Rough Ride

Hillary Clinton's entire campaign strategy has been to demonize Donald Trump. Fortunately for her, he has done much to help with that strategy, but her characterization of the man as an unhinged, Dr. Strangelovian, Bill Crosbian, KKK sympathizer is just a bit over the top. On Thursday, the Clinton campaign trotted out a black woman who claimed that a Trump property manager refused to rent to her. This single anecdotal instance was supposed to indicate that Trump is a "racist." In reality, it was designed to help expand a flagging African American voter turnout, something that has the Clintonistas in a panic and has the ever-classy Barack Obama on the stump accusing Trump of being a KKK supporter.

Hillary's trained hamsters in the media seem more concerned about Trump's real income than the manner in which Bill and Hillary Clinton amassed a net worth of over $100 million in 15 years with no private sector jobs, significant investments, or business income. Therefore, Clinton has been able to avoid answering questions on a variety of scandals that indicate criminal wrong-doing.

But let's forget that for today and discuss what a Clinton presidency might look like. The editors of The Wall Street Journal (certainly no friends of Donald Trump) give us a peek:

[Clinton] wants higher taxes, more spending on entitlements that are already unaffordable, more subsidies and price controls in ObamaCare, more regulations on businesses of all kinds, more limits on political speech, more enforcement of liberal cultural values on schools and churches.

The greatest cost of this would be more lost years of slow economic growth. The U.S. economy hasn’t grown by 3% in any year since 2005, and the explanation from Mrs. Clinton’s economic advisers is that America can’t grow faster and inequality is a bigger problem in any case. More income redistribution is their patent medicine.

But as we’ve seen with the rise of nativism and protectionism, the costs of slow growth are corrosive. Flat incomes lead to more social tension and political enmity. The fight to divide a smaller pie would get uglier in a country that was once accustomed to rising possibilities. Imagine the 2020 election after four more years of 1% growth.

Some Republicans say Mrs. Clinton would be more willing to negotiate with them than Mr. Obama has been. That’s a low bar, and during the 2016 campaign she hasn’t thrown a single policy olive branch to Republicans. None. Her current agenda may reflect her real beliefs going back to her activist days before the failure of HillaryCare caused her to adopt some New Democratic coloration. In 2017 she would also have Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders pulling her to the left.

Mrs. Clinton would also be less restrained by the courts. Mr. Obama has remade most of the federal appellate bench, and the Supreme Court is on the cusp. A Hillary victory means progressive judicial domination for a generation or more. This would mean more green lights for the abusive rule by regulation that has characterized Mr. Obama’s second term—and little chance to block the likes of his immigration order or Clean Power Plan.

The editors go on to suggest that Clinton might be somewhat more assertive than Barack Obama on the foreign policy front. But that's like saying that al dente linguine is slightly more firm than overcooked spaghetti. In addition, the foreign policy wreckage that exists as a result of Obama's eight years in office would be difficult to overcome for any president, particularly when she has to play to the hard left.

And then of course, there are the scandals—they are not going away (nor should they). The WSJ editors continue:

The most astonishing revelation of the 2016 campaign has been that neither she nor her husband learned anything from the ethical traumas of the 1990s. You would have thought they’d want to shed the legacy of the Lippo Group and the Lincoln-Bedroom-for-rent, but instead they built the same pay-to-play structure via the Clinton Foundation.

Mrs. Clinton made the astounding decision to use a private email server for official business so she could duck federal records laws. But when that was discovered, rather than admit the mistake and release everything, she and her retinue continued to resist and deflect and deceive. By her behavior in the past year, Mrs. Clinton has ratified the worst things her critics say about her.

Some of our friends argue that Mrs. Clinton’s corruption is tolerable because it is merely about gaining and maintaining political power. This understates how much the Clinton blending of public office with private gain erodes confidence in honest government. It feeds the leftist narrative that business is merely another arm of the state and thus reduces support for free markets.

We're in for a rough ride, folks. Buckle your seat belts.