From Arthur’s Policy Desk Election 2016: Why it’s different than other years

Next week election 2016 will be concluded and either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.

Now let’s be honest. On one level we will all be happy when this election is over. There have been hard and nasty elections before but this one is the first in that both candidates have majority negative polls. Both candidates have more than a 60% disapproval rating. This election is not about which candidate you like, this one is about which candidate you hate more. It’s a race to the bottom of the polls, not a race of high ideals or ideas.

Consider what will occur on November 9, 2016.

If Trump loses there will be recriminations through the entire Republican Party electorate. The establishment will assert that the party lost, again, because the Cruz /Tea Party branch which hijacked the Party in 2008 rejected candidates like Bush, Rubio, and Kasich who could have won over voters who are non-ideological purists who want Congress to get something done. The strategy of the enemy of my enemy, utilized by Cruz with Trump’s help, dispatched their candidates, but backfired on Cruz when the nationalist populist voters of Trump decimated the Goldwater/Reagan Cruz wing of the party.

The Cruz/Tea Party voters will assert that had the establishment backed their choice rather than sabotage him from the very beginning, the party would have been represented by a true conservative not a narcissistic thin skinned, amoral, bloviating Russophile who questioned America’s unequivocal commitment to NATO.

The Trump people will claim they lost because the election was rigged and will simply blame everybody from the corrupt media, to the party establishment, to dishonest pollsters, to Fox News.

If Clinton loses the party will not have ready internal targets to blame. Rather the party will enter a period of deep soul searching and analysis of why they lost but more importantly they will decide if they will be the party of total obstruction to the Trump Presidency as the Republicans were in the eight years of Obama or will it be more forthright in being a party of wall street, corporate welfare, as well as supporting left wing proposals through rhetoric and interviews on MSNBC.

But what is more interesting is what happens if Trump wins. Trump, though he claims to be an economic national populist, actually has no actual core political ideology outside of his own ego. Four years of President Trump being up at three in the morning negativity tweeting about some senator or congressmen who got under his skin is nothing to look forward to. But leaving that aside, what about His policy agenda. What will his administration focus on? Good luck on the wall, both for geographical and political realities. Obama care is eight years drilled into the American insurance, medical, and pharmaceutical establishments all of which for their own reasons like parts of the system and have had years to figure out how to make it work for them. To remove it root and branch would disrupt interests with too much lobbying power. His plan for child care for stay at home moms will never see the light of day because the conservative Tea Party wing in House will not support it on ideological grounds and the financial budget deficit wing will never support a program that enlarges not reduces the imprint of the Federal Government, much less balloon the already high deficit. Even worse, consider Trump’s promise to open criminal investigations on Clinton from Benghazi to her emails. Picture the Attorney General caught between Trump on one side and any semblance of integrity and understanding of the significance of such prosecutions on the other.

Consider if Clinton wins. You think we had political gridlock in Congress with Obama! But consider four years of Clinton drama. Enough said! Four years of new House Republican investigations. Four years of waiting for someone in her administration to start a scandal that the press will never let go. What about her policies? Universal college education, please! That would never see the light of day in the Senate, even if held by the Democrats, much less in the House controlled by Republicans. The Republicans in House will block any effort to fix Obama care as a matter of political principle, forget whether as a policy matter repairs need to be made. Even if the Democrats take control of the Senate that does not mean that she will get what she wants. Obama learned the hard way that Senate Democrats are more self serving and difficult to corral to support a policy than incalcitrant Republicans.

So what is this election really going to bring? Is there anything that is agreed upon on a policy level? One thing – one side will say, whoever wins, well at least we kept that person from picking the next Supreme Court Justice. Well I guess this election was about something after all.