Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has picked up the Newsnight story about the nuclear ambitions of Saudi Arabia, which, in stark contrast to those of Iran, do in fact exist.
This differentiates him starkly from the Saudi shills in both Houses and both parties, who are of course also Israeli shills. They are keeping both lines of campaign contributions flowing merrily, by siding with those foreign powers against their own President. Even though many of them are members of the same party as he is.
Remember when it was said to be treason to question or to criticise the President of the United States? Remember when it was said to be treason in the United Kingdom to question or to criticise the President of the United States? But we could all see where the real treason was then. And we can all see where the real treason is now.
The accompanying charge of anti-Semitism, however, has proved to be eminently transferable. It was anti-Semitic to oppose President Bush over Iraq, or even to raise any question whatever about the official line on that subject. And it is anti-Semitic to support President Obama over Iran, or even to raise any question whatever about the unofficial line of that subject.
Saudi Arabia would hardly need The Bomb, even if Iran had it. She has all of Israel's to deploy as she sees fit, and not only because, in Israel's own right, Iran is the only non-nuclear state in the world to be subject to an outstanding, active threat of nuclear attack.
Moreover, in 2008, as a candidate for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton publicly promised to nuke Iran if so instructed by her campaign's Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati paymasters. She is now effectively running as the incumbent both for the nomination and for the election in 2016.
The only alternative being mentioned is the other United States Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Massachusetts therefore seems the obvious place to begin a most necessary process.
State Democratic Parties that are committed to a foreign policy patriotic in relation to their own country, rather than in relation to other people's and to other peoples', need to make it explicit that they would not nominate any candidate who did not share that patriotism, but would instead ensure that someone else, who did share it, appeared on their tickets as their nominee for President of the United States.
State Democratic Parties that are committed to a foreign policy patriotic in relation to their own country, rather than in relation to other people's and to other peoples', need to make it explicit that they would not nominate any candidate who did not share that patriotism, but would instead ensure that someone else, who did share it, appeared on their tickets as their nominee for President of the United States.
Anyone voting for the Democratic ticket in those states would therefore be voting for that candidate, who would have enjoyed the full support of the state-level Democratic Party machine. If the national party did not wish that to happen, then it would have to ensure that its own nominee was ... well, basically, was not Hillary Clinton or any of her courtiers.
The only Presidential candidate who has run on a patriotic foreign policy ticket in the last decade is Ron Paul for the Republicans.
ReplyDeleteRand Paul is equally impressive.
While Obama boasts of how many people his drones kill.
But they are not going to be nominated. The GOP is not going to nominate even vaguely like that until 2024, at the earliest.
ReplyDeleteIf the relevant sections of the Dems got their act together, then they could do it in 2016. When the Democrat is bound to win, anyway.
No chance the Democrats would ever nominate an anti-war candidate.
ReplyDeleteThey'd get no campaign finance, and it would be a breach of that party's tradition as America's most pro-war party.
The part about the state party running a different presidential candidate than the national party is technically possible, and has been done before, though the precedents are not encouraging.
ReplyDeleteBefore the two party system really congealed, before the Civil War, the Whigs experimented without much success with running different presidential candidates in different states.
During the civil rights era (1940s, 1950s, 1960s), state Democratic parties in the south would sometimes run electors pledged to vote for someone other than the national Democratic nominee. This practice resulted in 1948 in being impossible to vote for the incumbent president, Truman, in some states. It probably meant that Nixon, not Kennedy, won the national popular vote in 1960 though this is obscured by an admittedly strange practice as counting votes for Democratic electors who were not pledged to vote for Kennedy wound up not voting for Kennedy as votes for Kennedy.
There is also a history, again among the Democrats, of state parties quasi-openly supporting the Republican presidential nominee, which is the main reason Nixon and Reagan were elected with such large margins.
However, generally state pols don't want to be cut off from access to White House patronage so I don't think this is going to fly.
It did the national party huge damage in the past, as you know. If they don't want that again, then they will have to be told how to stop it.
ReplyDeleteFrom the point of view of their respective bases, war is now pretty much the point of the Republican Party, while peace is now pretty much the point of the Democratic Party.
The Republican base is going to get what it wants, and then some; mercifully, that person is not going to win, because there is now (if there was ever not) a natural Democratic majority, and no part of it now has any reason to go GOP for the Presidency.
But the Democratic base also needs to insist that its candidate, who is going to win anyway, be acceptable on the key issue.