Considering what Obama, Biden, Walz and others have meant when they say that America might not survive another four years of Trump.
“I think you have to look at what the definition of ‘survive’ is. You can put me on a breathing tube tonight, but it wouldn’t be surviving like I’m surviving now.
That’s the best way of putting the threat that I’ve heard from anyone. We might survive but we’ll never be the same.
Clinton gave a wide ranging interview to CNN and it’s quite good:
Over nearly three weeks straight of 10-hour days – which means he’s had a much more active schedule than Harris, Trump, Tim Walz, JD Vance, Joe Biden or Barack Obama – Clinton is adamant in his speeches about his unique perspective as the only person on the planet who’s done the job and personally knows both candidates on the ballot Tuesday.
“You did pretty well when I was president, and I think I’m entitled to my opinion about who would be better,” he often says, his soft Southern accent now with a permanent rasp.
Standing in a church gym in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, he recounted a bit that he had read a few years ago about Dwight Eisenhower saying he worried how much longer the oldest continuous democracy could survive with all the effort it takes.
[…]
He insisted that this tour focus on towns and counties where a president has never been before, like South Haven, Michigan, where he spoke from a front porch in the middle of a block – a scene that would have been too conventional for Norman Rockwell to paint.
The people show up, and not just for the 40-minute, no-notes speeches that are more like chats – just with only one person talking. Clinton’s visit “cements something for me going forward,” 25-year-old Berrien County Commissioner Chokwe Pitchford told a few hundred people in the patio of a microbrew pub in Benton Harbor on a Wednesday afternoon, referring both to boosting local pride and Democrats winning elections there.
He expressed regrets about NAFTA and acknowledged the fact that it ended up fuelling some of the populist backlash that Trump rode to victory. He believes the economy is about to take off and whoever wins will be able to take advantage of it. He’s right about that. Just imagine Trump with this economy…
He said this about George W. Bush:
There’s only one living former president missing in this race: George W. Bush. Many people think they know where he stands on Trump, even though he has refused to say.
Clinton, who has his own long history with the Bush family, defended the 43rd president’s choice to stick to his rule of avoiding campaign politics in his post-presidency.
“First of all, he’s spoken up, I think, more than he’s gotten credit for, and he takes every opportunity that I’ve seen to talk about how important immigration is and how we can’t survive without it,” Clinton said, leaving hanging in the air the implication of that contrast to Trump’s nativism.
Bush really did want to get out of politics, Clinton said, before dropping in passing that “he likes Colin Allred,” who happens to be Bush’s local congressman in Texas and is trying for a potentially Democratic majority-preserving upset Tuesday against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Clinton said Bush told him that directly: “Oh, yeah. He’ll tell anybody that, that he’s a good guy.”
Bush left a congratulatory voicemail for Allred, when he first won election as the congressman from his home district in 2018, and they met in person once, but the former president has not gotten involved in the Senate race.
“He also knows, beginning with our relationship, it’s very different when you’re out of political life, when there is no competition, no consequence,” Clinton said. “And I think he believes that since he was a proud Republican all those years, it’s enough for him to make clear what he believes with all this, without giving up the party he’s been with all his life.”
When read Clinton’s comments, a person close to Bush told CNN, “President Bush has indeed moved on from presidential politics, but he has been working quietly and diligently to keep the Senate in GOP control.”
The person declined to comment on whether that work included efforts on behalf of Cruz.
To hell with the Bushes. If they can’t speak up now, when even Dick fucking Cheney is doing it, they are just as bad as we always thought they were. He loses nothing by doing it and neither does his brother or his wife. His daughter Barbara is canvassing for Harris but that’s not enough.
I think Clinton’s right about this though:
Clinton’s case for Harris is looped through with his own experience: The reason he’s so sure Americans will soon start feeling better about the economy is because that’s what happened in between Democrats’ devastating 1994 midterms after he made huge cuts to the shrink the national debt, and how they felt about the surging economy years later. He said he feels for Biden, complaining at the White House about not getting credit for infrastructure projects like replacing lead pipes and other spending that he says helped save the economy, “but that happens to all of us.”
The list goes on – but nothing is so aching for Clinton as what has always been the regret he couldn’t reconcile: His failure, up until almost the day he left the White House in 2001, to land a permanent peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Especially since October 7, 2023, people who have spoken with Clinton told CNN he has talked with anger and remorse in private about what could have been and what didn’t have to be. Standing in Michigan, reflecting on Arab American politics in the state sent him off on an extended riff through history and emotional understanding, building up to the missed crowning achievement that might have gotten him the Nobel Peace Prize and almost certainly would have saved many of the lives that have been lost without it.
“The only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth is when he promised me he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out,” he said, starting to tick through the details of the would-be agreement and the history of its approval by the Israeli Cabinet.
“I can hardly talk about this,” Clinton said, audibly choking up for a moment.
“How about we stop funding it?” a woman called out.
He kept going. There’s one president at a time, he said, but he thinks America needs to restart the bigger peace process.
“I’m going to do everything I can to convince people that they cannot murder their way out of this. Neither side. They can’t kill their way out. They have to make a new beginning,” he said.
The answer, he pleaded, isn’t being so mad at Biden that they turn toward Trump or other candidates that might help the Republican win. Show up for Harris, he told anyone listening, and it’ll be up to the next president to restart the peace process and pick up where he’d been forced to leave off.
“We have to find a way to share the future,” he said.
He muses about aging and it’s genuinely fascinating. He was the youthful first baby boomer president all those years ago. Now he’s in the twilight of his life.
If Trump wins he says that he’ll go back to work on his foundation if Trump will let him, which reflects his feelings about the possibility of revenge against him and his family (which is very real.)
He said he would be standing by to help if Harris wins, whenever she wants him:
“My belief is that you should always help if the president asks you to. I said, ‘I can help you on natural disasters, I can help you on some problems, but I will never call you,’” he said, proudly noting his 24-year, four-president run of never being the one to initiate a call, despite the many that have come in.
“She’ll call and say thanks to Hillary, me, and I’ll say, ‘We’re as close as your phone, but you’ve got a hard job, and the last thing you need is anybody like us working you.’”
I know his legacy is forever tarnished by his personal behavior but he remains a very interesting and, in some ways, powerful figure, as is Hillary. In the great scheme of things, they define the last three decades in American politics just as much as Trump does.