I’ve voted Democrat in every election I could since becoming an adult--now thirty-plus years worth of Democratic votes. Still, I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. As an American Catholic on the democratic left, it is clear to me Hillary will not work for the things I believe in, and will in fact work for many things I don’t.
To anyone paying attention, certain unavoidable truths have hit home in recent years. As follows: Mainstream Democrats never actually fight on issues that might put them into conflict with Wall Street or the corporate boardrooms. Obama, on whom so many hopes were pinned, including my own, was a depressing enough example of this. I’ve had enough of it.
Since the Bill Clinton administration, Americans have lived in a one-party state. At present, the only substantive differences between our Democrats and Republicans, the only times they dare stand for different things, are when the outcomes don't matter to the corporate elites now pushing our country, and our planet, into the ground.
Thus Democrats can be for Planned Parenthood, Republicans against it, because at the end of the day the 1% doesn't care if you're a mother of two or have had three abortions. The 1% don’t care because it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Likewise with gay marriage. Wall Street can continue its smoke-and-mirror games with our economy regardless of how marriage is redefined.
If you’ve been watching, like me, you’ll have noticed that these sex and reproduction issues are the only ones where “mainstream” Democrats actually take a strong stand, or indeed any stand.
Frankie Boyle in the Guardian put it perfectly. Assuming the Democrats will nominate Hillary:
The reality of what [Americans are] voting on in this election is something nobody dare express. They’re voting on the exact speed of the drift toward a future of armies run by corporations corralling permanently traveling communities of cooks, cleaners and sex workers, as they underbid each other outside the entrances to gated communities to ensure they’re the ones let inside to service the fortunate.”
By playing out sex and reproduction issues, Democrats somehow manage to bill themselves as "progressive", as “securing our future”. The American public, now childishly enamored of anything related to sexual rights, takes the bait. The public falls for what I’ve called the Progressive Corporate Agenda.
Meanwhile Republicans play the other side of this same small spectrum of issues, and get away with portraying themselves as "conservative" or "standing for tradition".
Looked at through the lens of left and right political theory, our Democrats aren't "left" or "progressive" in any meaningful sense and our Republicans aren't "conservative" or "traditional". They both abet the continued corporate destruction of our democracy and they're both “big government” parties, each handing out the bulk of their welfare checks to Wall Street and the corporations that paid their way into office. It’s a bait-and-shift scam, and those who continue falling for it do so only because they won’t step back and look at the big picture.
And so we finally live, as I’ve said, under one ruling party, with the difference that our ruling party, unlike China’s, dresses up in two different colored jerseys so as to play out the same rigged game every few years. It’s bread and circuses, now minus the bread.
Hillary Clinton is a circus candidate. Of course “everyone should like her”, as she said in the last debate. Everyone likes circuses, no?
I for one will no longer give the Democrats a pass on their fake leftism. I'm Catholic, politically on the left, an old school left, and hardly enthusiastic about the party’s current obsessive priorities. In years past, regardless of my differences on certain issues, I've stood with the Democrats because real democracy and social justice matter to me. As a Catholic, I’ve been able to put Democrats' mistaken support for abortion aside because I counted on the party to bring substantive progress in other areas: protection of jobs, solid public education, a fairer playing field, more realistic conduct of war and peace. Our current president’s performance (the ever-expanding surveillance state, the TPP, now this) has brought a turning point in my thinking. No more "mainstream" Democrats. And so: For me, it's Bernie or abstention.
Come what may, I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton. I am on the left, she is a right-wing, pro-corporate candidate who can be counted on to stand up for abortion, an ever-growing LGBT dogmatism, and the corporate elite. There’s nothing in it for me, as I support neither abortion so-called “rights”, nor the growing arrogance of gay activists’ witch hunts against any who dissent from their ever more stringent orthodoxies. (BTW: Though I’ve always stood on the side of gay and lesbian rights, going back to the 1980s, I strongly believe America’s “marriage equality” agenda needs to provide space and dignity for those in dissent. But rather than reasonable constitutional legal protections, dissenting people of faith face ostracism, crippling legal suits, the destruction of careers. This is wrong and it is un-American. Marriage is not a reality that has been “decided” by the Supreme Court, which has no mandate to decide any such thing. No, marriage at present is contested. As a committed pluralist, I believe both sides of this debate deserve space to live in conformity with their beliefs. That is not what is happening, by any stretch of the imagination. Whether law suits, ruined careers, attacks directed at our religious charities and schools--it is all due to a new gaythoritarianism that grows more arrogant with each passing season. My earlier support for the LGBT movement has waned to near zero. Bullied, they have become bullies. To tell LGBT activists squarely that they have no right to dictate the whole culture’s marriage beliefs, education policy, etc.--this is not “homophobia”, but merely life in a pluralistic culture.)
I am on the left, in the way that Pope Francis, the leader of my Church, is on the left. I see the West’s real challenges in the growing economic inequality we face, the reckless militarism, the corporate-sponsored destruction of the planet. Hillary has precisely nothing to offer on any of these fronts. She is a Republican in Democratic garb. Her record speaks for itself. She and her corporate sponsors do not deserve the support of any committed person on the left. If Bernie Sanders does not win the nomination, I will write in his name on the ballot come election time. I’ve pledged to do so, and will keep my pledge.
Unless Democratic candidates will fight for workers’ rights and our collapsing middle class, they deserve to lose. The 2016 election is an opportunity to send a strong message to the Democratic establishment: we Americans are not requesting that our elected officials work for us; we are demanding it.
American democracy is almost dead. If Sanders is not finally in this race, we will be face with just another contest between two members of the currently regnant Corporate Party. That’s no longer good enough for me.
And yes, even if the GOP nominates Trump, even if they nominate Kim Jong-un, I will stick to my pledge. Hillary Clinton will not get my vote.
Cross-posted at Clay Testament
