Hillary Clinton

Letter from the US: Behind the ‘Russia Did it!’ frenzy

Hardly a day goes by without much of the mainstream media concentrating on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. This includes any news about the various investigations into the question, much blowhard opinionating by talking heads, charges that Russia sought to collude with Donald Trump’s campaign, and more.

It is probably true that Russia would seek to influence US politics to the extent it thought it could. But to keep a sense of proportion, we should recall that the world’s foremost “meddler” in other people’s politics and elections is Washington itself.

Letter from the US: Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Party strategy is fatally flawed

In a New York Times op-ed in June titled “How Democrats Can Stop Losing”, Bernie Sanders slammed the Democratic Party.

“In 2016 the Democratic Party lost the presidency to possibly the least popular candidate in American history,” he wrote. “In recent years, Democrats have also lost the Senate and House to right-wing Republicans whose extremist agenda is far removed from where most Americans are politically.

Letter from the US: The hypocrisy of blaming 'Russia'

When Donald Trump is sworn in as president on January 20, he will take over the running of the US intelligence agencies — the CIA, FBI, NSA etc — that have brought charges to discredit the outcome of his election.

The Electoral College has rubberstamped Trump’s election and Congress has ratified it. The storm over allegations of Russian interference in last year’s elections will pass as The Leader takes charge and cleans house in these agencies.

But there are some things that should be noted about this brouhaha.

Trump the bitch? The role of misogyny in the US elections

The feminist movement has been sent into a spin following the election of Donald “Grab her by the pussy” Trump in the US. While the consensus is that the election of Trump is a disaster for women, the debates around the would-be benefits of Hillary Clinton remain fierce.

Lessons from Trump’s win — more democracy is needed

Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer-songwriter who died just two days after Donald Trump seized the White House, seemed to predict this moment.

In his dystopian song “The Future”, from the 1992 album of the same name, Cohen sang: “I've seen the future, brother: it is murder.”

“Things are gonna slide,” the famously dark singer suggested, “slide in all directions ... the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold.”

An orange baboon obsessed with the size of his hands.

The Land of the Free may have a few issues it needs to work through

If you want a bright side to the US elections, consider Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker who lost a huge chunk of cash after paying out early to those who put money on a Clinton win. 

Enjoying the misfortune of a representative of the bloodsucking gambling industry may be grasping at straws, but as we await the race between a nuclear holocaust and climate change-induced eco-holocaust, we might as well take what we can get. As for Paddy Power, they can at least make their money back offering decent odds on the nuclear option.

Would Bernie be president if he won the Democrat primary?

This year’s presidential election is the first in 50 years to take place without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act.

US elections: 868 fewer polling stations, purged rolls and armed intimidation squads

On November 5, the U.S. Supreme Court restored a Republican-supported law in Arizona banning political campaigners from collecting absentee ballots filled out by voters. In New Jersey, a federal judge decided against the Democratic National Committee in a complaint it brought against the Republican National Committee, ruling that the RNC’s poll monitoring and ballot security activities did not violate a legal settlement.

Dear neoliberal Democrats: This is your mess and you need to own it

One thing is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is a failure. And so is the neoliberal establishment.

Even if Clinton had narrowly managedto defeat Donald Trump, she would still have lost. Her failure is not individual, however, but a failure of Clintonism, the Democratic Party, and decades of failed economic policies.

A Trump rally.

United States: How could this happen? Some initial thoughts

From US SocialistWorker.org election night coverage: 

Why? How? Those questions are dominating the mainstream media as they take stock of Donald Trump's victory in the presidential race.

They are dominating us at SocialistWorker.org, and no doubt our readers, too. It is hard to come to terms with the upside-down results we are seeing. But here are some thoughts.

Time to call out Clinton — and face down the liberal feminists: a reply to Van Badham

Guardian journalist and self-proclaimed “socialist feminist” Van Badham’s latest article is entitled “Time to hail Hilary — and face down the testosterone left”.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Inside the invisible government: John Pilger on war, propaganda and the US presidential race

The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.

In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade - behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, "Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"