Hillary Clinton Has Gone Into Full Republican Mode

Remember the waning days of the primary, when, amidst the residual anger from the Sanders/Clinton split in the Democratic party, there was hope from the progressive left that Sanders had at least brought her a little to the left, and hopefully influenced the platform?

That didn’t last long. Sensing a chance to poach Republicans who think Trump is a lunatic, Clinton has sprinted, not merely shifted, to the center. And by center, I mean she’s blazed past that theoretical middle ground, and is now openly pandering to Republicans.

Hillary is trolling us now. This whole campaign is a shitpost. https://t.co/80xiMEweTk

— Matt Christman (@cushbomb) August 31, 2016

Yes, Hillary Clinton is giving a speech on American exceptionalism, and it’s not the kind of speech that cautions against it—it’s the kind of speech, given with a Republican, that encourages it. Read the nightmarish news from Talking Points Memo:

Hillary Clinton will jump back on the campaign trail on Wednesday with a scheduled foreign policy speech in Cincinnati, Ohio in which she will reportedly boost the idea of “American exceptionalism.”

The former secretary of state will be joined onstage by George W. Bush’s former deputy assistant secretary of state, James Clad, who announced his endorsement in a Tuesday statement.

If you’re a leftist, that’s at least a little heartbreaking, even though the non-naive brand of progressive won’t exactly be shocked. But like, isn’t American exceptionalism, at its core, what drives the Trump bloc? Sure, they have the “Make America Great Again” slogan, but their whole ethos is rooted in the idea that the rest of the world is an inferior trash pile who should by paying for our border walls. By encouraging American exceptionalism, isn’t Clinton actually encouraging this short-sighted mindset?

Last week, Clinton’s social media team also went on a Twitter tear where they praised the tolerance of previous Republican nominees in order to draw a contrast with Trump, and then failed to see the irony in immediately following up by quoting the proverb, “tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

I’m kind of amazed nobody on the @HillaryClinton social media team realized what this tweet sequence says. pic.twitter.com/lE9DJsjgBV

— Ben Spielberg (@BenSpielberg) August 26, 2016

Is this a smart political move? Who knows—maybe she’ll poach a few Republicans, or at least keep them home in November when they would otherwise have been voting Trump. Still, it seems like there’s very little Clinton could do to lose this election now, considering the historical awfulness of her opponent. None of this stuff is necessary, and the only real outcome is to broadcast to the progressive left—those few who were still deluding themselves, anyway—that no, your future president does not care about you at all.