The Gloria La Riva for President Campaign remarked on the latest development in the 2016 U.S. elections following the Indiana primary that took place earlier this week.. “The frontrunners Trump and Hillary Clinton embody the rigged nature of the elections.
“The Republican Party campaign began with 17 candidates, each trying to outdo the other in bigoted, anti-worker and pro-war rhetoric. Now it has narrowed to Trump, whose openly racist, anti-Muslim and anti-woman threats received billions of dollars of free media publicity, helping to propel him to the forefront,” stated La Riva, reacting to the primary results.
La Riva continued:
“Trump has built such a large and devoted following by taking advantage of the fears and insecurity brought on by the last decade of capitalist crisis and stagnation.
“We can only stop him by pointing out the true culprits — the big banks and corporations and their loyal servants in Washington, who have slashed living standards across the board and condemned an entire generation to underemployment.”
La Riva added that the surprising victory of Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton is evidence that the people are hungry for change:
“People in Indiana, particularly young people, have flooded to the polls in favor of the Sanders campaign to reassert their belief in a progressive movement. They are calling for free quality education, housing, and healthcare, and they understand that it’s Wall Street and the banks that have dragged down an entire generation.
“We appreciate the principled stand taken by supporters of the Sanders campaign who have declared themselves to be ‘Bernie or bust.’ They are refusing the Democratic Party elite’s commands to fall in line and vote for their anointed candidate, Clinton.”
Following the East Coast primaries on April 26, the Party for Socialism and Liberation elaborated on its analysis of the primary election as it entered a new phase. It argued:
The Democratic Party as an institution is not reformable. It is a ruling-class party. Sanders’ base of support was not fundamentally motivated by the idea that the Democratic Party could be an agency of change, and certainly not the agency for political revolution. On the contrary, millions of young people joined the Sanders campaign in complete defiance of the Democratic establishment, which used all its power to try and snuff out Sanders’ bid.
La Riva added that supporting Hillary, the “lesser of two evils” will not stop the march of the extreme right wing: “Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is a hair’s breadth of difference from Trump’s candidacy. They both spell more social and economic disaster for the U.S. working class, and growing threat of war and occupation abroad.”
Clinton’s record clearly disqualifies her as any kind of a progressive. In her career, she:
- Backed key pieces of legislation that gutted welfare in 1996 and deepened poverty nationwide, intensified racist mass incarceration including the 1994 crime bill, and slandered Black and Latino youth as “super predators”
- Voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq and backed the genocidal occupation
- Supported the bank bailouts along with her husband Bill, another champion of Wall Street, and the two were rewarded with $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries. Since 2000, the couple has been paid $153 million in speaking fees
- Was, as Secretary of State, the leading voice advocating for war on Libya, which killed thousands and resulted in the country becoming a failed state ruled by a patchwork of ultraconservative militias
- Initiated U.S. regime change efforts in Syria that led to a bloody and protracted civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives
- Registered a company (ZFS Holdings) at an infamous building in Delaware, where 285,000 other corporate entities — including those owned by Donald Trump! — are supposedly based in order to evade taxes on her extremely lucrative book and speaking deals
From now until November and beyond, the Gloria La Riva for President Campaign and the Party for Socialism and Liberation are dedicated to building the people’s movement, the real hope for those who wish to bring an end to the destructive capitalist system and replace it with one based on meeting people’s needs – socialism.
