The 2016 election season has been revealing in all sorts of meaningful ways. We’ve seen countless mainstream Republicans, particularly neocons, come out and passionately endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. More interesting than the fact they did this, was that they actually thought this would damage Trump. In contrast, it has helped him more than they could have ever imagined.

Indeed, as I noted in last week’s post, The Status Quo vs. Donald Trump:

The incredible irony of the situation is that in its failed attempts to make him unacceptable, mainstream Republicans have made him palatable. Trump couldn’t convincingly turn himself into “outsider” on his own. He needed help, and he has received it in droves from the GOP establishment. Meanwhile, the most pathetic part of it all is the fact that these so-called “conservative thought leaders” and politicians still don’t understand how absolutely despised they are by the general public. They think their “stand against Trump” hurts him, when in reality it just makes him grow stronger and gives him the street cred he never had before.

This rallying around Hillary by establishment Republicans merely solidified what so many people already suspected. Frustrated that one of their puppets couldn’t get the nomination and provide Americans with another false choice between two bought and paid for stooges, much of the GOP establishment immediately rushed in to support their supposed enemy, Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, we haven’t seen too many hardcore Democrats come out in support of Trump. This should be expected since that would be a far more genuine and significant gesture than neocon Republicans rallying around the neocon candidate. As such, I find it very interesting that in the last 24 hours I’ve come across two separate opinion pieces by lifelong players in the Democratic Party who now support Trump.

Let’s start with some excerpts from yesterday’s piece by Adam Walinsky at Politico, I Was RFK’s Speechwriter. Now I’m Voting for Trump. Here’s Why:

I was a Democrat all my life. I came to Washington to serve President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. When the president was murdered and his brother struck off on his own, I joined his Senate campaign and staff as his legislative assistant and speechwriter, until his presidential campaign ended with his own assassination. I ran on a (losing) Democratic ticket in the New York state elections of 1970. When I was working to enact my own program of police reform in the 1980s and 1990s, then-Governor Bill Clinton was chairman of my National Committee for the Police Corps. This year, I will vote to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States. So profound a change, and a decent respect for old friendships, requires me to deliver a public accounting for this decision. Here it is. John and Robert Kennedy devoted their greatest commitments and energies to the prevention of war and the preservation of peace. To them that was not an abstract formula but the necessary foundation of human life. But today’s Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments. We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military movement or action. Nor has the Democratic Party candidate for president this year, Hillary Clinton, sought peace. Instead she has pushed America into successive invasions, successive efforts at “regime change.” She has sought to prevent Americans from seeking friendship or cooperation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia by characterizing him as “another Hitler.” She proclaims herself ready to invade Syria immediately after taking the oath of office. Her shadow War Cabinet brims with the architects of war and disaster for the past decades, the neocons who led us to our present pass, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, in Ukraine, unrepentant of all past errors, ready to resume it all with fresh trillions and fresh blood. And the Democrats she leads seem intent on worsening relations with Russia, for example by sending American warships into the Black Sea, or by introducing nuclear weapons ever closer to Russia itself. In fact, in all the years of the so-called War on Terror, only one potential American president has had the intelligence, the vision, the sheer sanity to see that America cannot fight the entire world at once; who sees that America’s natural and necessary allies in this fight must include the advanced and civilized nations that are most exposed and experienced in their own terror wars, and have the requisite military power and willingness to use it. Only one American candidate has pointed out how senseless it is to seek confrontation with Russia and China, at the same time that we are trying to suppress the very jihadist movements that they also are attacking. That candidate is Donald Trump. Throughout this campaign, he has said that as president, he would quickly sit down with President Putin and seek relaxation of tensions between our nations, and possible collaboration in the fight against terrorists. On this ground alone, he marks himself as greatly superior to all his competitors, earlier in the primaries and now in the general election. John Kennedy admired political courage. He began his first campaign for Congress at the height of the Cold War by saying, “Above all, day and night, with every ounce of ingenuity and industry we possess, we must work for peace. We must not have another war.” Years later, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, he and his brother had to overcome great opposition from their own military commanders, government officials and other public leaders, to prevent a war with the Soviet Union: there were 13 men in the ExComm room, and Robert Kennedy said that had any 1 of 8 of them been president, the crisis would have exploded in nuclear war.

No wonder they assassinated him.

