Suppose the polls had been right; suppose that what practically everybody believed would happen actually did happen.
Then Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, would be president of the United States, but the Senate, probably, and the House of Representatives, certainly, would have remained under Republican control.
In other words, had Hillary won, we would now have pretty much what we had when Barack Obama was president – but with the executive branch less competently led and more packed with Clintonite (neoliberal, liberal imperialist, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later) officials, and with a Congress run by obstinate Republican troglodytes running roughshod over feckless, slightly less retrograde Democrats.
Radical impulses would, of course, continue to stir throughout the general population but notwithstanding widespread and deep popular support, to even less avail than before.
A Clinton presidency wouldn’t make the blood of high-minded people boil, the way the Trump presidency has done, though, for anyone with the courage to face reality squarely, it would be nearly as painful to endure.
That pain would be much less constructive than the pain that is now so widely felt. Instead of sparking anodyne “resistance,” it would be drowned out in a sea of acquiescence.
In a word, Clinton’s first term would be what a third Obama term would have been – ratcheted down a few notches in the squelched “hope” and “change” departments.
By being African American,…