By SJ Otto
Now that Ted Cruz and John Kasich have dropped out of the
Republican Primary race, Donald Trump is on the way to being the official
candidate of his party. There are no obstacles to his way, so there is no
reason to believe he won’t get the nomination at the Republican Party
Convention this summer.
Even though Bernie Sanders has not thrown in the towel for
the Democrats, it is looking like it will be Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump
next fall. As can be expected, this site will support Clinton over Trump. This
blog has never been supportive of Republicans so our readers know what to expect. Some obvious
issues will be immigration. Clinton is likely to have a more favorable policy
on immigrants, especially dealing with Hispanics. Then there are women’s
issues. Hillary will support abortion rights. Clinton will be the first women
president in the entire history of the US. That will be a big step forward for
this country, even if it is only symbolic. One really important issue will be
health care. Clinton will save Obama Care (Affordable Care Act) while Trump has
threatened to get rid of it all together.
However this is not the slam dunk it might appear to be to
some people. Clinton is not a leftist or liberal. She is close to Wall Street,
just as Bernie has said. Worst of all is that Clinton’s foreign policy might
actually be worse than Trump’s. She has been a real hawk on foreign policy.
Trump has hinted that he may actually scale back some of the worst of this
country’s imperialist foreign policies.
"America
first will be the overriding theme of my administration," Trump was
quoted by CNN
for his remarks at Washington's Mayflower hotel, delivered from a prepared
text.
"Under
a Trump administration, no American citizen will ever again feel that their
needs come second to the citizens of foreign countries….
…..My
foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and
American security first."
The phrase “America First”
came originally from the isolationist organizations of the 1930s and 1940s by
those who opposed getting involved in World War II. If that is what he is proposing
it will mean scaling back the imperialist policy of “nation building” that has
been the general foreign policy direction since the George W. Bush Regime.
"I
will never send our finest into battle unless necessary and I mean absolutely
necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital
V," Trump emphasized, according to CNN.
He also referred to the "legacy of the Obama-Clinton interventions"
as one of "weakness, confusion and disarray."
And with all his anti-Muslim comments throughout his
campaign:
"We're
going to be working very closely with our friends in the Muslim world, which
are all at risk for violent attacks," he said.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who supports
Clinton, described his comments as a "simplistic" mixture of slogans
and contradictions.
"He just underscored the fact that he is running the most
reckless and dangerous presidential campaign in modern history,"
Albright said on a Clinton campaign conference call (reported by CNN).
However Clinton’s policies are well known by all of us by
now and she has embrace nation building and has backed President Barack Obama’s
hawkish attempts to interfere
with such nations as Syria and Saudi
Arabia’s reckless meddling in such countries as Yemen.
Another problem for Clinton is that a lot of the young
people who came out to
vote for Bernie Sanders may not come out at all for Clinton. Between polls
and conversations I’ve had with local people, there is a reluctance to vote for
Clinton by young people who are clearly attracted to Sanders left-leaning
anti-political establishment policies. That is going to be a real struggle for
her. Sanders and Clinton are miles apart on the most basic domestic policies.
And yet Clinton is still the better candidate than Trump,
despite her terrible imperialist foreign policies. The need for Obama Care
alone makes this election important. There are people who may literally die
without the medical coverage they now get from Obama Care. We don’t need
American citizens dying from neglect.
However we must acknowledge that foreign affairs will be a
major struggle if Clinton is elected president. Even if Trump wins the election
his foreign policy is not going to be an actual break with imperialism. His
policies may be better, but he is not going to end the struggle against US
imperialism.
We are once again left with the choice between the lesser of
two evils. That doesn’t mean the election is meaningless. We still need to take
part and prevent the Republicans from wrecking America.
No comments:
Post a Comment