Week of 04/06/2020

What if Hillary Won?
– by David Matthews 2

For almost the past four years, we have been engaged in a surreal demonstration of what happens when the wrong person gets put in the White House.  And by “wrong”, I don’t mean partisan favorites.  I mean someone who has demonstrated with his actions, antics, and words that he really should never have been elected, regardless of party affiliation or political leanings.

But... what if things turned out differently in 2016?

While this columnist was celebrating 24 years of his weekly column, a YouTube personality that specializes in speculative alternate histories came up with a timely video talking about how differently things would be if “the right” person won the 2016 Farce.  And, no, he wasn’t talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Rather, he was speculating how different things would be if the actual “presumed” nominee for the GOP won.  Specifically, Jeb Bush.

The video was an absolute farce, which was appropriate since it was released on April Fool’s Day.  It showed that Jeb’s bland centrist approach would not only heal the nation, but would eventually take over the world, and then the galaxy.  It didn’t take long for viewers to realize that the video’s creator was pulling a prank, and that this was nothing like the usual somber and calculated speculation of a truly alternative timeline.

But that led this columnist and a few other people to begin to speculate in earnest.

What if Narcissist Donald Trump had lost the 2016 Presidential Election?

Now, before we do that, let’s get a few things out of the way...

First, I did not vote for or support Hillary Clinton.  If you read my column back then, you’d know that I thought she was also the wrong person for the job.  Not because she’s a woman, but because she carried on as though she was entitled to be president, and she tried too damn hard to convince people of that.

But the fact of the matter is that it was going to be either her or Narcissist Trump in 2016.  That was it.  So there is no talk of a third party savior that would sweep in and somehow win, because there wasn’t one in our history, so therefore we can’t assume one in an alternate history where the results would be different.  Sorry, Libertarians and Greens.

Second, there are many outlying events that happened regardless of who would be in the White House.  Natural disasters, certain deaths, and certainly a global pandemic.  The election results would not change any of those things.  Hurricanes and earthquakes would still devastate the land.  Certain people would still die.  The COVID-19 global pandemic would still happen.  These all still happen.  It’s just that our response to them would differ with someone other than an unstable malignant narcissist in the White House.

So... what would happen on that November in an alternate history if Hillary Rodham Clinton won the 2016 Farce and became the first female President of the United States?

For starters, the GOP would challenge it.  Narcissist Trump himself laid down the groundwork just before the election, saying over and over again that it was a “rigged system”.  Bear in mind, this was just after the Democratic Party was exposed rigging their nomination system so that Hillary would be the nominee.  The party’s process was clearly rigged against Senator Bernie Sanders, so it should be no stretch of the imagination to consider that the presidential election could be rigged as well.

Plus this is the same goddamned party that spent eight years questioning and challenging the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s tenure.  They never got over their delusion that Obama was born anywhere but inside the United States.  So, yes, of course they would throw temper tantrums over Hillary!  Screaming Walmart-level tantrums.  It’s just what they do now.

But those tantrums would still not get them anywhere.  Calls for recounts and claims of voter interference would not stop the Electoral College, and they would not get help from the United States Supreme Court like they did in 2001.

Narcissist Donald Trump, in this alternate timeline, would most likely fade away once the challenges to the election peter out.  His reality TV show would be cancelled following the infamous “grab ‘em” video, which Narcissist Trump would claim was political retaliation.  He would continue to sell books, which his followers would lap up like Harry Potter stories, and eventually he would join the conservative and alt-right media by becoming a regular contributor to the Fox News and Fox Business cable channels.  He would then join the choir of conspiracy nuts peddling every possible theory and be lost in all the inane insanity.

The inauguration of President Hillary Rodham Clinton would be at best a lukewarm one.  While the media would be hyping this as a major historical event, attendance-wise it would be about average.  It certainly would not be on the same level as Obama’s first inauguration, and some might even compare it to that of her husband’s, who would now be the very first “First Husband”.

She would give a boisterous speech, talking about a new day for America and offering an opportunity to work with Congress and to end the partisan division that had stalled the federal government.  There would be some applause from the audience but almost none from those members of Congress in attendance.

Pretty much any chance of cooperation between her White House and the Congress were null and void even before she took office.  This is because the GOP would still be in control of both houses, and they would not be willing to work with her any more than they did with her predecessor.

Their first order of the day would be to neuter President Hillary’s Administration.  Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell would claim that the Senate would give Hillary’s cabinet nominees “extra scrutiny”, but in practice they would stonewall every nomination she puts forth.  Her first year would be to fight hard just to get her cabinet in place.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives under Speaker Paul Ryan would openly begin investigations on the 2016 Farce, with special focus on allegations of voter fraud by the Democrats.  They would also be continuing their Benghazi investigations, demanding the President give up the infamous emails, and laying the groundwork for articles of impeachment.  They would also make it clear that any budgetary ideas from the White House would be dead on arrival.  Speaker Ryan and the rest of his faction would be thumping on their pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution and proclaiming that they and only they are in charge of the budget, and their favorite word is, once again, “deficit”.

“Pizzagate” would be one of the subjects brought up during these House investigations, and it would still culminate with someone showing up at the Comet Ping-Pong pizza place with assault weapons to supposedly “liberate” children that did not exist from a dungeon that did not exist in a basement that did not physically exist.  President Hillary would be upset, scold the nation, and then that part of the witch-hunt would end.  But it would be the exception, as every other crackpot conspiracy theory ginned up by both the GOP and Russia saboteurs would still be discussed and investigated and rehashed over and over until they get the answers that the GOP want to hear.

