What Really is Going on With Hillary Clinton?

The mainstream corporate press has been full of stories about how Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president is failing, she’s being investigated for storing classified emails on a non-secure computer server, Bernie Sanders is gaining on her in the polls, and Joe Biden is tantalizing us with the prospect of running himself.  There are also rumors that Obama is not turning over his campaign staff or donor records etc. to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

What on earth is all this about?

The thing that you must never forget, is that the mainstream corporate press is not a free press, but a propaganda machine run to a tight script that is generated by maybe fewer than a dozen people who mostly all play golf with each other.  Negative stories about Hillary Clinton don't just magically appear on CNN or FOX news, unless the right people have approved them first.

Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, performed yeoman service to his wealthy patrons in selling out the national interest for money.  Hillary herself is nothing if not joined at the hip with Wall Street, and – empty campaign slogans aside – has always come down on the side of the super-rich against the interests of the middle class.  From her support of anti-worker anti-American trade agreements like NAFTA and the TPP, cheap-labor immigration policies, letting Wall Street loot the public treasury, etc.etc., she’s been a reliably corrupt grifter. 

So from the point of view of the 0.01%, what’s not to like?

If the real players in our society liked Hillary, you would not be hearing this negative press – it would all be sunshine and sparkles, her utterly dishonest press releases about wanting to help the middle class given uncritical glowing exposure by a sycophantic corporate press.  The executive branch is now almost utterly lawless – look at how the nation’s immigration laws are increasingly being flat-out broken.  If the people in charge wanted the business of the classified state department emails to go away, they would go away and you and I would never have heard of them.  But why?

Of course I don’t really know.  But it must be for a reason, and we can speculate.

1. Hillary don’t golf.  Bill Clinton and Barack Obama always spent a lot of time golfing and palling it up with their wealthy patrons.  And just as Charley don’t surf, Hillary don’t golf.  I have also heard strong rumors that, in person, Hillary can be a real nasty piece of work.  So some of this might just be personal – the old boy network doesn’t like her.  Still, the old boys know that business is business, and if they felt that Hillary would be the best agent to advance their agenda I’m sure they could swallow their personal dislike of her.

But on the other hand, it might be more than personal dislike – by not playing golf and schmoozing in general, the oligarchs might wonder if they are really all on the same team.  It could be a trust issue, which leads me to:

2. Hillary is not playing by the rules.  The game according to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is this: you lie through your teeth during the campaign about wanting to help the middle class and the poor.  Then when elected you dutifully serve the interests of the super-rich while totally screwing over the nation as a whole.  Then, AFTER leaving office, you cash in.  That’s how it’s done.

But Hillary isn’t going along with this.  As Secretary of State she spent a lot (maybe most?) of her time making deals selling out the national interest to enrich herself and her family and foundation.  WHILE STILL SECRETARY OF STATE.  Now, the rich don’t give a damn about public figures selling out for money – hey, it’s how the rich keep getting richer, because they can outbid the rest of the nation for the services of government officials.  But, Hillary was not a good little servant.  She acted like she was already a major player – she was looking to advance her own interests up front, instead of advancing the interests of the oligarchy and then getting paid off. 

This must worry a lot of the people in charge. What really will Hillary do if she gets her hands on the increasingly unchecked power of the US presidency?  Will she do as she’s told, or will she try to grab everything for herself and her foundation and step on a lot of powerful toes?  That must worry the people with powerful toes.

And then there is the feminism angle.  The elites are happy to let little people deal with affirmative action and racial and gender quotas and squabble amongst each other for scraps, but these agendas are not to ever ever apply to the elite, who remain mostly rich white men.  Could Hillary apply gender quotas to the real players here?  That would not do.  Such things are only for little people.

3. Obama must be starting to sweat. In the old days of the US constitutional republic, presidents would retire and live out their lives in peace.  In dictatorships, that doesn’t happen – executives with absolute power don’t typically retire willingly, because if they do they are always going to be a potential threat to their successors.  Thus, retired/deposed dictators tend to be assassinated/jailed/investigated/executed etc. 

Now Congress has increasingly signed away it’s power to the executive branch, and the judiciary has become little more than a rubber stamp that will approve anything as long as national security or executive privilege is invoked.  So the president can start and continue to fight wars all over the planet almost without restraint, can spend billions undermining foreign governments, can sign binding treaties without 2/3 congressional approval, can completely make up immigration law out of who cloth, can arrest and imprison US citizens indefinitely without charge, can classify any piece of information, can freeze anyone’s bank accounts on a whim, can refuse to enforce any law, he can lock down entire city centers so his rich banker friends can throw a party…. you get the idea.

So what happens when Obama retires, and Hillary gets all that power?  Maybe she’ll play nice.  Or maybe she won’t.  The point is that once Obama steps down, and Hillary steps up, Obama will give up all that power.  Oh, he’ll still have powerful friends, but they will have other issues to attend to than protecting Obama, and Hillary will have all the leverage.  If she wanted to, she could investigate him on any number of obscure violations of the federal code real and imagined, she could make his life hell.  Is there any bad blood between Obama and Hillary?  Is she still bitter about 2008?  Payback’s a bitch, and so's Hillary.

