Must Read of the Day – The Clinton Presidency Is Going to Be a Miserable Slog

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For a long time now, I’ve felt that no matter who wins this election, the U.S. is in for extremely difficult times over at least the next 4 years. The reason is twofold. First, when you combine Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters (the latter didn’t just disappear), a majority of the population is in full on revolt against the status quo. This mood isn’t going anywhere. Combine this backdrop with the very high likelihood of an economic downturn, and you have a recipe for mayhem. This isn’t even taking into account the possible end to a multi-decade secular bull market in sovereign bonds, the ramifications of which represent a financial extinction-level event for much of the Western world.

When I look at the financial markets and note that they appear totally unwilling to even flirt with the very real possibility of a Trump victory, I conclude that the current status quo assumption is not only that Hillary will win, but that after she wins, the social mood will get better. I, on the other hand, think it will get far, far worse, as disgusted Trump and Sanders supporters push back relentlessly from day one. As I noted earlier today on Twitter:

Of course, I’m not the only one. Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote an excellent piece earlier today published at The Week titled, The Clinton Presidency is Going to be a Miserable Slog, which is my must read of the day.

Here it is:

Being on the cusp of electing the first woman president, and defeating a snarling, newly crass, and nationalist Republican Party should feel energizing for the American left. But it’s been tiring. The Democrats aren’t just electing a woman. They’re stuck electing this woman, Hillary Clinton. It’s been a slog.

Clinton could not easily put away her socialist challenger Bernie Sanders. She would not release the transcripts of the paid speeches she gave to Wall Street banks. She could not name her accomplishments as secretary of state. She could not quite escape her own role in managing the political fallout from her husband’s affairs, or the appearance of corruption in the Clinton Foundation’s pioneering work in the field of do-gooder graft.

When FBI Director James Comey gave us a healthy reminder of Clinton’s email scandal last week, liberals must have realized: It’s not just the campaign. The Clinton presidency is going to be a slog, too. 

The Clinton standard of political behavior has always had a lawyerly slipperiness to it. When the scandals come, it depends on your definition of “is.” When the headlines erupt, suddenly we discover that all of Clinton’s friends signed an affidavit contradicting the latest accuser or whistleblower. And, really, what difference, at this point, does it make? Partisans will note that Clinton’s ethical lapses and faults are minor compared to Donald Trump’s. Those comparisons are not going to matter in a few days.

Some may object. They’ll reply that the only problem is the aggressive prosecutorial zeal of the Republicans. And it is true that Republicans have an ongoing grudge against Clinton. But let’s posit the existence of a vast right wing conspiracy that hates President Obama just as much as it hates the Clintons. Why is it only able to turn up news-driving scandals on the latter? Could it be that Obama, however detested by conservatives, conducts himself with higher ethical standards than Bill and Hillary?

Clinton’s scandals and misdeeds often have little to do with the Democrats’ battle with Republicans. Clinton played fast and loose even with the Obama administration’s own rules. Obama had forbidden Clinton from giving a government job to the Clinton’s on-demand schemer Sidney Blumenthal — yet Clinton kept him on the payroll of her “charity” and kept up correspondence with him about Libya, even as he had business interests in a post-Gadhafi state. Despite explicit rules set by the Obama administration, the Clinton Foundation continued to operate as a bank in which foreign leaders and governments could deposit their quids, while Clinton was at the head of the State Department, able to distribute pro quos in return.

Beyond the propensity to generate scandal, there is a larger reason that Clinton’s administration will be a slog. The 2016 election has been characterized by a demand for great change. And Hillary Clinton has run as the defender of the way things are, the way they’re going, and who they’re going for.

Hillary Clinton received a vigorous challenge from a left wing that isn’t afraid to label themselves socialists. America’s center-right party ditched its commitments to establishment doctrine on free trade and liberalized immigration, and challenged the wisdom and justice of America’s post-Cold War political order. But Hillary Clinton will enter the White House as the caretaker for the status quo in American political life.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were not the men to carry forward this message of discontent to real political triumph. Both candidates represented their cause poorly. Trump was at once too crude and unethical himself. And Sanders had none of the political instincts and savvy to really go after Clinton in the primaries.

Clinton is the face of a prosperous, grasping establishment that won’t bear challenge from the left or right. Her ability to survive scandal after scandal will not be received as some testament to her political canniness or some deep integrity. It will be received as just the system defending its own from attack. Her survival and her ability to win is a a tribute to the power and self-regard of our political class. And this class has no plausible solution for the nation’s foreign policy, for its immigration system, or for an economic system that abets the elite’s secession from their own nation.

Clinton’s presidency will be a slog because she is exactly like the system she defends. She can point to the great wealth this system produces for its top clients. But neither she nor her cheerleaders can really claim that it looks like wisdom or justice to anyone else.

Well done, Mr. Dougherty.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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13 thoughts on “Must Read of the Day – The Clinton Presidency Is Going to Be a Miserable Slog”

  1. WOW! Hillary Clinton Had Multiple Gmail Addresses NOT Just One As Reported.
    Hillary Clinton & Hillary’s Aides lied to Congress that Hillary only had and only used one gmail address.
    The Shoebat article below is one I just came across while doing research.
    In that 2015 article, it is revealed that Hillary Clinton had set up and used multiple gmail addresses not just the one that was reported.
    If Congress ever finds out about this…
    March 6, 2015,
    “Fox News reported tonight that Hillary Clinton may have had several different private email addresses she used that were all on her private email server. They got this information on the multiple email addresses from a professional hacker that used a tool to comb through public information found in major search engines.”

