You know, I'm tired of hearing it. I'm tired of hearing how important the next four years are for the democrats and there's so much at stake and we will make SOOO MUCH PROGRESS!!!!11! if we just vote for Hillary Clinton. Even if she's nowhere near as progressive as we would like, we're told she's way better than Donald Trump and if we vote for him or a third party, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. However, I'm getting increasingly skeptical of these claims that Clinton is the best we can do here. It's like they're keeping us on a treadmill of dependence on them where we vote for them every 4 years just to avoid making things worse.
8 years of "hope and change"
Here's the thing that really makes the backdrop of the democrats' promises in 2016 so ineffective. We already had 8 years of democrats in the oval office. Heck, we actually voted for the superior candidate in 2008 all things considered and they still don't have their heads on straight. Obama ran against Clinton in 2008 and won, saying she would say anything, and do nothing. Obama, I think he tried his best, but he does take a bad approach to the current situation and never really was that much more progressive than 2016 Hillary (yes, I have to put a year before Hillary's name so we know what Hillary we're talking about).
The only very significant things Obama did were to bail out the economy, and pass Obamacare. The first any sane president would've done, and the economic recovery that came after would've happened under either a republican or a democrat. The second was a mediocre reform. Obama, other than that, has basically acted fairly conservatively. He has mostly acted to keep the current system from falling apart. He extended unemployment when it was bad, etc. The whole gay marriage thing, that happened due to the Supreme Court.
But generally speaking, Obama hasn't done much his entire second term. He's pushed for the TPP (YUCK!), he's tried a few executive actions when he didn't think the republicans would scream over them, and he tried negotiating with the republicans, only to watch them tear him down for the last 6 years.
But we're expected to believe that if we only elect Hillary, things will be so much better?
Not unless you retake congress, and even if you retake congress, I don't think they have the resolve to actually get anything progressive done. Obamacare was passed with a democratic congress, and it's essentially a former republican plan.
I think it's reasonable to believe that if we elect Hillary, nothing will change. It will be 4 more years of the last 8. Maybe some people want that. I know some rank and file dems love Obama even now, but honestly, I think we can do better as a country.
Democrats are more interested in defending legacies
The thing is, even if the democrats do get elected. Even if they somehow retake congress (unlikely), even if we get Hillary, the democrats are not going to push for more progressive solutions than Obama has been for. Listen to the debate between Sanders and Clinton on healthcare. Sanders says we need universal healthcare, and Clinton says that Obamacare is the law of the land and we can't revisit past battles again. Take note of this. Obama pushed an inferior alternative to universal healthcare for the sake of political expedience, the democrats tell us we can always improve the stuff later if we vote for them again, but they won't. They're too entrenched in supporting Obama's legacies and continuing his ideas. They are more interested in defending the last 8 years, and giving us more of the same, not advancing us to the future with solutions that work. If Hillary passes her education plan, a true universal education likely will never come to pass. If we concede and say the economy is doing well, they will lose the resolve to fix our problems. The democrats will turn a blind eye to their own shortcomings to push more of the same, because to actually revisit the same battles hurts their pride. It tells them they didn't do it right the first time and they need to fix it.
This is, ironically, a huge reason the democrats were opposed to Nixon's family assistance plan (basically a limited form a basic income) in the 70s, by the way. They did not want to admit that their war on poverty programs were mediocre and flawed, and opposed a superior reform that would fix these problems, because the idea of a republican fixing their ideas and making them better hurt their pride and their image. 40 years later, we actually made these programs WORSE with "welfare reform", and the idea of even touching them to improve them in a tangible way that goes beyond the most minor of band aids is unthinkable. The democrats have always been interested in advancing their "team" more than they are in fixing the problems. If fixing the problems hurts their image and makes their current attempts at solutions look bad, they'll stifle progress and tell you that you have to settle for what they gave you, and be grateful for it. They don't understand progress is a moving target and just because we did things a certain way does not mean the debate should be settled. We need solutions that work, not mediocre solutions that don't.
Democrats keep people on a treadmill
Sometimes I think the democrats push mediocre solutions to keep people voting for them. Look at the minimum wage. The democrats agreed on $15 an hour, but refused to index it. Why? Well, to be fair, a more practical reason could be that it's uncharted territory and could be too high, so you don't want to keep it at that level. But on the other hand, I suspect part of the reason they never index it is because if they actually did, then that means the minimum wage would remain high, forever, and they would have nothing to campaign on. You see, the democrats love to dangle minimum wage in front of people every few years. It's a popular issue, it helps a lot of people, but they just don't like the idea of permanently solving problems it seems. I remember when I was in high school going into college congress raised the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. It was the first time they raised it in a decade. Now, they want to raise it to $10, to $12, and then eventually Bernie pushed them to $15. But you know what? We raise it to $15, everything is good for a few years, and then it'll just go down, and down, and down. And then the democrats get to play hero again by running on raising it as a campaign issue. We could solve this problem, keeping the minimum wage high automatically (I'd rather see a minimum wage around $12 indexed to inflation than a 1 time increase to $15, for reference), but then what would the democrats have to campaign on?