Or maybe it’s more of a turf war – Hillary could suck up so many donations into the Clinton foundation that Obama’s competing foundational power center could be left gasping for oxygen.

Either way, Obama would sleep a lot easier knowing that team-player Joe “The Senator from Mastercard” Biden was in charge.  Biden is a moronic mean-spirited gaffe-monster, but he knows enough to do as he’s told. 

4. Hillary might be crazy enough to scare even our elites.  When one considers the devastation and unforced strategic errors of Dubya and Obama, one could be forgiven in thinking that the elites no longer care about competency in foreign affairs.  Sure, throw trillions of dollars away attacking the wrong countries, arm islamic fanatics who then promptly turn on us.  The rich are now so powerful that they must feel invulnerable - hey, the entire nation can go up in flames and they'll just hop on their private 757 jet and go to their private island.  

But Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State might actually be scaring some of the people who count.  I mean, here was a guy, who lately had made nice with the US, was cooperating with us on terrorism etc., and ran the country with the highest standard of living in Africa.  Hillary armed islamic jihadists, attacked the Libyan central government, and turned the place into a post-apocalyptic wasteland that threatens to drag down not just a large chunk of the middle east and Africa, but maybe a lot of Europe as well.

Perhaps even our elites have come to realize that, maybe, there are still limits to the stupidity and evil that they will tolerate in government.

5. The Republicans might not be following the script.  What the rich really want is that, come election day, the American public has a heads-the-rich-win tails-the-workers-lose choice. Hillary vs. Jeb, Hillary vs. Rubio, it’s all good.  One sometimes hears complaints about those high-priced campaign consultants (like Karl Rove) that lost a lot of elections but still keep getting paid big bucks.  They didn’t lose.  They played their part in stage managing a false campaign where the rich won.  So of course they keep getting paid – where it really counts, they keep winning!

Now the Democrats have an edge over the Republicans, in that their base is completely demoralized and adrift from any sense of sanity.  Obama can stab them in the back time and again, and liberal democrats will continue to support him and whine that it’s all those evil Republicans fault for having a divided Congress (as if Congress even mattered any more, and when it does – like the vote for Obamatrade – Congress rapidly falls into line).  The Republican base, however, is still in some measure of contact with reality.  When a politician campaigns one way and then, after being elected, does the opposite, the base gets angry. 

So if it were Hillary vs. Trump or Hillary vs. Santorum, the rich won’t sweat it.  The Republican party will fight amongst themselves, as oligarchy-approved forces battle it out with the grass roots.  So Hillary would automatically get the Democratic vote: a Trump or a Santorum would be so slandered in the mainstream press and attacked from all sides, that they would be lucky to poll more than 40% in the general election.

But what if Trump (against all odds, I’m still not very optimistic) manages to pull it off?  What if he actually makes headway with black voters, that hey, all these bad trade agreements and illegal and legal immigration are stealing your jobs?  And ditto with many American citizens of Latin American descent?  And what if the slanders that he’s a racist make him not weaker, but even stronger?  This might not spin out the way the rich want after all.

And if Trump ends up running against Bernie Sanders... well... all bets are off.

6. So is Biden the oligarchies’ backup plan?  As I said before, Biden is a disgusting nonentity of human being.  But he’s a proven team player, and won’t shaft Obama after the latter retires.  Look for sycophantic press coverage – nonstop pushing about how he’s the champion of the American worker (barf) how his son begged him to run for president on his deathbed (did Spielberg script that one?), that he’s got the “Joe-mentum”, etc.

Never underestimate how the rich can take someone with zero percent in the polls and, with constant manufactured press coverage, push them to the front.  That happened with Bill Clinton, and John McCain, and Barack Obama – all going nowhere until the deal was struck.  So don’t laugh, Biden for president could happen.

And watch the Republican side as well.  If the rich can find a more pliable ‘outsider’ who talks pretty in public but promises to betray the nation when elected, such a person will get a lot of glowing press.  Yes I am thinking of you, Ben Carson.  Carson is surfing on the anti-establishment vibe, but if you look at his website and listen to his press releases, he's effectively for unlimited illegal cheap-labor immigration.  I read a lot on his site about abortion and keeping 'gitmo' open, but nada about all these anti-American trade deals, or how hedge fund managers are being taxed less than truck drivers etc.   Sounds to me like Mr. Carson is toeing the big-money establishment line.  Rile the proles up with social issues and let the big money continue to rip us off.

Beware of ‘outsiders’ saying what you want to hear, that are somehow not being slandered as racist far-right goons. 

If they can’t beat Trump directly, they can try to wear him down with slander and deflect the anger of the American people with a more acceptable ‘outsider’.  Watch for it.

Remember how good Obama sounded in 2008?  Well, don’t forget how that ended up.