…The Clinton Machine doesn’t depend on holding local offices or controlling a particular city or state; it floats untethered from geography. Bill Clinton isn’t the Mayor of anything, and he’s constitutionally ineligible for another term in the White House, but few people in the United States have more influence than he does.
…The machine gathers the cash that provides perches and incomes to Clinton loyalists; the loyalists keep the publicity machine pumping, keep the networks of contacts and patronage refreshed throughout the vast Clinton network, and staff what amounts to a permanent campaign. This is what party machines used to do: provide incomes for the army of operatives who would jump into action to make sure the machine stayed in office.
…Any fashionable cause that can gain applause at Davos and in the world of gentry liberalism here at home (empowering women in development, climate change, entrepreneurship and the poor, disaster relief, medical research, and so on) gets office space and a PR package at the Foundation…What donors buy, or think they are buying, is influence and face time with two of the most powerful people in the world and their political machine; what they get on the side includes good PR, some invites and connections, one’s picture with a Clinton or a courageous and charismatic human rights figure from the developing world, and a tax deduction for a charitable contribution.
…there is the synergy created by the intersection of the Power Couple and the Twenty-second Amendment, which limited Presidents to two terms. Term-limited Presidents have a hard time convincing donors that further gifts will result in future benefits. This is a problem the Clintons do not have.
…the Foundation vehicle allows the Clintons to attract enormous sums of money from foreign as well as domestic donors. Unlike ordinary politicians, the Clintons can take money from foreign individuals, states and firms without breaking US laws.
…In part because of its deep roots in 20th-century liberal Democratic politics, the Clinton machine is deeply entangled with interest groups and lobbies who want to perpetuate blue model governance even as the economic realities that empower the machine are no longer consistent with blue model methods.
Read more: The American Interest
In a season where the public in BOTH parties has tilted wildly anti-establishment, it is hard to imagine anyone MORE establishment than the Clintons:
Wealthy… Well-connected… King-makers…
She’s an “Insider’s Insider”.
Is Hillary PART of the Machine, or THE MACHINE?
