There I was, on November 8th of 2016, standing in line at the polling place, minding my own business when my conscience tapped me on the shoulder, "Dude, you aren't going to vote for Hillary, are you?"
"Why not?" I asked. "Better than Trump."
"No shit. Hemorrhoids are better than Trump. Dog shit is better than Trump."
"So what's your point?"
"Hillary's a shoe in. No way Trump wins. There can't be that many stupid people in America. I say, write in Bernie."
"I'm not going to write in Bernie. You fucking crazy?"
"If you don't write in Bernie I'll hold my breath till I turn blue," said my conscience as it stomped about.
"Fine then, I'll vote for Bernie."
A few hours later, Hillary Clinton took the stage at her headquarters. Cora and I watched, stunned, disappointed and afraid. "Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for and I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country."
I remember the camera panning to staffers who were openly weeping. That's what staffers do after losing a hard fought slog of an election. But they weren't weeping over the loss. They were weeping over the notion that Donald Trump was going to be president. My memory of turning to Cora and saying, "Fucking Donald Trump is President of the United States," is as clear as if it had happened just last night.
Hillary should have won. Hillary could've won. Nobody in their right mind thought that a boorish, racist, reality show con man could be elected to the most powerful office on Earth.
And so I and the legion of conscience soothers who voted for Sanders, or Jill Stein, or plain old Jill Smith down the street, because we just couldn't stomach Hillary could only bury our heads in our hands and hope. Hope that during the ensuing three months the new boss would take a crash course in "how to act responsibly at being the most powerful person on Earth," and actually learn it. We hoped, as the world did, and as some of his handlers promised, that he would grow into the job.
Hope dashed. Promise not kept.
Four years later, or, after 1461 days, or 2,103,840 seconds, because some of us were literally counting the seconds until the madness of Trump's presidency would end, Joe Biden took office. But not until a struggle, an attempted coup, and a violent insurrection had taken place. The wicked witch is dead, we thought. There were tears again. Tears of relief and of joy.
The tears hadn't even dried when Trump and his office holding sycophants and his cult of weirdos and idiots went on a four years long rant of whining and lies and threats of retribution. Trump and his gang of pirates refused to go quietly.
And here we are, with just five months and change until the next election. The same two guys who the majority of people don't want. I suppose that the plus to having this unpopularity contest is that each of the candidates has a presidential term that the voter can evaluate and base his vote on.
We have a fair sense of what we'll get with a second Biden term. If we get a reprise of the past four years we'll get stability and an honest shot at bipartisanship from a man who will hold to the promise of being president for all Americans (notwithstanding the MAGA claims to the contrary). We'll get a president who will hire a competent bureaucracy, and if necessary, won't nominate a flaming ideologue to the Supreme Court.
We'll also get the Biden who drives me to distraction. The guy who isn't sleepy Joe, but slow off the mark Joe. His handling, or mishandling, of three significant issues has marred his presidency.
For more than two years, Biden acted as if the crisis on the border would somehow go away of its own accord. By the time Biden reacted, the border was inundated and the Republicans have since taken politcal advantage of the full blown crisis.
Biden's initial handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has always been three or more steps behind the curve.
And then came Gaza.
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