Commentator Says He’s 50% Bernie-or-Bust—the 50% That Doesn’t Matter

Kyle Kulinski, host of YouTube’s Secular Talk, recently released an introspective segment concerning his stance on the Bernie-or-Bust movement. 

Kulinsky calls himself a “50%” Bernie-or-Buster because he will be writing in Bernie’s name or voting for Jill Stein if Clinton secures the Democratic nomination—but only because he lives in New York, a “deep blue” state. If Kulinski lived in a swing state, such as Ohio, he confesses that he would feel compelled to vote for Clinton to prevent Trump from becoming president.

I applaud Kulinski for stating his position clearly and without condescension. But I think it’s pretty misleading for him to call himself “50% Bernie-or-Bust” if he would vote for Clinton in 100% of the instances in which doing so would make a difference.

It’s easy to see why Kulinsky reaches the conclusion he reaches. He’s terrified of a Trump presidency—as he should be.

The weird thing is that Kulinsky is educated enough about Clinton to realize that she is even more terrifying than Trump. I simply don’t understand how he can say, “I trust [Hillary Clinton] with an army more than I trust Donald Trump with an army.”

What?

Why would anyone be more frightened of what Trump says he will do militarily than of what Clinton has already done? It’s terrifying that Trump talks about using the American war machine like an irresponsible, misinformed schoolyard bully—but not nearly as terrifying as the corpses and displaced populations on five continents that are the direct result of Clinton’s worldwide meddling.

Kulinski goes on to say, “I trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes and the army 0%. I might trust Hillary 8%.”

Kyle, have you fallen on your head?

I agree that we should trust Donald Trump 0% with the military and the nuclear codes because we have no idea what he’s going to do.

But that doesn’t mean we should trust Clinton 8%. In fact, we should trust her negative-100% because we know exactly what she’s going to do with the military: the same terrible and expensive things she advocated first as a senator and then as secretary of state.

A Trump presidency is terrifying, but people who allow a fear of Trump to dissuade them from voting for the candidate of their choice are doing precisely what Kulinski often faults Barack Obama for doing: conceding their leverage before the negotiation even begins.

I’m Bernie-or-Bust because this election is too important for Americans to allow their fears to extinguish their hopes. If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, I will be voting for Jill Stein (whose platform bears a stunning resemblance to Sanders’) and urging everyone I know to do the same—even though I realize that a sufficient Bernie-or-Bust turnout might result in the election of someone as frightening as Trump.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC can try to trap me in this game of chicken, but I won’t be the one to swerve. And I won’t accept the blame because I don’t believe there will be any. I genuinely think a Trump presidency is a better outcome for the American people and the world than a Clinton presidency. 

We all know that Clinton won’t do anything about carbon emissions, but she’ll talk enough about the importance of doing something to keep the rest of the world from taking action. By contrast, Trump will almost certainly provoke the global population to defend itself from his contempt for the health of the planet. 

The same logic applies to almost every other important issue because Clinton has the clout and the expertise to maintain the deadly status quo. Trump has neither. 

Trump is outrageous—and that’s a good thing. He will rile up resistance. He will motivate me and millions like me to fight his policies for as long as he’s in office. When opposition candidates require support, they will get it because Trump loves attention and will go out of his way to shine a spotlight on his own despicability. Most importantly, the resistance to Trump will be effective because our government has built-in checks and balances that Trump doesn’t fully understand how to bypass.

Clinton understands how to bypass those checks and balances and how to prevent opposition coalitions from forming. She’s made a career of lubricating the American political system so that it processes the agendas of her donors.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both bad for Americans. So why should I fear Trump more than Clinton if Clinton is the one with infinitely more skill and experience at being bad for Americans? This is the giant hole in the argument against Bernie-or-Bust advanced by folks such as Kulinsky, Cenk Uygur, and even Bernie himself. 

I’m not willing to drive headlong into a Trump presidency because I’m fearless, but because I can’t help being more frightened of Clinton’s deeds than of Trump’s gibberish. Here are four questions I couldn’t help asking myself as I became 100% Bernie-or-Bust: 

1) Trump says he can’t be bought, but do I think he will end up in the pocket of military-industrial profiteers?

I think so—but Clinton is already in their pocket.

2) Do I think Trump will do anything substantive to keep jobs in America?

I doubt it—but Clinton has already worked to send jobs overseas. 

