GNABB Reluctantly Endorses Hillary Clinton

In the almost eight and a half years that GNABB has been helping to shape American culture and thought, the editorial board here has never endorsed a Democrat. We espouse a center-right ideology around these parts. But we at GNABB must now break from party for the good of country. This is less an endorsement of Hillary Clinton than a complete rejection of Donald J. Trump. But in order to reject Trump and save our country, that necessitates a default endorsement of Clinton. (Stein and the Green Party are silly, and Gary 'Aleppo' Johnson had a shot at a protest endorsement, until he proved himself less informed than my six year old).

Oh where to begin. I actually don't think Trump, at heart, is a racist. He's almost as bad, though, in the sense that he uses racism as an opportunist does. He carelessly courts a dangerous and until recently mostly dormant (other than in dark corners of the internet) racism amongst frustrated working class whites and those who pander to them. This racism was slowly fading, or at least had been kept around dinner tables and in chatrooms. Trump has brought this ugliness into the mainstream culture. But I also blame the Left. I blame them for creating an intolerable and intolerant politically correct environment in higher education, for supporting a vitriol-laced attack on law enforcement, for a weak and feckless foreign policy for eight years...the time had come for a strong, conservative resurgence. But instead of finding the next Ronald Reagan, the Republicans found Donald f*cking Trump. A crude, sexist, bloviating, attention-seeking, delusional (remember this one from the convention: "I alone can fix it"), insecure/pompous reality TV star with a frightfully short attention span. Trump is not stupid. Far from it. He is a master manipulator. But he cannot seem to focus long enough on any one topic to really deal with serious issues. Watch his interviews. The guy is all over the place without saying anything.

Trump's economic plan, such as it is, would add trillions to our debt.

I can't even discern a coherent foreign policy. At different times, he has said the following: he would crush ISIS, let the Russians handle ISIS and we should stay out of it, we should go take Iraq's oil, we should encourage nuclear proliferation in Asia, we should rethink NATO (just as Putin has visions of a new Russian Empire), Vladimir Putin is a great guy, Mexico will pay for a Wall that it does not want to exist, Brexit was a great idea. I know it's a campaign line, but what Clinton says is true. Trump is a man who can be provoked with a tweet or a well placed insult. Just look at this week. Clinton masterfully distracted him and drew him into a feud with a former Ms. Universe who put on some pounds. Imagine how Putin could toy with Trump for the next four years?

I could go on and on, but I don't really need to. I have proudly been a Never Trump conservative from the beginning. Trump has highjacked the Republican Party. Both parties have masses of people that have voted for them, but have been kept out of the decisionmaking. The Democrats contained their kooks when they were able to shut the Bernie Sanders movement down; unfortunately the Republican Party has been taken over by its most ignorant, unthinking, reactionary constituencies. Trump is not a conservative. He has no ideology at all, in fact. I stand with Mitt Romney and George H.W. Bush in their resistence and criticisms of Trump.

Finally, I oppose Donald Trump because I have two young daughters who I have been raising to respect themselves. Do I want their president to be a man who engages in public vendettas with almost any woman who publicly criticizes him? A man who has very publicly called certain women "pigs" and "dogs," even if they were just Rosie O'Donnell.

Perhaps one of the scariest things about Trump is that he is easily baited and cannot let criticisms go. Look at how viciously George W. Bush was attacked during his presidency, and how visciously Barack Obama has been attacked during his. Can you imagine Donald Trump being able to focus on the tasks of the presidency while being constantly criticized by his opponents and the media? He simply cannot let things go. He would spend most of his days in twitter wars and responding to every journalist who wrote a negative op-ed piece. In fact, he has openly discussed making it easier to sue journalists for defamation of public figures (translation: curtail freedom of speech and press).

I don't really have positive arguments for Hillary Clinton. She is capable, knowledgeable. She will continue the damaging policies of the Obama years, but we can recover from that. I think she is less ideological than Obama, and once elected, she will probably tack back more towards the center like her husband eventually did. At least that is my hope. She's got to keep the silly Bernie supporters in line until after the election. Then she can be reasonable again. By many accounts, she actually was a fairly effective Senator, and even many of her former Republican colleagues will quietly admit that she worked well across the aisle and listened to opposing views with a relatively open mind. Again, I hope that is the case and that she would be that kind of president.

But I do know that we cannot have Donald Trump as president. OK. So I just endorsed Hillary Clinton. I need to go take a shower now.