Meditation on a Corrupt Primary Season

The NY Times, that fine defender of equal rights and political justice, as long as you agree with them, has run another editorial telling me that a vote for Bernie is Bonkers, but a vote for Hillary is for Truth and Justice.

The editorial goes over and over how bad the Republicans are for Gay Rights, and how good Hillary will be for Gay Rights. I have no doubt that the editorial is correct. But, Horrors of Horrors, as much as I support Gay Rights, I think it is an issue blown all out of proportion by the Religious Right and that it is not the only issue on the table. Sure, Gay Rights, no problem. Absolutely, Gay Rights! How about Criminal Sentences for Top Executives who Violate the Law? How about Taxation of the Rich? How about a real Economic Strategy for this country that is more than “Make more money for the rich; destroy the middle class; destroy the labor movement”.

And of course they trot out the issue of Bush vs Gore. Now, as a Gore supporter, I feel that "electing" Bush was a disaster for this country and the world. But Al Gore is not Hillary Clinton. Gore is not a compromised "Tool of the Corporation". Where was the NY Times when the Supreme Court pissed on the Constitution in public in 2000? I was there, I was watching, and I can tell you that the NY Times bent over and fell into line.

Trump is a Red Herring. He is nothing more than an attempt to manufacture consent for the Rockefeller Republican candidate Hillary Clinton.

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. And I can tell you flat out that I have no idea what she stands for beyond her strong support for Globalization and the status quo. Is she a bad person? Probably not. 

Now it may be that under that $12,000 Armani jacket burns a heart filled with compassion for the poor and disenfranchised, for the unemployed and the abandoned. We won't know until she is elected and I am a firm believer in the principle that you can not know how someone will really be as President until he or she is there.

There are other problems as well. In California, there is a law that keeps anyone who ran in a party primary from running in the main election as an independent. Its called the “Sore Loser” law. So that means that Bernie can not run as an independent in California, or that is my reading. Why does this matter? It matters because what with Nevada, Massachusetts, New York and many other irregularities, issues of whether independents can vote in a primary, etc., we have a nomination process which is illegitimate in many Americans' eyes.

Maybe I need to lower my expectations about what constitutes a fair election.  But I would have thought that by 2016 we would have this more together. You know, Democracy? Free and fair elections?

And that's a problem.  When you blow your credibility on things like this, how can you expect people to believe you when something even more important is on the table?