Kevin Drum: ‘The Progressive case for Hillary Clinton’

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says  The Progressive Case for Hillary Clinton Is Pretty Overwhelming:

For a lot of liberals, the most important goal of this election is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. And since Trump naturally sucks up most of the political oxygen, that means lots of blogging about Trump and not so much about Clinton.

But a lot of lefties aren’t happy about that. They want a positive argument in favor of voting for Clinton, not just a negative one for voting against Trump. That’s fair enough, so I figured I’d put one together.

But I should be crystal clear here: Nobody should take this as an attempt to demonstrate that Clinton is perfect or to persuade you to vote for her. If you think she’s too instinctively hawkish—as I do—that might be reason enough for a liberal to vote for someone else. On some issues—supporting the Iraq War, supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, voting for the Patriot Act, etc.—she’s taken positions that might be flat deal killers. On other issues, you might think she’s not strong enough, or that it took her too long to get to the right place. Finally, on a personal level, she’s often oversecretive, overly lawyerly, and sometimes skates a little close to some ethical lines. She distrusts the press and withholds information too often. And she is, plainly, an establishment politician, with all the flaws that implies.

On the other hand, no successful politician is ever perfect. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on to lots of compromises that liberals detested. Ronald Reagan did the same with conservatives. Clinton will too. There are just too many competing interests in a pluralistic country like America to expect anything else. But all thats aid, the liberal case for Clinton remains pretty overwhelming. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but here it is:

(continue reading).

Drum lists 84 items in his list. 84. Check it out.

Now about that Who Lies More: A Comparison chart from Robert Mann in early August, relying on PolitiFact data. The mainstream media and even lefties have internalized right-wing talking points over the last 30 years and subconsciously adopted them as their own. This demonstrates the power of the corrupting influence of big lie propaganda by the conservative media entertainment complex.

Kevin Drum posted about the chart above in August. The predetermined media narrative is  all wrong, Hillary Clinton Is One of America’s Most Honest Politicians:

Look: all politicians lie sometimes. That includes Hillary Clinton. But as the chart [above] shows, Hillary is one of the most honest politicians on the national stage. Here’s a similar conclusion from the New York Times. All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others.

Remember, the Times invented the “Clinton Rules” of media coverage with its Whitewater coverage, this is not the mythical “liberal media bias” in favor of the Clintons that conservatives attribute to the Times.

I know it’s in their partisan self interest for conservatives to insist that Hillary is the world’s biggest liar. But she isn’t. Not by a long, long way. Republicans need to get the beam out of their own eye before they keep banging on about the mote in Hillary’s.

So some positive news for today.