Having been an Obama delegate for the past two conventions and having been a leader of a 1700 member union for over 30 years, it would seem heresy for me not to support the Democratic nominee. I even railed against the Nader supporters before he arguably helped get George W. elected. Bu I cannot and won’t vote for Secretary Clinton. There are a lot of reasons, but let me boil it down to two:
1) For six years Hillary was on the Board of Directors of Walmart during the pinnacle of their power.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/31/Clinton-remained-silent-a_n_84246.htm
Power that was used to silence workers who dared to speak up or dared to want to form a Union. Her time there was spent enabling some of the worst abuses of workers, especially women workers, in corporate America. When people talk about her lifelong commitment to justice, especially for women, this is conveniently left out.
As a lifelong unionist, I have no reason to believe that her ethics and morals have changed since then. This, after all, is a moral issue, not just an economic one. I realize that many Unions have endorsed Hillary, but that’s one of the problems with Union leaders over past 30 years. The same Unions who do all the legwork for the Democrats before elections, find their agendas tossed once they’re elected. Even Obama, in his first two years when he had a democratic Congress, failed to even try to get comprehensive Labor Law reform, as he promised. Yet I still supported him for a second term, choosing the better of the two corporatist candidates.
2) Foreign policy-We all know about her support for foreign interventions in Iraq, Libya, et al, but her involvement with the coup in Honduras is something I know a lot about. One of her best friends, Lanny Davis, was an architect and enabler of the atrocities that went on there.
I have no confidence that Hillary’s interventionist instincts, which has resulted in thousands of deaths, will be any better and perhaps worse, than Trump.
And her embrace of the mass murderer, Henry Kissinger, is something all Democrats should revile, rather than rationalize.
So on the two issues that I have spent my 65 + years fighting for, labor rights and a non-interventionist foreign policy, Hillary fails miserably.
Many Hillary supporters argue that Bernie and Hillary agree on the issues, it’s just that she wants yo take a more incremental and pragmatic approach. I could support her if I thought that was true. But on the issues near and dear to me, she is on the opposite side of Bernie.
Secretary Clinton is a classic corporatist democrat. Her whole life, except before elections, has been consistent in that regard.
What is most striking to me is not her record, but the support she has received on this website. It’s one thing to argue that she is much better than Trump, but it is pure revisionism to argue that her record, except on a few social issues, is anything near what a progressive person should support.
