US independent political analyst Pye Ian thinks that Clinton's longstanding presence in the political arena might be the reason why people could feel this way.
Sputnik: According to the sentiments of some people, "Clinton is the only candidate who can take on Trump". Why is that?
Pye Ian: People may instinctively feel as such because 1) seemingly ‘no one else is as qualified’ politically as Hillary Clinton in taking on Trump, and 2) the stung-and-reeling American nation presumably learned its lesson in supposedly electing Trump as POTUS three years ago, and thus wishes to reverse course.
Sputnik: What is so special about her for the Democrats?
Pye Ian: As mentioned, Clinton has been in the political public eye for decades. She has had rare access to privileged levels of political power, even well before she became First Lady in January 1993. Having served as Secretary of State and a powerful Senator from New York (in which she served on various powerful Congressional Committees such as Armed Services, Budget, Environment, Health, Education, Labor & Pensions), she is the consummate, definitive insider. Most importantly, however, Clinton and her husband are firm members of the wider, critically determinant transatlantic Establishment, retaining rare, valuable relationships with leaders, diplomats and multigenerational, legacy-wealth-wielding private interests who essentially underwrite clandestinely coordinated policies across borders and continents via their diversified asset holdings.
Hence, perceptually, and at the least, Clinton represents unrivalled experience and thus legitimacy. Quite possibly more so than any other national American politician today. The Democratic center would feel re-empowered, and her supposed re-entry into the national presidential race would mandate that more independent-minded, progressive Democrats presumably and inevitably ‘fall in line’ in order to defeat ‘the Trump scourge’ (assuming he’s not ‘impeached’ before then…).
All of these aspects precede the fact that Clinton is a woman running for POTUS, yet again. Other women are clearly running as well, yet none with her power pedigree.
What most miss, however, is that there is only one Anglo-American Establishment, to cite the late historian Carroll Quigley (who was college professor, mentor and Rhodes Scholarship sponsor to Bill Clinton), and it prefers continuity with regard to perennial macroeconomic and global affairs mandates, whether carried out by Washington, or by US allies. Hence it ultimately does not matter who or what (gender) sits in the White House, despite even extreme theatrics and tactical, scare-mongering unpredictability from the likes of Donald Trump.
Said Establishment is in the process of transitioning away from the 75 year-old dollar-as-global-reserve-setting Bretton Woods and 46 year-old petrodollar standards toward a more digital, even more integrated international monetary system. One which apparently requires further macro-crises (i.e. ‘another Great Recession’, etc.) to serve as thesis & antithesis preceding a Hegelian synthesis involving cryptocurrencies, the blockchain and IMF SDRs as replacements for a US dollar standard that’s run its course, as it was expected to. All of this while consolidating financial assets and natural resources concurrently with trying to remove rogue leaderships serving as impediments toward achieving said long-desired goals.
Hence there is no way that said Establishment would leave things – or candidates – to "chance". I.E. Why true "mavericks" such as Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and other Establishment critics never make it past U.S. Presidential Primaries, and tactically assigned gatekeepers such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the late John McCain, Ted Cruz, et al., are tasked with capturing necessary interest from the wider national polity before then herding it into either political party’s main tent.
Sputnik: Hillary Clinton has been using her book tour to speak about the political situation in the country. What do you think are the main reasons behind that? What can you say about the timing of this tour? Why now?
Pye Ian: America was already polarized prior to the 2016 election due to – at the least - the true nature of the national economy, which never properly ‘recovered’ from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The real rates of unemployment and inflation were vastly higher than what the US government chose – and still chooses – to report, while other critical economic metrics such as real GDP, the true money supply, savings rates, public and private debt burdens, all beg deep questions over how long we’ve actually been in a second Great Depression, which may have commenced in less than 80 years from the onset of the prior one in 1929.
Be that as it may, and the stock market’s performance both from 2009 and from Trump’s election through Q3 2018 notwithstanding, the current economic situation is being shown by said Establishment – which runs the corporate press, central bank policies and government statistics – as increasingly dire.
Market volatility is spiking again, yield curves are crossing, a grotesque trade war has been concocted as core distraction, and the US Fed is running out of ammo while throwing the kitchen sink at the repo market, thereby increasingly weakening the dollar while panic exacerbates across interconnected financial centres. All seemingly on cue, to those watching the Wider Game.
Said economic fundamentals behind political sentiments, along with an endless barrage of moral outrage from Trump’s assigned stage act (as the newer version of Nixon’s “Madman Theory” of the early 1970s, tellingly with Henry Kissinger advising Trump as he did Nixon), provide the backdrop to presumably start introducing a "cleaner, saner, seasoned alternative" national leader. Books and their tours tend to be safe, dependable PR means of introducing – or reintroducing – a politician to the public, whether said public reads the books or not.
It’s nothing new for Clinton, as her latest effort – co-written shrewdly with her daughter Chelsea – is her eighth penned text. The conspicuously feminist theme of the text dovetails with the Trump-exhausted public’s yearning for female empowerment, thus revealing the #MeToo Movement and its related news stories as requisite political precursors toward attaining the first woman in the White House.
The surface-level reasoning for Clinton’s book and tour would thus involve harnessing a seeming national political rallying cry against the most disturbing American President in modern memory in order to make way either for a third run for the White House by Clinton herself, or even just for preparing the way sensibility-wise for the nation to accept a new Franklin D. Roosevelt (i.e. Elizabeth Warren) figure as replacing the inept Herbert Hoover villain who ran the economy into the ground (i.e. Trump).
Yet the deeper reasoning, I believe, for the book tour and Clinton’s re-entry back into the national public spotlight entail the need to continue to babysit the collective public consciousness as the national and global economies correct aggressively and collectively. To point the finger at ‘the other side of the political aisle’, rather than allow for any semblance of an awakened awareness to the fact that said single, engrossing, hyper-powerful Establishment is guiding market booms and busts while waging warfare in differing manners against all rivals regardless of prescribed politicians, personalities, parties or contrived political platforms.
