Did Ken Salazar really get tapped by Hillary Clinton to head her transition team? Ken Salazar??? This gives Hillary Clinton absolutely no street cred in progressive city, or as having potential as a friend to the environment. In fact, In an article at The Intercept, authors Zaid Jilani and Naomi LaChance write:

“As a senator, Salazar was widely considered a reliable friend to the oil, gas, ranching and mining industries. As interior secretary, he opened the Arctic Ocean for oil drilling, and oversaw the botched response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Since returning to the private sector, he has been an ardent supporter of the TPP, while pushing back against curbs on fracking.”

The writers continue on to describe Salazar’s history of advocacy for the fracking industry, and blatant denial of the harmful effects it has on the environment and on drinking water (despite EPA findings). So this latest Clinton-pick is one more incident that conflicts with her posturing as a progressive-posturing brought on largely by the pressure of the Sanders campaign. At one point in the contest for the Democratic nomination she even began waving her arms around and yelling-trying to act like an angry old socialist-Jew, and indignantly proclaimed her progressive-ness. It seemed that Sanders style and his questioning her “for the people” credentials (considering speeches to big banks that raked in a lot of cash, vote for Iraq war, deference to Wall Street…) started to resonate too much and Sanders had gained traction in the polls. So what to do? Start claiming to be progressive, and one-hundred-percent for those things you never have really been for; say that you supposedly said things you probably never said (like told those banks to “cut it out”); pretend that you are against that other stuff that Sanders fans seem to really not like.

What ended up happening, though, was a refusal to release the transcripts of the big-bank speeches (speeches that those bankers paid her obscenely well for), a crooked establishment-fix win despite all denials from the establishment, and a lot of mistrust of Hillary Clinton.The problem? There was already a real, honest progressive taking part in the contest-and it was Sanders, not Clinton.Clinton just could not, cannot, and seems to have zero ability to come off as genuine or consistent with herself. It is a problem that dogs her, and in my mind means far more than Benghazi.

While a DNC fix from day 1 (and even before?) and primary voting shenanigans may have helped preserve a win that had already been reserved for Clinton, you would think recent revelations verifying these suspicions as facts would prompt some real progressive reform movement from one of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in history.Quite the opposite: Clinton seems even more entrenched in the establishment and the political/economical status quo. By airlifting  Debbie Wasserman-Shultz out of nomination-rigging disgrace and into her personal fold, then picking Tim Kaine for VP, and now the Salazer pick…Clinton reveals that she considers herself having graduated from presumptive nominee (a position she has likely held since 2008)to pretty much the presumptive next president of the United States.

Here’s the thing, though. It would seem that she can afford to be so presumptuous. Clearly the fix was in against Sanders and any other opponent in the primaries. And now? She is running against the other most unpopular presidential candidate in history. You couldn’t make it any more easy for an un-trusted, disconnected, elite, establishment, Democrat-in-ballot-line only if you had planted a sure loser for him or her to run against. The only way to make it easier would be if the opponent was not only unpopular, but behaved like a narcissist moron and said the most god-awful and idiotic things.

Hey…wait a minute.

But back to being a progressive. As a criticism of Clinton’s sudden urge to put herself out there as a progressive (when it looked as if it might poll well), Senator Sanders said:

“You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive,” he said. “Most progressives that I know don’t raise millions of dollars from Wall Street.”

A true progressive is interested in change- progressive movement away from an undesirable status quo. Our nation has slowly been sacrificed the “free market”-an economy that grows on paper for the few, but loses opportunity, stability and security for the many. Even the “hope and change” president is enthusiastically selling out our jobs and our schools to the “global economy” through the TPP agreement.The status quo approach to the masses has been accepting and being grateful for what little you have, and competing against others with little-hoping to take some from them.

Clinton, along with the help of Obama’s trade agreement, Salazar’s love of Earth-busting, and Wall Street’s ability to buy morality, will definitely make “progress”…but in what direction and down what road?

Is anyone else feeling a little warm?