    “it appears Clinton established multiple email addresses, including:
    hdr@clintonemail .com, hdr18@clintonemail .com, hdr19@clintonemail .com, hdr20@clintonemail .com, and hrd21@clintonemail .com.

    Other email addresses include:
    h.clinton@clintonemail .com, Hillary@clintonemail .com, contact@clintonemail .com, and mau_suit@clintonemail .com.”

    “Hillary’s Connection To The Muslim Brotherhood And Her Multiple Private Emails With Her Muslim Assistant Huma Abedin Is Being Investigated For Muslim Brotherhood Connections”
    http://shoebat.com/2015/03/06/hillarys-connection-to-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-her-multiple-private-emails-with-her-muslim-assistant-huma-abedin-is-being-investigated-for-muslim-brotherhood-connections/

    Reply
  2. Trico, if there is a Clinton Presidency, it will be very short.

    The Deep State will make sure of that, because they know that she can’t be trusted not to start a world war.

    Reply
  3. “Sanders had none of the political instincts and savvy to really go after Clinton in the primaries”

    I beg to differ. Much of Sanders’ appeal (especially to non-socialists such as myself) was his genuineness and lack of affect. He didn’t lack political instincts, he eschewed them. I believe this carried him much farther than just the relatively small population of true socialists whom his appeal should have been confined to.

    While our man from Vermont did indeed go after Clinton — and in much more highbrow fashion that Trump — he was no match of the unholy alliance of Clinton with the full weight of the equally corrupt DNC behind her.

    That this was allowed to just slip by with barely a mention by corporate media is one of greatest tragedies of this election, no mean feat considering how tragic things have been.

    Reply
  4. I’m getting dizzy – Trump can’t win, she can’t win, Trump’s a shoe-in, she’s a shoe-in, landslide for him, etc. What is the point of all this speculating? Come on, one more week and all will be settled – unless it’s a repeat of 2000, but worse.

    I’ve yet to meet a single Hillary supporter (OK, one) – must be the deplorable circles I travel in.

    Reply
  5. “…the Republicans have an ongoing grudge against the Clintons…”

    That’s not the problem. The problem is that the Republicans have a TRIVIAL AND MINOR grudge.

    Bill did two terrible things, which were part of one package. He deleted Glass-Steagall, and he made international trade deals opening the way to eliminating our industries. Both favored financiers over real business. He should have been impeached for serving China and Mexico. Instead, the Rs focused on the trivial nonsense about Monica.

    Hillary did many terrible things as Sec of State. She started at least four new pointless aggressive wars and continued two existing wars. Her attributable kill count is about 250,000 foreign civilians and 1000 American soldiers.

    She should be forbidden to take office on grounds of genocide. Instead the Rs are focusing on the trivial nonsense about Benghazi (FOUR deaths) and misuse of email.

    Conclusion: The Rs are not opposed to the Clintons. Their job is to make opposition to the Clinton dynasty look silly.

    Reply
  6. She will lose because the established order recognizes at this late hour she is too compromised to be an effective vehicle to carry forward -or even defend, their agenda. Trump will be more useful to them as a scapegoat, a lightningrod for discontent, and a distraction while they plot their comeback. At least that’s the plan。 I think. In any case, I think the puppetmasters are cutting their losses and withdrawing their support for her.

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  7. The Clinton Presidency will be a LONG, MERCILESS, NEVER-ENDING SLOG? Yes. And, worst-case-scenario: It’s going to be MUCH WORSE THAN THAT! FIND OUT WHY!

    Look. Let’s face REALITY, here, ok? We are now 5 days (FIVE!) from the Presidential (PRE-)(S)”Election”. SHILL-ary is the PRE-SELECTED CANDIDATE of choice, of the “globalist” ROTHSCHILD-ROCKEFELLER-SOROS-(“VOTE”-SWITCHING-MACHINE)-CFR-CIA ‘Cabal’.

    Have you seen ANY actual evidence, that ANYTHING will be done to indict let alone prosecute SHILL-ary Clinton?

    Of course not. There are HUGE $$ behind her. THAT IS WHY SHE IS “ABOVE-THE-LAW”. And, she will CONTINUE to be “above-the-law” right through Nov. 8th.

    Soros-Linked Voting Machines Cause Concern Over Rigged Election
    http://sgtreport.com/2016/10/soros-linked-voting-machines-cause-concern-over-rigged-election-2/

    Read ALL the comments. Click on ALL links. Read/view/listen to ALL content.

    Reply
  8. I am writing to you today after careful thought about voting machines that switch the vote while the voter is making his selection.
    I ask: Why would any programmer allow the screen to display the change of vote? He would program it to switch the vote so that no one could see the change. No programmer would allow the switch to be seen unless he wanted it to be seen. This “visible vote switch” is being done on purpose.
    In order to understand why they would program the machines (to show the vote switch) in this way you have to think like the CIA thinks.
    The voting machines show the switch on the screen so that people will focus on the individual machines, and lose sight of the real trick….central control of thousands of machines. While the voters stress out over one machine, the big switch will happen at the end of the day. The voter meanwhile, is thinking “gee, I’m glad I had the clerks get my vote right, that machine was out of wack.”
    These machines are programmed to make people believe an individual machine is corrupt which keeps people from seeing the bigger picture. (That the voting machines are all centrally controlled.) This is a good example of “hidden in plain view.”

    Reply

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