What Could Have Been in 2016: The US Election, 1/3

What could have been in 2016? President Hillary Rodham Clinton? A mixed record, but hardly Biden bad. Her win would still be big for women, albeit with the same caveats as Kamala: what does it mean to break the glass ceiling when you were a glazier? Here are a couple of works that consider this premise. I believe that, with a Republican Senate, there would be little difference in a Sanders or Warren presidency.

Now: what could the Trump presidency have been? To be clear: this was never the right guy for the job. Dozens of allegations of his sexual misconduct date back decades. He influenced the wrongful conviction of five black and Latino teenagers in 1989, by taking out full-page newspaper ads calling for their execution. He had been descending into the USA’s hard-right conservative politics for years before running.

I didn’t know this. 2016 was a political awakening: accepting millions voted for him, and that issues extended beyond one man and before 2016. For an experiment, let’s take Trump's 2016 rhetoric at its best, from a naive perspective like mine, and comprehend what he could have done.

Trump ran as an outsider. As the ultimate insider, as the top politician he pursued tax cuts for the superrich and corporations, and repeal of Obamacare: definitive insider goals of establishment Republican politicians, no different from George Bush. Drain the swamp? He is a consummate scuba diver, bluffing in business despite unreported incomes and hidden debts. He is simpatico with fellow elites. How does the US run differently now from 2016 or from 2008?

He touted his business experience. Do we consider failure experience? He raised tariffs, a terribly outdated economic idea which drove up prices, while continuing an Obama-era war against some of America’s hardest workers, undocumented immigrants. His erratic conduct shook business confidence; many businessowners turned to stable, predictable Biden. He promised to bring back jobs for regions left behind. His destructive trade wars returned none and killed so many family farms.

His USA has tackled none of its issues. They have done worse with a dangerous pandemic than far more populous countries like India and China, than higher population densities like South Korea and Japan, than comparable federal systems like Germany and Australia. Somebody has to be blamed. Who, if not the most powerful, important person in the country, responsible for all lives?

Trump has his rallies and his tweets: an unparalleled, direct connection between his unfiltered thoughts and us. Still, sycophants have reinterpreted and sanitised his words anyway, as if the media made him say those things. When he says something racist for the thousandth time, when the hundredth bureaucrat speaks out against him, believing he is hateful and incompetent is a no-brainer. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

You can believe in the dream of a fresh outsider. Trump was never going to be your man, and he proved that Americans shouldn’t hesitate to believe they’re worth a better president. Sending hope across the Pacific for 2024.