Her vicious record notwithstanding, I think\u00a0we should consider voting for her for two important reasons: A) The Supreme Court will have vacancies to be filled, and B) a Republican president actually will <\/em>be much worse.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve grown to hate this notion,\u00a0but,\u00a0I think we have to vote for the\u00a0\u201clesser of two evils.\u201d I\u2019m not using this phrase\u00a0as a figure of speech. Both Democrats and Republicans hobnob with the power elite, take their billions, and do their bidding. Both candidates will lie and use populist rhetoric\u00a0to manipulate us into voting for them. So, yeah, I think this constitutes \u201cevil.\u201d\u00a0Unfortunately, we have a two-party system, and we have to struggle within that reality. Things are bad under corporate Democrats but they would be really bad\u00a0under a Republican presidency.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to be slavish, adoring groupies to vote for Hillary or to work for her campaign. We can engage\u00a0strategically and pressure her on issues\u00a0to force her to the left.<\/p>\n

What progressives can do<\/h2>\n

Hillary is a political animal, and like\u00a0all political animals, she responds to political pressure. What we progressives can do is educate ourselves on the power elites, how they function, and how she will be working with them. We can start by looking at her campaign advisors and whose interests they represent. We can be vocal\u00a0in our criticism of her Wall Street alliances, and her record of undermining working people and the poor.<\/p>\n

There is always the\u00a0fear that criticism of a Democratic candidate from the left will cause him or her to lose, but that view comes from the all-or-nothing mentality of the personality-driven, groupie crowd that\u00a0populates campaign offices. It\u2019s time for grown-up, hardball politics. It’s not only OK to criticize a corporate\u00a0Democratic candidate, it’s essential if we are to restore anything resembling a democracy.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0would not harm but rather strengthen Hillary\u2019s candidacy if we call her on her fake populism and demand that she commit<\/em> to real progressive policies\u2014like, for starters, Medicare for all, the expansion of Social Security to an income the elderly could live on, raising the income cap on Social Security taxes, or the development of a national infrastructure bank. A genuine progressive would get\u00a0a disengaged public\u00a0to the polls. It would strengthen her candidacy if we call her out on her hawkish foreign policy and her support for Wall Street proxy wars, like the one being fought in Ukraine. We need to ask her, publicly, why the\u00a0billions spent on\u00a0defense (a form of government handouts to corporations and CEOs) would not be better spent on a peace economy that would benefit everyone. Finally, after she is elected, we can vow to be a constant thorn in her side until she delivers for the American people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I watched Hillary\u2019s slick ad announcing her 2016 presidential campaign. If you haven\u2019t seen it, you can watch it here.\u00a0Left writer and thinker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":31665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2119,2421],"tags":[603,2422,602,152],"yoast_head":"\n