Friday, November 4, 2016

I'm With Her

Needless to say, I'm With Her.

That's no surprise, but she's managed the madness well during this campaign and fought endlessly and tirelessly not only to save her own skin, but to save ours too.

Since she's a Clinton, I fully expect a low-grade simmering headache of minor scandal throughout her presidency, scandal that will be followed by poor decisions on her part that will be rewarded with heretical persecution by Republicans. It seems to be where we are right now.

I am too harsh on her. She has endured these last twelve months with a steely-eyed determination and clarity that speaks very well for her time in the Oval Office. She is wise, not a fool. She has experience and a demeanor that shows she knows how to use that experience to inform her decisions. In other words, she learns from her past, if at times she also repeats it. Her campaign has proven that she is tactically and strategically sound. She is cautious if not conservative, almost certainly too conservative for Bernie supporters, but she will come as close to finding the political center of American politics as anyone could in these very demonized times. She will not be surprised by what she finds on the political landscape either, and even will come across a periodic lemon tree where she will be able to make some lemonade from lemons she finds there. In other words, we are about to experience another Clinton presidency.

Any capable opponent could have turned that last observation into a liability for Hillary Clinton. Her real-world opponent cannot however because he is categorically unqualified and entirely unfit for the job he seeks. Donald Trump is an unwitting tool of Russia, a comment that expresses two of his many bad attributes: he is unwitting and he is an agent of a foreign government. To name another, he's been endorsed by only one national newspaper, that of the Ku Klux Klan. Those are the people in the white robes who hang people from tree limbs. No other news room will touch him, not even Republican ones in Alabama and Texas. He incites violence with his casual references to violence, then denies it. He is anti-democratic in his calls to jail his political opponent and his flirting with nullifying the outcome of the election, as if he were some Mexican drug lord taking to the hills.  He's a fraud who will soon be sued for his fraudulence. He is a liar who has no compunction about his lying, which makes him pathological, I believe. His hotels sit half-empty now because he is so hated. If that is what he does to his own brand, imagine what he will do to his country. And in case I forget, let's just say it now: he also may be a child rapist. That has yet to be determined in a court of law, but given everything else we know about him, let's err on the side of caution and say that he is. If facts prove otherwise, we'll be surprised, but graciously accept the judgment of the court.

Most disturbing in this election to me is that a strong 40 percent of the voting public are willing to pull the lever for a man who has all those vile attributes and many more. What that says about the Angry White Male I do not know, and what that bodes for the Republican Party I know even less. Their internal struggles are just beginning. They must ask themselves, can neo-fascist white supremacy coexist with traditional conservatism? The answer is "no," but how the GOP leadership handles this political razor blade will tell us a lot about the long-term prospects of the party in the 21st century.

The other culprit in our current political malaise is gerrymandering. Those districts, separated into reds and blues, have walked us down parallel cul-de-sacs separated by an insurmountable wall of distrust. There, Donald, is your wall. It's already been built.

Thankfully, this is a problem we can do something about, though it will take some courage and some political leadership of a type that is in very short supply right now.

In the meantime, I'm With Her. She will make a great president. She has already proven that. The other alternative is too dire even to contemplate.

====================

Note: To see more about political polarization in Congress, check out this amazing graphic of trends since the 1950s --