Would we - America, the world, Humanity as a whole - be in such a dire place we are right now where trump causes chaos and criminality on an hourly basis?
What would it be like in a 2018 where voters in key states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and especially Florida - decided in 2016 not to be a dick and avoided voting for Jill Stein or trump himself?
What would it look like to wake up in a world where Hillary was President?
Okay, for the Hillary haters out there who'd be screaming OH SHE'D BE TAKING R GUNZ AND GAY MARRYING OUR KIDZ AND SHOVING US INTO CAMPS will you KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. In the eight years of Bill Clinton and eight years of Barack Obama, your worst fears NEVER HAPPENED and the odds are it wouldn't have happened under Hillary either. Christ. You PARANOID FUCKWITS.
But that's the world we'd wake up to. Every morning, Fox Not-News and Drudge and Rush Limbaugh and the whole fearmonger wingnut army would be up and angry, yelling about whatever slight they think Hillary dropped on them the day before, screaming for her impeachment and letting the worst of them drop the "Lock Her Up" chant for shits and giggles. Just think of all the anger and outrage that happened under 8 years of Obama, only this time with the special vitriol that Republicans have for Hillary.
We'd wake up to a world where the Congress likely remained in Republican control. There's little evidence that a shift in Hillary's favor would have meant the same shift for House and Senate Democratic candidates. So that would mean several things:
- House Republicans would be blocking every attempt by the Clinton White House to firm up Obamacare and other health care reforms Hillary argued for. The sputtering self-inflicted damage Republicans did trying to destroy Obamacare would still be at full throttle, as they'd know Hillary would block their attempts meaning they could repeat themselves and never fear the chance of getting blamed for wrecking it. We may even have gone into another Republican-forced Shutdown by now, because Gods help us every time the Republicans pulled that shit they still won the damn midterms afterwards.
- Senate Republicans would be blocking Hillary's attempts to fill the Supreme Court and other Judiciary seats. Knowing McConnell's desire to screw Obama out of a SCOTUS legacy, he'd carry that hatred over against Hillary. And the excuse this time would be "Well, we dare not appoint any judges while the President is under criminal investigation." (Yes, that IS the argument Democrats are trying right now to block trump's attempt to fill Anthony Kennedy's vacating seat, but it's a hard one to make legally: Dems are better off arguing that Kavanaugh will offer unethical Quid Pro Quos with trump should trump ever find himself under arrest and making Supreme Court appeals to avoid trials) As a result we'd like be seeing an 8-seat Supreme Court with Kennedy holding off his retirement, and Merrick Garland sitting there on the sidelines wondering if he should sue McConnell for emotional damages.
- Speaking of "criminal investigation," we'd likely be in the 18th month of MORE congressional hearings into BEHGHAZI, and HER EMAILS, and the fervent hope that the DNC were hiding things in their servers rather than the fact that Russians were illegally hacking us. Where trump whines about legitimate criminal investigations into Russia's interference - and trump's acts of obstruction / possible conspiracy - Hillary will most likely be weathering each faux accusation by Fox & Friends every morning and wondering when her breakfast toast arrives.
So that's some of the bad stuff we'd be seeing.
In terms of international woes, there's every likelihood the mess in the Middle East would remain a mess. Syria's Civil War would still be a pit of bloodshed and heartache. Half our allies in the region - Turkey and Egypt in particular - would be nightmarish dictatorial hell-holes. The situation with Russia invading Ukraine would still be a pressing matter for NATO. North Korea would still be an annoyance in Asia.
It's just in those situations, we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the internal chaos of a trump regime. We wouldn't worry about a State Department ravaged by incompetent leadership - Bye, Rex! - that gutted needed foreign policy experts and sabotaged our nation's abilities to retain strong connections to our allies. There'd at least be some sense of stability.
The United States would not be an isolated, hated nation the way we are now under trump. NATO would not feel bullied. Our Asian allies would not feel abandoned. Canada, for God's sake, wouldn't be in a trade war with us.
That's the other thing: No tariff war. Hillary would never have pulled the stunts trump has raising tariffs on steel and other products. We wouldn't be caught in the crosshairs between an angry China, angrier EU, royally miffed Mexico, and a super-pissed Canada.
We would not have the scandals of Cabinet Secretaries like Scott Pruitt ripping off taxpayers and breaking environmental standards that keep Americans healthy. That depends of course if McConnell's Senate decided to let Hillary HAVE a hand-picked Cabinet in the first place.
The nuclear arrangement with Iran - backed by NATO - that trump is trying to derail would instead be in full force, and nobody except the warmongers would be angry about that.
Putin would still be scheming and getting his Russian hackers to try and wreck the 2018 midterms in ways to get the U.S. to drop the sanctions against himself and his cronies, but our intel agencies would be operating with the belief that their President has their back.
Our immigration policy would not be the nightmare it is now. While the Far Right Republicans in Congress would never approve any Hillary-backed reforms, we won't at least be coping with trump's hideous travel bans and we won't be arguing over the deluded "need" for a border wall with Mexico. The current trump practice of separating children from their families as they seek asylum? THAT particular nightmare shouldn't even be dreamt of in Hillary's timeline.
We wouldn't have a madman causing ulcers every morning when he tweets his insanity. Half of social media wouldn't be yelling and screaming at the other half. Well, not as much as it would normally be yelling.
In this world, trump would be busy wasting other people's money on his failing TrumpTV channel, struggling to find enough advertisers to keep it floating while most wingnuts remain watching Fox Not-News for their anger fix. His rage-filled tweets wouldn't cause stock market drops. Hillary's tweets won't do a damn thing, because she rarely showed the habit during her campaign and most likely as President would stick to messaging through her Communications Office like every other President before her.
In a HillaryWorld, it'd have been a world much like Obama's after 2011: Republicans yelling and fantasizing over their latest conspiracy theories and blocking any Democratic agenda, while the Democrats chug along trying to make sure government works and the planet doesn't blow up.
Would it have really been as horrifying a reality as the one we have now???
1 comment:
Let's see... We'd still be in the Paris climate accord, most likely there would be two centrist justices on the supreme court, Roe v Wade wouldn't be in danger of being overturned, the goddamn Nazis wouldn't be so confident that they feel safe parading around our cities and running over people with cars, Steve Bannon would never have been employed at the white house, and, well, Molly Ivins said about Bill Clinton before he was elected that there are reasons to elect someone of great political skill such as him to the presidency, and I would expand on that to say that there are reasons to elect someone as competent at statecraft as Hillary to the presidency.
I actually supported her in the '08 primaries, but was obviously happy with Obama when he won.
Another thing that might have come down is the salvaging of the TPP, which she came out against after pressure from the left, but in retrospect looks a lot smarter now that it has been scrapped and we have been left on the sidelines in that area, influence-wise and economically.
It was a tool (an imperfect one, I'll give you that) that could have been used by a competent administration to counter the abuses that China has been engaging in for a long time where our intellectual properties are concerned. You know, the stuff Fergus says we need to have a trade war over. But he's getting his (and our) ass kicked in his trade war, and multilateral pressure might be more effective at correcting the actual problems, and wouldn't involve the made up (or misunderstood or whatever) problems he bases his policies on.
Thinking about this is actually important, because we need to be able to articulate our reasons for wanting Democrats to win elections in common-sense terms that show not just how Republicans are bad, but how Democrats are good, for the voters and for the country.
-Doug in Oakland
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