The same goes with Obamacare. Hillary says we don't need to get rid of Obamacare, we just have to tweak it a bit. She wants to push some minor reforms to make it better, not recognizing the whole thing is bad. I'd imagine her education plan would work the same way. Maybe in a few years a future president will work on some minor expansions.
And again, the safety net. We could have a guaranteed income system without the current welfare traps, but the current welfare traps, according to conservatives, keep people dependent on the democrats where they keep voting for them, even though the current safety net stops them from getting out of poverty. Now, to be fair, republicans think the solution to poverty is taking away all safety nets and forcing them to work under the threat of starvation, which isn't good, but let's face it, we could have a much better safety net. Nixon's administration proposed one. They actually did want a limited form of basic income with work requirements known as the "family assistance plan." But the democrats prefer a mediocre system that keeps people dependent on them to keep voting them in every 4 years. They never fix the problems, because that would mean they don't have anything to run on. So they run as the party that will prevent those darned republicans from making everything worse. This is how we got here. The republicans want to eliminate things like the minimum wage, Obamacare, safety nets, etc., and the democrats get to be the good guys, stopping these things from being destroyed, but never really proposing something that works. They keep you on a cycle of dependence on them, keep you voting for them every 4 years, and if you don't, bad things happen.
Our current two party system is like having a sick patient, and only two doctors to treat them. The first doctor wants to do nothing at all and thinks you're not sick and you just have to walk it off. The other doctor could cure you, but chooses instead to implement a system of "disease management" in which you're told a cure is off the table but they got some painkillers available that will make living with the disease more manageable. Take note that neither doctor here wants to cure you. This is the current dialogue between republicans and democrats. It's like, as Chomsky said, our system keeps people in line by implementing a strict spectrum of debate, within which there is lively debate, but outside of that spectrum, discussion is generally not going to go anywhere.
Even if democrats controlled the government, things wouldn't get better
Even if the democrats took over congress, owned every seat even, all 535 of them, and controlled the presidency, I doubt they would actually propose bold solutions that would fix our problems. This is true even if we took dependence on them and "disease management" off the table. If there's anything I've been noticing about the democrats ideologically lately, it's that they either don't recognize, or don't care about, the full extent of America's problems. Even if we put aside legacies, and reality denial in defense of them (cough, 5% unemployment, Obama so wonderful, cough), the democrats just ideologically don't get it. I realized this reading Clinton's interview on basic income the other day, which culminated in the article I wrote and posted yesterday. Clinton is clueless. She's bought into this whole protestant work ethic crap, and likely still believes in the "American dream" too. She downplays the serious problems with capitalism, and the serious problems that are the cost of her ideological ideas surrounding it. As I mentioned in my article about the labor market, the labor market is inherently rigged, employers act in their own self interest, and the only logical result that can come from the problems associated with it are poverty and exploitation. Our system is set up to cause those things. It's the only logical conclusion as I see it. The only way we can solve these problems is to get serious about these fundamental flaws, to recognize there's a problem, and then to implement sweeping reforms that fix it. Otherwise, poverty will always exist, our distributional system will always ensure that people are poor, exploited, and dependent on elites. Of course, maybe this is what both parties want...
The supreme court
The supreme court is an argument I've heard a lot this election, even before Scalia's death. The democrats wave around how old these justices are and how half of them can die at any moment and that you need to support them to make the court more liberal and blah blah blah. But honestly, the court is ultimately a revolving door. Yes, theoretically Trump or Clinton could nominate up to 5 justices, but they might also only nominate a replacement for Scalia. maybe if another retires and kicks the bucket we'll have 2 justices being replaced. Not the end of the world. That's par for the course actually. It won't be a fundamental right wing shift for decades if a republican gets elected. That's only the absolute worst case scenario. Some of those justices might not retire or die until after 2020 or 2024. And then they'll use them again as leverage to vote for them. in addition to justices that are aging. It's just another argument to keep you dependent on the democratic party. It's just another piece of leverage.
Conclusion
Throughout this article, I've come to the conclusion the democrats really have no interest in fixing America's problems. They promise us that if we only support them for four more years, that if we only keep voting for them even if we are tired of them, that they'll implement progressive change, or at least stop things from getting worse. But all in all, that's all they're doing, stopping the republicans from making things worse. They don't care about us. They care about their legacies and ensuring the people have a reason to vote for them in four years. The democrats and their progressive voters are like an abusive relationship. They keep convincing us to come back to them, even after we're tired of their lies, promises, and mediocrity. When that fails, they tell us how pathetic we are without them and how our lives will be miserable if we don't come back. They pull this every 4 years. They will continue to pull it until we show them who is in charge and vote with our consciences. I cannot, in good conscience, support Clinton for president, and what I've discussed here is a huge reason. I cannot keep voting for the lesser evil here, because that lesser evil will never be a greater good unless we force them to. If we ever want real solutions, we need to break this cycle of dependence on the democratic party and implement progressives who are willing to implement what we want. Even if they fail or under deliver because of the political system itself, they should never stop trying. The big problem with the democratic party is that they don't try to begin with. They make some half hearted efforts and then tell us to settle for less. This has to stop. This is a big reason I'm voting Jill Stein.
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