The Most Frightening Thing This Election is that One Of Them Will Win
October 31, 2016

 
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Happy Halloween. And with the latest round of “scandals” ping-ponging between the candidates each week (Trump’s sexual misconduct, now Hillary’s emails), the more I dread what’s in store for us over the next four years (notice I did NOT say “four to eight” years.) Last February, despite being an enthusiastic Bernie supporter, I conceded that if the choice came down to Hillary vs Trump (just as I predicted) I would support Hillary (in the end, I didn’t, writing in Bernie) because the danger of a Trump presidency was just too great to ignore. It didn’t really matter much anyway (at the time) because the chances of Hillary winning Texas were about as low as the chances the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series. In the 2000 election, I voted for Nader… not because I preferred Nader over Gore but because a vote for Gore here in Texas was a wasted vote, but helping the Green Party reach 5% so they’d be eligible for Federal funding in 2004 was an actual attainable goal.

Last week was the start of Early Voting here in Texas, and despite waiting until the third day, there was still a line with 15-minute wait. Turnout is high because recent polls moved Texas into the “Leans Red” column, suggesting there is a chance Hillary could actually win the Lone Star state. Trump supporters desperate to make sure that doesn’t happen flocked to the polls, as did Clinton supporters motivated by the possibility it could.

And me? Never have I agonized so much over a presidential vote. A vote for Trump was still unthinkable, and Libertarian Gary Johnson… well, let’s just say I think a president should be smarter than the people I went to High School with.

That left just Clinton and Stein. If it looked like Hillary could not win without winning the second most populous state in the country… second only to California in number of Electoral votes… then I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment before casting my vote for Hillary. And if the chances of her winning Texas were as unlikely as Gore winning Bush’s home state in 2000, I would have voted for Stein… not because I support “Tofu Palin” (a great label I saw online that sums her up perfectly) but to help The Green Party hit that 5% threshold. But Stein currently stands at 2% here in Texas, making her reaching 5% just as unlikely as Hillary winning here (possible, but unlikely.)

So I ended up writing in “Bernie Sanders”… not because I harbored any delusions he might actually win, but as a protest vote. “You screwed over Bernie, now I’m screwing over you. If Hillary is to win, it’ll be without Texas. It’ll be close enough to make you sweat. Think about that the next time you consider taking sides to help a deeply flawed duplicitous fraud that’s just one scandal away from losing an election, to defeat their Democratic rivals.” A candidate SO unpopular they may end up winning only because her opponent is more despised than she is.

So, what can we expect for the next four years?
 

If it’s President Hillary…

The investigations & accusations against the 1992 Democratic nominee Bill Clinton began from almost the day he announced his candidacy in 1991. Those accusations of sexual misconduct with “Gennifer Flowers” and “Paula Jones”? Those stories broke before he became president and dogged him for years. “Trooper-Gate”… which alleged an actual crime of using state resources (local police) to shuttle then-Governor Clinton’s mistresses home after having an affair at the Governors’ mansion… actually broke before he was elected president.

After Bill Clinton was elected president, the “investigations” continued… helping the GOP retake control of the House for the first time in over 40 years. And those investigations kicked into high gear with Republicans now in control of both Houses of Congress. They appointed a Special Prosecutor (“Ken Starr”) to investigate everything from “Whitewater” to “Socks The Cat’s Fan Club Mailing List (“who’s paying for those stamps?”) Their goal was to ensure he did not win reelection… and once that failed… impeachment.

We are already seeing history repeat itself. The GOP has known Hillary would make another run for the presidency since the day she conceded in 2008. And the attack of a consulate in BenghaziTM… clearly a question more suited to focus on the military and decisions of the Secretary of Defense… was tied to Secretary of State Clinton instead since Consulates/Embassies are part of the State Department. And despite the fact the Secretary of State does not have the power to scramble/scuttle fighter jet missions, and it was the GOP themselves that voted to deny additional spending on Embassy security, they still carried out NINE investigations (at the tax-payers expense) clearly with the intention of crippling her presidential ambitions before they had even begun. And if you think these endless investigations will cease once she is elected, you were either too young or not yet born to remember the early 1990’s.

Republicans will follow Gingrich’s playbook from Bill Clinton’s first term. They’ll do everything they can to cripple her first two years as president in order to regain/maintain control of Congress in 2018, then work overtime investigating her to ensure she’s a one term president (if you thought the GOP controlled Congress was a do nothing Congress under Obama… just you wait. Ted Cruz… who actually clerked for the late Chief Justice Rehnquist… has already threatened to deny the appointment of the replacement for Justice Scalia… ensuring not only gridlock in Congress, but on the High Court as well for at least the next year.) And if by some miracle she wins reelection, they will then make sure she is impeached before the end of her second term.

