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What Happens After the Election?
Assume because it’s a safe bet that Hillary Clinton wins the presidency by a wide margin. Assume a double-digit disaster in down-ticket races, perhaps with the GOP narrowly keeping the House. (I assume it will because there are few real swing seats; filing deadlines have passed, and many seats don’t have a strong Democratic challenger.) Odds look better-than-even that the Democrats will gain four seats and take back the Senate. It’s possible, if less likely, that they pick up a filibuster-proof majority.
We the People are already nearly at each other’s throats. I don’t see what could happen between now and the election that could reduce America’s political, social, and economic polarization. Hillary Clinton will be the most unpopular president ever to be elected. Trump’s supporters will be embittered. Given Trump’s enthusiasm for conspiracy theories, I can readily imagine him claiming voter fraud or otherwise challenging the legitimacy of the election. Congress will be close to gridlock from Day 1.
No matter who’s elected, the next four years are apt to be tough. Our infrastructure is crumbling and the consequences of this will increasingly be obvious. We’re on the edge of several geopolitical precipices. It’s highly likely that America will either be forced into a humiliating retreat, internationally, or war. There will be more terrorist attacks, certainly, and more mass shootings. In the best scenario, there will only be a normal cyclical recession, but in the worst, there will be another big economic shock. And we’re out of tools to deal with it. No one is going to get the economic security they’re longing for in the coming four years.
This would all be true even if Lincoln were about to enter the Oval Office. But it won’t be Lincoln. It will be Hillary Clinton, who is despised and distrusted by a large part of the electorate. To her left is a large minority who despises and distrusts her just as much as the right does. (Read the comments here, for example.) She won’t be entering office with a large reservoir of public hope and good will to draw upon.
The ugliness and bitterness of this campaign won’t end. No matter who takes office in November, the first thing the rest of the world will do is test the president’s resolve. Right now, the election is sucking up so much media oxygen that Americans aren’t paying much attention to the warning signs of dangerous confrontations to come. But the global balance of power has been so destabilized that no one should hope otherwise.
So what will happen when the things that have created a groundswell of support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders get worse?
In 1994, Edward Luttwak wrote Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future. I wish it didn’t seem prophetic, but it does.
He concludes:
… Thus neither the moderate Right nor the moderate Left even recognises, let alone offers any solution for, the central problem of our days: the completely unprecedented personal economic insecurity of working people, from industrial workers and white-collar clerks to medium-high managers. None of them are poor and they therefore cannot benefit from the more generous welfare payments that the moderate Left is inclined to offer. Nor are they particularly envious of the rich, and they therefore tend to be uninterested in redistribution. Few of them are actually unemployed, and they are therefore unmoved by Republican/Tory promises of more growth and more jobs through the magic of the unfettered market: what they want is security in the jobs they already have – i.e. precisely what unfettered markets threaten.
A vast political space is thus left vacant by the Republican/Tory non-sequitur, on the one hand, and moderate Left particularism and assistentialism, on the other. That was the space briefly occupied in the USA by the 1992 election-year caprices of Ross Perot, and which Zhirinovsky’s bizarre excesses are now occupying in the peculiar conditions of Russia, where personal economic insecurity is the only problem that counts for most people … And that is the space that remains wide open for a product-improved Fascist party, dedicated to the enhancement of the personal economic security of the broad masses of (mainly) white-collar working people. Such a party could even be as free of racism as Mussolini’s original was until the alliance with Hitler, because its real stock in trade would be corporativist restraints on corporate Darwinism, and delaying if not blocking barriers against globalisation. It is not necessary to know how to spell Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to recognise the Fascist predisposition engendered by today’s turbocharged capitalism.
Is he wrong?
Published in General
Considering that Texas is most oft mentioned to secede I think it would be welcomed in Washington DC.
Remove the Texas Congressional delegation and stable Democrat majorities are solidified the next election and there will never be a Republican or Conservative threat for the White House again in our lifetimes.
Democrats would be frustrated by a prosperous free market society to their south, but would have free reign over America.
We conservatives like to think that politics is downstream of culture. But yet, whenever things go poorly, we focus on (and blame) politics.
