Comrades!

First, let me welcome all of you to this historic gathering, an undertaking decades in the making and only possible thanks to the combined efforts of every Trotskyist party in the country. All should be proud that this soon-to-be-legendary venue, Conference Room C of the airport Hilton, has been packed tight with loyal revolutionaries.

Also I will take a moment to acknowledge our honored guests: leaders of every successful Trotskyist revolution in history. This row of empty chairs symbolizes the protracted, difficult struggle our tendency has gone through since its founding, and the future success of our tireless work for the cause. Our newspaper distribution campaigns in France, England and on E 12th Street by the guy who sells doner kebab will surely bear fruit, and we are proud to consider those brave agitators our brothers at arms.

I speak to you now in a time of deep crisis for the country, and the world. The liberal press has no doubt informed each and every one of you over the course of the last year how important the United States presidential election is for the health of this nation. Though we cannot agree with this claim — elections being supreme bourgeois spectacle — it is our duty for some reason to take a position in this contest, as our tendency has for many years. No doubt many of those assembled here, along with the world at large, eagerly anticipate the stance we will take on this pressing question, which is both completely irrelevant and the only way we have deemed it possible to get any attention from the public.

At present time there are but three options to consider for this election. Third-party choices exist, but we have found none that we can comfortably stand behind while also maximizing the number of unique visitors to our website. Rather than go into great detail about the candidates we have eliminated for consideration, we will instead articulate why our pick is the only revolutionary option in November.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the only principled choice for followers of our line, just as Barack Obama was in elections past and other Democratic Party front-runners in times before that.

Clinton, as the most openly telegraphed non-incumbent winner in modern history, will ascend to the presidency as the "inevitable candidate." This will do more to demonstrate the futility of bourgeois elections than victory for real estate mogul Donald Trump, who would lend legitimacy to the process as a "people's choice," the heir to Andrew Jackson as a dangerous and unpredictable white supremacist. We of the Fifth International prefer our white supremacy to be as safe and predictable as possible, which means the Democratic Party holds the only palatable candidates.

The same goes for Senator Bernie Sanders. Were he to win, class antagonisms would diminish and liberals would be, however briefly, convinced the system works. A mass of satisfied liberals would, of course, lower our recruitment numbers, but I can assure all of you this has nothing to do with our endorsement.

Furthermore, as the poster candidate for "crony capitalism" — despite running against a cartoon billionaire — Clinton would demonstrate to the masses the inherent corruption in the capitalist system. Clinton is the overwhelming choice of the ruling class. Were that group to get its way, the working class would at last understand how the economy is stacked against them, and begin the process of permanent revolution, which is a term I definitely understand and don't use indiscriminately.

A win for Clinton also puts the abuses of state power by capitalists in new light, thanks to past scandals in which Clinton took part. By taking advantage of her position as First Lady of Arkansas to trade cattle futures for an astounding profit, she has shown how easy it is for capitalists to accumulate wealth, even as a lapdog of the ruling class.

Her role in firing members of the White House Travel Office to facilitate patronage appointments as replacements make it clear that a capitalist government cannot be trusted to manage its own affairs honestly and transparently.

As this is a speech to a Trotskyist international, I am required by party rules to mention at least once that Stalin was very bad, and nothing the Soviet Union did was good. Thank you.

Finally, the manipulation of loans and investment by Madison Guaranty after the failure of the Whitewater Development Corporation is clear evidence of the lack of consequences for capitalists in the market. Bill Clinton's subsequent presidential election wins do their part for this argument, as well. How can the working class possibly trust their government to act in its interests after so many failures of stewardship?

It is unlikely, though outside the realm of possibility, that Clinton has participated in these abuses of power to bring these contradictions to light, and her subterfuge dates as far back as the early 1960s, when Clinton volunteered as a "Goldwater Girl." If this proves to be the case, our endorsement only grows stronger.

We would be remiss not to mention Clinton's foreign policy, which as a former Secretary of State, should indicate much about her character. We Trotskyists have always been, and continue to be, firm and consistent anti-imperialists. This is why we have aligned with the United States on every foreign conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries. We also believe every protest is extremely correct, no matter the issue or position. Clinton has supported protest movements across the Middle East and Eastern Europe, or at least the ones the CIA likes. We like them, too, and when defending them make sure to shake our heads very hard and equivocate multiple times to show our support is reluctant.

Clinton's strong interventionism on the matters of Iran and Syria will inevitably lead to the foundation of strong people's government in the region after American military campaigns, as there will be governments and those governments will, in all likelihood, have people in them.

Ultimately, there is only one revolutionary vote to make for President of the United States, and there is simply no better person for the office than Hillary Clinton. All power to the voting booths!

Again, we thank all of you for coming and hope you will do your part to advance the cause of proletarian revolution in 2016. Don't forget to grab your stack of poorly-Xeroxed pamphlets and calendar of left protests to ineffectually bother in the coming months. The ISO and SWP tables are available if you have a spare few hours for conversation about Slavoj Zizek, and books are available at two hundred percent markup outside the conference hall.