I'm for Hillary,.... but it wasn't easy.

I'm voting for Hillary Clinton on November 8....

A lot of readers of this humble blog may be he horrified it's taken me this long to make the obvious choice. Just to reiterate; both the major party candidates suck (to use non-scholarly assessment terminology). One sucks more than the other, but they both suck. Each sucks in different ways, but they both still suck.

And, because they do, I'm also worried about what comes after November 8. Let me explain....

Donald Trump

What else is there to say about the candidacy of Donald Trump? I have had plenty to say about Trump, his policy positions (if they can be called that), and the circumstances that have contributed to his ascendancy (see here too). I saved a good chunk of my complaining about Trump and Clinton in my post just after Labor Day. Everything there stands. I saw nothing in either of the first two debates that changed my basic view of Trump as singularly unfit to be president. I give him credit for running an unusual, inexpensive, and surprisingly effective, campaign. It's possible the campaign was a one-off fluke of circumstance. But it's also possible we've seen the campaign playbook re-written in ways we'll be dissecting for years to come. I also give credit to Trump for exposing some of the fissures in the Republican Party itself. If, as the current polls suggest, Trump is headed for a humiliating defeat November 8, I hope the GOP can begin to right the ship, mend some fences, and finally figure out how to broaden an electoral tent that seems destined to shrink simply because of American demographic trends.

That said, the GOP has been here before. In the aftermath of the 2012 defeat, the RNC engaged in a bit of soul searching about this same topic. It didn't work. While I am certain Trump's candidacy has shaken the GOP to its core, I am not certain it will galvanize the party in any particular direction. Trump and his supporters are going to be a force to be reckoned with for several years to come. While I hope they can get it together, my money is on internecine warfare through the next presidential campaign in 2020.

In my view, a Trump Presidency would be an abject disaster. It is amazing to me that someone who boasts about winning and being a winner has lacked the discipline to mold his candidacy in that direction. He stands a real chance of being embarrassed on election day, and has only himself to blame. Trump's insurgent candidacy meshed well with the distrust and cynicism in the electorate.

He had a chance. But-- in words Trump would appreciate-- he choked.

Since my early September post, Trump took every piece of bait Clinton dangled in front of him at the first Presidential Debate, made sure the accusations about mistreating a former Ms. Universe remained in the news for days by foolishly Tweeting about it, struggled to deal with the now-infamous "Access Hollywood" video from 2005 that reinforced existing perceptions about his attitudes toward women, threatened to politicize the Department of Justice by having his opponent (Clinton) investigated and prosecuted a la any number of dictatorships around the world, and has begun spinning yarns about conspiracies to steal the election from him.

The atmosphere at the Second Presidential Debate was as charged as any you will ever experience. Just 90 minutes before the debate, Trump held a hastily-called press conference in which he shamelessly tried to change the channel by exploiting some of Bill Clinton's former accusers. Then, he tried to have them seated in the family box along with Melania, Ivanka, and the rest of the Trump clan. Blissfully, officials from the National Debate Commission would have none of it.

Trump has been too easily dismissed by too many people for too long. He, and the people that support him, needed to be taken seriously much earlier. While the charge sheet against Trump's candidacy is long and full of a remarkable number of disqualifying acts, his defeat may also foster complacency on the part of the victors regarding the circumstances that gave rise to Trump in the first place. Indeed, Trump himself likely doesn't appreciate the complexity of the problems faced by some of his own supporters and offers glib, simplistic solutions. Indeed, some of the offense of Trump stems from his exploitation of circumstances he had nothing to do with creating.

Ignoring those circumstances would be a mistake.

Third-Party Blues

Libertarian Meltdown

 In early September, I lamented the lousy choices being presented to American voters in the 2016 Presidential campaign. I said at the time that I was done with both Clinton and Trump and would be giving the Libertarians, Gary Johnson and William Weld a closer look. For a short time, Johnson and Weld looked like the most serious Libertarian ticket in a long time. Moreover, voters like me who were looking for some, any, credible alternative to come out of the woodwork were hoping these two might be the ticket.

