Article #29: Politics

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under former President of the United States Bill Clinton’s Administration, penned a social media post about the increasing vitriol among Presidential Candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters after the New York primary for the 2016 Democrat Presidential nomination:

What do we think, Mr. Secretary?

We think that you are a great man with an understanding of what’s going on in this country economically that most will never have.

We are huge fans of yours and use examples from you in paid entrepreneurial workshops and economic enlightenment seminars that we do around the country.

We truly believe that you love this country and the people in it and want nothing but the best for both.

However…

…We also think that you have to understand something about these individuals who are on Bernie Sanders’ side and are angry and feel we have to seriously do something about the Clinton Machine; a prime representation of all that is wrong with politics in America today.

The Anger Justification of Bernie Sanders Supporters:

Think about what it is about which they’re angry when it comes to the chain-reactions of all of those problems that were helped to come to come to fruition by Hillary Clinton. People are:

• Savings-less…
• Physically and mentally exhausted…
• Working MANDATORY overtime…
• Working multiple jobs, yet still have no money…
• Moving back in with their parents, which we believe has helped raise the bed bug infestation…
• Living with roommates just to be able to pay rent…
• Barely holding onto their jobs because the companies who donate to Hillary don’t care about the actual workers more than they do profits…

…and Progressives don’t believe that she is going to do anything except continue the working-class down this stressful, uphill road.

When Clinton helped create all of these problems, and then (before and during the Democratic Presidential primary)…

• Mastered crony capitalism…

• Had her political surrogates attack Bernie using skewed information and just outright lies…
• Had the corporate media (who has bought her with massive speaking fees and massive campaign contributions) mostly black out Bernie Sanders coverage, then made the little coverage they gave him be transparently and repetitively negative…

• And she’s going to continue the more center-right policies that Obama has done because she’s beholden to corporations…

…yeah, we can see why Bernie Sanders supporters are angry. Even more so than that, what they’re saying about Hillary Clinton is not a “characterization.” It’s factual.

They’re not making things up, unlike the things the Clinton Campaign are skewing and fabricating about Bernie Sanders and his record.

So although you are one of the Progressive’s champions, even you telling them to calm down is only going to make them angrier because you, in essence, are telling them to stop speaking the truth.

People tend to think that only people who don’t have a reason to be mad should be told to calm down, not the ones who do. At least that’s what the Sanders supporters seem to feel, and, in our opinion, with much validity.

The Democratic Left’s Diagnosis of Hillary Clinton

So what is Hillary Clinton to true Progressives?

She’s untrustworthy.
She’s corrupt.
She’s bought.
She’s a chameleon.
She’s a blue-dog Democrat.

TRANSLATION: Not Progressive.

Bernie Sanders supporters, made up of Democrats, Independents, moderate Republicans, and true Progressives, don’t believe Hillary Clinton when she speaks, especially in populist rhetoric, not because of her current words, but because of the history of her actions.

They don’t believe she will act on Progressive values. Hell, they barely think she’s a Democrat, and we agree with that assessment based on historical facts, not feelings.

She’s a center-right corporatist who will sell out to corporations before she defends the ones the corporations are oppressing, and Bernie Sanders supporters know this.

They are just utterly and completely sick of individuals like her selfishly co-opting their message for votes-only from the very people who she will, based on her history, immediately sell out.

TRANSLATION: Progressives don’t like convenient flip-floppers.

So, with all due respect Secretary Reich, no, they won’t stop their truthful, fact-based “characterizations” of her, period, and we agree that they shouldn’t.

It’s not “excessive divisiveness.” It’s both necessary, long-time-coming outrage and the outright truth.  And, as one former Ohio Senator, the great Nina Turner, always says, we should always speak truth to power.