Hillary’s First Hundred Days

What can we expect during the first hundred days of a Clinton presidency? The New York Times let’s us know:

Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party.

Economic inequality is destroying the United States. It has fractured the Republicans, led to the emergence of a proto-fascist demagogue, and nearly cost Hillary the democratic nomination (to a socialist, no less). It is warping the entire character of this nation and gradually turning it into a third world country. It is the fundamental political problem of our time, and it’s causing upheavals not just in the United States but in Europe as well. Ignoring it constitutes political malfeasance of the highest order.

But our next president and her handlers, tucked away in the soundproof womb of the Beltway, don’t see or hear any of it. The tectonic plates of history are shifting and buckling beneath their feet, but when they put their big brains together all they can come up with is … bipartisan immigration reform!

This is vision on the level of a Warren Harding or a James Buchanan. At best, this is the usual bipartisan happy talk that all candidates have to use to sooth the folks and reassure the powerful. At worst, it reflects a staggering disconnectedness from the actual world.

And how will Hillary achieve this bipartisan miracle? Simple. she’s going to change the upholstery, and this is somehow going to make the car run better:

In her first 100 days, she would also tap women to make up half of her cabinet in hopes of bringing a new tone and collaborative sensibility to Washington, while also looking past Wall Street to places like Silicon Valley for talent — perhaps wooing Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, and maybe asking Tim Cook from Apple to become the first openly gay cabinet secretary.

Women, gays and Silicon Valley CEOs are going to bring a new tone! Sounds like a brave new world to me. Why hasn’t anybody ever thought of this before?

This from a campaign that routinely derided Sander’s supporters as shallow naifs, as whiny children who believed in change fairies and unicorns and just didn’t grasp the tough nitty-gritty of politics.

She’s incapable of thinking beyond the narrow Washington group-think that has formed her entire worldview. She’s spent a lifetime inside the bowels of the establishment, which can only be done if you never rock the boat and never go below the surface politics of things. Even if she does grasp the fundamentals of our predicament, she would never have the political will to act on it. It would go against the grain of her entire life. She will tinker around the edges, like Obama and her husband before her, a nip here, a tuck there, and rainbow colored band-aids everywhere, while the great rotting barge of the country drifts ever closer to the iceberg. Putting her in the White House at this moment in history is like putting an orthodontist in charge of a major heart operation.