The usual ‘triangulation’ to a more centrist position that typically happens after the primary isn’t happening this year, and according to Heather Digby Parton there is little reason to expect Hillary Clinton to make that move. Republicans are scrambling all over themselves to reject Trump and the poison he brings down on them. My feeling is that they wish to absolve themselves of any responsibility. Yeah..Good luck with that.
Wall Street Journal advocated it here in May, 2016: Five Reasons My Fellow Republicans Should Vote for Hillary Clinton. More recently republicans seem to have formed a sort of band wagon, and are getting on board as they denounce their own presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Even GOP top brass seem to be dead set on making it crystal clear they are the polar opposite of Trump
After reading reports like this from trusted sources — The Hillary Clinton/Neocon Merger — I too had grave doubts that the Dem party was heading where it should be heading — > to the left.
I was really glad to run across and read this opinion by Digby today. There are few as sharp on these things as she is. Not being all that good with words I’ll just post a couple of excerpts from Digby’s piece titled:
excerpts:
...even by comparison to her run in 2008, she it taking a much more aggressively progressive stance on a number of issues from immigration to criminal justice reform to voting rights that just a short while ago would have been seen to be dangerous ground for a Democratic candidate for president..
What isn’t happening..
One big concern bedeviling progressives is that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy will mark the return of triangulation—the preemptive ceding of ideological turf, at a time when, thanks to partisan polarization, such concessions amount to outright victories for the Republican Party.
What is:
Basically, she’s taking popular positions and making the Republicans have to explain why they oppose them. This shouldn’t strike anyone as being particularly odd unless you are a Democratic strategist who believes that only a handful of people could ever vote for popular liberal issues
— emphasis added
I’d missed this piece last year, and regret it for the very convincing arguments that Digby puts together from a variety of reliable sources
It was well worth the time to read the whole piece.
With the GOP train-wreck of a party off a cliff and not a few of them running to endorse Clinton, it may sound like bad or worrisome news. But that is only if one believes that Hillary Clinton has an incentive to move to the right to accommodate those republicans. 1) She does not and 2) judging by her decades of progressive activism in the past, she has exactly the opposite incentive - Her own. Last but not least 3) Clinton is tough and smart, and since these republican assholes are chained to the very same party that has stalked & hounded her for years, hammering the lot them is also the smart thing to do. And that means the GOP will do the accommodating this time around. Not Hillary Clinton and the Dems.
This time around republicans will be confronted with their own platform and past votes on legislation that is in opposition to the vast majority of Americans
And then there is this out July 25, 2016; debunking the exaggerations we’ve been hearing lately:
It was also the Dems platform that started me thinking that there is no way the GOP is going to intimidate Hillary Clinton — not even a little bit
Including this:
And this:
And this from ‘The Daily Labor Report’:
About the law:
Civil Justice:
The platform also seeks to reform the civil asset forfeiture system “to remove perverse incentives for law enforcement to ‘police for a profit,’” as well as require the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate “all questionable or suspicious police-involved shootings.”
For the first time, the platform addresses LGBT rights in its own section and also includes issues of LGBT homelessness, bullying and discrimination
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Jobs in Clean Renewable Energy:
with a last note: - so it seems the GOP’s deep fear of Hillary Clinton, once based on the belief that she would triangulate towards them and in doing so take moderate republicans and the so-called Reagan Democrats with her, is no longer the paradigm these days.
It looks as though the GOP will lose voters but it will now be because they, as they have for decades, deserved to lose. Hillary Clinton and the Dems will indeed remain true to progressive/liberal left leaning policies while holding the the door open for moderate working class republicans, despite Nicole Wallace’s incorrect accusation during the 2016 Democratic national convention that Hillary..”closed the door that president Obama had opened”
— imo — and it’s late or way early, so time to turn in..
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p.s. this is not about Elizabeth Warren. She’s great :)