The Hillary Clinton Thought Experiments

I see them all the time now—the Hillary Clinton Thought Experiments. What if she'd been elected...? They break my heart.

Thought experiment: If @HillaryClinton were president with a Republican Congress what would be different in this gov't funding bill?

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 1, 2017

It sure wouldn't include $61 million to reimburse local law enforcement agencies for providing security in New York City & Florida. https://t.co/1YO2msRewo

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 1, 2017

That, of course, is the tip of the iceberg. As I wrote in March:

I am not nurturing a grudge, nor am I sucking on sour grapes. I am rationally angry about the outcome of the election, for reasons of which Trump's dumpster fire of a presidency reminds me each day.

Because I did my homework; because I read every factsheet and every policy proposal; because I listened to every one of Clinton's speeches and/or read every transcript; because I watched every debate; because I read every interview; because I read her State Department emails; because I read her autobiography; because I paid attention to what her staff and surrogates said; because I listened to people who worked with her and for her, and who had come to know her because of something she'd done for them quietly, away from the spotlight; because I did my due diligence and then some on this candidate, my brain is an entire card catalog of data on Hillary Clinton's campaign, her record, and policy proposals.

Every time Trump says, does, endorses, proposes, or signs anything, I know what Clinton's position would have been. Every time he nominates someone, I know what Clinton's administration would have looked like. Every time he comments on some piece of shit legislation Congressional Republicans are conspiring to unleash on the public, I know what Clinton would have said about it.

I have a pretty damn good idea what she would be doing if she were president, and I have a pretty damn good idea what she wouldn't be doing. I have a clear picture of the differences in what our domestic policy would look like, and of what the diplomatic differences would be.

I don't know these things because I'm a mind-reader. I know because she told us.

They are stark, these disparities between what is and what could have been.

I grieve that cavernous difference every day.

The thought experiments, which invite me to consider the disparity even more explicitly than simply bearing witness to Trump's dumpster fire of a presidency every day does, are particularly painful.

When it's a member of the political press doing a Hillary Clinton Thought Experiment, I burn with rage that most of the political press was endeavoring quite aggressively to avoid doing them before the election, instead working overtime to create a parity between the two candidates that was profoundly dishonest.

And when it's someone who is trying, even now, even still, to suggest that nothing would be different anyway, to try to retroactively justify their electioneering horseshit about how Clinton and Trump were virtually indistinguishable candidates, I burn with rage, because it is frankly and dangerously not true.

Virtually every single thing in national politics would be different if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. And nothing, I fear, will ever be quite the same again.