I believe that our problems are much more economic and cultural, and that politics is a lagging indicator. We have an absurdly expensive education system that simply doesn’t do the job. (There’s a story today on HotAir that Wayne University is dropping the math requirement and replacing it with diversity training.) We have an economy that’s mismatched with the worker base – either the jobs require skills that few workers have, or automation, or … the list goes on. I currently have a stable job, but I haven’t had a significant raise (my last raise was wiped out by my medical plan jumping 20%) in years.
Those problems may be exacerbated by Washington, but those problems are not caused by Washington, nor is Washington likely to affect them in any significant way.
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The people in those states have accounts with American fiat currency. That is different than money.
A simple exchange for other fiat currency, if applicable would be possible. Additionally, Texas put forth two bills in the last legislature one passed and the other ran out of time that will deal with this issue.
KC, one area where politics is to blame is how these misadventures get funded.
I am confident that if we wiped out federal funding for education and eliminated federal student loans math would again be a priority and diversity studies would go by the way side.
I agree the culture is demanding this, but those of us funding it have let it go on too long.
What happens?
1)You guys lose your jobs
2)I get out of my job because I always wanted to go Galt and I’m sick of rich baby boomers.
3)Practice my distance shooting. Texas seems a nice place to do that. Maybe I’ll relocate.
Oh you meant to the country. The country stays on the trajectory it has been. The D and R maintain power and a Facist party doesn’t exist(your fears are not my fears Claire). Mistrust of politicians and the media reach third world status. Soft resistance with black markets and under the table deals increase. Our financial situation worsens and entitlements become untenable. Single payer with age and disease related rationing is openly discussed. Charity goes away except in small town USA where the rule of law still exists. Human decency that was common in this country becomes a rarity. The dead kids on Meditaranian shorelines, meh. Starving babies with kwashiorkor appearance and Sally Struthers pleas, meh. The Israeli state nuked , meh.
So my final answer to what happens if Clinton wins big is Meh. I’m done.
As a radical solution, this is one reason why I’d prefer some type of highly organized tax resistance movement to any secession. If things keep going down the same road under HRC, starving the beast from the grassroots may hit ’em where it hurts.
http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2016/06/13/so-what-difference-does-it-make-n2176528
Nothing matters. Nobody Cares. LOL.
But that wouldn’t do it. Most people are paid by corporations that are national and are not headquartered in Texas.
Perhaps you’re right. I’m no economist nor a business major. I’ve learned to have little faith in economists so I don’t think anyone can predict what would happen with any reliability.
I think the best path forward is for states to reassert their interest in enforcing the tenth amendment. That is the path with the best possibility of avoiding the bloodshed of a civil war.
Another means of resistance would be a general strike. Every three days with no work done takes 1% of productivity out of our economy. Since margins are so thin that bites in a hurry.
It also has the advantage of not being illegal and does not expose the striker to life-changing legal action.
Odds look better-than-even that the Democrats will gain four seats and take back the Senate. It’s possible, if less likely, that they pick up a filibuster-proof majority.
Filibuster proof majority?Did i read that right?So Claire is suggesting the Dem’s will possibly pick up 14 seats?….unless i have completely misunderstood this it udermines the entire premise of the post IMHO……
Hillary Clinton will never be president.
OK. A Trump win does that. If that’s your point then great because I am for it!
Claire
I think what is necessary is for people with a serious appreciation of the world crisis to enter the policy debate within the Democratic Party. The potential viability of the GOP as a party of government has become questionable at this point, and in any case, as you point out, Hillary is going to win. Therefore, rather than seek to use issues where the Democrats are defective as wedges, every effort must be made to enter their discussions for the purpose of improving their policies. To use an old expression, we are going to need to “bore from within.”
This is going to be a difficult task. It is comparitively easy to to publish in friendly publications and speak to friendly audiences. But aside from the fact that rational thought no longer has a safe home in the Republican Party, it is now clear that preaching to its unstable choir is not an effective strategy.
Our old home is gone. We must carry the light to new lands.
They could expand it by accepting the ready departure of the other six States, too. But the Left isn’t stupid, only dishonest: they know we’re the source of the OPM on which they so desperately depend.
Oh, and what they’d reign over won’t be America. Those States will have left.
Eric Hines
Certainly a better solution, but to do that, we need to win elections, not cede them to the Progressives because we’ve taken a hit on our guy this time. Nothing in life or politics is monotonic.
Eric Hines
Wow!
Yikes!
Yup.