3) Do I think Trump will lower our standing in the world?

I’m sure he will—but surer that Clinton already has.

4) Am I worried that Trump has vowed to commit war crimes?

Here I think Trump is entirely preferable to Clinton if only because of his reckless honesty. She knows how to use the coded political speech of Obama, Bush, and Cheney to disguise American aggression. Since Trump won’t bother to learn that code, he will unify the world in opposition to our campaign of global terror that masquerades as anti-terrorism. Clearly we citizens cannot prevent our leaders from miring us in eternal warfare. We need help from the rest of the world—help that Trump will catalyze and that Clinton will artfully diffuse.

I can’t imagine answering those questions any other way. So anyone (including Sanders!) who tells me to get behind Clinton to prevent Trump from winning is simply fear-mongering in the time-honored tradition of the Democratic Party. 

I understand being fearful that a Trump presidency will turn America into a re-enactment of 1930s Germany. We shouldn’t dismiss that possibility out-of-hand, but we shouldn’t embrace it as inevitable when a sober evaluation of the evidence suggests how unlikely such an outcome really is. Trump might try to be Hitler, but I honestly don’t think he has it in him. I don’t think he has the political skills or the deep-seated hate required. Hitler had to buy his own hype to give himself the energy he needed to terrorize the world. Trump is too lazy to buy his own hype.

A Trump presidency is far less likely to be a nightmare than a bad dream from which Americans will awake before he completes a single term.

The nightmare Clinton scenario, on the other hand, involves using a no-fly zone over Syria to provoke war with Russia so as to distract Americans from the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Even if you believe the Clinton nightmare scenario is less terrifying than the Trump nightmare scenario, which outcome do you think is more likely? 

If Kulinsky answers that question honestly, he’ll understand why I’m counting on Bernie-or-Bust voters in swing states more than anywhere else.

Hillary Clinton's Impeccable Followership Credentials

In "Why Hillary Clinton Could Be the Kind of President Bernie Sanders Supporters Will Love," Paul Waldman argues that if elected, Clinton will "be as liberal as liberals force her to be."

He points to the "Fight for 15" as a telling example. Waldman admits that Clinton was unwilling to support a $15/hour minimum wage until the struggling workers of New York City forced their legislators to recognize that hardworking people deserved something better than starvation wages.

Once those workers achieved their objective, Clinton was "proud" to stand on a stage with Governor Andrew Cuomo and celebrate their achievement as if she had something to do with it.

Clinton shills such as Waldman love to argue that this sort of behavior from Clinton will somehow inspire "love" from the electorate not because such shills are tone-deaf to the will of the people, but because they are tone-deaf to their own desperation.

Does Waldman understand what it means to run for president--to rely on a slogan such as "Fighting for Us"--to present oneself as a champion of the people?

Apparently not--so I'll explain.

The etymology of champion is available to anyone with access to the internet. Unsurprisingly, the term still means (just as it did when we started using it back in the 14th century) "one who fights on behalf of another or others."

We Sanders supporters are apparently silly because we think that the person we elect to the presidency should be willing (like Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt) to lead the charge against any mercenaries bent on thwarting the will of the people.

But Waldman wants us to understand that Clinton can be a different sort of champion than the knight who jousts to advance a particular cause. She is perfectly willing to sip tea in her tent behind the arena while we--her putative supporters--pour out of the stands to demolish the mercenaries against whom she is supposed to joust. Once the field is littered with their dead bodies, Clinton is 100% capable of emerging from her tent to take a bow and allow us to shower her with rose petals.

Do we think that Sanders can defeat all the mercenaries arrayed against him without our active help and support? Of course not. If we're going to get anywhere with Sanders, it's only because he'll ask us to give more to the cause of reclaiming democracy than we think ourselves capable of giving. But he can inspire us to dig deep enough to do just that.

Clinton, on the other hand, will wait for us to inspire her.

Waldman's argument therefore boils down to the contention that if we citizens can solve Flint's water crisis without any help from our public officials, we'll "love" a President Hillary Clinton because of her willingness to drink the tap water once it's proven to be non-toxic.

Inspiring stuff.

The Coalition Opposing Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Grows

In the picture above, Doug Hughes holds a dollar bill stamped with the message: "Not to be used for bribing politicians."

