I’m supporting Hillary Clinton. There are many reasons why I am, not the least of which is that I want a woman president elected in my lifetime; however, I suppose the main reason why I support her is that I have never seen a person, male or female, more capable and prepared to do the job.
It’s not that I don’t agree profoundly with almost everything Bernie says (except his position on gun control, which no matter how he tries to spin it, was completely wrong) particularly about “Single-Payer” healthcare, but let’s get real, there’s not one thing he’s proposing that he can actually accomplish if he is elected.
And please spare me all that rubbish about how he’s worked across the aisle during his time as a congressman and senator. Both Obama and Clinton worked across the aisle when they were in the senate. Republicans like McCain, Graham and Hatch used to sing Hillary’s praises about how practical and easy to work with she was on issues where they could find common ground. But there are two reasons why that is absolutely meaningless. The first is that once you’re elected president, all bets are off and you are now the spawn of Satan who couldn’t get agreement from the Republicans if you proposed a bill saying that the sun rises in the East. The second is that Republicans like McCain, Graham and Hatch are an endangered species who no longer hold sway over what the conservatives do in congress.
President Obama’s tenure in the White House proves the point. To the utter dismay of progressives, myself at the top of the list, Obama’s biggest problem from the start was that he stubbornly held on to the misguided belief that he could somehow deal with the Republicans if he gave them enough concessions to support his proposed legislation. Take his signature healthcare initiative which Senator Sanders insists he helped write.
The time to push for Single-Payer was during the initial fight for the Affordable Care Act. We wouldn’t have gotten it, but the compromise would have been the Public Option. As we all now know, the Public Option was proposed instead of Single-Payer but it was never really a serious consideration. In fact, it was chucked under the bus at least a dozen times in a congress then controlled by the Democrats, before real negotiations began. Hoping to appease conservative Democrats and attract Republican support Obama stripped the ACA of some of his proposed cost control measures, dropped the Public Option and struck a deal with Big Pharma eliminating the ability to negotiate for lower prescription prices. Even with all his concessions the ACA was passed without any Republican support except for one vote in the House. Worse still, the insurance industry was allowed to keep its malevolent stranglehold on healthcare.
As the Republicans have just voted to repeal the ACA for the 60th time, is there anyone out there who truly believes Bernie can get Single-Payer even brought up, let alone passed in a Republican controlled congress?
As much as it pains me to say it, the same is true for all of his other proposals. If you recall, Obama made many of the same promises when he was running against Hillary in 2008, and as a result rallied all the young, disenfranchised, progressives and a good many independents to his cause. Unfortunately, during his first term he was so busy trying to win over Republicans who on the night he was elected got together and vowed that they would never, ever allow him to pass a bill, that he gave away the store on almost every issue we cared about. I believed then and I believe today that Hillary Clinton would never have been as easily rolled by the GOP and she would have done a better job of keeping rogue Democrats in line.
I know the anti-Clinton progressives will never be convinced that she’s worked just as hard for economic equity, as well a social and gender equity, that she isn’t bought and paid for by Wall Street and that she isn’t itching to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. Quite frankly, I’ve given up trying to change their minds. I consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart, commie pinko liberal who believes in everything Bernie is espousing. That’s why I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.