We’re all counting the days until we can begin to forget this unforgettably weird presidential election.
I’m so sick of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and the illness will linger when one of those two egomaniacs is declared America’s next leader.
Seriously, we’re all sick of this crude campaign overstuffed with sexual references, profanity, misogyny and deplorable characterizations of both candidates and their supporters.
There were Nazi salutes, Bernie bashing, locker-room talk, a huge wall proposed for the Mexican border, national security scandals, calls for vigilantism and even thinly veiled threats of assassination. Makes you feel ashamed to be an American.
Only in America could a racist megalomaniac millionaire and a left-leaning power-hungry dowager face off in a nasty national showdown, but so it goes.
The major-party choices are so repugnant that local politicians can’t figure our how to position themselves. Among those in a tizzy are GOP Congressman John Katko and Republican-in-name-only County Executive Joanie Mahoney, neither of whom could bear to endorse their party’s top nominee.
The only area Democrat who has made any pro-Clinton noise is Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner. Most of us who recall Mrs. Clinton’s promise to bring 200,000 jobs to Upstate New York as a U.S. Senator are less convinced about her presidential promises.
Big business paybacks
Eight years ago millions celebrated when a black man won the top job for the first time. Now, millions of voters likely send their first woman to the White House. Beyond doubt, Hillary Clinton will win New York state by a landslide, pocketing its coveted 29 Electoral College votes. For nationwide victory, she’ll need a total of 270 electoral votes.
But after her inauguration nothing’s going to change. Clinton’s first term will simply mirror Barack Obama’s. His wishy-washy ill-advised policies both foreign and domestic will continue under Clinton.
Now don’t have a cow about her social agenda!
When Obama became president, the former community activist from poverty-stricken Chicago might’ve been expected to push for benefits for poor folks, assure equal housing, equal pay and equality in the justice system. But no. Instead we got a president intent on benefitting the Wall Street firms which bankrolled his candidacy, and that’s what we’ll get from Hillary.
Under Obama, few Wall Street insiders faced charges following the “Great Recession.” Instead, Obama appointed former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY Tim Geithner as secretary of the treasury and tapped GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt to head his jobs council. Obama also awarded the nation’s insurance industry with countless new paying clients via the “Affordable Care Act” which penalizes Americans who fail to pay for health coverage.
Halfway through his two terms, Obama smiled as corporate profits rose by 171 percent.
Obama may be black, but green was his administration’s operative color.
Hedge fund homeboys
And Hillary Clinton will have even more paybacks to make than Obama did. Our former U.S. senator received $225,000 and $400,000 for each of 41 speeches in 2013. In total she received $9,680,000 for those talks, which were partially funded by Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments UBS and Bank of America.
Her benefactors also include hedge funds and private equity firms like Apollo Management and Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts. Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is a co-founder of a hedge fund named Eaglevale Partners.
Last week, USA Today ran a page-one story headlined, “Wall Street, lawyers dominate Clinton’s fundraising.” The finance sector donated more than $20 million to Hillary and her party, it reported, and her 1,300-plus “Hillblazers” have raised some $137 from corporations, law firms, bankers, CEOs, financiers and even rich Republicans disenchanted with the Trump candidacy.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont refused to mince words when he was running against Hillary in the Democratic primaries. “You know, there is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system,” he said about his opponent’s fundraising. “In my view, it’s undermining American democracy and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families of this country.”
Anyhow, when your friends ask you who you think will win the election on Tuesday, you can say, “I don’t think…I know who will win…”
They’ll ask, “Who?”
And you’ll say, “Wall Street.”
And you’ll be right.
The columnist can be contacted at [email protected].