Just over a year ago, Hughes was arrested for landing a gyrocopter in the lawn of the U.S. Capitol (a violation of restricted airspace). He characterized the act of civil disobedience as a "stunt" designed to call attention to the corrupting influence of money in politics.

A mail carrier in his 60s, Hughes wanted to deliver 535 letters--one for each member of Congress--concerning the urgent need for campaign finance reform in America.

After being arrested, Hughes planned to challenge DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for her seat in the House of Representatives. Hughes was motivated to run because he considers Wasserman-Schultz "the poster child of corrupt politics in the Democratic Party."

Those who consider it corrupt for a representative to take money from the predatory lending industry and then work to repeal consumer protection laws in that industry might be inclined to support Hughes' candidacy.

But alas! Such support now comes too late, as Hughes has suspended his campaign in support of another rival for Wasserman-Schultz' seat, Tim Canova. Canova is a law professor who, according to the New Times of Broward-Palm Beach, is "part of the frothing section of the populace that is pulling for Bernie Sanders."

Of the superdelegates Sanders supporters would most like to see thrown out of office for backing Clinton, Wasserman-Schultz presumably tops the list. But if she has any sense that the natives are restless, she doesn't seem to let on in this interview with TYT's Jordan Chariton:

At one point in the interview, she says she would wager "a lot of money" that any corruption in the Democratic Party is trivial, in the eyes of most voters, compared to the ongoing meltdown in the GOP. Regrettably, Chariton failed to ask which payday loan service would be spotting the money for that wager to Wasserman-Schultz as a thank you for the important work she does to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Who Better Than Hillary Clinton to Help Stephen Colbert Betray Jon Stewart's Legacy?

If Jon Stewart could be relied upon for anything, it was his unflinching commitment to exposing the many ways in which corporate media failed the American people by using faux journalism to distract Americans from meaningful political discourse.

Stewart proved that in the face of a failed fourth estate, satire could routinely and compellingly do a better job of informing viewers about the important news of the day than any conventional anchorperson reading from a teleprompter.

In the wake of Stewart's retirement, some of us hoped that Stephen Colbert would emerge as the heir to Stewart's legacy. That position is plainly untenable in light of the video above, which is more Kafkaesque than Kaufmanesque in its approach to cringeworthiness.

In Other Inevita-Hillary News . . .

Watch Torie Osborne argue with increasingly repetitive and tautological desperation that voters are going to elect Hillary because Hillary is going to be elected.

Thanks to Ms. Osborne for this quick demo of how Democrats put the "demo" into demoralization. (Also, it isn't working.)

Nina Turner, Will You Be My Representative?

You’re obviously a busy person, Ms. Turner. For all I know, you may be preparing for the vice-presidency—so I’ll make my case as quickly as possible.

Will you please be my representative?

Understandably, since you’re from Ohio, you probably haven’t thought of being a representative from Austin, Texas. But my wife and I have a guest suite upstairs that we’ll be happy to rent to you for $1/month to help you meet the necessary residency requirements. (Since you travel full-time anyway, it’s less important to focus on amenities such as a private bath and sitting area than the fact that the zip code would do the trick for residency.) 

I know; I know. Texas probably terrifies you. With people like Ted Cruz dominating the headlines, our state looks a lot more backward than it is.

But you often go out of your way in speeches to quote the great Barbara Jordan, who passed away in Austin in 1996 and is still beloved by the community—so much so that the Home Depot where I sometimes shop is located on Barbara Jordan Boulevard. 

Jordan spoke, as you know, of an “America as good as its promise.” And when she served as the acting governor of the state for one day in 1972, she allowed Texas to become the only state in U.S. history with a black female governor. 

I swear to you the Texas of Jordan’s days hasn’t died—despite the insane appearance given off by Governors Perry and Abbott and Senators Cruz and Cornyn. 

As you probably know, the voters of Texas—especially in the Austin area—have been gerrymandered into irrelevance. Our representatives are elected despite the people and not because of the people.

We need to create a Texas as good as its promise, but our elected officials are standing in the way.

Even though I live in true-blue Austin, my current representative is Mike McCaul, who represents the interests of Houston (which is several hours away). Thanks to the criminal mapping of congressional districts, tens of thousands of Austinites go without representation in Congress because McCaul doesn’t care about our votes. He knows he can rely on oil money to keep him in office as he promotes the agenda of the surveillance state. As the second wealthiest member of Congress, McCaul is less a tool than a personification of special interests.

