Hopefully, this will be the last thing I have to write about the 2016 presidential race. That might just be wishful thinking, but with this hard slog of an election finally about to be behind us, I hope that neither side will throw a fit in the event of the other candidate winning. I hope that we can be done after this.
But we haven’t all voted yet. There’s still a little time left. And with candidates making closing arguments, I want to make mine: Let’s not let this happen again.
Hillary Clinton is an extremely flawed candidate. Her past is studded with scandals. Her thousands of emails, whether the State Dept. or Julian Assange is releasing them, have given America a unique look into the distasteful sausage-making process of politics. Politicians have been lying and misdirecting and making compromises behind closed doors since the dawn of organized government, and Clinton is consummately a politician — but unlike candidates past, she has no charming demeanor to hide the nasty business of governance behind. She is a liar. She has been flip-flopping on the policies she now holds since the beginning of her political career. And although no one has yet provided any real evidence of corruption, the spectre of the idea of it has been haunting her campaign from the beginning.
This persistent aura of crookedness has been the main driver of Donald Trump’s case against her — not despite the fact, but because of it, that she is really not doing things any differently than the politicians who have come before her. There is an appealing message to the Trump campaign’s new refrain, "drain the swamp," and it hits home for many people because Clinton is the embodiment of what Average Joes hate about politics. We want to pretend our government is clean and classy — Clinton has given us an unprecedented look at the dirty, messy side of it.
Liberals and conservatives are in agreement about how much we don’t like the idea of a president who lies to us, about how little we like the idea of our leaders having a private and a public position. Politicians have been reviled by the general public for decades, if not centuries, precisely because of this tendency.
This year, some people are rejecting that in favor of ignoring other people’s rights. Let’s face it, America. As much as many of us are angry and frustrated with government as it is currently being done in this country, we have it pretty good. Democracy is not a perfect or very efficient system, and we frequently ride roughshod over minority interests. But that is not the failing of our system that is currently spurring the Trump revolution in the GOP. Racial and religious fears are steering us down an authoritarian, nationalistic path as a dwindling population of white conservatives feels institutional power begin to slide away from them.
As much as the economic fears of rural voters who lost their jobs in the 2008 crash and have not seen them come back are understandable, what those voters — and moderate establishment conservatives falling into the party line — are doing to ease those fears is not. We have seen many humanizing portraits of Trump supporters in the last month or so, because the left has been scorning them on an institutional level, but what we miss in empathizing with them is empathizing with the people who will be hurt by a Trump presidency.
Let’s be honest about this. Donald Trump is incompetent to be president, and minorities in this country will suffer as a result of his election. In fact, everyone will suffer. He appears not to understand why he cannot use nuclear weapons with abandon, why our military will not conduct a “sneak attack” on the parts of the Middle East held by the IS, why he cannot order the military to torture people. And why you can’t sue the press for printing negative things about you. He definitely does not understand why trade deficits can’t pay for the wall. Military personnel say he knows nothing about the military. Economists say he knows nothing about the economy. GOP national security experts admit he is not knowledgeable about foreign policy. It is inescapable fact that he has given few genuine, specific plans for any of the things he claims he wants to do — he just wants you to believe that he’ll do them. He barely has any salient issue positions.
And he is additionally prone to trampling the rights of the most vulnerable people in our society — his campaign has been based on the idea of taking our country back, which leaves us with the question “from whom?” The obvious answer is the people he’s been disparaging all campaign: Those nasty foreigners. More specifically, those nasty non-white foreigners. Some Trump supporters will argue that his position does not come from a place of racism, but that argument is disproved by the fact that he doesn’t seem to mind his white wife having worked here illegally.
Trump has advocated banning Muslims fleeing war-torn countries from entering America despite lack of evidence that they are dangerous to us. He has advocated mass deportation because immigrants come here to commit crime, a statement which is patently untrue, since illegal immigrants actually commit less crime than the native population. He has shown a complete inability to see black people as anything other than inner-city ghetto dwellers. He does not understand issues that actually relate to those groups — instead he is provoking parents to wonder if their children will be welcome in America, throwing black supporters out of his rallies and suggesting his white supporters beat them, and demeaning both legal and illegal Mexican immigrants by referring to the undocumented ones as rapists, killers and criminals, and insinuating the documented ones are undocumented.
Some of Trump’s supporters, like the KKK and the man chanting Jew-S-A at a rally last week, are actually virulently racist — some others are simply tolerant of it. Neither stance is excusable. Conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio, who have all shown that they are aware that much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is racist, have still failed to condemn him; they are just as guilty as he is.
None of this even begins to mention his long and decorated history of sexism and sexual assault, his hair-trigger temper, threats to jail his opponent, his coziness with Russia, or his shameful mockery of the Deaf and the disabled. None of it begins to mention that he is no less guilty of an air of corruption, of wishy-washy policy positions, and of rewarding fealty than is Crooked Hillary. He is simply crookedness tied up in a bow of vagueness, ignorance and bigotry. But some people still prefer him.
If Trump wins, there will be a generation of children who are less white than previous generations who may be scared to shake the hand of their president. Conservative voters will have decided that they care less about democracy and principles than about their party and their party’s hatred of Clinton.
For me, there is no controversy. I would rather have a president who lies to me than a president who would disrupt the very ideas our imperfect democracy is based on. But I shouldn’t have to make that choice. After this election, no matter who wins, both parties have to reconsider what they want for this country. Democrats must resolve the Berniecrat-Old Guard divide between progressives and moderates. Republicans can cater to the lowest common denominator in their base or cut bait on them to actually stick to their ideals. Both sides need to figure out how to work together.
But please, America, let’s not do this again. Let’s actually listen to our autopsy reports this time and fix what’s wrong before we have to go through this whole circus of an election one more time. Let’s learn our lesson.
Here’s to hoping the lesson is over today and I’ll still be able to be proud of my country afterward.