Hillary Clinton, Loser?

Only in America would a woman who outpolled her opponent by close to three million votes be declared a “loser”. That is to say, only a woman running for president, because in every other election in the U.S.—and there are, of course, thousands—the person with the most votes wins. But because Hillary Clinton was running for president, she did lose, and now she lies like a fallen hero, stripped of her armor, subject to the ridicule and contempt of the meanest personage.

And by “meanest personage” I’m talking about you, George Will. Yes, Georgie Porgie mansplains¹—or perhaps it’s periwigsplains—why the Electoral College is so necessary.

“So, two of the five 21st-century elections (2000 and 2016) are the only clear and pertinent instances, since the emergence of the party system in 1828, of the winner of the popular vote losing the presidency. Two is 40 percent of five elections, which scandalizes only those who make a fetish of simpleminded majoritarianism.”

So, gee, only 40% of the time, that’s all! One wonders if Jeb Bush had won the popular vote by 30,000, rather than 3 million, and had lost to Hillary Clinton, thanks to the mechanizations of the Electoral College, if George would be so contemptuous of “simpleminded majoritarianism.” Or would he be rather screaming with inchoate rage? I suspect the latter.

I do not find Hillary Clinton an attractive figure. She’s priggish and unimaginative, driven to make rules for everyone else but obeying none herself, happy to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to recite platitudes to Wall Street big-shots, all of whom had surely heard the same beliefs, expressed more sharply and more honestly in private conversations at cocktail parties on the Upper East Side, the Hamptons, and other watering holes catering to the Davos set. “The more money I have, the more good I can do!” For who among us would not like to see Hillary Clinton be made as powerful as possible, looming above us grateful mortals like a giant balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade?

I certainly agreed with much of Hillary’s domestic policy—particularly on reproductive rights and immigration—but her foreign policy record as secretary of state was extremely poor. Matched against a competent opponent—which the Republican Party was unfortunately incapable of producing²—she would have deserved to lose. Certainly, she dug her own grave. If she had counseled against the invasion of Libya, which was a terrible idea for many reasons³; if she had understood that letting Ukraine remain in Russia’s orbit, though hardly desirable, particularly for the Ukrainians, did not at all encroach on U.S. interests; if she had rejected in toto the notion of “regime change” as ardently as she embraced it; and, well, if she hadn’t fucked up the “private server” issue half a dozen times, in compulsively Clintonian fashion, she would have won, and she would have deserved to win, almost regardless of her opponent.

I wasn’t planning to vote for Hillary. I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Candidate, in 2012, in protest of President Obama’s many shortcomings, and I expected to do so in 2016 as well. Living in Washington, DC, one can always “protest” because you know the Democratic candidate will win, regardless. But several days before election day I had a premonition—a very depressing one—that Trump would win, and I voted for Hillary simply to swell her total by one vote. So, Hillary, never say I didn’t do anything for you.