He’s been in office since 2004. I know it’s too late for you to challenge him in 2016, when he’ll be going up against the same Democratic opponent for the third time in a row (a candidate whom he keeps crushing so badly that the only conceivable explanation for nominating her yet again is that Democrats are less dedicated to winning than to dodging the expense of generating new campaign materials for a different candidate). If we are serious about challenging McCaul in 2018, we need someone with star power—someone who can get voters excited about standing up to the elected officials who refuse to represent them—someone like you.

We need a true Berniecrat. Please help!

If Hillary Secures the Nomination, the Next Casualty of Regime Change Will Be the Democratic Party

Hillary Clinton has a talent and a propensity for toppling established systems of authority and leaving power vacuums in their place. This usually happens in places far-flung from the average American voter (such as Honduras, Libya, etc.), but the chickens of Clinton’s chickenhawkishness are about to come home to roost for the Democratic Party.

The Democrats can only send one message to the American people by nominating Hillary Clinton: that they would rather preserve the current system of pay-to-play politics than win the presidency.

We all know that’s true, of course. But we also expect our professional politicians to do a better job of concealing their cupidity and corruption. This reasonable expectation of the electorate puts Hillary in a bind, since it’s difficult for one to conceal what one embodies. 

Every speech Clinton makes and every press stunt in which she participates is a dazzling display of disconnectedness from voters whose concerns she cannot fathom. From her perspective, however, it’s only fair to hold ordinary American citizens in contempt. If we commoners wanted to avoid economic hardships in our own lives, then we should have been more eager than Clinton was to trample on people weaker than ourselves. Those of us who didn’t seize the opportunity to profit from the school-to-prison pipeline or to advocate fracking in struggling economies all over the globe or to exploit worldwide sympathy for Haitians to line the pockets of our friends and family members—well, we only have ourselves to blame.

If Hillary could really win a general election in November, then the Democratic party might be able to survive her nomination. But she can’t win an election because there are only two kinds of people who will vote for her: the misleaders and the misled.

The misleadership class that supports Clinton consists of the people who are already on her payroll and others who seek to be on her payroll. Their motives are clear; their incentives are real; and their support of Clinton is perversely genuine inasmuch as they are championing the candidate who is most like themselves. Some of them work in politics; some work in churches; some work in the media; but they are united in their purpose of putting themselves as far ahead as possible by making sure the people whom they influence stay as far behind as possible. These folks will vote for Clinton, but there aren’t as many of them as Clinton likes to pretend. 

The class of the misled includes rank-and-file citizens who trust their local politicians, their local clergy, and the corporate media to tell them what is in their best interest. Such people are often overworked and underpaid. They are too busy and exhausted to pay close attention to national politics, and they may only have access to information via frequencies approved in advance by the Clinton machine. These folks will also vote for Clinton, but the existence of the internet means that the ranks of the misled are dwindling by the hour. 

The misleaders and the misled who support Clinton do not even constitute half of the Democratic Party—much less half of the general electorate. Clinton therefore has no realistic chance of winning. She has relied on the foil of Donald Trump to prop up the sputtering viability of her own candidacy, but as we watch the wheels falling off the Trump campaign, we must realize that Clinton is going to have to beat another actual politician with an actual ground game. She can’t do it. 

But as I indicated earlier, the elite members of the Democratic Party are determined to nominate her not because they believe she will win in November, but because they know that her Republican opponent (whoever that turns out to be) will pose less of a threat to their gravy train than Bernie Sanders does.

I understand why the DNC leaders believe this strategy will work. They’ve seen how successful Clinton has been at destabilizing and disenfranchising people throughout the world by removing their leaders from power. Why should it surprise anyone that she’s willing to destabilize and disenfranchise the Democratic base by running as an unelectable candidate—a candidate who cynically relies on her own toxicity to prevent the people she purportedly represents from having a voice in government?

But there’s a critical difference between cutting power off at the head and cutting it off at the base. If you remove the democratically elected leader of Honduras from power, Honduras doesn’t cease to exist. But if you remove the voting base from the Democratic party, all you have left is a train starving for gravy.

So good luck, Paul Krugman. Good luck, Barney Frank. Good luck, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Good luck, Queen Hillary. Good luck with your glorious future of presiding over nothing and no one.