As the election moves forward and Hillary’s lead starts to widen, there is one very vital message I would argue that Hillary Clinton needs stress with voters.
Her true opponent in this election (as it has been with Obama for the past eight years) is not an opposition candidate, but in fact an entire political party that has no policies or plans of any kind other than preserving the wealth and privilege of the wealthy, and pouring billions of wasted dollars into defense. Beyond that...NOTHING!
Nobody payed a lot of attention to what was actually happening procedurally the night Ryan tried to shut down the Democrats protests in the well of the House by bringing up legislation to vote on.
That legislation was in fact, an attempt by the GOP to override a Presidential veto of a measure they had tried but failed to pass that would have removed requirements for financial advisors to inform their clients whether they are placing their own interests or those of the client first. Remember that! Given a choice of an action to take, Ryan chose to once again try to kill legislation designed to protect the public. It failed fortunately, but it is just one more example of a party that puts itself totally ahead of the interests of the country, whether it be gutting Dodd Frank, protecting the payday loan industry and for-profit schools and colleges, or ignoring the need of the public for safe affordable drinking water.
More recently, the GOP managed to block a measure that would have provided funds for the Defense Department to undertake a long term study on the impacts of global warming….both in terms of its potential to generate regional wars over resources like water, force large scale migrations like the ones we are seeing now in the Middle East and Europe --- and deal with actual consequences of warming on military facilities...consequences that are already underway.
Republicans say the (proposed DOD) directive is a distraction from the real threats the Pentagon should be focused on, particularly terrorist groups in the Middle East. “The military, the intelligence community [and] the domestic national security agencies should be focused on ISIS and not on climate change,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who sponsored the amendment to block the funding. “The fact that the president wants to push a radical green energy agenda should not diminish our ability to counter terrorism.”Buck dismissed the idea that the military should focus on climate change as a threat: “The president has talked about an increase in the climate temperature on the planet,” he said. “It is a fraction of a degree every year. How that is a current threat to us is beyond me.
Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundationwho spent two decades in the Marine Corps, argued that the directive will require additional resources to implement, a costly effort in a time of tight budgets. “You’re just overloading the military with yet more tasks,” he said.
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Even as the GOP was taking this stance, a recent report on NPR chronicled the problems already facing the nation’s largest naval base at Norfolk, VA, where a combination of rising sea levels and sinking land is beginning to cause serious problems. A naval official told NPR that the base’s docks for nuclear submarines include water, power and sewer lines that are connected to the subs while at berth. However, a couple of times a month now, tidal rise brings the water up high enough to submerge the power lines, forcing the base to cut off services to the subs during those periods.
But of course, if we actually dealt with that, Dakota, our hard right wing Heritage Foundation researcher, says that would just be too much money. Dakota fella….wait until they send you the real bill in a few years. It might wind up taking away your cute little super jets and extra aircraft carriers and cruise missiles, because we need the money to build dikes around several dozen critical coastal military facilities worldwide.
And regular Kossacks can readily create their own rapid checklist of things the GOP has blocked:
Hobbled the ExIm bank by refusing to hold hearings on a Board membership (a nominee made by Republicans) thus maintaining a lack of a Board quorum and hobbling the Bank’s ability to approve larger loan guarantees for US exports (while other countries gleefully take advantage of our own obstruction.) GOP members tried to block funding the 85 year old Bank at all and ultimately lost that vote by a nearly 2/3rds margin, yet the obstruction continues.
Hobbled court systems at every level by blocking nominations to a growing number of vacancies, including of course, the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Garland.
Tried repeatedly to gut Obamacare, The Consumer Protection Board, the FCC, the Labor Relations Board and the UN, and continually cutting the budgets of important agencies like the IRS and SEC, thus hampering their ability to prosecute tax evaders and cheats, and proposing complete elimination of departments like education and commerce.
Refusing to take ANY action on meaningful gun controls even in the fact of polls showing 89-90 percent of the American public wants universal background checks for gun ownership.
Have tried repeatedly to block equal access to the Internet.
Congressman Ryan keeps his media cred as a thoughtful “wonk” by issuing important “policy papers” on tax plans and healthcare that are totally devoid of the most basic information (How much will it cost and who will benefit?) while continually saying he is doing it to give Americans more choice and flexibility even as his plans propose to take it away.
It was Speaker Ryan who threw a major hissy fit after the Democratic demonstrations over gun control in the well of theHhouse, charging that they were nothing but a publicity stunt and that he was engaged in doing “the peoples’ business.”
But for the GOP, clearly, the peoples’ business involves gutting agencies, ignoring overwhelming public sentiment and repeatedly blocking any attempts by Congress to deal with the mounting critical issues we face (immigration, wage inequality, equal pay, global warming, environmental degradation, wage stagnation, middle class job losses, cuts to education, and civil and voting rights.)
In sum voters choices involve just not the candidate, but in the case of the GOP...their entire party. THAT is what Hillary needs to add to her message.
This election offers you clear choices as voters:
A skilled, experienced and steady candidate representing a party with a carefully thought out program to tackle those issues
vs. a bombastic blowhard with the business ethics of a card shark, a total disdain for issues or policies, and no understanding or interest in the consequences of decisions he would make, based on his gut and his ego. And worst of all, he is backed by a party which has no clear plans or policies to deal with these critical issues — even as the dangers of economic stagnation, wage inequality, affordable health care, and global warming grow ever more critical.
You have seen the consequences of a party whose sole mission has been to block the President at every turn. We ask you to give us the next four years to show you what is possible. But to do that, we need majorities committed to working together to get the job done. This year, your vote should be both for candidate AND for party.
Without it, the stagnation will only continue. Let us show what we can accomplish. If we haven’t shown signs of progress after four years, using the majority we are asking you to give us, then vote us out then, but continuing as we are today is going to guarantee more years of delay, obstruction, stagnation and failure and further delays in facing the mounting dangers of global warming alone.
Voters in Britain today are waking up to the consequences of decisions many of them made without thinking, listening, or doing the most cursory study of the consequences. (According to one report the trending UK search term on Google after the vote was “What is the EU?”)
Now that it has happened, they are discovering that the warnings made are proving to be true and the end result may be a fractured nation, lower economic performance, lost jobs and higher costs.
Those now supporting Trump out of frustration over the current system should learn one clear lesson. Voting on the basis of frustration and anger won’t end up making things any better. Blowing things up because you are angry will not effect the change we need.
A true voter tsunami is going to be needed if Clinton is to have any hope of promoting an agenda that can get things done. The GOP has skillfully gerrymandered districts and tried, wherever it can, to create obstacles in the form of Voter ID laws. However, the potential for that tsunami is there, IF many GOP voters get so discouraged they fail to vote (or better yet decide to vote for Clinton) and if we GET OUT THE VOTE.
It’s a long shot, but there may never be an opportunity like this again. Trump’s unique negatives and his clear inability to be anything, other than his true self-centered ignorant self, (he has pivoted so many times already he is steadily screwing himself into the ground) gives us those opportunities.
Let us not blow it!
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