Pretty astonishing this went right to secession. I think if Hillary is elected we will resign ourselves to a country without pride, hope, justice or security, and try to enjoy friends, family and nature and put our trust in God. All the people who talk about losing the Supreme Court “for a generation” are wildly optimistic- what would be left after a generation? Darn little left now.
Donald Trump has an (odd) charisma that easily could attract Democrats if the Never Trumpers did not join with the Democrat Party to make it a class/status thing to be embarrassed to support him. He might well pull it off even though they are doing that. No one likes Hillary. Some people like Trump. I think he’s an embarrassing and risky choice for President but I could hope to be pleasantly surprised. I have no such hope with Hillary.
I think the United States needs to and will dissolve into its original fifty states for administrative purposes and that the union will persist as a complicated mutual-aid and defense treaty.
With proper leadership, that’s how this could and should end.
Texas does not wish to live like Vermont. And it shouldn’t have to.
The politician I want now is someone to back us out of federalization, someone who will guide the states into breaking off from the Washington bureaucracy.
And it is easier and less painful than it sounds to do that–states first need to stop taking the federal money. And there go all of the federal mandates.
How do you propose to do that with a Clinton Supreme Court? A Court that, even before this, has drastically eroded the 10th Amendment with its 14th Amendment incorporation canon.
So: how do you propose to do this, exactly? Other than at gunpoint?
One way is to recognize that this is a generational struggle, not a one or two elections and we’re done struggle. And to recognize that our side won, resoundlingly the last three elections. And proximately to get our guy elected, bad as he may be, protect the Senate and so the Supreme Court, and use the time to correct our errors so to do better in the succeeding Presidential elections–not just the next one–and continue to do well in the Congress and State elections.
Eric Hines
That’s how the Articles of Confederation
workedoperated. It was a failure then, too.Eric Hines
No. I decline to be run out of my home. Not by anyone.
Eric Hines
Can someone please ban me from this Pro-Hillary site. I just saw I automatically re-upped my account and was very disappointed in myself for allowing that.
The immediate consignment to Hillary and the comparison between Trump and Hitler is a clear illustration on the split between the rich, full-of-**** wing on the Republican party, and the disenfranchised white working class that Rob always says shows up anyway so who give a **** what they think.
The continual need for a new Reagan is tiresome. He’s dead. I’m really considering consigning myself to just make money and do my best to live well.
Texas would have a huge immigration from the North!
And this is because today’s Democrats have shown themselves so receptive to being influenced by ideas from the right?
If “rational thought no longer has a safe home” in the Republican Party, it’s on the endangered species list with respect to the Democrats.
It’s not a good idea to fight in a burning house.
Your keyboard to God’s inbox James. I pray that it would be so.
My prediction however, the FBI will slow walk the investigation so slowly that it will never have a conclusion. It will just fizzle out.
It has maybe another week or two to recommend indictment. After that it won’t because it would interfere with the Democratic convention, after that it won’t because it would interfere with the election, after that it won’t because (for quite different reasons) neither President Clinton nor President Trump will allow it.
Neither Clinton nor any of her inner circle will ever bear any meaningful consequence for their actions.
Eric, my contention is that we won the elections to do so in 2010 and 2014. We refused to exercise the mandate and ceded to an imperial Presidency.
Since center right failed to endorse and support that mandate and memorialized the excess power of the executive center right is now wailing and gnashing teeth over the prospect of candidates that will leverage the presidency in ways that will harm the republic.
We won the elections we needed to restrict funding for nonsense and refused to do so. If the presidency has grown to such powerful proportions that it is the only office that matters we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not exercising the checks and balances in the Constitution to prevent an imperial Presidency.
But it says Conservative conversation and community right at the top of the page!
If fascism is the wave of the future it will probably be because voters want fascism, or because they want what fascism purports to offer: security. Single-payer healthcare is fascist to the core but you know so many people love the idea that it seems free. If we look to the examples of single-payer health care that have been tried in the US–VA system, Vermont’s I’ll-fated experimet–it’s a disaster. Even Romneycare isn’t working.
If the banks want to have any hope of collecting the money they lent to those people, they’ll make their deposits available to them.
Ditto companies like Fidelity and Vanguard where many people have their savings. If they still want to do business, they won’t stiff their customers.
On the other hand, the question of secession was never settled legally. I can’t imagine any enthusiasm in the Blue states for bringing the secessionists back in by force of arms which is how it was settled the last time.
But yes, it would be a real wrench.