Hillary is much better than any Republican that has declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination for US President. Hillary would not destroy the United States during eight years holding the office of POTUS. Some of those Republican guys might come really close to destroying the United States that fast, given the momentum that they have been working hard to build under Obama, because they hate having a black man be President more than they love our country.
I am writing this diary in response to a diary that asked for Bernie supporters to agree that Hillary was much better than any of the Republicans running to be nominated for POTUS. Apparently a Hillary supporter hoped that a bunch of Bernie supporters would be lulled into saying, "Of course Hillary is much better than a Republican President," and leaving it there.
I do not remember seeing anyone saying that Hillary was even worse than the field of Republican candidates, although a few said that she was almost as bad as some of them.
The problem is, the diary asked the wrong question, which the diarist almost certainly knew. The question was carefully chosen to get as many yes answers as possible, but not to prompt a direct comparison between the two Democratic front runners. Clever, but not clever enough, for more than one reason.
Bernie supporters are not stupid. Nobody just said yes or no to the question. But most of the answers merely expanded on either why Bernie is better, or why Hillary is not quite good enough, or why it was important to elect good down-slate candidates and who had better coattails. All of those involve minor variations on the question asked.
I want to pose a radically different question.
Given the state of the country and the world, can any Democratic POTUS, even with a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, and some additional Democratic Governors, do what we expect a Democratic POTUS to do in the next eight to ten years without a miracle? Second question, is there any way that concerned people, using our best effort, all our science, all our determination, help that POTUS accomplish the necessary miracle?
I think that the best Hillary can do as POTUS at this point is help slow the runaway train that the Tea Party has worked very hard to create in this country. I think Hillary can and will slow the runaway train, because she is a truly amazing person. But I think the country is in a much worse position than Hillary recognizes. So I think that if Hillary accomplishes slowing the runaway train, it will show that Hillary is amazing, but it still will not be enough, because Hillary is not asking enough of her supporters. Hillary is asking her supporters to get her elected, which is all most candidates for any office ask of their supporters and usually that has been enough. It will not be enough now.
This country was in a bad mess when Obama took office. Obama ran because he realized that the country was in a bad mess, and Obama knew that the POTUS could do something to fix the immediate mess if the POTUS knew what to do, and Obama had some very good ideas of several things that would help repair the mess. Obama believed that he could inspire his supporters enough that they would help him get the necessary changes made. Obama got enough changes made to slow the runaway train a little. He inspired his supporters to get him elected POTUS twice, which created enough gravitas for him to get enough changes made that the runaway train is no longer a runaway train, but it is still going in the wrong direction on the wrong track, because Obama could not inspire most of his supporters to stay actively involved in politics after the elections. Obama knew that elections matter but elections are not enough, but Obama did not know how to explain this to people who were used to being asked to be involved during elections.
Hillary believes that she can count on her supporters to get her elected instead of Bernie. Hillary believes that the whole point of supporters is to get you elected every so many years, and between election cycles supporters rest up for the next election cycle.
Obama and Bernie both were very active in genuine grassroots movements and saw the power of committed activist supporters between election cycles.
A genuine grassroots movement that is active 365 days a year and more on leap years can create miracles. That kind of grassroots movement is what Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders inspired during the late 1940s through the early 1970s. The black civil rights movement created a miracle. The black civil rights movement got a still very racist nation to enact civil rights and to start to learn to act like civil rights for blacks was the law of the land. That was a miracle of Biblical proportions, and it was done with strong leaders who dreamed that miracles were possible. But it was not done by the leaders who dreamed that miracles were possible, Thurmond Marshall, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, and too many other hundreds of leaders to name.
The black civil rights movement had extraordinary leaders. Extraordinary human beings. They guided the movement. But the movement was not a few hundred great men and women. The movement was hundreds, then thousands, then millions of very ordinary men and women who listened to the extraordinary leaders, and walked for a year to make a bus boycott work, who marched on Washington and filled the mall, who registered to vote and were beaten up for it, and then came back and voted and were beaten up for it, but they registered more voters until there were too many to beat them all up or even kill them.
Hillary will never lead that sort of a movement, will never create that sort of a movement. Hillary could be a valuable part of a movement like that, once she realized that it was necessary.
