Fans of Community are familiar with the concept of the darkest timeline. While nobody has clinched the nomination and there is still time for unexpected events to change the trajectory after Super Tuesday, the most likely outcome of the nomination battles is that we will have a habitual liar and warmonger running for president, and the other candidate will be Donald Trump. The two worst candidates imaginable. We might now be living in the darkest timeline.
Again, nothing is final. Super Tuesday was set up to benefit moderate Democratic candidates who would appeal to the southern states, with party rules set up to hinder liberal nominees even before the games played this election year. Clinton did very well in states she probably has no chance to win in a general election, but it was also disappointing to see both Clinton and Trump win in Massachusetts.
Clinton has more than enough baggage to normally derail any politician but, like Donald Trump, her supporters don’t seem to care what she has done. There is also a remote chance that the Republican race will turn into a two way battle with the survivor being to win enough winner take all states to overcome Trump’s advantage.
One hopeful sign is the amount of donations Sanders has been receiving, receiving over forty million dollars in February alone. Generally, when a candidate loses primaries, they are forced from the race as their money dries up. Sanders has the resources and will be continuing to take on Clinton.
If it is a general election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, one question will be how the nomination process led to the two candidates with the highest negatives for a general election winning each party’s nomination. While the outcome is analogous, the process was completely different. Clinton has benefited from being the establishment candidate in a battle rigged in her favor, without regard to the consequences. Trump has defied the Republican leadership, which has so far been powerless to get in the way of voters rejecting the establishment.
In other words, the Democratic race has been totally undemocratic, while the Republicans have had a much fairer process. As David Atkins wrote about the Democratic process at Washington Monthly, “The Democratic Party should be true to its name and trust in democracy.”Republican voters have been right in rejecting the establishment, but unfortunately the wrong person has benefited from this.
An election between Clinton versus Trump will very likely break modern records for dishonesty and smears. With each candidate being so disliked on a national level, each will probably try to win by making voters hate the other even more.
We might see a breakdown in the red/blue state divide which has dominated recent elections. It is not unimaginable to see Donald Trump taking New York and the blue portions of the midwest in a battle with Clinton, who already is having problems in the traditional battleground states. On the other hand, Democrats might be lucky if Trump is the nominee as Clinton would have a much harder time beating Cruz or Rubio. The latest CNN poll , along with multiple other recent polls, agrees with this, showing both Sanders and Clinton beating Trump, with Sanders winning by a larger margin, but only Sanders being able to beat Rubio and Cruz.
The real reason that this is the darkest timeline is not the general election, but who we will have to live with as president for at least four years. A Clinton victory means a return to the neoconservative foreign policy view which has resulted in disaster. She will keep us on a path of perpetual warfare and strengthening of the surveillance state. She even received a major neocon endorsement last week. While Donald Trump is less hawkish on paper, I could still see him as being at considerable risk of blundering us into more wars. Both show little regard for First Amendments rights.
We would have a Democratic nominee who has proposed legislation making it a crime to burn flags in protest and a Republican nominee who has proposed limiting entry to the country based upon their religion. Neither is tolerable. I imagine that in the case of Trump we are dealing with what might be campaign hyperbole, versus an actual record on Clinton’s part of proposing restrictions on civil liberties and pushing for greater military intervention, but it is risky to trust that Trump will be more rational if in office. Just like it is risky to believe it when Clinton takes more progressive positions, on limited and selective issues. At least Trump has exposed the problems of big money in politics–not that I would count on him really reforming a system he has benefited from. It is no wonder that I am seeing so much talk about voting for the Green Party recently.
