Obama’s administration was entirely free of scandals, and of course his legacy as the first African American president will stand forever as the embodiment of the progressive, democratic and egalitarian side of American history. Trump’s specific campaign proposals, as opposed to the vague and grandiose promises that studded his speeches, are taken from the policies developed by Congressional Republicans.
At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama has a number of significant accomplishments. His Affordable Care Act, while not a unitary system, offers health insurance to all Americans. No previous president, not Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Carter or Clinton, all of whom tried, was able to pass a national health care plan. Obama also was the first president since Johnson to reduce income inequality, and he did so while preventing an economic collapse and depression at the start of his presidency. He also began to reverse financial deregulation through the Dodd-Frank bill. In foreign policy, Obama negotiated an agreement that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power, and he opened relations with Cuba, reversing a futile and inhuman policy begun 55 years earlier by Eisenhower. Beyond legislation and treaties, Obama’s administration was entirely free of scandals, and of course his legacy as the first African American president will stand forever as the embodiment of the progressive, democratic and egalitarian side of American history.
Had Hillary Clinton been elected president, Obama’s domestic and foreign policies would have become permanent and been expanded, even if Republicans kept control of Congress. The Supreme Court would have had a majority of Justices appointed by Democratic presidents for the first time since 1969. Instead, Trump became president, albeit only because of a concatenation of circumstances: the Electoral College system, created by the authors of the Constitution to preserve the power of slave states and which in 2016 allowed an open racist to take office despite losing the popular vote by 3 million; FBI director James Comey’s letter that, in violation of Justice Department rules, raised allegations that 10 days later were found to be entirely without merit; Republican successes in suppressing voting by African Americans and Latinos in more than enough states to account for Trump’s electoral edge.
What will Trump do as president? Trump’s specific campaign proposals, as opposed to the vague and grandiose promises that studded his speeches, are taken from the policies developed by Congressional Republicans. His tax cuts will cost trillions, and half the lost revenue is slated to go to the top 1%. Past tax cuts didn’t spur economic growth; they just added to the deficit. Trump’s tax cuts will make it impossible to fund existing social programs or even maintain regular governmental functions.
Trump promises to gut environment, health and safety, and financial regulations. Those moves will increase the likelihood of another financial collapse and will allow businesses that sell shoddy products, unsafe food, and scam customers to flourish. Trump already has selected an Education Secretary who wants to divert Federal education spending to charter schools. Her success in that effort in Michigan resulted in falling test scores and scandals as for-profit firms opened schools that enriched their owners will offering little more than babysitting to their students. We can expect similar results at the national level, except in states and communities that repel such attacks on their public schools.
Most likely Trump will never act on his campaign boasts to break exiting trade agreements or impose tariffs that would lead to a global trade war. His supporters in the dying communities of Appalachia and the Middle West will have to settle for enjoying Trump’s provocative rhetoric. Already we see a rise in the number of hate crimes and vulgar words directed at women and minorities. We can expect much more of that, especially when the economy doesn’t improve for most of Trump’s supporters. America will become a coarser and uglier country.
Similarly, Trump is unlikely to start a war. However, the mere fact that America elected such a man president has permanently undermined the nation’s moral standing in the world. Governments throughout the world will move to rearrange their economies and foreign relations so that they can lessen their dependence on the U.S. as much as possible.
Trump has selected global warming deniers to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department, confirming his commitment to energy production, and to the owners of energy firms that are the most generous financial backers of Republican Party candidates. If the U.S. withdraws from the Paris Agreement, or even just fails to meet its treaty obligations, CO2 levels will rise past the point at which irreversible catastrophic rises in sea level and mass extinctions will occur. That would be the most significant consequence of this election, and one that will affect the descendants of those who voted for Trump as well as people in the rest of the world who don’t get to vote in American elections even as they suffer the consequences of uninformed and callous American voters.
