Should we vote for Hillary Clinton? Should we vote for her despite what we know about her?
What do we know?
We know that in the name of 'getting things done,' she would let down progressives on nearly every issue such as expanding Social Security, offering Medicare for all, making available free public college for all who qualify, increasing the minimum wage, mandating paid maternity and sick leave, returning to the 40 hour work week, limiting global emissions, as well as on other issues such as the death penalty, which she continues to support.
We know that she is a hawk. There is very little chance that she dumps the surveillance state as Bernie has pledged to do. There is very little chance that she will do much to reduce the militarization of the police, or reduce police violence. She continues to support the criminalization of marijuana use, which is a tool of the state to incarcerate mostly black people.
We know that her ties to major media lobbyists mean that she will have little enthusiasm for election reform. We know that eventually she will have to pay back the billionaires who purchased her favor during the election.
Her "proud to be a moderate" position essentially means that if elected she will meet the Republican Party halfway. This would increase their power, and they could (heaven forbid) gain more seats in congress during the midterm elections because her "moderation" enabled their extreme positions.
So" should we hold our noses and vote for Hillary if she ends up winning the primary (which is by no means certain, and hopefully won't happen)?
There is another choice. We could vote for Jill Stein, the Green-Party candidate, whose positions are closer to Sanders' and Warren's than they are to Hillary's.
Voting for Stein, who has a zero percent chance of winning, would have the symbolic value of a protest vote but in fact it would help the Republican cause. So it would risk handing the country to the Republicans who have transformed their party into a radical insurgency modeled on a kind of two-fisted neo-Fascism that tolerates no deviance from party line. In other words, voting for Stein could deprive Hillary of just enough votes to hand the Republicans the election, as some say Ralph Nader did in 2002.
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