Hillary Clinton; The GOP’s best hope in 2016

As it becomes increasingly clear that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are going to face off in this November’s election, it’s been both sad and funny to see Republicans putting their conscience and morality through the mangle in order to squeeze out a way to support Trump. To argue that our country would somehow be better off under Trump than Clinton is to completely reject at least fifty years of what it means to be an American.   People are certainly welcome to do that, in fact many people feel that  America over the last fifty years is very much worth replacing.

Civil rights, justice, equality, women’s health, etc. are in fact parts of the new America that make a whole lot of Trump’s ground troops very uncomfortable.  I see very clearly why he appeals to them.  Their generation has lost the battle to secure white male privilege and that is not the America they signed up for.  Calling these followers of Trump stupid, or even worse, calling Trump stupid misses the mark.  These are desperate individuals who are coming closer and closer to the day when being born white and male is just not going to be enough to give you a leg up.

This is not to say that other forces in our country aren’t aiming to dumb us down.  The idiocracy being built by the religious right is easy to document.  As knowing how to think continues to threaten the monopoly on knowledge claimed by those with one hand on the Bible and one hand in our wallets, those people too are becoming quite desperate to hang on to what’s left of their voice in the future of our country.  Attacks on public education are getting more forceful and it almost seems like we’re witnessing the Battle of the Bulge all over again.  As a way of thinking and treating other people seems clearly (and thankfully) on the way out, one last desperate onslaught is being launched by those with the most to lose if people really begin to think for themselves.

But I digress.

Supporting Trump is logical and understandable for that group of people who aim to reverse trends toward racial harmony, equality of all people, sensible treatment of women’s reproductive rights, etc.  It’s the leadership of the GOP that has me baffled.  If Trump succeeds in winning his “throw out the bastards” campaign, THEY are the bastards he’ll be throwing out!  It’s been a long time since we have had a clear choice in this country between  a proponent of the status quo and someone who aims to completely remake our political system.  Perhaps we have to go as far back as Eugene Debs (before we jailed him for questioning the WWI draft.)

I find it impossible to see what the GOP establishment finds so objectionable about Hillary Clinton.  Sure, they have spent 20 years setting up their campaign against her should she ever be nominated, but that strategy was to be used if Clinton was running against a real Republican.  All those years of fabricated scandals are about to be wasted.

If we look at the issues that really divide conservatives and liberals, how is Clinton any more liberal than George HW Bush?  How is she any more liberal than her husband?  She is certainly to the right of the already middle-right Barack Obama.

If we look at issues like gun control, income inequality, universal health care, capital punishment, racial equality, equality of all citizens, military spending, and privacy rights, how is Clinton any different than Presidents of the last 50 years?

Barack Obama continues to receive high praise for his role in helping the economy recover, but the single most important economic crisis has actually gotten worse under his leadership.  Income inequality unlike anything we have ever seen in this country was the one thing liberals hoped Obama could ameliorate.  But he hasn’t.  And Hillary Clinton isn’t going to do anything about it either.

The Affordable Care Act is so far from the type of health care liberals had hoped for when Obama was elected, that most of us call it a major disappointment.  And Hillary Clinton is not going to push for a single payer system that treats all Americans like real, live human beings.

Gun violence in this country remains a plague.  And despite the hysteria of the NRA and its dopey minions, Barack Obama has done nothing to make our families safer.  And neither will Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama could not close Guantanamo. He couldn’t secure complete exits from Afghanistan and Iraq.  He has ground forces in Syria. The military consumes far too much of our budget.  And veterans are still treated like shit by the Republican Congress who was all too eager to get them shot up in the first place.  And Hillary Clinton seems destined to have us fighting somewhere during her first four years in office.

Assaults on our privacy devised by George W. Bush’s team were not overturned by the Obama administration.  The USA PATRIOT Act remains an affront to our constitutional rights.  We are not safer in our persons, houses, papers, and effects because of President Obama.

Clearly all the things that Barack Obama might have wanted to do were derailed by his detractors.  His early plans for a single payer health system were withdrawn.  His early speeches on income inequality were buried.  His plans to reign in the military-industrial complex have been shot down by the military-industrial complex.  He’s surely not to be blamed totally for these failures.

But Hillary Clinton isn’t even going to try to fix the problems that really plague our country. Her presidency will look a lot like her husband’s….a lot like W’s…a lot like GHW Bush’s.  Middle-right with no real plan nor real desire to move the country to the left where it belongs.

So instead of using the game plan drawn up twenty years ago to defeat Hillary Clinton, the GOP would be better off making sure Donald Trump doesn’t take the entire party down with his out of control plan to upend our government.  They have four more years to work out a better strategy and to find a candidate that isn’t going to make them look as ridiculous as they look now.