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.
_________________

67. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/keep_calm_and_vote_green
_fascism_is_ not_coming_20160923