Let's be honest....nothing progressive can happen under HRC as president.

[BainsBane]

66. Let's examine this

What I'm saying is that a Democratic president is supposed to stand up to capital with just as much passion as Republicans blindly serve it.

Since when? When did the Democratic Party ever oppose capital?

And, especially, we are never supposed to barter our party's soul by taking massive corporate donations.

That is the nature of the cleptocracy that has developed over the past couple of decades. That is not the fault of Hillary Clinton nor would her candidacy or election affect it.
If you want to change the role of money in politics, the only current solution is a constitutional amendment. No political messiah is going to rewrite the constitution (or SCOTUS's fucked up interpretation of it) without the approval of SCOTUS, congress, and state legislatures. I personally think that is the single issue that most impedes our democracy--money, not just from corporations but generally. That is an issue that I would like to see organization around. Opposing Hillary Clinton is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to that issue.

And we are now being asked to endorse a candidate whose nomination implicitly commits the party to going back to that era...and also reduces us to the disgusting spector of alternating ruling families, a kind of politics in which ordinary Americans have no hope at all.

No one (save some other DUers doing their own fantasy presidential politics game) has asked you to endorse Clinton. Clinton hasn't asked you to endorse her. She has not even declared as a candidate. You have been running your fantasy presidential election for years now. You and her enemies are the ones working so hard to make her inevitable. YOU. (I have often wondered what would happen if she doesn't run. A number of people here have talked about nothing else for several years now. If she doesn't run, I wonder what would that mean for you people who have defined yourselves entirely around your opposition to her. I think some people would feel very empty without the single thing that has defined them for several years now. She's only a politician for God's sake.)


Her crime, it seems is being married to Bill Clinton. Nothing you have listed has anything to do with her personally. It is endemic to the system, some of it to the nature of the capitalist state and some of it to the current campaign finance nightmare SCOTUS has imposed. Your association of Secretary Clinton is not an argument. It is an assumption based on the fact you refuse to see her as an independent human being. Whatever. I don't give a flying shit who you support for president. I would like to wait until there is an actual campaign and we can see who the actual nominees are. I will tell you one thing. It's going to be very difficult for me to resist supporting her after hearing all this illogical moaning for years on end.

What we have here is your deciding Clinton embodies everything you despise about the current American political system and the Democratic party. That has to do with you and your own issues and is not a logical position. Nothing you have mentioned will go away with another candidate. NOT ONE THING. You could pick your dream president right now and in a few years you would be making the exact same complaints. There are no political messiahs. No President is going to save America. Our political system does not vest that much power in the presidency. If you want to do something about money in politics, you need to quit your fixation on the presidency and work for a constitutional amendment. Absent that, ain't a fucking thing going to change about the role of money in politics.


Lastly

Obviously, a president can't by her or himself transform the country. But she or he can, at least, make it clear that she or he will NEVER stand in the way of transformation from below. Do you honestly believe that this candidate will ever do that, being committed, as she is, to the notion that political decisions should be made solely by elitist "insiders"?

The irony in this statement is mind boggling. You talk about a race for President and then bemoan "elitest insiders" in the same breath. The Presidency, the most elite of offices, the elite of elite. And it is now an office that costs a billion or more dollars to acquire, and you think someone besides elitist insiders is going to have a shot? I get the feeling you actually believed the mythology you were taught in grade school about government of the people by the people. I'll clue you in. It's a lie. It's always been a lie. It's national mythology, meant to inculcate loyalty to the state and capitalism. You need to give up this school boy fantasy of American government. The founders worked diligently to separate government from the people. They never wanted a government that would represent ordinary people. They were all wealthy landed elites. That is how our nation was born, and it is how it has always been. Now it's gone way out of kilter with big money, so much so that people like folks on this site have finally started to notice that reality doesn't quite add up to the myth, only you think it's a temporary condition rather than endemic to the system. Both parties serve capital. The differences have started to become greater because the GOP has gone full fledged bat shit. Even then, sections of the Tea Party are quite hostile to big money, so the divide isn't what you imagine. That there is any difference on these issues is a product of the late 20th century. Some of that alignment came in the 30s when the Democrats emerged as the party that garnered most labor support. Then in the 60s, African Americans moved to support the Democratic Party. Now they also have the support of most women and LGBT. But at no point did they set themselves up as a party that opposed moneyed interests. That is not possible under our political system, nor is it how the framers intended the system to function. You seem to forget the Democratic Party was once the party of slaveholders. Politicians typically represent the financial interests from their regions. They couldn't survive if they didn't. Every single MN Democratic is lobbying to get the medical device tax removed from Obamacare, including Keith Ellison, chair of the Progressive caucus. Why? Because it's crucial to the MN economy. He'd have to be insane to cross them. That is why Biden always voted in the interests of credit card companies and why midwestern pols always vote for agribusiness. They can't survive if they don't. That much has been true since the continental congress was elected, largely because the representatives were the financial elite.

Not a single thing you have mentioned has to do with Hillary Clinton. Not one. I encourage you to think about what you have visited onto Clinton (the female body) everything that you dislike about the American political system. Another candidate won't change a single concern you raised. Not a one. America will still be America, and SCOTUS will sill be working to make the cash nexus more naked than ever. There are things the American people can do to make it better, but that requires actual organization, mobilization and hard work. A President will not and cannot solve it.