Posts by Jon Talton

Much of the pushback I received over the previous post on Hillary Clinton took place on Facebook. The pushers were fervent Bernie Sanders fans who argued I wasn't taking him seriously as a candidate. So I hope we can continue the debate here where many more thousands of readers will see it.

I get it. I love the way Sanders talks about the oligarchy that has taken over our politics, the inequality that has destroyed the middle class, the financialization that has wrecked the economy. He's right about all this.

I just don't see how he's electable.

My concerns were similar in 2004 with John Kerry. The Democratic establishment saw him as the "electable" candidate, even though a Democrat from the Northeast, from Massachusetts no less, had not won the presidency since 1960. And John F. Kennedy probably didn't honestly win that one.

Kerry was properly "swift boated" as an anti-war traitor by members of the vast right-wing infrastructure who had sat out the Vietnam War on repeated deferments. And we got another four years of the worst president since James Buchanan.

I don't want to but the media make it almost impossible. They have been fixated on her, and mostly in a malicious way, since 1992. The New York Times keeps floating trial balloons for the mediocre Joe Biden to get in the race.

Biden? I'm sorry the man lost his son, Beau, but as a presidential candidate he would be a disaster in a race trending populist, what with his vote for the 2005 bill that made it much more difficult for working people to declare bankruptcy and his son, Hunter, on the payroll of a credit-card giant. Good old Amtrak Joe hasn't done anything to expand or improve passenger rail during the past six-plus years. And this is before the vice president opens his mouth to give one of his blunder-filled speechathons.

Then there's Bernie Sanders, whose popularity is supposedly rattling the Clinton camp. As much as Bernie gives 'em hell and tells is like it is, he would win one state in the general election. One. If you don't believe me, you need to get out of the progressive echo chamber.

Benghazi is a dead end except for the Republican dead-enders who wouldn't vote for Clinton anyway. The private email account is a different matter, one of those reminders of the inexplicable things Bill and Hill do — the crazymaking we've forgotten during these years of No-Drama Obama. Why on earth did she do this? It might be nothing. But it looks bad — at the least bad judgment that is so at odds with the solid record she has built.

It does say something about the state of our republic that poor-boy-from-Hot-Springs (oh, Hope!) William Jefferson Clinton spent much of his adult life seeking and holding elected office in a poor, Southern state. Then he served two terms as president (salary at the time, $200,000 a year). And he ends up a zillionaire. He and the Candidate have been renting a lil' summer place in the Hamptons for two weeks costing $100,000.

And this is supposed to be the tribune of the average American?

Tonight, the clown car of Republican presidential contenders will drive into the ring of the Fox "News" circus and they will all pile out, with enough hot air to do in the dodgy New York developer's combover. (One of my vows is not to mention him by name).

Today, I wrote a column at the Seattle Times on the economic questions that should — but won't — be asked. Earlier this week, Kunstler had a superb piece on "matters that serious candidates should dare to talk about." It's really worth a read, even for those of you who are Kunstlered-out.

Yet it says something about out Cold Civil War that nearly half the nation will look at the fools tumbling out of the clown car — not one of whom has done anything constructive for the public good — and see the next president.

Behold, the heirs to Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ike. These "conservative" voters will view this not for sport or comedy, but with ultra-seriousness.

Anybody but that Islamo-fascist socialist (pssst Negro) in the White House. Lord, if this is socialism, where are my high-speed trains, free university education, universal health care and month's paid vacation?