America faces a stark choice on Tuesday: they will vote for President. On the one side, we have Donald Trump for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats. I'm just about to argue why, for the love of all that is holy, America MUST choose Hillary Clinton.
Now, here' the thing. I know what most of my American friends are going to be like: "Ah, but I'm already going to be voting Hillary Clinton! It's just such a terrible election..."
So I not going to make the case for voting AGAINST Trump. I consider that with his climate denialism, belief that vaccines cause autism, his belief that he knows better than the generals do how to fight ISIS (who by the way is badly losing the war now); he plans, of course, to fight ISIS by nuking them and by committing heinous war crimes. And that the Donald also wants to build a 20 BILLION dollar wall over 3000 miles of border with Mexico, ban 1/5th of all humanity from coming into America, withdraw from Nato, put his rival into prison, cosy up to Russia (at a time when measured but determined resistance is the best formula), repeal the Iran nuclear deal (despite it actually working) and start a trade war with China (WHY?!?!?!?). Add to that that he is so far openly hostile to: the judiciary, rule of law, congress, the free press, protesters and free trade. Not even king to go into his record with defrauding contractors, refusing to sell housing to black people, setting up a fake university, pretending to be his own publicist in a series of bizarre phone calls, getting into 3am Twitter wars with former Mrs Universe Pagent winners ending with him advocating people watch a nonexistent sex-tape, his choice of extreme religious right Mike Pence for VP and more. All this means that most people on NS will definitely not vote for him.
But what about Clinton? Surely she's a terrible candidate too? I disagree.
Emails
It's easy to say that Hillary Clinton is much better than her rival character-wise, but surely she is no saint at all? After all, she had all of those email scandals? She's being investigated by the FBI, after all?
Fine, I say, and what have they found? Bits and bobs of campaign planning, completely mainstream foreign policy decisions like arming the Kurds, that John Podesta has a healthy fascination with aliens, that the already disgraced Antony Weiner is likely to be somebody who commits sexual assault (which we already knew about anyway).
Seriously, I've been going through Wikileaks for hours on end looking for dirt on Clinton and I can't find anything outside of what we would expect. Occasionally the Clinton Foundation gets a dodgy donation, sometimes they organize for a protest outside a Donald Trump rally, at times they discuss zingers that she might say at possible questions in debates.
But what about the DNC emails?
Those are a bit more shady, but again those are sparse on direct smoking guns. The very worst one was a guy who advocated having Bernie Sanders's religion be an issue in the Deep South, but that's about it. While it is possible that there was electoral fraud in the primaries (a barrel of fish that would take too long to write about properly), it's unlikely.
In short, the emails are much ado about very little.
As a final thought, could you imagine if all of Donald Trump's emails, more than 30000 of them, were leaked? Would ANYBODY care whatsoever about their contents? Even if they were the most revolting and damning content ever to exist? You know the answer to that. So now don't hold Clinton to a higher standard than you are for her rival!
Record as Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton was a disastrous secretary of state, screeches Donald Trump. She bombed Libya for example! .... Except that America didn't rush headlong into Libya. They only intervened after Britain and France had been doing it for a while. It was a perfectly mainstream opinion at the time to remove Gaddafi, a horrible dictator who was gunning down his own people in the streets with a mercenary army. The situation in Libya is bad now, true, but ultimately not the worst it could have been.
But what about Russia! Clinton's big "re-set" seems to have gone down the tubes! .... Well, in fairness, Russia then annexed Crimea... after Clinton was secretary of state. Blaming John Kerry would be more accurate. Seriously though, annexation isn't a cool thing to do. And before somebody rants and raves about how much the Crimeans wanted to be a part of Russia, the riots in the streets a few weeks back when they had their elections suggest very strongly otherwise.
But wait, Syria! She once torpedoed a ceasefire because she thought it would protect Israel! To which I say; it's a sad reality in American politics that Israel is the gold standard for Middle Eastern political intervention. A ceasefire not in Israel's interests won't get backed. But what about arming the rebels! This one is a classic damned if you do, damned if you don't. Can you imagine any course of action America could realistically take without you getting mad at it? No intervention- Turkish, Saudi, European and Gulf State backed rebels are crushed by dictator Assad, resulting likely in mass atrocities like ethnic cleanings. And Russia becomes a bit more powerful in the world stage. Full intervention- hundreds of coffins draped in American flags come back home and you are angry at that. Backing Assad- OMG America loves freedom at home but oppression abroad! Come on now. There is NO situation you would be happy with short of somebody walking in with a magic wand making Syria into the next garden of Eden.
Domestic Policy
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both united in hatred of one thing: big money in politics. But nobody sits down and asks themselves HOW they would do it.
Nothing can be done about big money and special interests until 2010 Supreme Court decisions Citizens United vs FEC is overturned. As a democrat, it's in Hillary Clinton's every best interest to appoint a liberal to the empty seat left by the death of Antonin Scalia, funnily enough one of the justices who voted for Citizens United. A liberal supreme court would at the next opportunity strike down citizens united, and from there legislation can then meaningfully be passed to fix the broken system. Meanwhile, Donald Trump would likely relegate the issue to Mike Pence, who would appoint another Scalia who would not strike down that disastrous ruling. Congrats America, the issue you pretended to care about can't get fixed because you were so distrustful of the candidate who could have fixed the problem because she once took money from an unsavory source, a completely legitimate (if shady) thing ALL politicians do.
What about the flip-flops though?! She used to support the defense of marriage act but now is all for gay rights! Yes, but if you REALLY want to discuss flip-flops, might I point out Donald Trump once changed his position on abortion twice on the same day. Again, don't hold Hillary Clinton to a higher standard than you are her opponent!
I hope this post helps sway a few votes. In particular, I want to show how you don't have to grumble and hold your nose when voting for her: she has a wealth of good experience in situations that were never in her control to begin with, the main objection against her is much ado about nothing and she is far better than her rival in every metric you could deign to erect.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Don't let your anger that the good isn't good enough allow for evil to win.
