I have leftist friends who are going to vote for Biden in November, to my surprise. These are people who would never have voted for a Democrat in the past. This is because Trump is arguably the most disgusting president we’ve ever had. Sure, we’ve had slave-owners, slaughterers of the indigenous, war mongers and some of the worst scumbags ever to lead a nation.
But Trump lets you know he’d do it too, whatever requires one to stoop lower than whale poop. He’ll glorify sexism, racism, and the savage murder of a high-ranking Iranian government official. He’ll thump the Bible as an adherent all the while participating in extra-marital relations with Playboy Playmates and porn stars.
Selling out the people by profiting from his position as president doesn’t appear to bother him. Staffing the White House with family members is par for the course. As a peculiar kind of populist, Trump eagerly seeks supporters who, like he, are sexist, racist idiots who oppose science, books, and knowledge in general.
Which brings me around to his opponents, the Democrats.
I remember when Bill Clinton ran supporting that which Republicans had embraced in the past, blowing his opponent, President G.H.W. Bush’s mind in 1992. Squirming as he might, Bush could not get to the right of Clinton, so lost the moderate vote and the Oval Office.
Clinton had both houses of Congress majority Democrat, and passed nothing approaching a progressive agenda. He did push and pass NAFTA and GATT, which caused labor and the environmental movement to sit on their hands for the 1994 election, in which the Republicans snatched both houses of Congress away from the Dems.
Clinton went on to push through welfare reform, throwing poor children into the streets. He pushed through laws that allowed a consolidated media to further consolidate, shutting out opinions that differ from corporate viewpoints. He got rid of banking laws that allowed for the horrible scams leading (eventually) to the 2008 recession, causing millions to lose their jobs and millions to lose their homes (as a corrupt Congress, whose campaigns are funded by banksters, bailed out the banksters who caused it all, and allowed the millions of victims to go under).
The same thing happened when Obama became president. He immediately finished GW Bush’s bailout of the banksters as his first objective, offering again, nothing for the victims of the banksters numbering in the millions. Obama also had both houses of Congress as Democrat majorities, and did absolutely nothing progressive again.
Obama got “Obamacare” passed. This assured the medical insurance companies more billions of dollars from the government and fined working class people who would not buy the phony medical insurance they couldn’t afford to use because of the high deductibles and co-pays.
The public rebelled again, as in Clinton’s first term, and the Republicans again took control of Congress. There is nobody more responsible than Clinton and Obama for the loss of the Congress to the Republicans. Had either Democratic president an iota of decency, and addressed the needs of the working class who produce the profit, the Dems would have stayed in power.
Obama went on to please Wall Street enough (like Clinton) that (like Clinton) he was allowed by them the financing to be reelected, and he sold out the American people every bit as much as Clinton.
This will be the first year in many decades that I will not vote. I am 75 years old and don’t want to risk getting in line to vote during a pandemic. The Green Party won’t be able to get on the ballot because of the pandemic, and my state doesn’t allow write ins for president. I don’t want to risk giving up the personal information required to vote by mail in my state—don’t wish to have my identity stolen.
I know Trump is a scumbag, but I have absolutely no reason to believe that Biden won’t sell us out to the interests of those billionaires and banksters who fund him. They don’t give him the money because they think he has the interests of the nation at heart. I have never underestimated the propensity of Democrats to find ways to undermine the hopes of the working class and poor, while pretending to be on their side.
Jack Balkwill has been published from the little read Rectangle, magazine of the English Honor Society, to the (then) millions of readers USA Today and many progressive publications/web sites such as Z Magazine, In These Times, Counterpunch, This Can’t Be Happening, Intrepid Report, and Dissident Voice. He is author of “An Attack on the National Security State,” about peace activists in prison.
