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Jul. 16th, 2016 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingJust saw someone complaining that Hillary Clinton is "too liberal". And that drives me crazy because, uh, Americans? Hillary Clinton is *not liberal, in any way, at all*. Hillary Clinton is a hard-right extremist, of the sort that would be considered either "the far right of the rightmost Major Party" or "unelectably far right, relegated to an insignificant joke party" EVERYWHERE IN THE CIVILISED WORLD. Fucking hell, Bernie Sanders is center-right when you look at actual positions and not just "where you are relative to the bigoted extremists".
Clinton could MAYBE get elected in Canada or England, but she's significantly to the right of Theresa May or Stephen Harper or Boris Johnson - she might be an MP, elected by a yokel constituency of a few thousand xenophobic hicks in the middle of nowhere, like Nigel Farage or Jason Kenney, but she'd never be Prime Minister.
The USA is a captured two-party system with a hard-right extreme-conservative corporatist party - the Democrats - and also a second ultra-bigoted theocratic party, of the sort that polls 1-2% in civilised places, the Republicans. There's no such thing as an American politician who's "too liberal" because there's no such thing as a liberal American politician, all liberals are excluded before the process starts. Anyone who says an American politician is "too liberal" just means "insufficiently extremist right-wing for my personal ultra-extremist bigotry"
At the same time, the person ignorantly calling Clinton "too liberal" was doing so in the context of "She's too liberal but Trump is a disaster, so I will vote for the liberal evil" and, uh, okay. Sure. Whatever. Clinton's a right-wing extremist who will be significantly worse than any liberal candidate would be, but you're correct, Trump would be WAY worse. So you do you and hold your nose and vote Clinton, even though she's "too liberal" by being an ultra-right-wing lunatic who is not liberal in any way.
Clinton could MAYBE get elected in Canada or England, but she's significantly to the right of Theresa May or Stephen Harper or Boris Johnson - she might be an MP, elected by a yokel constituency of a few thousand xenophobic hicks in the middle of nowhere, like Nigel Farage or Jason Kenney, but she'd never be Prime Minister.
The USA is a captured two-party system with a hard-right extreme-conservative corporatist party - the Democrats - and also a second ultra-bigoted theocratic party, of the sort that polls 1-2% in civilised places, the Republicans. There's no such thing as an American politician who's "too liberal" because there's no such thing as a liberal American politician, all liberals are excluded before the process starts. Anyone who says an American politician is "too liberal" just means "insufficiently extremist right-wing for my personal ultra-extremist bigotry"
At the same time, the person ignorantly calling Clinton "too liberal" was doing so in the context of "She's too liberal but Trump is a disaster, so I will vote for the liberal evil" and, uh, okay. Sure. Whatever. Clinton's a right-wing extremist who will be significantly worse than any liberal candidate would be, but you're correct, Trump would be WAY worse. So you do you and hold your nose and vote Clinton, even though she's "too liberal" by being an ultra-right-wing lunatic who is not liberal in any way.