Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Trump did not Win, Hillary Lost.

Politics, ,
What? Me Worry?

With 56 days till Election Day I thought it would be good to share some positive thoughts. That is why I have Alfred E. Newman on this post. It is also why I’m going to talk about the 2016 election and not the 2020 election in this post. I think we need to remind ourselves just where we are coming from.

First off I want to remind everyone out there that Donald Trump did not win in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost. And in looking back on that she lost should not be much of a surprise to anyone. But that is the problem. Most of the scholars and pundits of Political Science (or just plan Politics) are pretty much at a loss on why or how Donald Trump won. The problem is that they are asking the wrong question. What they need to ask is how did Hillary Clinton lose?

It is not all that hard to understand when looked at in the correct way. We need to remember that Clinton was and still is, one of the most divisive people in our body politic. Almost no one doesn’t have an opinion about her. Starting there, let’s take a look at the campaign of 2016 as if it was a long long foot race.

At the start of the race, Hillary gets off to a good start as all of the Republican contenders keep getting in each other’s way. Until, lo and behold, the one contender everyone thought of as a joke ends up the only one still in the race with all of the others falling down in the dust. And now the fun starts as the clown knows how to keep all the attention on him.

So, now almost no one sees and even few comment on all of the interference that was thrown in Hillary’s way. It’s like no one cares that people in the stands are throwing things onto the track that the leaders have to deal with, which slows her down and lets the challenger creep up. Here I’m talking about the slow drip drip from WikiLeaks and the Russians. Then the way some of the officials acted, by letting the challenger get extra boost by acting totally unfairly in the debates. Several times in all the debates Trump acted in such a way that in any other debate setting he would have been called out. But not in the Presidential Debates of 2016. I’m particularly thinking of the time(s) Trump left his podium to walk around the stage. In any other debate the moderator would have interrupted and directed him to return to his place. Think of this as disruptive as a runner cutting across lanes on the track.

Finally we have the most telling blow. The absolutely wrong action of the FBI in the final weeks of the election and the problem with “Hillary’s e-mails”. Think of this as a track official stepping out onto the track, in the runner’s lane just as the runner is going into their final kick, to warn the spectators not to step out on the track. Then the final point, calling the race for the Trump winner runner because he breaks the tape even though Hillary’s foot crossed the finish line first. When looked at it this way, it is no wonder she lost.

In fact I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict in 20 or 30 years the scholars will be all talking with amazement that Hillary Clinton came so close to winning with everything stacked against her. And that brings me to the positive point I want to leave you with. This is 2020, not 2016. We know what happened back then and we, the American Electorate, are on the lookout for all the dirty tricks that were played and who played them.

We are fortunate that WikiLeaks is no more. Even if we have Q-Anon we know it for what it is. And yes, the Russians are playing the same game as before, but again, we know what to look for. Even the attempt to paint Joe Biden with a broad brush of scandals backfired. It got Donald Trump in the history books as only the third president to be impeached and showed up the Republicans in the Senate to be the spineless lickspittles they are.

What we can expect to see in a HRC Presidentcy

Politics, , , ,

220px-Hillary_Clinton_official_Secretary_of_State_portrait_cropYes, it is two plus years till we need to really worry about who should be President but I’ve been hear quite a lot on “Hillary” Clinton running once more.  There is enough, more than enough, time to talk about her qualifications and liabilities.  What I want to talk about here is what we, the country,  can expect to see if she is elected.

I’m not talking about what can be expected from her, her administration, or the Democrats in Congress.  I want to address the reactions from the right.  We’ve had six plus years of the Obama Presidency, the first non-white Presidency and we’ve seen some very strong reactions from the right.  I think it is reasonable to make some extrapolations on their, conservatives, reaction to the first Woman, non-male, President.

First, I expect a strong effort to de-legitimatize her election on the same order as the ‘Birther’ attacks on Obama.  But!  I do not expect any effort to say she is not a citizen, natural born or not.  If the election is close look for people talking about how it was ‘stolen’ by voter ‘fraud’ and machine politics of the cities.  I think this because I see that the GOP has been quite successful in playing to American conservative disdain and horror of anything not Small Town/Rural.  While I expect there will be some misogynistic at work I think it has more to deal with hate & fear of change and the new than of women.  By 2016, the conservative movement will have had to deal with eight years of  new and change and they have had more than enough.  They will be pushing even harder for someone who is ‘just like me’, who represents ‘things as they were and the way they should be’.  I dread what there reaction will be if faced with eight more years of things going/being wrong.

Does this mean I’m not in favor of   a woman being President? No.  Of  Hillary Clinton being President?   Again No.  What I am saying is we must be prepared for the reaction of some of those members of the conservative movement who are ready, willing and able to do what ever is needed to appose anything done by Hillary, just because she is doing it.  We need to be ready for them not to compromise on anything, not because they are bad or evil, but because they are good people who happen to believe that compromise with Hillary (or the left) means ‘compromising with the devil’.  Many feel that they are ‘compromising more than enough’ when they let the left join them in doing something, anything.  We have seen this type of activity and thought for the last few years and we can expect more to come as the 2016 election approaches.

We have been in this same situation many times in our history and I dare say we will be in this situation in the future.  I submit for you consideration that there are a great many similarities between now and the 50’s and 60’s.  Not the causes mind you, but with what is happening, how people are acting and reacting.  The danger this country faces now is the rise of the unscrupulous politician(s).  People like Huey (Kingfish) P. Long  of the 30s or Joe McCarthy of the 50s.  These people can do a great deal of harm before they are brought down.  But more dangerous are the people who honestly believe they are doing what is right, for the best of the country, and who are just dead wrong.  These people can not be brought down, they can only be apposed.  More about them at another time.  For now it is enough for us to deal with the unscrupulous politician.  These people can make a new Clinton Presidency a living hell.