Tag: Hillary Clinton

Why Every President Tries to Make Nice With Russia and Why It Never Works

One of the things I find odd about the way the press is covering the Trump/Putin relationship is how devoid of context and historical memory it is. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, four new presidents have come to power, and each has tried to create a good relationship with Russia. Bill Clinton was briefly successful, but the way Clinton used his success poisoned the well and made it very difficult for his successors to replicate his performance. Today I’ll tell you the story of how America has tried to turn Russia into an ally and why this effort has yet to succeed.

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What the Single Payer Movement Can Learn From “Repeal and Replace”

Single payer healthcare seems to be getting more popular. More people are becoming aware of the advantages of single payer. A majority of Americans now say that the government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage, and more than half of that majority now think the best way to do it is single payer:

The current push for single payer does however have a lot in common with another political movement–the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.

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The Rise of the “Hillary or Bust” Voter

Remember “Bernie or Bust”? Some Bernie Sanders supporters were very cross when Sanders did not win the Democratic Party nomination. They believed he should have won, both because he deserved to win and because some of them believed the DNC stole it from him. They were unwilling to support Clinton in the general election, and Clinton supporters let them have it. How could these Bernie supporters stand idly by and allow Donald Trump to become president? Don’t they care about poor and working people, about the middle class, about people of color, about women, about LGBTs? How could they betray the groups they’re meant to care about like that?  Sarah Silverman told them they were “being ridiculous”:

But the tables have turned. Today we see a new breed of Democrat–the “Hillary or Bust” voter.

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We Must Normalize Trump to Beat Him

Since President Trump’s inauguration, it’s become popular to demand that we not normalize Trump’s presidency. Politically, this means constantly drawing attention to all the things that Donald Trump does that separate him from past presidents. To that end, the left has focused on a suite of character and corruption-oriented issues:

  • Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump’s possible ties to Russia
  • Trump’s tweets and style of communication (rude, bigoted, or post-fact)
  • Trump’s conflicts of interest (nepotism, lack of blind trust, Ivanka involvement)
  • Trump’s history of screwing people over (Trump University, bankruptcies, cost of Trump Tower security & Mar-a-Lago trips)
  • Trump’s untruthful or corrupt henchmen (Spicer, Kushner, Conway, Bannon, Flynn, Sessions, etc.)

This is all a mistake. To beat Trump we need precisely the opposite approach–we must treat Trump as just another establishment Republican president and attack his administration for failing to help the people it promised to protect. Here’s why.

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