[Letter:] The New Yorker endorses Hillary Clinton

The following is a response to the New Yorker’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.

As I write this on the morning of Election Day, one can only hope the Editors’ convincing endorsement of Hillary Clinton for US President comes to fruition, however, the otherwise coherent piece contained an inaccuracy I feel I must address.

With regards to the WikiLeaks dump of her staff’s leaked e-mails, the endorsement states: “Not since the release of the Nixon White House tapes has any political figure had private communications subjected to this degree of public scrutiny. Yet no dark alter ego has emerged.”

Sadly, however, this is simply untrue.

The e-mails showed that the Clinton Foundation knowingly accepted funding from the same bodies funding Islamic State, how her campaign directly colluded with Super PACs in breach of the law and how it worked in unison with the Democratic National Committee against party rules to undermine Bernie Sanders’ nomination aspirations.

The e-mails also showed the tight-knit relationship developed between the DNC and Wall Street in betrayal to the working-class voters that Clinton claims to represent. This betrayal was most notably demonstrated by the transcripts of Clinton’s private speeches to bankers that were contained in the leaks where she advocated policy positions that were contradictory to statements she had made in public.

Another astonishing revelation from the leaks was that a list of recommendations for cabinet positions sent by Michael Froman, then an executive at Citibank, were received by John Podesta a month before Barack Obama was elected President went on to make up over 90 per cent of Obama’s selections for the roles. Clinton, of course, cannot be blamed for this, but it is not a stretch to assume that little has changed within the workings of the DNC.

You [The New Yorker] are right to say that “voters distrust her”. They have more than enough justification to.

To endorse her without adequately addressing these blatant violations of law ­– as well as to inaccurately repeat the completely unsubstantiated claim that the e-mails are “thanks to the tradecraft of what appears to be Putin’s hackers” – is to treat The New Yorker’s readership with the same contempt that the Democratic Party treats its disillusioned base.

Hopefully, by the time this goes to press, the lesser of two evils is elected, but rather than rejoicing, the American public and this publication ought to focus on adequately repairing the broken political system and addressing the flaws highlighted by the e-mails.