HILLARY: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

The Baby Boomers got us into our present mess, and I guess they will have to get us out of it.  This coming November would be a good place to start.

Men are capable of saying, "He may be an SOB but he is our SOB."  Even if a lot of women didn't care for Hillary, why didn't they say the same thing, and we would have had our first woman president?  With Republicans demeaning Hillary for 25 yrs, too many women believed it, though it was mostly lies.  No, the e-mail server was not a lie, but everyone involved in her e-mails had security clearance so there was was no crime.  And it is said that Pres. Donald Trump uses an unsecured phone, and that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

It is not that I think Hillary would have accomplished a lot before Republicans impeached her since the Baby Boomers would have given her a Republican Senate and House.  In fact, her accomplishments would have been things that didn't happen: like the law that permits mentally unstable people to buy guns, or the election of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, or ruining the ACA, or the verbal war on our allies, or the Muslim Ban, etc.

You might think that Hillary would have gotten an infrastructure bill through.  Maybe, but Republicans don't like infrastructure bills.  Even Donald Trump was for an infrastructure bill (remember $100 billion/yr for 10 years?).  Whatever happened to that?  I heard the other day that Trump was thinking about resurrecting it, but now it is too late.  Now you get very little for your money (construction workers are in short supply and we have economically recovered from the Great Recession.).

The big hope is that Hillary would have flipped on TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and come out for it.  Many Republicans might have gone along with it as free trade is their thing and it would have gone a long way to containing China.

Besides, Republicans really need a Democratic President to find their inner desire for balanced budgets.  I doubt we would have had the recent tax-cut bill paid for entirely by government debt.  With a Republican President, Republicans can be even worse spenders than Democrats, as we have seen.

You may wonder why I don't blame my own generation (1930-1945)  born during the Great Depression followed by WW-II.  Well, I suppose we contributed to it, but there are too few of us to swing elections.  We are the depleted generation.  We never have had a president born during our period.  Of course, Bernie (Sen. Sanders b. 1941) still has a chance, I guess, but he is a bit much for me.  Joe Biden was born in 1942.  Common guys, what kind of a country are we that need our grandparents for president?  No, our time has passed.

And so have some of the Baby Boomers so far as I am concerned.  Elizabeth Warren was born in 1949 so she will be 71 in 2020.  Just for the record, Hillary, born in 1947, will be 73 in 2020.

Speaking of "the time has passed," it has for me as well, as I am 87.  I would like to see a recovery during what time I have left or at least the beginnings of one.  Right now, I don't see it.  Remember, workers gave away their unions.  As ineffective as unions may have been, it was workers only hope for some sort of equality.  So I am not sure that America won't give away Democracy also.  But then, I have been a life-long pessimist.