Note: Honestly, I am still frustrated by the same thing I was frustrated with yesterday, so this is another rant. I apologize if it is a bit incoherent at times. My thoughts tend to race when I get upset about politics, and my writing can reflect these racing thoughts.

"Many feel alienated by the Democratic Party. They may want unity, but not if it means a stamp of approval for a political status quo they believe is fundamentally flawed and needs to be fixed." http://www.theatlantic.com/…/hillary-clinton-bernie…/481389/

I think that this statement sums up my feelings pretty well. As I have told many people, I think that Democrats, like Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner are more destructive to a progressive agenda/policies than a Republicans. It took Bill Clinton to make the Democratic Party the "other" corporate party by pushing for, and/or signing bills, like:

NAFTA
GATT
The Telecommunications Act of 1996
Gramm-Leach-Bliley
CFMA

At the same time, Bill Clinton co-opted much of the socio-political and economic framing, and policies, used by the Republican Party of the 1990s. "The era of big government is over." He "reformed" welfare. His entire economic team came from Wall Street banks (and went back after their time in the administration). He talked about balanced budgets. He resided over the largest increase of incarcerations in American history. One should take anything the CATO Institute with a grain of salt, but here is an argument made suggesting that Bill Clinton was more conservative than Bush. It was written in 2002: http://www.cato.org/…/co…/was-clinton-more-conservative-bush
Another article from the American Conservative talks about how respected he is among Republicans: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/…/how-bill-clinton-…/

President Obama hasn't been a whole lot better. His signature piece of legislation was a policy developed by the Heritage Foundation. It forces us to buy a product from an industry that has a financial interest in denying claims, and they do everything they can to do that. His administration pushed the idea that a President can make life and death decisions, without a warrant, without a trial, for an American citizen. It is bad enough that President's have usurped war powers from the Congress (Thanks President Bush!!), but now they can unilaterally decide to kill an American citizen too. He has increased the usage of drones. This has created a paradigm shift in how we fight. It has become impersonal. We do not see the true aftermath of hellfire missiles hitting innocent brown and black people. Under his watch, the banks have gotten bigger. They were already big enough that their failure sent huge waves through the world economy, but he did NOTHING to truly rein them in. The failure of these banks could, and would, still crash the world economy. He, like his Democratic predecessor, has also taken his economic team from the financial sector. His previous AG came from a law firm that defended these parasites, so it was pretty obvious he wouldn't prosecute them. He has since gone back to that firm.

Hillary Clinton will frame issues in the same way. As I have said many, many times, she is a political opportunist. Aside from a handful of issues (on women and children, though her tenure as SoS has tarnished this record, as did her advocacy of the "Crime Bill" and Welfare Reform), I don't know much of what she truly believes. She has flipped and flopped on so many major issues, one cannot be blamed for not knowing where she stands at a given time and on a given issue.

It is this, and much more, that gives me pause. I know that Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton, but given that she associates with the same group of policy advisors, it is hard to believe that she deviates too far from him on policy.

Bill Clinton is the worst thing to have happened to the Democratic Party in modern history. President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are cut from the same cloth, and influenced by the same people. Hillary will be just as destructive to a leftist agenda in this country as her husband. Those who believe that Hillary will be anything other than this need to open their eyes to what the Democratic Party is. It does not represent you unless you are at the top of your profession. If you are young, "unskilled," and/or live in poverty the party couldn't care less about you as you don't fill their coffers.

It is this realization that I cannot support status quo Democrats. That includes both of my senators. I am happy though that there is a truly progressive voice running in my district (https://ballotpedia.org/Pramila_Jayapal), and I will be voting for her in the primary and hopefully in the general election.

*Edited formatting.