A lament.
None of this - the loss of abortion rights, the culture war attacks at gays and trans people, the collapse of functioning government - would be happening if Hillary had won in 2016.
None of this would be happening if enough left-leaning voters - progressives, liberals, moderates - had turned up to vote for Hillary in the battleground states that flipped their Electoral counts to trump.
None of this would be happening if the goddamned Beltway Media looked past their own personal vitriol for Hillary to report more on donald trump's ethical and criminal and sexually offensive actions. "But her emails" on the front page of the New York Times while trump's "grab them by the pussy" bragging goes unreported.
The Supreme Court would definitely look differently - and acting more moderate or at least holding to stare decisis as a foundation - than the one we have thanks to trump and that goddamned Mitch McConnell. While the GOP-controlled Senate in 2016 was promising not to grant a President Hillary any appointments to fill the vacancy left by Scalia's death, odds were sooner or later a deal would be brokered to fill that seat. It wouldn't have been a firebrand liberal but it wouldn't have been the likes of Gorsuch or Kavanaugh or Barrett or any other Federalist Society wingnut.
We wouldn't have a Supreme Court willing to undo decades of federal regulatory practices set by the Chevron ruling, and we wouldn't have a Court that undid Casey or Roe.
And we wouldn't have had a Court that would grant imperial powers to a corrupt Presidency. For two reasons: One, Hillary was never as corrupt as her haters kept imagining and would have never gotten to a point of insisting on immunity for "official acts;" Two, even a liberal-leaning Court favoring Hillary would never betray or undo the Constitution like that.
If Hillary had won in 2016, we'd have never given trump even a chance of claiming such legal immunities for the moment when his crimes would have caught up to him. trump's tax evasions and constant grifting would have finally gotten the attention of state and federal prosecutors, and even his delay tactics wouldn't have gotten him past 2020 before finding himself fleeing the nation to avoid jail time.
A trump loss would have diminished the Far Right wingnut MAGA cult, proving their extremism couldn't get past a national popular vote that still favors Democrats (and the center-left). Given all the grifting that the wingnut leadership indulges, they'd have gone for each other's throats by now to claim the scraps trump would have left behind.
We wouldn't be in this darkest timeline. There'd still be political sniping, and derogatory insults aimed at Hillary (and anyone following in her path) as "communist threats to a Christian America" and there'd still be culture war bullshit at the state level, but not with the official seal of approval that trump's offensive regime created.
And this is all a lament is good for. Regret.
It doesn't help to wallow in the past. What Ifs are only good for fiction, and for awareness of how BAD things CAN get if you let the sons of bitches win.
This 2024 is a chance to let go of all regrets of the past. This 2024 is a chance to do what is truly best for the United States and for a citizenry that begs for sanity to reign instead of King trump.
This 4th of July, we have a chance to stand with the current President Joe Biden as he runs for a second term, a term focused on bringing back abortion and health care rights to women, bringing back good jobs at good wages, bringing back affordable housing across all communities. A second Biden term will defend our allies abroad and stand firm against the corrupt powers (Putin) trying to undermine Western democracies.
The lament is over. The fight for American virtues and American rights and American democracy begins again today.
1 comment:
2016 showed us what happens when the goddamn media gets divorced from reality: They all thought she was such a sure thing that they could position themselves as "objective" by endlessly antagonizing her without ever once considering what effect on the actual election they might be having. There are no more presidential landslides in this country, or 2020 (and 2024) would have been one. We can't afford to fuck around with this stuff, like the damn media is doing right now.
I was a Hillary supporter. I even voted for her in the 2008 primary. She warned us about the supreme court during the campaign, but the media never covered it like they covered her email server. At the very least, it is our responsibility as citizens to be accurately informed, and although that is harder to do than it used to be, it still ain't that difficult.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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