Buying The Presidency?

-by Dorothy Reik,
President, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains

The curtain has been pulled aside. Money has been laid on the table. Bloomberg and Trump are in a bidding war for the presidency of the United States-- but they are bidding against the people as well as against each other. And the winner gets-- our country! In the past the buyers of presidencies hid behind PACS and SuperPACs, like the Koch brothers, but now Bloomberg and Trump have each pledged to spend whatever it takes to buy the presidency of our country. This is a truly terrifying proposition and we the people are the only ones who can stop it.

Bernie weighs in:



Crooks and Liars reports that Ed Rendell would consider support Bloomberg against Bernie-- as would Hillary's campaign chairman, lobbyist John Podesta-- so we can see that the party elite are getting scared. They'd rather sell the country to a plutocrat than let the people have it! The real candidate here is Wall Street-- that's where Bloomberg made his fortune. Polls show that Bloomberg would take votes from HRC and hand Trump a victory! Trump knows this so he is delighted. He doesn't care about Wall Street-- except as a building site!

So it's eminent domain vs eminent banksters. Trump will take our land and Bloomberg will take our money-- or make it a lot easier for his bankster friends to do it. And in the NYTimes' Charles Blow writes Hillary is "blowing" it. Her "campaign seems increasingly desperate and reckless."

I noticed the turn in the last debate as Clinton seemed to me to go too far in her attacks on Sanders, while simultaneously painting herself into a box that will be very hard to escape.

She wrapped herself in President Obama’s legacy so tightly that she could hardly breathe, and then built an image of herself as a practical politician who could build on Obama’s accomplishments by taking small steps and negotiating tough deals.

...[I]nstead of Clinton finding a way to express that her plans are more tangible than Sanders’s, and her chances in the general election are stronger than his, she and her campaign have made some incredulous inferences about Sanders’s honor.

The swipes at him as being soft on the gun industry as some way of cozying up to it, or of being anti-Obama because he wanted Obama to be stronger in pursuing a liberal agenda, or that he wants to scrap Obamacare, simply do not connect.

Sanders may be a dreamer, but he’s not dishonorable. Trying to sully him in this way only sullies her.

There are a tremendous number of echoes starting to be heard between the way Clinton ran against Obama, and the way she is running against Sanders.

Clinton has what political insiders call the “firewall”: Overwhelming support among black and Hispanic voters in Southern and some Western states. But a win by Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire could supply a boost of momentum that could greatly erode the Clinton firewall.

If Clinton can’t find a positive, energetic message to project, and soon, she is going to be swept away by Sanders.

Some part of Sanders’s proposals and even his vision for this country may indeed be a fairy tale. But in the 2008 race, Bill Clinton criticized Obama and his position on the Iraq war as a “fairy tale.” Well fairy tales sometimes come true, particularly when Hillary Clinton stumbles.

Tom Hayden agrees:

Hillary Clinton is ill-served by unleashing an unsavory attack dog, David Brock, on her opponent Bernie Sanders. The irony, of course, is that Brock was a pretty rabid attack dog against the same Hillary he works for now. In those days Brock wrote one of the most personal, viscous pieces on Hillary in the modern form of old-school yellow journalism.

For some reason Brock has switched to become Hillary’s highly paid defender-in-chief, still paddling in the gutters of hyperbole and mud-slinging that have become his trademarks. It’s a mistake to employ this style against Bernie Sanders.

This week Brock was all over the news for attacking the Sanders' generic television spot as racially exclusive. He went over the top by declaring that “it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”

Why would a white Hillary opposition researcher like Brock want to pontificate like that? It seems to be his style. Who is he winning over? Its one thing to raise a careful argument over Sanders’ appeal in primaries that lie ahead. It’s a different thing to employ a slime attack about the same thing, out of his mouth, and it will be offensive to many black Democrats.

Hillary is a good enough debater to keep her team on a level of dignity and rationality. It’s not too late to reverse course to the more positive Hillary seen in the original debates.

And Brock should know by now that when you throw ink it drips on yourself.

So if she does, indeed blow it, we can look forward to a bidding war indeed-- but there is a third bidder here-- the American people!!! Go to either the Blue America Bernie page or to the Blue America page for Bernie and the congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on the same platform.