I'm With Her

False equivalencies between political candidates are likely as old as democracy itself. "Thucydides is corrupt and Aesop is a liar. It's rigged. We live in an oligarchy, man," someone wearing a toga may have said, probably. I know nothing about Ancient Greece.

These false equivalencies become genuinely destructive when they give comfort to the worst impulses of those they accurately depict. If all politicians are thought to be unscrupulous liars, the most unscrupulous liars have an advantage over the less capable liars, who in turn have an advantage over those who want to act ethically. It's not long before the first group has feasted on the bones of the latter two. 

It's one thing to be dissatisfied with your choices this election; that's understandable. It's quite another to let that dissatisfaction convince you that somehow these two candidates are equally unpalatable. Better people than I have broken down the juxtaposition between Hillary Clinton, former senator and secretary of state, and Donald Trump, former reality TV host and vodka salesman. And yet we're still here, actually hashing this out because we as a nation remain committed to the idea that these two figures must be comparable until the final tallies have been made tomorrow night. Anything else would be unfair. 

No one wants things to be unfair. Which is why it's perfectly fair that Clinton, (twice) declared clear of any wrongdoing by an agency that clearly has it out for her, can be compared less than favorably to a man who, whatever the result of the election, will be on trial for fraud later this month. Because fraud is hard to establish in the court of public opinion (even when the defendant has put in an impressive amount of time in courtrooms), but putting "Clinton" and "emails" in the same headline is easy. 

It's not unfair to point out that the Clinton Foundation presents an ethical quagmire that might act as a breeding ground for corruption. But we need to wait for the verdict to come in before we can say that Trump University was, provably, a Ponzi scheme. 

It's also perfectly fair to question Clinton's judgment in her choice of advisors, particularly after the estranged husband of her closest advisor wasn't content to torpedo his own career and managed to posthumously damage Clinton's as well. Never mind that Clinton, more than perhaps anyone in the universe, is someone who can have empathy for Huma Abdein and that standing by her friend proves extremely inconvenient for all those "cold, insatiable, power-hungry Hillary" fantasies so many of us have had swimming around in our heads for so long. But we have to be careful when documenting Trump's relationship with a former campaign manager who thought little of physically restraining a reporter for asking a question. Or how the KKK's newspaper (yes, they still exist and, yes, they have a newspaper, I guess?) formally endorsed Trump. The Trump campaign rejected the endorsement, duh, but most people, in that same position (you know, all those people who would've somehow, perhaps as a result of a silly mix-up, found themselves the recipient of an endorsement from the Klan), probably would've responded with an Arrested Development meme rather than barreling forward. But that's the kind of thing that happens when you are your own best advisor, apparently.

And it's perfectly fair to hammer Clinton on her "basket of deplorables" comment from a few months ago (I'll remind you of the KKK thing from the last paragraph; no reason). But we have to allow for some nuance when Trump mocked a disabled reporter (for being disabled), when he attacked a gold star family because he (the billionaire presidential candidate) had "a right to defend himself," when he offered to pay the legal fees for any of his supporters who attacked protestors at his events, when he got those same supporters to harass the media at those events while wearing t-shirts with this printed on them and... I... I don't have the energy anymore. 

One of these things is definitively not like the other. You may not like the taste of fennel, but right now it's either that or raw sewage. 

Using this again because I like it.

There's a school of thought among some observers that we need to apologize for our support of Clinton. I don't buy that. And I find it disingenuous and a little cowardly, too. I'm going to go over some points I made more succinctly on the podcast this month, but these cannot be overstated if only because she deserves to be thought of worthy of this office and not just a (much) better alternative to her opponent. 

To start, the woman is strong as hell. She has put up with more nonsense than any presidential candidate of my lifetime. Some of that is just the kind of shit a woman puts up with in a male-dominated field. Some of it is the insane fixation so many people have had on her for so long; the same gross impulse that has forced so many to qualify their support of her. But our country could use a dose of whatever it is she's bringing to the table. Not only because it stands the smallest chance of decreasing the nonsense that ambitious women put up with going forward, but because we've all gotten pretty whingey lately and could use a steel-toed designer pump up our collective ass right about now. 

Because despite everything, she not only gets up every morning, but does so with a genuine desire to go to bat for us--us!--who put her through this every day. I'd have had myself sealed in a whiskey barrel after a week of the kind of treatment she gets. After a month, Trump would be on the ground in the fetal position, mumbling "losers" over and over again. She's done this for thirty bloody years. Who's going to stare this woman down? Putin? China? Some other international threat I don't have the psychic energy to focus on right now? 

Another point, and I touched on this in the podcast (seriously, go there for the short version--we also talk about clowns): I believe in the value of a functioning government. If you follow the insidery talk, you know that Republicans who knew and worked with Clinton when she was a senator... actually kinda like her. Behind closed doors, some even praise her. They won't admit to it in public (admitting that you like Clinton is worse for your career than threatening to not even listen to her should she get in), but people who know her like her. It's the rest of us who are perpetually giving her the stink eye. 

So while we're still looking at gridlock and Potemkin investigations, so much of that will be due to Congress' broken nature, something no president can fix. Underneath that, we're going to get basic governance: mildly acceptable deals being made, nothing set on fire, what we've come to expect. I suspect she'll actually fair better than Obama, who took the same "shut up, I don't care" tack that all good-hearted and reasonable people would've done when working with Congress. But Clinton's been stewing in the swamp for a long time--she can go to work for four years and deliver us a few wins. Underwhelming? Sure. But as long as we're not hurtling headlong toward Ragnorak, I can chalk it up as a win. 

Clinton's had her hands on various levers of power over the last few decades and if that sullies her in some peoples' eyes, it's because there is a dangerous shortage of optometrists in the country. The experienced pol may seem unclean, but hiring someone who's never done anything like governing is madness. Politics is the only field where someone with less experience is considered more qualified to do the job, because modern politics is Wonderland, apparently. But you don't hire a tattoo artist to perform heart surgery on you and you don't give our nuclear arsenal to a newb. That shouldn't require explanation. Clinton knows how Washington works (and how it doesn't), she knows how to get things done, and she has advisers that aren't herself. 

The Atlantic magazine has a venerable, 160-year history. I'm a dick with anxiety issues and access to the Internet. I am not on the same level as The Atlantic. But when it issued its third ever presidential endorsement this year, extolling Clinton in the same measure with which it denounced Trump as "the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency," it gave dicks like me a a little bit of cover. And while words like "fascism" have lost a lot of power through overuse in the last decade and cries of impeding doom for our republic are way too easy to make, there is a lot that about Trump that I cannot let slide.

Someone who says he may not accept the results of the election, and tells his supporters that that election is rigged (before it's even finished), solely because he is losing does not have the temperament to be president.

Someone who talks about women and minorities the way he does, and treats people the way he does, does not have the humanity to be president.

Someone with so little regard for the first amendment does not have the integrity to be president.

Someone who orders his steak well-done does not have the judgment to be president.

This whole awful thing is almost over. What comes after might be worse, whether through a Trump presidency, Trump contesting the election (regardless how close the finally tally), or a slicker politician running with the ball that his tiny hands fumbled. But if we can get one moment, akin to the one we got eight years ago, when we make an historic choice and choose the eminently qualified woman, with all her flaws, and reject the Raging American Id of hate and divisiveness and pettiness... well, that might actually make the last sixteen months worthwhile.

Right?