What Might Have Been...

As we weather the current bout of Trump-induced chaos, some who are inclined to live in the moment might wonder if the nation would have been better off had Harris won the election. In response I offer my snapshot of a Harris presidency.

• Massive spending and continued inflation.

• Suppression of information about the myriad government misdeeds that we've learned of since Trump won.

• Even more waste, fraud, mismanagement, duplication, and inefficiency in the use of our tax dollars.

• No DOGE or anything like it.

• No demands for European self-defense accountability.

• Green policies that would make energy ever more expensive, coerce us into electric vehicles, make us buy appliances that don't work well, force us to change our home HVAC and water heating systems to more expensive and less effective versions, cover the country with solar panels and windmills, and reduce both our energy independence and our energy security.

• Perpetuation and expansion of DEI and "woke" policies in government and in Corporate America.

• Continued degradation of women's sports in favor of a fanatical, detached-from-reality gender ideology.

• "Environmental Justice" reparations paid to favored constituencies.

• Government-imposed price and rent controls.

• Myriad new government subsidies and handouts.

• More people on the government dole.

• An increased minimum wage.

• Substantially higher taxes on those who already pay the bulk of them.

• Taxes on wealth and unrealized gains.

• New and expansive gun rights restrictions.

• More attacks on free speech, and resurrection of plans for a Ministry of Disinformation.

• Covering up the cover-ups that are just now being exposed.

• Continued border abandonment and a "nothing to see here" attitude towards illegals.

• Further attacks on the Supreme Court, including attempts at term limits and stacking.

• The seating of leftist Justices should any Supreme Court seats open during her tenure.

• Foreign policy that would embolden Hamas and Islamists.

• Continued evisceration of such boys-centric institutions as the Boy Scouts of America.

• An abandonment of Israel.

• Continued fire-hosing of money and military materiel into Ukraine.

• Big Tech continuing the censorious agenda we witnessed under Biden.

• Trade protectionism similar to Trump's.

• A continued "culture of fear" imposed by the Angry Left. A validation of cultural Marxism and a reinvigoration of cancel culture.

• A press corps that carried water for the Administration, rather than being properly adversarial to the government.

• Expansion of government-funded health care.

• Cancellation of student loans, no matter the Supreme Court's rulings.

• No cultural reset away from the Left's excesses. Instead, we'd get even more such, because the Left is insatiable.

• No revelations about government's abuses of power during the previous Democratic administrations.

• A continuation of the "shadow government" operation of the nation that we now know took place during the latter part of Biden's tenure.

• A flooding of the courts with progressive judges.

In sum, a Leftist dystopia.

The green energy stuff alone would have been enough to make me despair. The harm from the Left’s insane energy policies - economic, ecological, cultural, and geopolitical - was a full-stop red flag for me, before piling on the rest. And the rest is quite a pile.

Then there's the question of her mental aptitude. Not from the "diminished capacity" aspect that Biden exhibited, but more generally. There's little evidence that Harris is a deep thinker, even less to show she is an effective communicator, her politics are weather-vane but default to authoritarian, and her leadership skills appear to be slim to none. Her Presidency would be feckless when it needed strength and invasive the rest of the time.

Worse, a Harris victory would be more than just Harris’s actions as President. It would have been an inflection point in America’s culture.

That's just a few minutes' musings. A full list would be much longer. Feel free to add yours in the comments.

As for positives emerging from a Harris White House? Honestly, I really can't think of many, and the ones that come to mind are "meh" in magnitude. We'd not have the destructive trade war that Trump launched (and may be aborting), for example, but we'd still have tariffs and protectionism and green and reckless spending and all sorts of other economy-killing goodies.

Take note, this is not a blanket endorsement of Trump's policies. I knew his term would be a chaotic mixed bag, with some great, some good, some bad, and some terrible, and this has proven true in just his first couple months.

I've heard the argument that a GOP Congress would have held the Harris administration in check. To that, I ask:

• How well did the GOP House hold the Biden administration in check its last two years?

• What are the odds that the House would have stayed Red if Harris had won the election?

• How many of those close House races would have tipped the other way?

It's easy to compare Trump to an idealized Harris vs suddenly-with-a-backbone GOP Congress, but it's far more likely the GOP would have acted whipped and lacked any resolve in the wake of the American people accepting all the shenanigans that led to Harris's candidacy, not to mention Harris herself.

I also believe that many who idealize in this fashion actually like and want a lot of what I listed above. They put the rampant abuses of our rights, our money, and our futures by the Biden administration well behind their desire for Big Government to 'do more,' the consequences of all that be damned.

Then there’s the argument that the nation would have been better off electing Haley or DeSantis. I agree, and I’ll go you two further. Rand Paul or Justin Amash would have been even better. But, the voters rejected all, and we were left with a choice between The Formerly Orange Id and Cackles.

I remain convinced that the nation needed to reject the Democrats and their leftward lurch, even if that meant a Trump Presidency. The post-election behavior by Team Blue and its left flank reinforce that conclusion, even as I watch Trump's tariff mania create chaos and fear.

The long-term concerns are very real. Will Trump's current chaos settle down? Will his Good-Trump policies override his Bad-Trump policies, in perception and in reality? Will the Democrats push aside the Angry Left, or will the socialists further tighten their grip over Team Blue? Who will emerge as Team Blue's new standard-bearer, or will the party remain in its own chaos for the next couple years?

It's impossible to tell. Trump is running full-steam-ahead, his supporters and his detractors are in full throat, the politcal commentariat is awash in garbage ideas, vicious partisan rancor, and junk theories, and global circumstances will remain in high flux. All we can do is hang on, and take some solace in the bullets we dodged.

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An afterthought. Some believe that a Trump loss would have pointed the GOP in a different, better direction. This ignores the reality that Trump was and is a product of a nativist/populist shift in the GOP, a shift precipitated by the Left’s takeover of the Democratic Party, and a shift that would be reinforced and amplified by the Left’s continued cultural and political domination under a Harris presidency. Had Harris won, the GOP’s next candidate would have been Trumpian in policy. That is to say, populist and nativist. Sorry, you weren’t going to get your old GOP back.