I hope that Bernie can inspire enough Democrats and Independents to create that kind of a movement. I hope that enough of us care to become part of that kind of a movement. I hope that by four years from now there are a few million of us who spend a substantial part of our time even when there is not an election on the horizon maintaining that kind of a movement.
unless we manage to get Bernie for President and a majority or very close in both houses, I doubt that I will still be living in this country eight years from when the new President takes office.
There is so much going wrong with this country and has been for over twenty years that I think it is unlikely that we will pull this country out of its decline within three or four decades if we do not continue and expand upon the good changes that Obama has managed to make for at least the next 15 to 20 years.
I know that the Republicans are not going to voluntarily do it. All the Republican Presidential candidates want outcomes that are opposed to what I need, so they will work as hard as they can to make things worse.
I know that neither Hillary nor Bernie will try to make things worse for me. Both of them will try to make things better for me. I believe that many things that Hillary wants are in my best interests. The main difference that I see is that I believe that Bernie believes that we have a crisis and that we all need to work together zealously to make the needed changes as soon as we can do so sustainably, but Hillary seems likely to be happy to move in that direction at the pace that politics usually works when there is no world war or Great Depression or space race to motivate politicians to move faster. If I were a debt free healthy able bodied twenty year old, I could probably wait for change that occurred at that pace.
But I am not healthy, and I am not debt free. I am 64 years old, I have no children, my parents are dead for over ten years, I am badly disabled, and all of my life before a major disabling injury at work ten years ago I worked only at jobs that required both mobility and manual dexterity that barring a major miracle I will never have again. Fortunately my intellect works adequately well, and I should be able to learn a vocation that while it requires a lot of my mind does not require more than my body will ever do again, and I can probably master a vocation that will be adequate to allow me to make a living in a stable first world economy. In a third world economy, which our country is working fast and furious to become, only the ability to create basic necessities like food and shelter matters, and most of that if done without advanced technology is hard physical labor, which is now impossible for me.
I have no choice. If our country destroys our safety net and destroys our ability to sustain our technology, I have to have left this country well in advance of that point, and I have to leave it for someplace that I will be able to survive in without being a burden on society for a few more decades, or I will be one of the victims of the short-sightedness of the greedy part of the 1%.
I do believe that Hillary will slow the rate of our decline a lot. I do believe that she understands most of the problem as well as Bernie does. I do not believe that she understands that we have allowed things to get so bad that the next ten years will determine whether we can change things enough that the country will still recover quickly. If we do not get major change very soon, the economy will not get better for a long time, maybe thirty years, maybe three hundred years. I believe that Hillary can make it so we have a chance for a thirty year recovery, and the Republicans will try to doom us to a three hundred year recovery. I believe that most people will survive the recovery that Hillary would work towards. I believe that it is possible that the Republicans will lead to a collapse that will kill off millions. I believe that electing Hillary next year and winning back both houses of congress will help preserve humanity as we know it with technology that we will recognize, with an economy that we will recognize, with geological features that will leave the coastlines of the continents recognizable. If the Republicans gain control of all national branches of government and a significant number of states, and if other countries do not do any better, the oceans could easily rise to levels where continents change shape beyond being easy to see the similarity to their present shape, and more than half the world's population dies off in the next 100 years from one cause or another.
Yes I will vote for Hillary if Hillary is the nominee. Yes I will campaign for Hillary if Hillary is the nominee. I would rather have six years to figure out where in the world I will have the best chance of survival than to have six months after the election to figure it out. Because I have been already working on it since shortly after Obama took office, when the Democratic national party obstructed everything that Obama was trying to accomplish. Within six months of Obama taking office as President, I decided that the country as a whole was determined to drive off the end of a pier, and the main question was how soon, and how much of the world did we plan to take with us.
I was hoping that enough people who had worked to get Obama elected would see that we would need to continue to work to see that Obama was effective. Nope. Not only did Obama not work to keep the base mobilized, but the base was glad to wash their hands of all responsibility post election, except for a few rare shining lights like Occupy Wall Street. Obama should not have had to work to keep his supporters mobilized. We should have known that politicians who want change need people to support them vocally once they are in office. Obama made that his message over and over during his campaign, which is part of what inspired me about his campaign. I knew that Obama could not work miracles.
But I know that we the people can work miracles. We the people are the only political body that can work miracles.