I believe that the Democrats will take back the Senate in the 2016 elections. This will put a halter on anything that Trump wants to do should he become President. This will also force Trump to nominate moderates to the Supreme Court and other positions requiring Senate confirmation.
Indeed, there are really only 2 areas where a President can act unilaterally with some degree of autocracy: Trade and Foreign Policy. I find Trump’s views and positions on both these issues to be much more in line with my own (and those of most Sanders supporters) than those of Hillary Clinton.
If Clinton wins, I am confident that there will be an almost immediate escalation of our involvement in Syria, greatly exacerbating a bad situation and generations even more anti-American sentiment. I am also pretty sure that a Clinton Administration will throw our move towards detente with Iran in reverse and would not be surprised if we are bombing Iran by the end of her first term. In sum, I am sure that a Clinton Presidency will have disastrous consequences for America lasting decades into the future. Trump has criticised the Iraq war and opposes “stupid” interventionist wars that simply do not make financial sense to him. He espouses a more restrained foreign policy and has even expressed a willingness to negotiate or even collaborate with Putin and Russia. He has also said that he will honour the nuclear deal with Iran.
On Trade, I am likewise 99.9% sure that a President Clinton will not only green-light the TPP but will actively promote it, just as she has for so many years. This will be a domestic disaster of epic proportions that will have repercussions extending far beyond the term of her Presidency. Trump opposes “disastrous trade deals” just like Sanders – albeit in a more crude fashion. Trump puts it into the frame of “winning” ands “losing” but the message is the same: these trade deals have been a disaster for the American middle class, and he opposes the TPP.
Trump is scary, but more scary to me is getting a phony corporatist Democrat in the WH. If Trump is elected, he will be a one-term President, and will hopefully be defeated in 2020 provided that the Democrats put up a TRULY progressive candidate and not a Corporatist Wall Street tool like Clinton. Hillary, however, would use her first term in office to consolidate her political power and further cultivate powerful allies and forces in the American corporate community. She will be unbeatable in re-election, and so the cause of Progressivism will be set back for decades. This, combined with a disastrous trade policy and an irresponsible and aggressively adventurist neocon foreign policy make her for me the less attractive candidate.
EuroYankee is a dual citizen, US-EU. He travels around Europe, writing on politics, culture and such. He pays his US taxes so he gets to weigh in on what is happening in the States.
