Election outlook 2016: Here comes Hillary

By 

LeRoy Goldman

BlueRidgeNow

Our Guest columnist

Published: Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 4:30 a.m.

Looks to me like Hillary has the inside track to the White House. Whether such an outcome engenders ecstasy or revulsion is not the point. What is worth examining is how and why she may be the nation's next president. It's not a pretty picture.

There is no doubt that the nation has been in decline for a very long time. Poll after poll tells the same story. Americans in large numbers believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Large majorities also have contempt for the president and the Congress, regardless of their party affiliation. Voter anger is palpable.

Barack Obama waltzed into the White House in 2009. His campaign of Hope and Change was music to the ears of most Americans. His victory came with large majorities in both the House and the Senate. But by the 2010 election the honeymoon was over. Think Obamacare.

Since then it's been all downhill for the Democratic Party in Congress and at the state level. President Obama's inexperience coupled with the bitter polarity engendered by Obamacare have severely harmed the Democrats. Since 2010, the Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 12 governors, 30 state legislative chambers, and 919 state legislative seats. Republican legislative dominance is now stronger than at any time since 1928!

This carnage at the state level for the Democrats is what has enabled the Republicans to solidify their control of the House of Representatives through gerrymandering. Their dominance of the House is likely to last until at least 2022. President Obama's unforced errors destroyed his ability to work with Congress in a bipartisan manner, and they will cast a long shadow over Hillary Clinton if she is elected.

Here's a useful way to understand better how America has cornered itself politically. On Nov. 3, 2010, the day after the huge GOP victory at the polls, the president held a news conference during which he said, "It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth — that used to be us."

A year later, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman and Johns Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum borrowed the president's phrase, "That Used To Be Us," for the title of their insightful book that powerfully chronicles America's decline. In the chapter of the book dealing with energy policy, they state, "The Democrats were cowardly, and the Republicans were crazy."

With an additional four years of hindsight, it is now clear that their acid condemnation of both political parties applies far more broadly than just to energy policy. The Democrats, for example, have shown cowardice on the urgent need for entitlement and tax reform. President Obama created the Simpson-Bowles Commission, and when its report was issued, he and the Democrats ran from it like a scalded dog. Similarly, once the House Freedom Caucus began to flex its muscle by putting a choke collar around John Boehner's neck, crazy things began to happen like voting to repeal Obamacare 50-60 times or voting to shut down the federal government.

Although both parties have worked hard and successfully to earn the distrust and enmity of the American people, there is no denying the enormous advantage the Democrats have when it comes to the presidential election. That advantage exists where it counts the most — in the Electoral College. The Democrats basically have a lock on states with 247 of the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. That means victory is only a couple of swing states away. That's Hillary's ace in the hole.

Alternatively, Matthew Continetti, writing recently in the Washington Free Beacon, believes Clinton can be beaten. He states, "Clinton can't be trusted. Trade, same-sex marriage, crime, foreign policy — she'll betray you whenever it suits her political needs. She lied about the Benghazi video; she lied about her email; she lied about Sidney Blumenthal. That what she does. She lies." And Continetti argues that Clinton will have to defend both of Obama's unpopular and significant achievements, Obamacare and the Iran deal. He concludes, "A race to the bottom is a race we can win."

It's not clear to me that the GOP wins a race to the bottom. That's so because the Republicans have problems of their own that, left unattended, will hamstring their nominee, regardless of Hillary Clinton's character flaws.

In a recent Politico Magazine article, Michael Lind argues the GOP has lost its intellectual moorings. It no longer has a coherent set of beliefs that resonate with the American electorate. Lind suggests that the Republican Party's greatest obstacle to governing is that its ideology is "not only disconnected from the values of the larger society but from the values and interests of Republicans themselves."

Lind suggests that what used to be accepted pillars of Republican thought, tax cuts, a more robust military coupled with military intervention around the world, and the social policies of the Religious Right are no longer fully embraced by most Republicans. Lind believes the GOP must "abandon the old orthodoxy altogether and start afresh." He's right.

Unfortunately, soul searching of that magnitude is not in the cards for the GOP. That's why Hillary has the inside track. If so, the nation ends up where we started — cowards at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue and crazies at the other.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. 

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