The top trending search as I write these words is Tulsi Gabbard. For half a second I thought my hometown had finally made the big time. But no, I looked it up and found images of a gorgeous woman. The first thing I read about her is the first thing I learn about her. The ABC headline about her reads “Tulsi Gabbard announces she is leaving Democratic Party, calling it ‘elitist cabal of warmongers.'”
Sounds like a girl after my own heart. I’m going to discuss:
- 1) Who is Tulsi Gabbard?
- 2) Is she a courageous woman leading the way to freedom, or a traitor to her party?
- 3) I’ll discuss the pros and cons of leaving the parties, and give some analysis of the viability that a third party could save us (Rosdower saves us and saves all the world).
I hate to admit it, but I had no idea till yesterday who Tulsi Gabbard is. She served as a Congress person from Hawaii, being the first Hindu elected to the Legislature. She ran against Biden for the Democrat nomination for President. Before all of this, she was in the military, being stationed in Iraq, and later in Kuwait as an MP Platoon Leader. Likely her highest post to date has been as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, from which she resigned to be a part of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign.
I will leave here links to the four best sites I’ve found about her.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/tulsi_gabbard/412532
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tulsi-gabbard-ends-her-2020-presidential-campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/11/tulsi-gabbard-quits-democratic-party
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tulsi-gabbard-announces-leaving-democratic-party/story?id=91326164
According to govtrack.us, she tracks a bit left of center, with only a few of her votes going to Republican issues. She sponsored three bills that were enacted into law. I can’t find a site that tells if that is a strong presence or not, the site itself presents no figures to back it up, but says this is typical: “most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law.” In an effort to put it into perspective, let’s compare her to Obama and Biden. Obama succeeded with two of his bills as a Senator in a career spanning roughly half of Gabbard’s tenure. Biden was at least a co-sponsor of 28 bills that passed into law in a 36-year career. I get these figures from Congress.gov. According to huffpost.com, roughly 4% of all bills get passed. So I suppose she did all right in her success rate.
PBS says this of her announcement to leave the last Presidential race:
“And with a primary challenge looming, she announced in October she would not run for reelection to her Hawaii congressional seat. Gabbard’s decision became public shortly after a public feud with Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. In a podcast interview, Clinton appeared to call her “the favorite of the Russians” and said she believed Republicans have “got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.”
“Gabbard responded by calling Clinton the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” In January, she filed a defamation lawsuit against Clinton, saying Clinton’s comments were based on either her own imagination or “extremely dubious conspiracy theories” that any reasonable person would know to be “inherently and objectively unreliable.”
“Asked to comment on the lawsuit, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said, “That’s ridiculous.”
ABC provided the most comprehensive reporting of the websites above. I’ll share some salient highlights: “Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced she is leaving the Democratic Party, denouncing it as an “elitist cabal of warmongers,” while calling upon other “common sense independent minded Democrats” to exit with her.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” Gabbard said on Twitter.
“Gabbard represented Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021 as a Democrat, and in 2020 she mounted an unsuccessful bid for the party’s presidential nomination. In a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday, she claimed that the party she’s exiting stands for the “powerful elite,” not the people.”
ABC also shared the most quotes about how she is leaving because she is terrified of an imminent nuclear war with Russia.
Is Tulsi Gabbard a Courageous Woman Leading the Way to Freedom or a Traitor to Her Own Party?
Anyone who has read my posts knows that I am a fan of neither party. I’m a Republican by affiliation, but I think that both parties are nothing more than puppets of the real Hegemony. I have to confess, looking strictly at the tiny bit I’ve learned in the last few days, I so desperately want to believe the former. But I learned with the Bush family, with Trump, with most of the post-Reagan Republican leadership, all too often my hopes are crushed by ineptness and betrayal.
Let’s take a look at this, shall we?
https://en.as.com/latest_news/the-reason-why-tulsi-gabbard-leaves-the-democratic-party-n/
This article may tangentially explain why Gabbard left the party.
As one would expect, the Conservatives are calling her courageous and open-minded. But I’m more interested in why Gabbard is leaving, and in Democrats who support her decision. Debra Soh of the Washington Examiner agrees at least in spirit with the move. She writes:
“Gabbard’s comments are certainly reflective of a wider sentiment among many on the liberal Left, myself included, who feel increasingly disenfranchised by Democrats’ current policies. A recent Pew Research Center study underlines this political fatigue.
“Discontented liberals make up 10% of adults. They are described as holding views ranging from “liberal” to “very liberal” on most social issues. Fifty-seven percent are women, and 83% are under the age of 50. They typically vote Democratic but are less politically engaged than others in the party. For example, this group was 9 percentage points less likely than the average citizen to vote in the 2020 presidential election and 11 points less likely to vote than the average Democrat. Only 3 in 10 identify as Democrats, and about 5 in 10 identify as Democratic-leaning independents. They are more likely to have supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Most reported feeling like “none of the candidates for public office represent their views well” and that there is little difference in what the two parties stand for.
