Ever since the 1930s, every four years on the 20th January there is a new presidency or the continuation of an existing one. This year sees the rare occasion of a first term incumbent President leaving office having been defeated by a challenger. Not since 1992, has this happened and it is worth reflecting on what has led to the current state of America.
Ever since Donald Trump came down his golden escalators in 2015, he has been a fixture of the US political scene. Despite his fame as an entrepreneur and media celebrity, he was a novice at politics but played this to his advantage and soon found his groove as someone who could speak to a significant part of the American population who had felt that politicians had ignored them for too long. He wiped out 16 of the Republican Party’s elite Governors, Senators and other worthies in the primaries to win his party’s nomination and took control of the party over the course of 2016. It wasn’t plain sailing, the Republican Convention that year was far from a smooth coronation; then there were the infamous Access Hollywood tapes; and finally, there were three lacklustre debate performances. He was expected to go down in flames against Hillary Clinton who ran a solid, if uninspiring, campaign.
On election night 2016, it ended being too close to call for most of the evening and into the following few days. With Trump winning Florida and Ohio by clear margins and holding on to Arizona and Georgia, where the Democrats had expected to run it close, it came down to the three rust belt states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In the end, after multiple recounts and the “Big Boards” on most of the TV stations running a constant service round the clock for many days, all three states were called for Hillary with less than 50,000 votes between all three of them. The final result was that Hillary won the popular vote by just over 3 million nationwide, but the Electoral College vote was far closer at 278 to 260.
Donald Trump cried foul almost immediately. During the debates with Hillary he had repeatedly refused to commit to conceding and he lived up to that threat. It was made worse when it was leaked that James Comey, the Director of the FBI, had decided not to announce that they were once again looking into Hillary’s emails before the election. Despite the investigation again finding nothing to prosecute, Trump insisted that it would have swung the election for him and that anyway the three vital states had all seen huge, if unproven, electoral fraud.
His supporters congregated in state capitals across the country, trying to contest the vote. There was also an attempt to invade Congress by Trump supporters in early January 2017 to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote. The Capitol security saw off the protest somewhat heavy-handedly, which played into Trump’s narrative that Obama’s people had secured the Presidency for Hillary and it has essentially been a coup against the democratic mandate he had received.
However, on January 20th 2017, Hillary Clinton became the 45th President of the United States and the first female to hold that office.
Hillary played it safe, as is her habit, but also because she was limited by the Republicans holding both the House and the Senate. Her Cabinet was mostly re-treads from the Obama administration, but she secured a bit of a coup by luring Joe Biden to be her Secretary of State. Joe played well with foreign leaders as someone they could do business with and, despite the occasional gaffe, he guided the US through tough negotiations with Iran and North Korea. He also managed to secure significant sanctions against Russia for their aborted attempt to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favour, which had been proved without doubt by an independent bi-partisan commission in early 2018.
Domestically, Hillary had little room to manouver given the opposition control in Congress. However, her enduring legacy will almost certainly be her appointments to the Supreme Court. She was able to push through the confirmation of moderate Merrick Garland, who had been nominated by Obama but whose confirmation had been held up by Mitch McConnell before the election. A couple of years into her presidency Stephen Breyer’s retirement gave her an opportunity to replace one liberal on the Court with another. After a bruising fight over her first nominee, who had been accused of unproved sexual misconduct at university, she had to settle on another moderate who could get through the Senate rather than a liberal. Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement had been speculated about many times, held out to see if a Republican President would be in place to appoint his successor. Finally, in the last few months of the 2020 campaign, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died leaving one final opportunity to remake the Court. It wasn’t to be, as Mitch McConnell again held up confirmation of Hillary’s nominee awaiting the outcome of the election. In her dream world, Hillary would have moved the Court firmly to the left, but in the end her two moderate nominees helped secure the centre rather than move the balance.
Many of the establishment of the Republican Party had hoped that Trump’s candidacy was an aberration and normality would be resumed after his defeat – Trump and Trumpism would be gone. However, this wasn’t the massive defeat that Barry Goldwater suffered in 1964, and Trump was not vanquished. Trump used his “Stop the Steal” campaign to launch his next career as owner and major talent on Trump Network News. TNN quickly hoovered up Fox News’ audience and that of other smaller conservative networks and became the dominant voice of right-wing populism in the USA. Trump’s weekly tirades against the socialist government of Hillary Clinton became the most popular show in television history. As the owner of the network, Trump could give himself as much air time as he pleased resulting in his voice becoming stronger and drowning out more pragmatic and moderate voices in the GOP.
Then came the mid-term elections of 2018. The President’s party almost always does badly in the mid-terms and that year was no different. The Republican majority in the House was increased by a sizeable 30 seats consolidating Speaker Ryan’s control, after he had made peace with the Trump wing of the party. The Senate was even more impressive with gains in Florida, Ohio, both seats in Minnesota, and a slew of other seats taking the majority to the magic filibuster-proof number of 60.
That was the beginning of Hillary’s real problems. Committees of both the House and Senate used their powers to investigate every aspect of the Clinton administration, tying up and exhausting so many staff. Stories about Bill’s extracurricular activities started to do the rounds mainly on TNN and other media outlets started to follow where they led. The fact that Donald and Melania had divorced quite soon after the 2016 election was deemed irrelevant as was his unconventional views on dating, which seemed to be of little interest to his droves of conservative fans. All of this added to a sense of siege at the White House.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic gave even more fuel for the anti-Clinton forces. When the death-toll reached 10,000 people in mid-Summer, a special session of Congress was called to consider Impeachment of President Clinton for allowing the “China-virus” to kill so many Americans and her support of multi-lateral entities like the World Health Organisation. The Articles of Impeachment were overwhelmingly passed by the House’s Republican majority and in the Senate trial found her guilty, again on party lines, but falling short of the 67 votes needed to remove her from office.
A visibly tired Clinton entered the Fall campaign lagging candidate Trump by a wide margin in the polls. Trump had won renomination easily, routing Senator Ted Cruz, who had led the anti-Trump hold-outs in Congress. Hillary had tried to reenergize her campaign by replacing solid but lacklustre Tim Kaine as Vice Presidential candidate with rising star Kamala Harris. Kaine went quietly, having been promised Secretary of State with Joe Biden finally deciding to retire to Wilmington. However, the move backfired as Trump painted the new ticket as a radical feminist cabal which was alien to American values. Mike Pompeo, as Trump’s running mate, played even more hardball than his boss, attacking both Clinton and Harris remorselessly. The contrast with understated Mike Pence of 2016, could not have been starker.
Again Hillary intellectually dominated the debates and again it didn’t matter as Trump’s bombastic and bullying performance played well with his supporters. Even his brief bout of, and recovery from, Covid 19 endeared him to his fans, demonstrating how strong he was.
Election Day brought an Electoral College landslide, Trump carrying all the States that he had in 2016 and adding the three he lost so closely last time, plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Tim Kaine’s Virginia. Hillary won 74 million votes, many more than last time, but she couldn’t catch Trump’s 80 million.
So in 2021 we stand at the beginning of President Trump’s first term. His transition team has attempted little engagement despite many attempts of outreach from the outgoing Clinton team. Hillary Clinton supported by Bill and Congresswoman Chelsea Clinton, stood graciously in defeat as Donald Trump took with the Oath of Office with First Lady Ivanka Trump. The next few years are going to be very interesting and probably quite scary!
Obviously, history didn't turn out the way described above. However, it is always worth contemplating how today could have been radically different with only a few things having changed at pivotal points.
