Hillary Wins! The First 100 Days

It won't be pretty.

Let's start with a few plausible presumptions.   Presume Hillary wins the election 52-48, a win but not a landslide.   Presume the House stays Republican, a near certainty, and presume the Senate stays Republican, which is plausible if Hillary wins narrowly.

Obama and Garland

What will happen immediately.    Post election and pre-inauguration the Senate will immediately take up the nomination of Merrick Garland, the archetype of a moderate judge.  The Republican Senators had stood in near unanimity in saying the nomination should be made by the person elected in 2016.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell said: "The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country, so of course the American people should have a say in the court’s direction."

That was then.

Republicans will immediately switch and say that Garland is just fine after all, that he has been held up long enough, and that the election showed a Democrat should made the nomination and Obama is a Democrat.   Their earlier comment that the new president had the mandate didn't abrogate the "advise and consent" function, they will note.   Hillary should settle for Garland, they will say.   Garland is the best you can get appointed.   

Their position will be blatantly inconsistent and hypocritical of everything they had asserted for a year, but they will switch to say the Senate could confirm Garland--but likely no one else-- and it would save the country the agony of a long, protracted and possibly inconclusive Senate confirmation.

Hillary will have to choose whether to ask Obama to drop Garland or to go ahead, and this will be the first public showdown and demonstration of the future.   Is Hillary going to be non confrontational and get bullied by the fact that the House and Senate oppose her, or will she attempt to insist on her own stamp and attempt to appoint someone to the court who is more clearly liberal? 

The month of November, 2016, will be the showdown and either way the Republican legislators begin eroding the power of the Clinton mandate.  Either she "knuckles under" to their threat of future unwillingness to approve presidential appointments, which shows the limits of her power even to create an administration, or she claims a mandate and says the people have chosen her, not Trump.  She has ample evidence and Republican Senators on videotape saying that the election was all about the Supreme Court.  She can say she has a mandate and that she won fair and square.   It won't matter.  If Republicans hold the Senate they will give her the choice of Garland or nobody, of accommodation with the Republicans or the inability to appoint a Cabinet.   She can choose Garland or confirmation gridlock.


My prediction:  She will trade approval of Merrick Garland for an agreement that she can choose her own cabinet without endless obstruction.    Republicans will extract approval of the pure-moderate Garland as the price for allowing Clinton to  form an administration.   The news spin on this will go two directions simultaneously.  One is that Clinton is "working cooperatively" with the Republicans.   This will give some people hope that we are entering a new era.  The problem with this is that Republican officeholders cannot allow that narrative because it is a narrative of government-at-work.   They need a narrative of non-compromise.  So the second narrative is the one that will stick, that Hillary is a weak president and has lost control.  This narrative says that Hillary Clinton's mandate was simply for an alternative to Donald Trump and any hope for progressive change was lost even before she took office.  This will inflame the progressive left and divide Democrats roughly along Sanders/Clinton primary lines--a pleasant result for Republicans.

Nothing passes, on left or right

Post inauguration, the first 100 days.   Republican legislators will have just lost the presidential election and many of them would have been publicly tepid regarding Trump.  They will be under severe pressure to re-establish their Republican bonafides.   The best way to do it is publicly to announce that Hillary Clinton will get nothing done.

I predict essentially instant gridlock, for which Republicans take credit and justify as good.   There will be no comprehensive immigration reform because Republicans are too split about what they want.   Some want to work out a path to legalization but the majority of their voters wanted a Trump-style solution of a big wall, reduced immigration, and deportation.  There is no consensus to coalesce.

There will be no significant regulation or breakup of banks.  There will be no agreement on campaign finance reform.  There will be no agreement on infrastructure building or college affordability or fossil fuel regulation or climate change, or tax increases,  or even trade.   Why not?  Because there is no consensus on any of these issues within the Republican Party.  And Democrats are divided on trade, which is why even that one will not move.   There are a great many "winners" in a world of global free trade.  (Including Oregon, which is a net exporter to the world.)

The party of Reagan and Romney and Ryan that supported smaller government and free markets came to the grim realization that their voter base wanted--or thought they wanted-- populist talk and solutions, not conservative free trade.  Voters wanted government intervention into business and trade on behalf of "the little guy" instead of trickle down laissez-faire.

Gridlock fuels Trump 2.0

There will be only one point of general agreement and a safe political position for GOP incumbents: Hillary Clinton must be stopped.    

Even a program of infrastructure that funded local projects will be dead on arrival if they are part of a stimulus package presented by Clinton.

By the end of the 100 days, the narrative will be fixed and clear:  Americans elected a disliked woman who can get nothing done.   Government doesn't work.  The Congress is useless, the President is useless, and America maybe should have elected a strong leader, not a bunch of weak talkers and do-nothings.

House Republicans will be furious that their demands for a special prosecutor are being ignored so they will establish Hillary Clinton email special oversight committees which will subpoena witnesses and start hearings.   Rush Limbaugh, on day one of Hillary Clinton's being sworn in will start a countdown clock:  America Held Hostage, Day One.

The first 100 days are the Honeymoon.

Donald Junior and The Donald

Donald Trump need not disappear.   Donald Trump, Junior will begin doing the warm up speeches for his father, who will continue to do rallies that condemn the weakness and worthlessness of the present government, as is demonstrated by the gridlock.   Trump will form an organization and associated SuperPAC to continue the movement promoting American Pride, American Protection in trade, American Workers, and American Citizenship.   By 2018 The America First Party--the AFP--will either have essentially taken over the Republican Party, or it will be a fully legitimate 3rd party.  Because Donald, Junior will have avoided the racial and misogynist comments of his father his appeal will be approximately what a majority of voters in America would vote for today, if such a candidate were available:   a non-Hillary, cleaned-up, temperamentally sound, younger version of Donald Trump without the history of having said outrageous things.   And there he is. 

Yes, there is even more!   

Attorney Thad Guyer and I do a podcast that shares our take on the election.

Check it out:

October 2 Podcast: The Truths that Hillary and Trump know full well, but must not say

This October 2 podcast talks about the polls, about Trump's self-inflicted wounds, and about the things that Trump and Hillary know full well to be true, but must not admit.   The podcast is a spirited conversation between me and Thad Guyer, an attorney who represents whistleblowing employees, with an international practice.   He watches the election from home base in Saigon.