Hurricane Maria would still devastate Puerto Rico in 2017.  However, while President Hillary would do everything in her power to provide essential aid, she would be hamstrung by the Congress and their continual insistence of only allowing funding connected to drastic cuts to domestic spending.  There would be talk of statehood for the commonwealth to provide actual representation and better aid, however all talk of statehood would die with said GOP-dominated Congress.

The economy would also be a sore subject during the early years of President Hillary’s tenure.  Rumors of a Hillary recession would start floating about as news of shutdowns and layoffs would begin to mount, just as they did in our normal timeline.  The White House would eventually agree to a tax cut for wealthy corporations, but only on the promise that Congress would stop trying to attack the Affordable Care Act, previously dubbed “Obamacare” but later rechristened as “Hillarycare”.  It would be a promise that the GOP would later renege on.

The Judicial Branch of the U.S. government would be decimated during this time.  At the start of her tenure, there would be over 100 judicial vacancies that were left open because of McConnell’s partisan stonewalling, and one key vacancy in the Supreme Court.  Because the GOP lost the White House, again, McConnell would make it clear that those vacancies would remain indefinitely, including his prized vacancy in the Supreme Court. That would soon become 2 vacancies following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

President Hillary would nominate people to fill those vacancies, but, again, McConnell would refuse to bring any of them up for consideration, just like he did with Obama’s nominees.  Conservative and neo-conservative think tanks would send out columns praising the vacancies and claim that America is somehow “better” with an overwhelmed and undermanned judicial system.

A third Supreme Court vacancy would most likely happen as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would announce her retirement due to her many health issues at the time.  The judicial scales would still be in moderate favor for the White House, so there would be no strong emphasis to fill these vacancies at this point.  The push, instead, would be to break the GOP dominance in the Congress so they would be able to get these vacancies filled.

However, unlike the results of 2018 in our time, the Democrats in our alternate timeline would lose the mid-term elections.  While the GOP would continue the partisan extremism of the past eight years, they would not be driven to the abusive levels that were seen in our normal timeline under Narcissist Trump.  Plus, many people would see the GOP control of Congress as a way to keep President Hillary in check, even while they hate the hyperpartisan stagnation.

With their dominance in Congress assured in this alternative timeline, the GOP would move forward with the impeachment of President Hillary Clinton on the charges of destruction of evidence and contempt of Congress over the Benghazi investigation.  President Hillary would be only the third president impeached by Congress, and, just like during her husband’s impeachment, she would not be convicted by the Senate.  Everyone in the nation, including diehard GOP supporters, would be saying that the charges were nothing more than ginned-up partisanship.  Unlike the impeachment of Narcissist Trump in our timeline, there would be no actual evidence in President Hillary’s impeachment.  There would be no “smoking gun”, no whistleblower, no witnesses, no proof to even deny, never mind contradict.  Only theories and conspiracies.  But there would still be a complete and prolonged impeachment trail in this alternate history, unlike that in our own timeline.

The impeachment in this alternative timeline would end up hurting the GOP, and with the 2020 election coming up, many GOP members of Congress would announce their retirement, opening the door for more extreme conservative and alt-right members to run in their place.

The start of the 2020 Presidential Fraud in this alternative timeline would be eerily familiar to 2016, with many of the same wannabes resuming their campaigns.  Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, and Rudy Giuliani would be quick to run, joined by the likes of Speaker Paul Ryan, former Governor Sarah Palin and twice-removed disgraced judge Roy Moore.  For the Democrats, Senator Bernie Sanders would once again challenge President Hillary and would once again be shut out of many primaries and caucuses as state party leaders would rally around the president.

That would bring us to the big one... the Coronavirus Global Pandemic.  Unlike the presidential incompetence of early 2020 in our timeline, the White House in this alternative timeline would try to address the spread of the virus quickly and to keep it from spreading to the United States.  There would be talk of providing medical aid, which would again be shot down by a GOP-controlled Congress, insisting that any testing or protective equipment or ventilators remain in America.  President Hillary would have the help of a pandemic response team, which was created during Obama’s time, and would not be dismantled in this alternate history.  Whether or not it would be effective would be speculative as our alternative timeline has now caught up to the posting of this column.

Let’s get brutally honest here... in all likelihood, things would not be any better under a hypothetical White House run by President Hillary Clinton.  If anything, the hyperpartisan gamesmanship that we saw from the GOP under President Obama would continue, and it would get worse.  But there wouldn’t be a sudden surge to fascism as seen under Narcissist President Trump and his alt-right advisors and supporters in those early years.

Political stagnation and sabotage would still go on, and it would hamstring the federal government in this alternate timeline, as opposed to our own reality, where the newly-assimilated Trump Party would literally break every rule and procedure to get their way.  But past treaties and agreements would still be honored with a different president.  There would be no pulling out from the Paris Accord.  The North American Free Trade Act would remain in place between the US, Mexico, and Canada.  Trade deals with China would still go on, and the economy would not be driven to sudden rises and falls.

What you would not see in an alternate timeline would be a president that would be an embarrassment on the world stage.  President Hillary would not parade herself like a spoiled princess at places like the G-8 Summit.  If anything, she would blend right in with Germany’s Angela Merkle and France’s Emmanuel Macron.  North Korea would still cause problems, but it would be handled no differently than under Obama’s tenure.  Russia would still cause problems, but nobody would claim that the White House was compromised as they do in our timeline.

We would still face economic challenges, no matter who was president.  They would just be handled differently.  The coronavirus would still devastate the world, but how it is approached would possibly limit that devastation and the number of deaths in America.

This is, of course, one person’s hypothetical look at alternative events, taking into account the prevailing attitudes of the time.  Your views might differ.  But those who think that life would be better under someone other Narcissist Trump need to remember that there was more going on in America’s political scene than just the aspirations and antics of some boisterous orange-skinned clown.