Nope. Just a few days after I posted my September lament, Gary Johnson had his "Aleppo Moment" and has never recovered. As a third-party candidate in a two-party system, you are held to a pretty high standard. Party identification is pretty strong in the U.S. and third-party candidates don't have much room to make mistakes. Some might recall the last third-party challenger to make waves was the Texas billionaire Ross Perot. He ended up with 19% of the popular vote and, because a lot of his support was drawn from disaffected Republicans, arguably handed the presidency to Bill Clinton. However, Perot's impact was muted (he didn't win a single vote in the Electoral College) because of a bizarre mid-campaign crisis of confidence, the result of which was a temporary suspension of his campaign. Why? Because he concluded he couldn't win.

As a third-party candidate, what "winning" is ought to be carefully thought through. There are many reasons to run as a third-party candidate, many of which have nothing to do with actually becoming president. However, the bottom line for Perot was that he never really recovered from the self-suspension of his campaign.

Gary Johnson's candidacy died in Aleppo along with a lot of people he evidently knew nothing about.

Green's Never Got Going

I confess to not giving the Jill Stein and the Green Party a very serious look. Like the Libertarians, they don't have a lot of rope to work with in terms of making mistakes inside a two-party system. For me, I didn't have to go any further than Jill Stein's selection of Ajamu Baraka as her running mate. There is much to commend about Baraka's work on human rights issues. However, the Green Party ticket lost me when he called President Obama an "Uncle Tom" because of some connection Baraka sees between Obama's support of trade liberalization and being a corporate/capitalist stooge.

We could have a good debate over the merits of trade liberalization, but to toss around a charged term like "Uncle Tom" at the nation's first African American President in that context was a bridge too far. Unfortunately for Baraka and the Green Party,  you don't get more chances. Moreover, that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

A Write-In?

Some of my Republican friends are going to stay home or write-in a candidate. I briefly considered doing the same. I was part of the 2,800% increase in searches for "write-in candidates" reported by Google a few weeks back.

Because my last U.S. voting residence was in the District of Columbia, that is where I have to request my absentee ballot. D.C. is a quirk in American politics because the roughly 650,000 residents there have no representation in Congress (remember "No Taxation Without Representation"?).
So, in a national election like this, the ballot is pretty skimpy; this year only for president and for D.C.'s non-voting member of the House of Representatives. Moreover, the District votes overwhelmingly Democratic. A vote from me isn't going to tip the balance one way or another.

But none of that works for me. As I noted in my September post, I take the responsibility of voting rather seriously. I respect those who consciously decide not to vote or to complete a write-in ballot as a form of protest. It is that kind of conscious decision-making with respect to using your right to vote that I respect. So, if you go to the effort to register to vote or get an absentee ballot and then choose not to vote? Okay. I get that. But to do nothing out of inertia? I'm not so sure.

Unenthusiastic, but for Hillary

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton... I am not enthusiastic about voting for her, but feel the need to vote for someone that is actually on the ballot. Even if I don't like the two candidates the process generated, I respect the process that generated them. This is what's on offer. My vote for Hillary Clinton is split equally between voting for her as the least objectionable of the two and voting against Trump in an effort to prevent a misogynist, impulsive, undisciplined, race-baiting narcissist from assuming the powers of the presidency.

As I noted in my early September post, Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate. Her 2016 candidacy ought to be an inspiring, historical campaign. Instead, it's become a bloated, uninspiring replica of 2008. She has struggled to move beyond perceptions of her as a wooden, defensive, lawyerly policy wonk. Even most of those who work for the campaign, have become cogs in a robotic machine that too frequently seems to sputter and gasp under its own weight.

While Trump has had a hand in taking the entire campaign into the gutter, Team Clinton hasn't exactly offered an inspiring, hopeful alternative. It's perhaps important to under-promise and then over-deliver. Barack Obama is a great example of doing the opposite in that he was never really able to fulfill many of the lofty expectations people had of him once in office. Once Hillary Clinton began more fully wrapping herself in the Obama legacy during the Democratic Primaries, the main message became one of continuity rather than inspirational change. It's partly understandable that she'd do this since she was a big part of Obama's first term. Yet, it also suggests there was never much of a message of her own apart from being the first woman to occupy the White House. Moreover, Clinton seemed to embrace a full-throated defense of the Obama years (an administration I have not always been a fan of) only after it became evident that Bernie Sanders was a serious threat.

