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writing for godot

Thoughts on Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders

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Written by Ralph West   
Sunday, 07 February 2016 12:18
Thoughts on Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders

A number of us, your author included, would have been enthusiastic about Senator Warren, had she chosen to run for President. For reasons of her own, she didn’t. But where I am running into difficulty is in the matter of her silence when it comes to endorsing Mr. Sanders. He is the candidate who, day in and day out, is putting his life on the line in running on an ideology very compatible with hers. So why, one wonders, is she so silent about endorsing him? Her continued silence is becoming deafening and will make her irrelevant quite soon unless she speaks up.

It is hard to imagine her supporting Hillary Clinton, whose problems are obvious. She is very cozy with the 1%, as we see from the ridiculous speaking fees she accepts from the likes of Goldman Sachs. Acceptance of those fees bespeaks an ideological commitment to the 1%. Her vote in favor of the Iraq invasion is another obvious problem for her. It was obvious at the time that Saddam Hussein was not the same as Osama bin Laden. Her vote indicates loyalty to the military-industrial complex.

Interestingly, a long time ago, she was in favor of universal health care, but since she thinks the winds have shifted in favor of Big Pharma, she is against it. Her specious argument is fearmongering; we risk losing the ACA because any attempt to drive toward universal health care would involve re-litigating. Her position reminds me of the opponents of Martin Luther King – opponents who said it wasn’t yet time to advocate his causes. In response to this, he said, “ Justice delayed is justice denied.” The same is true with Mr. Sanders’ clear call to level the economic playing field. The time to correct the situation is NOW, not some future time.

She has another problem – a credibility problem which renders her personally unattractive. It’s very hard to take her seriously when she says she wants to take on Wall Street and we all know she has accepted millions of dollars in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. It looks very much as if politicians like her are part of the problem of the cancerous corruption of inequality eating away at our society; they are part of the problem, not the solution. Compounding this credibility problem is the insecurity she conveys when she shouts into the microphone. In virtually everything she says, she looks like a calculating robot, not so egregious as Marco Rubio in his Saturday night debate, but calculating nonetheless.I

I am struck, over and over, with the silence of so many politicians when it comes to endorsing Mr. Sanders. All I can say is, I know is this 76-year-old retired English teacher, along with many others, will continue to support him. Elizabeth Warren and her ilk will do well to endorse him or run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

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