WASHINGTON ― If trends continue ― and it’s only 11 days until Election Day ― Donald Trump could set a record, garnering a smaller percentage of the popular vote than even hapless Democrat George McGovern in 1972.
But that won’t produce an Era of Good Feelings in Washington for Hillary Clinton, even though she might win in an Electoral College landslide and make laudable history as the first woman to become president of the United States.
With each day it becomes clearer that from the start ― meaning on Election Night ― Republicans will be out to paint the second President Clinton as head of a secretive, corrupt, money-and-influence political machine: an updated, Democratic version of Richard Nixon, whom she once investigated, and who fled Washington in 1974 rather than face impeachment.
It’s an outrageous, unjustifiable comparison ― unless you are Trump, a Trump supporter, a rabble-rousing populist conservative Republican member of Congress, an agitprop editor of an alt-right sub-Reddit or one of their above-ground online allies, such as Alex Jones or Stephen Bannon.
Or unless you are one of the 40 percent of Republicans who believe a Hillary victory would be the result of a “rigged” system, or one of the 56 percent of voters in a new USA Today poll who worry that the Clinton Foundation could cause ethical and political problems should she be in the White House.
Or unless you read the sad details of the way in which the Clinton Circle ― as it has done for decades ― spends so much of its time mixing a bubbling brew of public office and good intentions with the relentless pursuit of cash in all of its forms and uses: campaign contributions, PAC contributions, speaking fees, consulting fees and charitable-foundation donations.
As portrayed in a flood of emails hacked by Russians and distributed through Wikileaks, Team Clinton was not legally culpable, perhaps, but devoted to the idea that, to achieve good ends, one must make the pursuit of personal and political money the main machinery of one’s life and career.
The foundation and former President Bill Clinton (not Hillary) are at the center of new revelations about the family and its involvements. There is no evidence so far that, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton did any official favors for donors to the foundation or to those who paid for her husband to speak.
But even if the Clintons stayed on this side of the law ― and so far they apparently have ― that won’t prevent the Washington threshers from whirring into motion.
The Clintons have said that the foundation will stop taking foreign donations if she becomes president, but they aren’t about to shut the thing down.
Assuming that the GOP retains the House, and it is likely to, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will be under enormous pressure to declare an investigatory jihad. Ironically, pro-Trump, “anti-establishment” members of the House Freedom Caucus may have even more proportional clout if the GOP loses some of its few moderate members.
And they already want Hillary’s head.
Ryan last summer said he wanted a new investigation of Clinton’s email server; he now will probably accede to Freedom Caucus demands for another investigation, led by up-and-comer Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, on the constellation of contractors and supplicants around the Clinton Foundation.
Whether the Democrats take the Senate or not, Republicans there will have enough votes to block judicial nominations, and have already made it clear that they will do so. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lost out to Trump, but he and the Donald (soon to be a streaming-video network mogul, it seems) will be on the same page.
If the GOP retains the House majority, they will control the subpoena power on that side, with chairs of committees having almost total leeway to issue them.
Senate committees generally require a majority vote, with each committee apportioned according to which party has the majority in the overall Senate.
That is one reason why Clinton is campaigning so hard for Democratic Senate candidates these days. It’s one thing to have a rump parliament of dead-enders in the House going after you with subpoenas in hand.
It’s quite another if, say, Cruz gets a chairmanship and a committee majority to work with.
And of course the GOP surely, eventually, will call former President Bill Clinton to testify under oath. And he will politely decline in his role as First Gentleman, and then ….
The only way to stop all of this is obvious: a comprehensive, sweeping Democratic landslide ― White House, Senate and House, too. Hillary has to work hard these last 11 days, and hope.