Gingrich himself once explained that because Bill Clinton won the ’92 election with “less than 50% of the vote” (thanks to Ross Perot), they deemed his presidency as “illegitimate”, ergo they were somehow justified in trying to bring down his presidency.

Presently, neither Clinton nor Trump have more than 45% of the vote. Investigations of her began LONG before she ever became the official Democratic nominee, and they are beyond motivated to make sure nothing she wants ever gets passed and that she is a one-term president.

If you thought partisanship, infighting, petty bickering and GOP obstruction were bad under President Obama, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
 

If it’s President Trump…

Both parties in this case have been quite clear: “Donald Trump is unfit for the office of president and Congress will unite to keep him in check. The man is an idiot. A loose canon that thinks he can unilaterally do anything he wants as president and doesn’t understand the mechanics of government. His plan for a Gestapo-like “Deportation Force” that will comb through cities to physically extract & deport 25 million undocumented immigrants (AND their children), his Rube-Goldberg like plan to “ban Muslims” from entering the United States, and his “quick & easyguaranteed solution to bring “peace” to the Middle East that absolutely does not, pinky-swear, involve using nuclear weapons and 500,000 ground troops.

However, as I pointed out almost from the day he declared his candidacy, “Trump is chasing the presidency the way a dog chases a car. The pursuit is exciting, but he really has no interest in catching it, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if he did.” It’s all a game to him. He just wants to win so he can give the middle finger to everyone who told him he can’t win. However, if he DOES win, he has no interest in actually doing the mundane every day chores. He only wants to do “the fun stuff”… like calling in military airstrikes or nominating a Supreme Court nominee. He’s not interested in signing bills or drafting budgets.

And in fact, in an interview with New York Times Magazine, a Kasich adviser reported that Donald Trump Jr… who was placed in charge of the VP search for his father… told them that his father’s VP would likely be in charge of “domestic and foreign policy.” Domestic AND Foreign policy? So WTF is left? “Making America great again” was Junior’s reply.

Oh dear Lord.

Every day, Trump demonstrates just how little he understands about how government works. Bills don’t become law if they are signed by the Vice president. The Vice president doesn’t have the executive authority to be Commander-in-Chief. When another world leader calls The Oval Office, they are not looking to speak with the Vice president of the United States.

So, will the defacto president for the next four years be a man NO ONE voted for, hand picked by Donald J Trump? What would Congress’ reaction be to that? It wouldn’t be Trump himself calling the shots, setting policy that Congress might feel the need to obstruct. It could be Mike Pence… a far-Right Teabagger idiot that served in the Senate and has plenty of friends in Washington, but legally has no authority to make policy or sign bills.

Someone needs to inform Donald Trump that the President of the United States isn’t a dictator (and that “ObamaCare” isn’t an insurance program. But I digress.) It’s the greatest flaw in the argument of Republicans who say they want “a CEO president” to “run the country like a business”. A Democracy isn’t a dictatorship. Trump admires dictators like Putin & Kim Jong Un because they appear to “get things done”. But that’s only because they don’t have a Congress to answer to. I wonder if Donald Trump believes Congress will just roll over and give him everything he wants because in his delusional mind, everybody supports everything he wants to do.

He actually said during a rally in Toledo last week (just as news broke that the email investigation may be reopened): “We should just cancel the election and give it to Trump.” Because in his mind, he’s winning by a mile, the polls are all wrong, everyone agrees with him on everything (including how crooked Clinton is), and he’s going to win in a landslide.

So whether it’s Hillary and four years of unprecedented GOP obstructionism, endless investigations, and threats of impeachment, four years of Trump expecting Congress to just roll over and give him everything he wants out of some delusional belief that he is so beloved (much like I’m sure Putin & Jung Un do) the vast majority of the American people are behind him when in fact Congress is prepared to stop him at all costs, or perhaps it’s Pence… the far-right Teabagger VP with no legal authority to run the country actually setting foreign & domestic policy because the ACTUAL president refuses to do his job… it doesn’t matter WHO is elected next week, the next four years are going to be an unholy mess.
 

Suddenly, this doesn’t sound so bad:


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October 31, 2016 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, Politics, Predictions, Rants

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