  
excerpt:
"Clinton has collected
more money than any other candidate in the 2016 race from employees tied to the
50 largest contractors with the Department of Defense — at least $454,994 in
campaign funds over a 14-month period ending in
February.
While Clinton’s haul is
substantial, it is only one-third higher than the amount defense contractor
employees gave to the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s
rival for the Democratic nomination. Despite advocating steep cuts in defense
spending, Sanders’ campaign has accepted at least $310,055 from defense-related
workers — more than any Republican presidential candidate — since the start of
the 2016 campaign cycle."
a reminder for democrackers:
It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary
Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a
drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones,
she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique
aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender
milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to
obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo.
That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be
pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one, not yet this one) - makes it all the more tempting to regard
#HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity - much of it
speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall
Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her
presidency - make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate
is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in
September).
But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over
the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions
regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a
stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances.
Those increasingly inspired factions include:
Wall
Street
Politico Magazine, November 11, 2014 (“Why Wall Street
Loves Hillary”):
Down on Wall Street they don’t believe (Clinton’s
populist rhetoric) for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate
Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want
her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial
industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James
Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of
JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver
not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we
all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays
into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of
them think she really means her populism.
Although Hillary Clinton has made no formal
announcement of her candidacy, the consensus on Wall Street is that she is
running—and running hard—and that her national organization is quickly falling
into place behind the scenes. That all makes her attractive. Wall Street, above
all, loves a winner, especially one who is not likely to tamper too radically
with its vast money pot.
According to a wide assortment of bankers and
hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid
support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a
few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left
flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures
of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t
create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall
Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in
New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have
confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a
populist.”
The
Israel Lobby
Should she become president, on one level,
better ties with Israel are virtually guaranteed. . . . Let’s not
forget that the Clintons dealt with Bibi too as prime minister. It was never
easy. But clearly it was a lot more productive than what we see now. . . . To
put it simply, as a more conventional politician, Hillary is good on Israel and
relates to the country in a way this president doesn’t. . . . Hillary is from a
different generation and functioned in a political world in which being good on
Israel was both mandatory and smart.
Let’s be clear. When it comes to Israel, there is no
Bill Clinton 2.0. The former president is probably unique among presidents for
the depth of his feeling for Israel and his willingness to put aside his own
frustrations with certain aspects of Israel’s behavior, such as settlements. But
this accommodation applies to Hillary too. Both Bill and Hillary are so
enamored with the idea of Israel and its unique history that they are prone to
make certain allowances for the reality of Israel’s behavior, such as the
continuing construction of settlements.
Interventionists (i.e., war
zealots)
New York Times, June 15, 2014 (“Events in Iraq Open Door
for Interventionist Revival, Historian Says”):
But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of
American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists
are pouring their hopes.
Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had
recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was
the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of
foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as
her spokeswoman.
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign
policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more
realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table”
if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will
pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but
clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it
something else.”
Old school
neocons
New York Times, Jacob Heilbrunn, July 5, 2014 (“The Next
Act for Neocons: … Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton”?):
After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative
movement is back. . . . Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons
may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham
Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to
the driver’s seat of American foreign policy. . . .
Other neocons
have followed [Robert] Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton.
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in
administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on
controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in
Libya.”
And the thing
is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported
sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to
Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of
promoting democracy.
It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s
making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with
being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board. . .
. Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to
continue. In 1972, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The
Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early neocon stalwarts,
shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing “something of a swing group
between the two major parties.” Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s,
it is remarkable how very little has changed.
So take that, cynics. There are pockets
of vibrant political excitement stirring in the land over a Hillary Clinton
presidency. There are posters being made, buttons being appended, checks being
prepared, appointments being coveted. The joint, allied, synergistic
constituencies of plutocracy and endless war have their beloved candidate. And
it’s really quite difficult to argue that their excitement and affection are
unwarranted.
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