September 25, 2016

There might have been reason to think that Hillary Clinton could win the election by being a centrist. After the Republicans nominated an embarrassment, peeling off right-of-center votes seemed a reasonable strategy. (I speculated, not entirely seriously, that her logo, "I’m with Her," with a right-pointing arrow for the crossbar of the H, was a hint). However, relegating half of Trump supporters to a basket of deplorables and patronizing the other half wasn’t the way to attract them away from the Donald, or to seduce right-leaning undecideds. It illustrated two of Mrs. Clinton’s major weaknesses: she isn’t a natural or skillful campaigner, and her understanding of ordinary people seems limited.

Another potential weakness is the flip side of the centrist image: to some she’s too liberal to support, to others too conservative. I quoted one of the former persuasion on July 16; he worried about a "politically correct, free-milk-and-cookies, European-style social democracy" under Hillary. On the other side we have this: she is a "hideous imperial corporatist." Also, we mustn’t "ignore the plutocratic, racist, ecocidal, sexist, repressive and military-imperial havoc that Democrats inflict at home and abroad in dark, co-dependent alliance with the ever more radically reactionary Republicans."[67]

At least the Hillary-is-a-leftist writer admitted that he probably would vote for Trump, a bad decision but one oriented toward the real world. Our Hillary-is-an imperial-corporatist writer will toss away his vote in a noble gesture/fit of pique by voting Green. He feels safe in doing so because the threat of Trumpism isn’t real: Clinton will win.

Maybe she will, no thanks to our leftist scold, but if she doesn’t, don’t bother him; he’s too busy dreaming of a true liberal world.
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67. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/keep_calm_and_vote_green
_fascism_is_ not_coming_20160923

September 20, 2016

We need to address the divisions in the country, sometimes dressed up in "nationalisms" — white, Christian, Southern — which seek exclusion or separation. Who would better deal with such problems? In last Friday’s Washington Post, George Will worried that the election might produce "an unleashed, and perhaps unhinged, Democratic majority" in the Senate. How awful! We wouldn’t want policy to be made, problems to be addressed, by such wild, irrational people. Fortunately, we can turn to a Republican, who had a better and nobler view of nationalism, one which seeks to unite Americans in common cause.

We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The National Government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the National Government.

So said Theodore Roosevelt in a speech entitled "The New Nationalism."

Adopting this vision would require that we think of ourselves as Americans, something — apart from slogans — we often have had some difficulty doing, and which seems a distant hope at present. It requires a sense of, and a commitment to, common goals and welfare: in short, a sense of community. "The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage." TR quoted another Republican, Abraham Lincoln: "I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

Sadly, their Republican Party no longer exists. Blathering, as the current Republican candidate does, about making America great while fanning flames of division, demonstrates that it is not the Democrats who have become unhinged.