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Thursday, March 24, 2016

Hey Camille Paglia: Hillary Doesn't Need your Vote

She says she won't vote for Hillary but will either write in Bernie or Jill Stein. She warns that Bernie supporters won't necessarily vote for Hillary. I've said as much myself.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-many-bernie-supporters-would-vote.html

I mean many will. Some have already turned to Hillary now and say it's time to unify behind her. But is there a percentage that won't? I would assume. Not all these Bernie supporters are Democrats.

But the Obama Coalition is big enough that Hillary can win without them.

"Camille Paglia: This is why Trump’s winning, and why I won’t vote for Hillary"

"GOP needs to wake up and realize Trump is its fault. But the Trump/Clinton death match is a national nightmare."

"So the GOP is stuck with Trump, and through every fault of their own. Are we really hurtling toward a Trump-Hillary slugfest? If Bernie Sanders had gotten a hundredth of the press coverage lavished on Hillary over the past three years, he would have had an excellent chance of overtaking her. But thanks to the outrageous press blackout (Clinton Incorporated’s vast vulture-wing conspiracy), Sanders remains too unknown to too much of the electorate, particularly in the South. The now widespread claims that Sanders voters will automatically vote for Hillary in the general election aren’t true in my case: I will never cast my vote for a corrupt and incompetent candidate whose every policy is poll-tested in advance. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will write in Sanders or vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, as I did in 2012 as a protest against Obama’s unethical use of drones and the racially divisive tone of his administration."

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/24/camille_paglia_this_is_why_trumps_winning_and_why_i_wont_vote_for_hillary/

C'mon, Ms. Paglia. Hillary is a well known national figure for 25 years. There is no blackout here. The campaign has only been going on for a year. During that time, he's gotten plenty of coverage. On racial issues Bernie has as the great civil rights leader, John Lewis says, been AWOL which is why he has failed to catch on now.

That you didn't vote for Obama in 2012 shows that he didn't need your vote and neither does Hillary. The Obama Coalition is turning out for her and will turn out for her in the general.

Paglia in general seems to think there is some magic bullet. Certainly her critique of the political response to Brussells shows this.

"This week’s horrific terrorist attacks on the Brussels airport and metro raised the pressure in the already tight U.S. presidential campaign. Candidates of both parties were instantly measured against voter expectations of how a president could and should behave in a similar crisis. Meanwhile, it was jarring to see a beaming President Obama relaxing at a Cuban baseball game, while grisly photos of the wrecked terminal and dazed, bloodied victims in Belgium were on steady media feed all over the world."

"Given that most people, sequestered at their workplace, were unable to monitor the full range of responses throughout the day, the candidate who emerged on top was almost certainly Donald Trump. Despite his alarming enthusiasm for waterboarding and torture, Trump’s central campaign theme of securing the borders and more stringently vetting immigrants was strengthened by the events in Brussels, a historic city whose changing demographics he had already controversially warned about. Trump’s credibility would be enhanced if he treated the vital immigration issue in general policy terms rather than divisively singling out specific groups (Mexican, Muslim), the majority of whom are manifestly law-abiding."

The idea that Brussells shows the importance of vetting immigration misses the point that these are nationals engaging in these attacks. Then as Hilary says, there's the Internet.

"Hillary Clinton’s Brussels response was basically boilerplate, calling for solidarity with Europe and playing chess with Trump to paint him as a greenhorn and hothead. Bernie Sanders (whom I support and contribute to) had little to say, beyond conveying condolences to the Belgian people, because foreign affairs have unfortunately remained a sideline for him. Neither Sanders nor Martin O’Malley ever went after Hillary’s disastrous record as Secretary of State with the tenacity that they should have—a failure of strategy that has proved costly in the long run."

"Ted Cruz took the prize for dolt of the day, however, with his call for U.S. law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” What exactly are the telltale signs of creeping radicalization that roving patrol cars would be able to spot—an uptick in Bedouin garb and the waving of scimitars in the street, as in a Rudolph Valentino movie? And how would American police “secure” any neighborhood without violating basic constitutional rights?"

Obviously I agree with her on Cruz and about how the GOP has earned Donald Trump. But that she is unhappy with the response of everyone-she criticizes Obama for 'relaxing at a baseball game'-as opposed to conducting vital foreign policy-that HRC gave 'boilerplate' and she's not happy with the more creative things that Ted Cruz said, kind of makes Obama's point.
There is no magic bullet, no piece of additional rhetoric that will somehow make ISIS go away. She is critical of him using drones, so would she prefer we do more ground troops?

I mean, 'none of the above' is not a strategy. If everyone was wrong in their response, what does Paglia think it should have been? Is there some new strategy that neither Obama nor his haters in the GOP have looked at?

It sort of makes the case that Obama is doing everything he can already.

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