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Nothing exciting about Clinton vs. Trump

Nothing exciting about Clinton vs. Trump

Okay people, get over it, it’s going to be Clinton vs. Trump in November, and that’s that.

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Okay people, get over it, it’s going to be Clinton vs. Trump in November, and that’s that.

Yes, I know, it’s not terribly exciting, since once again we will be making the same trite “lesser of two evils” choice --“evils” being the operative word.

But, hey, when the reality of our powerlessness to decide the country’s future –and our own-- sets in, and we are confronted with having to help pick who will occupy the White House for the next four years, “anybody but Trump” begins to sound like music to many people’s ears. Isn’t representative democracy great?

“So look, I’m not changing. You know, I went to the best schools, I—I’m like a very smart person,” the billionaire blowhard said with usual modesty, addressing the nation from his Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday night, after his landslide victories in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island and Delaware. So much for the new, civilized candidate with universal appeal his consultants promised the Republican National Committee, just last week.

Trump’s remark elicited a shy, little smile from Chris Christie who, standing behind him, seemed to have taken to his new role as a bobblehead for the Republican frontrunner, if not with gusto, at least with resignation.

Gone were the bravado and the bullying the New Jersey governor was once famous for. On Tuesday Christie was, well, a wretched yes man for his new boss. Embarrassing.

Then, on Wednesday, Trump, after boasting he would not change, did something very un-Trump-like: He gave a foreign policy speech using a teleprompter in a hopeless attempt to appear knowledgeable or, at least, sane.  Admittedly not an easy task for a guy who, among other memorable statements, have said he would build a “beautiful” wall at the South border and make Mexico pay for it, deport 11 million immigrants, “bomb the sh..” out of Isis and bring back torture. A real statesman.

A couple of things came through loud and clear in Trump’s speech: First, he is an awful reader. And second, teleprompter or no teleprompter, the Republican “presumptive nominee” was still as ridiculously contradictory, absurd and nonsensical as ever – and a lot more boring. An embarrassing mess.

In regard to Clinton, well, she is no Rosa Luxemburg. Yet, there are times she seems to want us to believe she could be.

“I’m a progressive who gets things done,” she has said, meaning that she is different from that unrepentant dreamer, Bernie Sanders, who has the audacity to envision a fair, peaceful society with living wages, free college tuition and universal healthcare, a place in which the rich will finally pay more taxes than their secretaries, and where it is illegal for them to buy elections.

Americans “are hungry for solutions,” Clinton said last Tuesday in Philadelphia after her four primary victories. They “don't just want us to diagnose problems, they want us to solve them.”

Hillary is right, of course. But as long as she does not cut her ties to the despicable private prison industry, and to the banks that, for some mysterious reason, pay her millions for her speeches, she will be –to borrow a phrase-- part of the problem, not of the solution.

Trump’s foreign policy speech was stupid, but Clinton’s foreign policy decisions as a hawkish Secretary of State often were dangerous and unfair. A good example close to home? Her blessing of the shameful coup that deposed democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

See? I told you, come November having to vote again for the proverbial lesser of two evils –evil being the operative word-- is not terribly exciting.

“Anybody but Trump” is very much to the point. Pitifully, so would be “Anybody but Clinton.” 

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