For more on that topic, see: How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

But within a year thereafter, deeply affected by the barely-averted catastrophe, President Kennedy had forged a close working relationship with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, spoke all over the country to promote peace policies, and delivered his historic American University speech of 1963. Our “strategy of peace,” he said, was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” Rather it must be founded on negotiation, cooperation in areas of mutual interest, and recognition that “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” As to our great adversary the Soviet Union, he said, “we must reexamine our own attitude—as individuals and as a nation—for our attitude is as essential as theirs.” Six months later he was dead. Theirs is the legacy that is being abandoned by today’s Democratic Party. We have broken one Middle Eastern nation after another. Hundreds of cities and villages lie in ruins, hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are refugees; and, for all the press and political thundering against the menace of ISIS, Al Qaeda, or Islamic terrorism generally, our military leaders offer no prospects of victory. They cannot tell us what victory would require or mean; though they are quick to assure us, as in Libya today, that this conflict will go on indefinitely. They cannot even explain how some of our current allies (example Turkey) are bombing and shelling others of our purported allies (example the Kurds). So a Democratic administration, carrying on the work of the Bush presidency, without thought and without question, year after year, has kept sending more young men and women into the grinder. Most amazing of all, however, is that as we proclaim that the terrorists threaten Europe, threaten the United States, threaten Western civilization itself—as we face all this, we do not concentrate our military might against this unique threat. Where are we sending our warriors, our ships, our planes? Why to Russia, which the U.S. general who commands NATO has announced is the prime “existential” threat to America. As you read this, ground, air and naval forces of NATO, led and largely paid for by the United States, have been moving about the Western borders of Russia, carrying out the largest military maneuvers since World War II. At the same time, our most powerful carriers and naval air forces have been steaming about the South China Sea, there perhaps to find encounters of unknowable potential with the rising forces of China, our second said to be “existential” enemy. Former Defense Secretary William Perry, a Democrat, warns that we are now, today, “on the threshold of a new Cold War. … a new nuclear arms race. … the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is actually greater than it was during the Cold War.” So my hope for America is this. First, we must begin immediately to end our involvement in endless, unnecessary and therefore murderous wars. We need our best young people to help us here at home. We need to stop the reckless military spending on more destructive armaments. We need to breathe free again. President Kennedy told us over and over that our own peace and security, in this dangerous world, would depend upon peaceful and cooperative relations with Russia and the Russian people; indeed, at the end of his presidency, Ronald Reagan said the same. Fools in Washington, intent on world domination, would have us ignore that wisdom now. But it is the wisdom that we need to preserve the world and our children’s future. But nothing can be accomplished in the midst of a war against police, an insurrection against the Constitution itself. Our clear priority is reinforcement of our police and police departments. We need many more and better police. We need them to be better trained, not as warriors but as shepherds, as leaders and teachers of the young, as peacemakers in communities that have not known real peace for many years. We need our very best young people, not getting their legs blown off by IEDs in Afghanistan, but saving all of our lives in St. Louis and Chicago and Detroit and Baton Rouge and all the other wasted places in our own land. Donald Trump has been mocked mercilessly for saying, “America first.” But to demand that all the actions of government, at home or abroad, be first directed at the interests and well-being of our own country is not old-fashioned or outmoded. Rather it represents the deepest wisdom and tradition of American statesmen from the founders on. Only with a clear vision of what is truly in the interests of our nation and our fellow citizens, and a full commitment to those interests, can we act wisely at home and in the world beyond. Finally, our president has told us we must lower our voices. Of course we do not hope for domestic discord. But the people of the United States have perhaps stood silent for too long. The elites of opinion and government have not hesitated to offer us instruction, from the heights of their power and eminence. These are the people who have led us into useless foreign war and limitless domestic disaster. This president tells us that we must now spend another trillion dollars on new nuclear weapons systems, and when we ask who will be the target for these world-destroying weapons, says only, “There can be no business as usual with Russia.” Surely he must have misspoken, for anyone can see we are on a course of madness. We simply cannot fight the entire world, Russia and China and all the nations of the Mideast, and fight a war at home all at the same time. And therefore we citizens must not be silent, we must speak as with one great overwhelming voice, a voice as powerful as Washington, as Jefferson, as Lincoln, as Martin Luther King: Return to the wisdom of the founders, who fought necessary wars to defend the Union, but sought no foreign conquests. Well may we seek reassurance whether Mr. Trump has the kind of cool judgment and self-possession that the presidency requires; the judgment that comes to the fore in crisis, that saves a nation or perhaps a world. No one can ever truly know how a future president will react to such enormous pressures. But Trump has given some evidence. He set himself a unique course toward the office, disdaining conventional wisdom, speaking more truth about politics and about America than any conventional consultant or adviser thought prudent or wise. And yet it is his independence, his willingness to name facts however unpleasant, together with his great political courage, that can give us hope and even some confidence that he may be up to the job. Perhaps most important, he has proven that he is not intimidated by the generals and admirals who have up to this day had their unimpeded way with our wars and our budgets, to the immense loss of both. Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politician of our day. Most important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with all reasonable people and nations, concentrating our forces and efforts against the true enemies of civilization. Thus, to dwell on his faults and errors is to evade the great questions of war and peace, life and death for our people and our country. You and I will have to compensate for his deficits of civility, in return for peace, we may hope as Lincoln hoped, among ourselves and with all nations. Truly, America first, last and always; for ourselves and for our posterity. These are the reasons why I will vote for Donald Trump for president.

