Even if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential race and upholds to her promises, there’ll still be 50 million people in abject poverty and generations living in debt, said Ben Manski, campaign manager for 2012 Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein.
Hillary Clinton has
officially confirmed she’s running for President. She addressed
supporters in New York on Saturday. That was her fist campaign
rally since she entered the presidential race.
RT: Hillary Clinton promised a lot of
fancy things. From your point of view what
will be the hardest promise to keep?
Ben Manski: I think that all the things she said
she probably won’t be able to uphold to this promises. Putting
aside the question of whether she has credibility to deliver on
this promises there is just the reality that most Americans are
facing, which that is even if Hillary Clinton did all the things
that she has promised to do there still will be 50 million people
in this country living in abject poverty. You’d still be looking
at generations of young people who are living in debt,
essentially indentured servitude. We would still have an economy
and politics that are controlled by global corporations and the
Clinton family is emblematic of that. They are corporate
capitalism brought to politics.
RT: Wouldn’t it be the case for every
presidential candidate? Who could really solve the problems?
BM: That is why we need insurgent candidacies
and social movements and luckily we have them in the US. It
wasn’t so long ago that hundreds of thousands were filling the
streets of America with the Occupy movement, with the Wisconsin
Uprising and other uprisings. We do have independent parties in
the US led by the Green Party. And I do expect that you’ll be
hearing from Jill Stein about her plans for 2016. She is the
Green Party presidential nominee. The reality is that – you can’t
fix the system by playing with the master’s tools, by playing the
game by the rules that have been established for us. We have to
change the rules, and that is why there is so much interest in
independent politics in the US. The fact that Greens consistently
get 7-10 percent of the vote in statewide elections even though
we don’t have democratic elections shows that there is a demand
for reform.
RT: One of Clinton’s tasks as the top
diplomat was clearing the air with Moscow. Six years ago she
tried to do that “resetting button” together with Foreign
Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov. A lot has changed since then.
Today she’s talking about the Russian threat and last year
compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler. Will this harsher stance win
her more supporters?
BM: I really don’t think so. There is a lot of
below the surface concern in the US about the very hawk-like
posture of the Obama administration and also the Republicans and
Congress. Neither she, nor the Republican nominee will represent
a very large section of the Americans who don’t want to see the
US drawn into what would be a very difficult period of increased
hostility. We see what’s happening right now with NATO moving
east and with the US, with the Pentagon encircling Russia. Yet,
at the same time in the US there is a strong peace movement,
strong anti-war sentiment. I think there is a recognition that we
have been lied to about what has happened in Ukraine. So Hillary
Clinton will not be doing herself a service by carrying forward
in the way which we all expect from her to.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.