In a little more than two months this very bizarre presidential election will finally come to a welcome end. And, unless some huge scandal takes Hillary Clinton down, she will win and become our next president.
In this election many millions of Americans will hold their noses as they cast their vote for either Trump or Clinton. And when they do a great many will be voting for the one they consider to be the lesser of two evils. Another way of arriving at a decision is to think about which of these presidential candidates might do the greatest damage to this country, and then vote for the other.
While Hillary looks like a sure bet strange things do happen and there is a chance that Trump can still win. If he does the foundations of Washington and this government would begin to tremble and, subsequently, the Congress would fall into a state of turmoil and upheaval as the impetuous and impatient Trump would take charge and try to ram through all sorts of legislative initiatives.
We saw what happened during President Obama's administration when he tried to initiate changes that he promised he would make if he was elected. He was stopped in his tracks by the Republicans in Congress who declared that they would obstruct everything he tried to do; they did exactly that by pursuing an agenda of obstruction that prevented the passage of critically important legislation.
Just think of what will happen if Trump becomes president. While Mr. Obama had one political party blocking legislation he proposed, Trump will have not one but two of them that will make him wonder why he ever wanted to be president. We might finally see the Republicans and the Democrats agree on something; to bond together to stop every attempt by Trump to do something totally crazy like building that massive wall or trying to deport many millions of illegal immigrants.
And then we would see this slightly unbalanced individual literally explode and try to force this Congress to bend to his will, using his usual tirades, insults and threats to attempt to get his way, just as he did during the GOP primaries; but that would get him nowhere. He would then go around Congress, use his presidential powers, and could do a massive amount of damage to this country.
Now if he gets totally out of control we might see members on both sides of the aisle initiate impeachment proceedings against him to remove him from office. There should be no doubt but that a Trump presidency would create massive chaos and turmoil in Washington and he would be like a "man without a country" or one without a political party behind him.
Now let's look at what would happen under a Clinton administration and why I say, even though it will pain me if I decide to vote for her, she must win and become president.
Of paramount importance to the next president, and to this country, will be the replacement of retiring Supreme Court justices. We could see two or even three retire over the next several years. Nothing is more important than how this court will be constituted going into the future.
The Citizens United Case decision opened the door for unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and gave them the power to use massive amounts of money to not only influence elections but to control the outcomes. That's why this current extremely long election will end up costing somewhere between $4 and $5 billion.
If Hillary Clinton becomes president we can look for her to propose new justices to become a part of this court which then most definitely lean to the left on key issues. It wouldn't be long before its members would act on a challenge to the Citizens United decision and reverse it.
That reversal would serve to remove the power and control of Corporate America from this government at large, this Congress, and the election process. That's what America and its people desperately need; to see a clear separation between this government and Corporate America, just like the separation of church and state.
When that change comes to pass it will be a major accomplishment by the Clinton administration. There will also be more positive changes such as the increase in the minimum wage, a badly needed reform of the student loan program, some form of free education for students at community colleges, perhaps some highly necessary improvements to Obamacare, of great importance, meaningful job creation initiatives.
Now on the negative side of her presidency, and what I fear the most, is Hillary's very aggressive foreign policy which will be very much like that of President Obama but even more hubristic. At a time when this government should realize that its military actions in the Middle East and North Africa are accomplishing nothing but creating more terrorist enemies, I'm fairly sure that Hillary will not back off from her aggressive foreign policy and may even substantially increase U.S. presence in this region. And that is the last thing that America needs at this point in time.
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