For Mr. Walinsky, war and peace is the primary issue in this election, and he suspects Hillary Clinton will be far worse in this regard than Trump.

Two days ago, I wrote an article on exactly this issue titled, More Troubling Evidence That Hillary Clinton Will Start WW3 – Part 2, which concluded with the following:

This isn’t to say World War 3 is avoidable under a President Trump — I’m not convinced of that. As with everything else regarding Trump, he’s too much of a wildcard to know for sure. That said, I’d certainly argue that under Hillary Clinton, World War 3 is a virtual lock.

Moving along, a second opinion piece was published yesterday by a lifelong Democrat now publicly backing Trump. This one was by Adam Stein and it was published at The Wall Street Journal.

Let’s examine some passages from the piece, Party Loyalty Can’t Make Me Vote for Clinton:

I have been steeped in the Democratic Party all my life. My father, Jerry, was a New York City Democratic chairman and power broker, and I grew up in and around the Democratic Party. When I was a young man, former senators and Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees Herbert Humphrey and Estes Kefauverstayed at my apartment and we would proudly discuss the great traditions of the Democratic Party. My father was a pallbearer at St. Patrick’s for Bobby Kennedy’s funeral. When I was young, Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedywere (and remain) my political heroes. Four years ago, former New York Gov. and liberal lion Mario Cuomo spoke at my father’s funeral. I think his son, current Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is a very effective leader. I was elected five times to the New York state Assembly as a Democrat. In 1977, I beat David Dinkins and Robert Wagner Jr. in the election for borough president of Manhattan, and then was elected twice as City Council president. With this background it is very hard for me not to support the Democratic nominee for president this year. But I believe my party has become the party of the elites and moneyed class and has deserted its historic mission as the party of the working class and disadvantaged. Given my level of discomfort with the current leftist orientation of the Democratic Party, I am now supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump for president. I urge my fellow Democrats to vote for Mr. Trump. I have known him since the early 1970s and have seen his deep concern for people, and how effective he has been while working on behalf of the average citizen. Donald Trump is no racist. On the contrary, he offers the best hope for rebuilding our inner cities and creating better education and jobs for those trapped in poverty and lacking hope. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico in 1984, I asked Mr. Trump to provide a 727 airliner to bring critical supplies to the island. He did so and without publicity. I asked him to rebuild the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park because the city couldn’t complete it in 10 years. Mr. Trump did it in under six months and under budget. Her domestic record is as bad as her international one. When Mrs. Clinton was elected to the Senate, she promised to create 200,000 new jobs in upstate New York. When she left office in January 2009, the region had a net loss of 8,000 jobs. Now she promises to create 10 million new jobs in the nation. Why should we believe that she will do that, based on her failed record in New York state? As President Kennedy once said to his trusted speechwriter and confidante Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” This is the case in this election. I believe Donald Trump will make a great president and I ask my fellow Democrats to vote for him. The future of the nation may very well depend on it.

Personally, I don’t foresee many Democrats along the coasts voting for Trump in November, but many in the rustbelt might. As such, I think it’s interesting to hear the perspectives on why these two lifelong party players will be voting the other way this election. Especially since one of them is coming at it from the war angle and the other from the economic perspective (personally, I found the first article by Walinsky to be far more convincing).

In Liberty,

Michael Krieger



Donate bitcoins: Like this post?Donate bitcoins: 3J7D9dqSMo9HnxVeyHou7HJQGihamjYQMN

Follow me on Twitter.