"But we have hope it can be different ..."
It was a roll-call of all the nightmarish things that Republicans fear a Clinton presidency would do: create a "liberal" majority on the Supreme Court, raise taxes, bring in gun control, and spend more money on healthcare for poor Americans. Kasich was the "Only Hope" to prevent this disaster. If Kasich didn't get the Republican nomination, according to the video, then Trump would win it, but then lose the election and put Hillary Clinton into the presidency. That would be followed shortly by dragons, plagues and strange portents in the sky, leading to the End Times.
Well, Kasich is out of the race, Trump will get the Republican nomination, and Clinton will win the presidency by a landslide, just like the video says. Not only that, but the Democrats really may win control of both houses of Congress. Hillary Clinton probably will create a liberal majority on the Supreme Court, tax the rich a bit more, and expand the Affordable Care Act (what Republicans call "Obamacare"). She probably will tackle gun control, too, although you should not hold your breath while awaiting a positive result.
She will certainly push on with Obama's intiatives on climate change and add to them. But will she do anything genuinely surprising? It would be astounding if she did.
Hillary Clinton is "a safe pair of hands", not a radical. On foreign policy, she belongs to the "Washington consensus", so she is suspicious of Russia and Iran, reflexively pro-Israel, and uncertain what to do about China. She resents the fact that people still bring up her vote in support of George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it does highlight her inability to think outside the box.
She takes the standard liberal positions on practically every domestic issue from gay marriage and abortion (cautiously pro) to immigration (no mass deportation of illegals). She has talked about the need to reform the rules on political campaign finances, but would have trouble in getting that through even a Democrat-controlled Congress, and might just decide not to waste her political capital that way.
If all this makes Hillary Clinton sound like a profoundly unexciting president, that would not bother her a bit. Nearly three decades of experience with the political game at the highest level has reinforced her natural tendency to think only in terms of incremental change, and her whole approach to politics is managerial, not transformational. She will not rock the boat.
This is perhaps not such a bad thing in a peacetime leader - and the United States really is at peace, despite the small overseas commitments that entail an occasional military casualty. It is especially not a bad thing in the first female president in American history, just as it was not a bad thing for her predecessor, the first black president in US history.
When you are setting a new precedent for who can hold the office, competence is a better advertisement for the new rules than excitement. It's also the best way to assure a second term - which could be within Hillary Clinton's grasp if the Republican Party splits before or after the electoral debacle that, with Trump as candidate, seems almost certain. Although that would make her 77 at the end of her second term.
-Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
