By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com, February 13, 2020)

This is essay is not designed to persuade anyone to support Hawaii U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

I have suffered through the Iowa Caucus debacle and the presumably better-behaved New Hampshire primary and have come to this conclusion: The Democratic Party is fundamentally broken.

Conservatively, I believe 70 percent of Democrats are irretrievably brain-damaged. I do blame Donald Trump for their disability, if that’s any consolation.

But, of course, it shouldn’t be.

I support Tulsi Gabbard because I believe her anti-regime-change policy agenda could be implemented on Day 1 if she were President of the United States.

End our counterproductive regime wars in Iran, Syria and Venezuela. Tulsi would do that the minute she finishes the oath of office. The world would be safer for it.

And nobody, not the U.S. Congress, Sean Hannity or MSNBC, could stop her.

Sweet Jesus, I wish she was my president right now.

But we have a moron for a president instead. Thank you, Hillary Clinton, and all of you amoral, intellectually-compromised Democrats that helped make Donald Trump our president. No, I don’t blame the Russians for Donald Trump. I blame you!

I despise the Democratic Party because of the last three presidential candidates it has nominated (…I still like Al Gore. I’m sorry, but I do). The party has betrayed every working-class American since the day Bill Clinton took the oath of office in 1993. I never trusted Bill and the wife he publicly humiliated. I never will. I think they are both grifters.

But they still, ideologically, control the Democratic Party — even more so than the disappointing, billionaire-cavorting Barack Obama.

And that needs to change if anyone, like me, is going to support the Democratic Party again.

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Tulsi Gabbard is not perfect.

She fails to fully embrace Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-4-All policy, which is the most economically rational and cost-effective health care reform proposal in current circulation.

Tulsi misses the mark when she unwittingly supports dishonest efforts to outlaw the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

But on the fundamental issues — such as the role of U.S. power in the international security system — she nails it. She understand what the U.S. should — and should not — do.

The U.S. foreign policy and military establishment, under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s leadership, deliberately destabilized Syria and ensured the rise of ISIS. Over 400-thousand Syrian civilians died as a result. Along with Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad, that is blood on Barack and Hillary’s hands.

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Bernie Sanders may be my second choice for president, but Tulsi Gabbard still captures more of my basic requirements for a U.S. president — end the counterproductive regime change wars that are destroying lives of millions of world citizens today and fight for the average American.

I look at the other Democratic candidates (not named Bernie or Tulsi) and I see nothing.

Pete Buttigieg is lying when he suggests he will end ‘endless U.S. wars.’ He is a living, breathing product of those wars and he will never defy the U.S. military establishment if he becomes the next U.S. president. He offers no concrete ideas on how to end these wars except to say, he will ‘end them.’

Just listen to The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal describe the foreign policy ideas of neoliberal Democrats like Mayor Pete:

 

Pete Buttigieg is not a peace-candidate by any stretch of the imagination. But, worse yet, he doesn’t even support average Americans. When Mayor Pete criticizes ideas such as free-tuition at public universities, he soothes his supporters by saying, “I only want to make promises that we can keep” — which is politi-speak for: I will never work to cut tuition costs for average Americans at the expense of the bloated academic bureaucracies and banking lenders.

You don’t believe me? Watch what happens if we elect Pete Buttigieg or his ideological twin, Amy Klobuchar, as our next president. They will do nothing to help the tuition-debt crisis that looms over this country. They will defend the debt-holders long before they defend the average American student debt-holder. I know that based on the historical evidence.

Oh, at that new Amy Klobuchar media cult? Here is Senator Klobuchar trying to explain why she is uniquely attractive to Trump voters (spoiler alert: she’s not):

 

I can’t listen to Amy Klobuchar’s voice for more than 10 minutes without wanting to kill myself.

Like I said, I’m not here to persuade you of anything.

I believe Tulsi Gabbard is the best Democrat running for president because she is smart, articulate, and unbowed by the powerful forces arrayed against her candidacy.

Bernie Sanders is my second choice for president. But Bernie has one major problem that Tulsi does not — his policy ideas will never get passed by the special-interest-controlled U.S. Congress.

Never.

There’s a better chance my German Shepherd-Pit Bull mix, James, graduates from Harvard University than Bernie Sanders gets Medicare-4-All passed in the next Congress.

I love Bernie Sanders. But I know what a U.S. president can and cannot do. Bernie aims too high in the context of a U.S. political system dominated and corrupted by special interests that are far too powerful.

Tulsi, in contrast, knows exactly what can be done in this political context.

End our pointless and counterproductive regime change wars; re-invest in the American people.

Tulsi’s agenda will take hold on Day 1 of her presidency. No other change-oriented candidate can say that.

That is why I still support Tulsi Gabbard.

• K.R.K.