      Silly me.

  25. John k

    Trump should be asking, ‘are you better off now than 4 year’s about? No? How about 8?
    hillary is promising more of the same. Is that what you want?

  26. Peter

    Dear Michael Hudson,

    I am a lifelong democrat voter and a frequent commenter on Krugman’s blog, and I do my best to wake readers up to the Potemkin Village Construction Project of the Democratic Party establishment.

    I am trying lately to bring awareness to the readers about the role of the U.S. petrodollar in the post Bretton Woods world we live in (A.K.A. Super-Imperialism as you have written about). Krugman’s readers are mostly unaware of political economy and its history. They, like most Americans, believe the world we live in is due to fate and that we have no choice or free will. Without knowing it, Americans really do believe in social Darwinism. They (meaning liberal Democrats in this context) end up defending this fatalistic Darwinism, I imagine in order to rationalize their social and political impotence. It’s so sad and frustrating.

    My question to you is, how can you and others bring the message to the typical American TV viewer? Perhaps going on FOX news and telling the viewers you are there because these criticisms of the Democratic Party are so important that you are forced to seek a platform for your message to be heard. It’s just an idea.

    Perhaps you can link up with a documentary film maker and create a short film that shows the limitations and outright falsehoods of equating current neoclassical macro economics with political economy-showing the viewer that the saltwater/freshwater macro world is really just a construct to enable citizens to believe that the markets fully express human nature-back to social Darwinism.

    Another idea would be to have a multi-lateral event by yourself and the rest of UMKC teachers, along with Richard Werner, the Positive Money folks in England, and maybe a Henry George representative. By event I mean something that would get mainstream media airplay.

    Finally, and I think most importantly, folks who are in a position to get the message out should reach out to the Red state voters, in order to build a coalition between Red and Blue. Democrats want Blue voters to believe that Red voters are all racist cannibals. Robert Reich went on a many month book tour to speak directly to Red voters and he found that we all have so much in common, if we would focus on economics and social class, and stop focusing on identity politics. Elizabeth Warren used to talk about how enthusiastically she was received by Red state voters when she used to tour the country. This is where people like Rosario Dawson could help-in order to break down black/white barriers.

    The Red/Blue divide is false and is a construction of the two political parties and the elites. Neither party wants a majority of the country. Each party is happy to have roughly 50% of the country since they both are in a broker/client relationship with the elites. We the voters are the customers. Both party bases, Red and Blue, have been successfully duped into believing they are participating in something meaningful as members of the Democrats or the Republicans.

    We need to pull back the curtain on the Wizard and show the American voters of both parties that they live in OZ.

    I really believe that a new Southern Strategy is what’s needed in this country. Red and Blue working class voters (and poor and lower middle class voters), need to come together. Democrats tried to divide us earlier this summer with the tranny bathroom humanitarian crisis. It only went so far.

    I think the Democrats know that the use of identity politics is coming to an end. This is why they are using the doomsday option of McCarthyism. They don’t have a plan B.

    Please, Dr. Hudson, try to find a way to get your message to the Red voters. Show them how they are the victims of Blue snobbery and narcism.

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