Inevita-Hillary

It’s early April of 2016. Perhaps the mainstream media outlets are right; perhaps Americans have resigned themselves to a Hillary Clinton presidency as inevitable. 

We’re assured daily that it doesn’t really matter whether we like her. It doesn’t matter whether we trust her. It doesn’t matter whether we think she will prevent the planet from being raped, the taxpayers from being plundered, or innocent civilians from being gunned down by forces of their own government (domestically or abroad). 

We voters know that Clinton championed the war in Iraq as a senator and then lobbied for a series of regime changes as secretary of state. We wish we could elect someone who wouldn’t commit the U.S. military to perpetual worldwide warfare—but we seem willing to settle for that outcome as long as the person we elect isn’t Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. (“Vote Clinton,” the press whispers to us, “not because a corporatist candidate is such a great thing, but because it beats the heck out of an autocrat or a theocrat.”)

We voters know that Clinton was merciless when it came to destroying the credibility of a series of women who spoke out about having been sexually abused and exploited by Bill Clinton. We would prefer a candidate who touts herself as a feminist to be capable, at the very least, of empathizing with women less privileged than herself—but we’ll overlook Clinton’s viciousness as Bill’s attack dog because she isn’t Trump or Cruz. (“Vote Clinton,” the press whispers to us, “even though she spent her time as a board member at Wal-Mart diverting attention from the union-busting activities of the corporate giant by focusing on the hiring of female executives. If you want, you can fault her for routinely distorting feminism into whatever is most expedient for her at a particular moment, but does that really mean you’re going to vote for an autocrat or a theocrat? Get real.”)

We voters know that Clinton, by her own admission, exercised poor judgment in setting up a private server to handle her email correspondence for the State Department. We think it’s kind of embarrassing that just five years after the Cablegate scandal made that department—her department—look incompetent at managing its own intelligence, the hacker Guccifer is now being extradited in conjunction with his exposure of Clinton's e-correspondence. We are reluctant to elect a candidate who appears to be incapable of understanding that internet security is really a thing—but we’ll accept her carelessness as long as she isn’t Trump or Cruz. (“Vote Clinton,” the press whispers to us, “despite her childlike impulse to excuse her own misdeed on the grounds that Secretaries Powell and Rice made similar mistakes. Instead of acknowledging the immaturity of her response, distract yourselves by debating the degree to which her use of a private server compounds the error of relying on a private email account. And now that the topic has become sufficiently tedious, just overlook her cybernegligence and elect her instead of that autocrat or that theocrat.”)

We voters know that when the Clintons took furniture from the White House after Bill’s time in office, it was reportedly because of a clerical error. We know that when the Clinton Foundation failed to pay appropriate taxes, that was also reportedly because of a clerical error. We understand that electing Clinton means putting her in a position to report monumental clerical errors on a routine basis. We wish we didn’t have our suspicions about the Clintons—but we will try to look the other way when we see her hand in the cookie jar because at least it isn’t the hand of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. (“Vote Clinton,” the press whispers to us, “because even though you have every reason to suspect that she is on the take, you can’t prove it to yourself without doing a lot of boring research. Why spend all that time reading when it doesn’t matter anyway, since you’ll still vote for her ahead of that autocrat or that theocrat?”)

We can’t trust her with money. We can’t trust her to handle sensitive information. We can’t trust her judgment.

And yet we will elect her.

Or maybe we won’t.

Maybe the inevitability argument advanced by the corporate media on behalf of Clinton is about to buckle under the strain of its own preposterousness. Maybe we can’t be made to swallow a candidate we don’t want simply because of repeated assurances that the election has been settled in advance.

Maybe we care enough about each other to come together in defense of our most vulnerable citizens, our most beleaguered communities, and our most cherished democratic ideals. 

Maybe Bernie Sanders will win.

The delegate math is daunting, but it’s heartening to see articles such as this piece by Darrell Delamaide that sheds important light on how flimsy Clinton’s lead is becoming.

Of course, the same day that Delamaide’s article came out, we got this piece from fivethirtyeight.com that explains how Sanders is even further behind than we think. 

The press is going to keep whispering to us. We simply have to remember that in 2016, the job of the Democratic National Committee isn’t to persuade us to elect Hillary Clinton, but to con us into believing that she has already been elected.

But can a dynasty-fatigued electorate really be gulled into adopting the principle of inevita-Hillary?

We shall see.