Moreover, the famed competence of the Clinton's has, in my mind at least, suffered a series of mortal blows. The pseudo-scandal over Secretary Clinton's use of a private server is as much about whether she mishandled classified material as it is about her judgement in setting it up in the first place. The Obama Justice Department has zealously prosecuted much smaller fish for lesser transgressions in the handling of classified material. But as important for me is the fact that Clinton was so cavalier about the entire episode. She has yet to be forthcoming about the decision-making that led her to set up the server in the first place. About all she has come up with for voters is a canned version of: "I take full responsibility. If I had it to do over, I obviously would not have used a private server... blah, blah, blah." Her responses to questions about the Clinton Foundation's activities are painful to listen to, often generating more doubts than they allay.

Good grief. After three decades in the public eye, being challenged at every turn personally and professionally, why is it is still so difficult to lay it all out there and give folks a straight answer?
 
I am also troubled by the trickle of sleaze being revealed by Wikileaks. I am not happy about the Russian role in all of this, nor am I a fan of Julian Assange. Most of what has been revealed is normal low-level stuff about campaign strategy, some embarrassing detail about what insiders think, and a ill-founded assertions of collusion. Far more troubling for me are the evident discrepancies between what Clinton told Wall Street financial people about her support for trade liberalization and what she tells voters on the campaign trail. To Wall Street folks, she is apparently an ardent free trader interested in a tariff-free Western Hemisphere. On the campaign trail, she is against the Trans Pacific Partnership and has grave doubts about the NAFTA. 

I have complained about Hillary Clinton's lack of principle on trade before. What troubles me about this most is that the entire postwar economic order is being undone by poisonous stew of populist, nationalist, and xenophobic rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. Who will step in and push back against the dishonesty and lack of integrity that propelled the Brexit vote, has fueled the U.S. presidential campaign, and threatens European stability? President Hillary Clinton? No one knows what she really thinks about these issues.

Clinton's unfortunate remarks about Trump voters being part of a "basket of deplorables" are themselves deplorable since they suggest she doesn't really appreciate the challenges some Trump (and Sanders) voters face in a global economy. Moreover, she is unlikely to then lead the charge in making the case to those same voters about why liberalization is broadly good for the American economy as a whole, how it helps underwrite American leadership in the world, or how her administration can come up with solutions to help more people with the inevitable adjustment.

It's increasingly difficult to imagine a President Hillary Clinton meeting with people from the rust belt of the mid-west and doing anything other than pandering. Her credibility on these issues is shot.

Oh, and Bill Clinton still needs to learn how to be a role player. The future First Gentleman will need to be managed. 

All of that said, one of the reasons I am voting for Hillary Clinton is, in fact, because of continuity. A Clinton Presidency will come into office with large clouds hanging over it-- many of them self-inflicted wounds. But she will have established policy minds around her helping. I get Trump's points about how the "establishment" minds around recent presidents have turned out disastrously in some cases. However, Trump's wrecking-ball, make-it-up-as-you-go approach to policy virtually guarantees disaster.

I'll take continuity over that any day of the week.

November 9 Jitters

I think the sun will come up on November 9th. But I am increasingly worried about the aftermath of the election. This campaign has unfolded in a volatile period in American history. Who ever wins on November 8 will inherit a divided nation with a bucket of challenges and no real mandate from voters about what to do about any of them.

As Trump's chances of winning have faded over the last month, he seems to have adopted a scorched-earth approach to campaigning designed to galvanize his most ardent supporters for some future purpose by de-legitimizing parts of the process. Trump no longer seems as interested in winning as he does in sowing seeds of doubt about the election results themselves, including in last night's third debate when he left some doubt about whether he'd accept the results. Oh my...

In this era of post-truthiness in our political debate, anything goes. Rigging the U.S. election would be profoundly difficult to pull off. But, fact-checkers be damned. I'm nervous. As Hillary Clinton went on to say in her "deplorables" comments, there are a lot of people who feel let down by a number of America's institutions. The question for me is, who's going to begin to change that feeling? Trump has done nothing but pour gasoline on the flames. Someone has to put out the forest fire, cool the embers, and plant some new trees. Sadly, we may be casting about for that person for some time to come.

That said, my vote goes to Hillary Clinton with the hope (rather than expectation) that she can overcome the baggage she brings with her to the Oval Office and use her position as the nation's 45th President to begin to chart a positive course through choppy waters at home and abroad. Hillary Clinton's presidency will be historic no matter what happens in the next 4 years. Hillary Clinton is already an historical figure, and will cement her place in history on January 21st when she takes the oath of office. I sincerely hope she can transform a lackluster candidacy into a great presidency.

We need it.