“For the roughly 3 in 4 who report not feeling “satisfied with the way things are going in the country,” Gabbard’s message is a reminder that their disillusionment is real. But it also offers hope of change to come.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is no fan of Gabbard. While she was smooth enough to allow for plausible deniability, a little digging into the facts sheds some light on her passive-aggressive comments. Politico reports on the last Presidential election:
“Clinton appeared on a podcast hosted by…President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe. The two discussed the upcoming presidential election, prompting Clinton to muse…
“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve [the GOP] got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and they’re grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton told Plouffe.
“She continued of the unnamed candidate: “She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far…”
“While Clinton did not mention Gabbard, a spokesperson confirmed the “Russian asset” comment referred to the Hawaii congresswoman.”
Also, we have a salient quote from CNN: “Clinton never names Gabbard, but there are only five women running for President – Gabbard, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and author Marianne Williamson – and none of the other women have been accused of being boosted by Russia.”
My Tired Blogger Analysis
Once upon a time, when I was younger, and much more of a Republican and Conservative, maybe a year or two before I married PB Max, I read a philosophical book called Escape From Freedom. It was one of those interesting moments in life where, in spite of disagreeing with almost every argument he used to build up his central tenant, I found myself agreeing with his central tenant. Acclaimed by many as the premier German Social Psychological work, the book states that freedom is a source of anxiety and fear, and therefore people often embrace tyranny. Think Hitler. Think modern Presidents. Think world leaders though out the world, from Putin to Modi, from Trudeau to Giorgia Meloni.
I find myself in a similar position regarding Gabbard. On one hand, I listen to her, and I find so much to disagree with, her arguments don’t hold up, and yet…
Listen to these phrases. “Elitist cabal of warmongers.” Sounds like both parties to me. She described Hillary Clinton as the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” Throw in Nancy Pelosi (and I just offended half of my liberal friends) and I’ll totally sign on the dotted line.
I’m still unsure if she is throwing in with the Republicans, or if she is hoping for a large independent or Third Party following. The truth is, I’ve felt the Two-Party system has been broken my entire lifetime. Somewhere between the death of JFK and the 1968 election, the Hegemony took control. At no point in my lifetime has America really been free. And we must love being enslaved since we have done so little to shatter our shackles. But I promised to list the pros and cons of leaving the parties.
Pros of leaving the two parties.
- Rather than having to parrot the ideas of party ideology, candidates can simply campaign on the strength of their own ideas.
- The Party Machines would no longer have so much influence on who we elect to office.
- Wall Street’s control of the purse strings for the candidates would at least have to adapt to supporting candidates, rather than just writing enormous checks to a party and expecting to run unscathed a game of Monopoly played with our lives.
- Individual candidates would be more easily held accountable without Behemoth Party backing.
- Individual candidates would not have to worry about incurring the wrath of Party insiders, they could speak on the issues without fear of retaliation from entrenched apparatchiks.
Cons of Leaving the Parties
- Do we really want to part with all that lovely money?
- If somehow you end up on top, do you really want to give up all that lovely power?
- People don’t really want to be free. The early centuries of this nation seem more and more to be an aberration. We want parties to do our thinking for us. We want big corporations to make our decisions. Personally, I look forward to the Robot Overlords taking over.
Could a Third Party Save Us?
My entire life there has been an argument that all a third party could accomplish is ensuring a Democrat victory (for some reason I’ve never figured out, evidently it is only Republicans that vote for the third party). So we’ve always been told that we don’t dare break ranks and vote for John G. Hospers, Tonie Nathan, John Anderson, Ed Clark, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Evan McMullin, Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or Faith Spotted Eagle.
Because if you vote for them you guarantee a victory for the hated Democrat candidate. I wonder if Democrats are fed the same line of bull.
In the end, I don’t think our salvation is going to come from a political party. I do frankly wish something or someone would break up the Duopoly. And eventually, it will all come tumbling down like a house of cards. Until then, I think we should all make our choices. Choose a path and make a way toward something. I don’t know what anyone else wants, but I want to do more consistent blogging…I want to work with people who are grateful I’m around, and last of all, I want a family and a place to call home. I’m not that old…maybe I still have a shot. Meanwhile…
Am I saying I’m a fan of hers? At this point, I would say no. But I’m also not saying I hate her. I’m just getting “acquainted” with her in a sense. And while she says some things I wanna hear, there are other things I don’t like so well. A friend of mine (shoutout to Northern X Man with Red Dirt D&D huah!) sent me a few things to keep me balanced, I will share those things with my readers as well.
https://news.yahoo.com/tulsi-struggles-answer-u-help-025106601.html
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 
I know I’m on the verge of being an ass with what will come at the end of this thought; however, I 100% agree that Clinton & Pelosi are the rot, but T.G’s comments are undoubtedly straight off the demagogue script. It seems to me we have “Russian influence” on both sides: undoubtedly Trump and also Gabbard or whomever they have in their pockets.
The Russians want our democracy to fall apart and for us to tear each other apart from the inside. The oligarchs just want to keep their spot at the top.
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