We have been robbed this election season. We deserved a presidential race that focused on the tremendous challenges the country faces.
Instead we got a year of reality TV that has exposed and deepened the already yawning divides in our country. Once upon a time, elections were about issues. This election has become a pathetic game-show version of the process that we once brought us Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Obama.
Candidates would tell us what they stood for, what they would do, and they would connect their plans with their larger vision of the role of government. Democrats generally argued that government should have a more expansive role, and Republicans argued for a smaller role. But there was a shared understanding that government actually had a role.
This consensus has been unraveling for a while, as the tea party and Obama haters have been leading the charge. The federal government has been in gridlock for years. The message is that the federal government can do nothing well.
And into this mess steps Trump.
Donald Trump is that kid that we all knew growing up. He was that kid who blamed someone else whenever he got in trouble. If you were a girl, he snapped your bra strap or pulled your hair, then ran away laughing at you.
He had a derogatory nickname for everyone outside his circle of toadies. If someone called him a name, he would retort, “I know you are but what am I?”
His teachers and parents were thrilled when he got through a few days without getting into trouble, and the kids all knew that he just hadn’t gotten caught yet. He was the kid who got away with it because – you know – boys will be boys.
He had to be the center of attention. He had the best toys, the best house, the most stuff. And he made it very difficult for anyone who crossed him.
Old-school Republicans recognize him for the overgrown adolescent that he is. But 16 candidates were unable to put aside ambition and unite around a candidate that could defeat Trump.
And now, many of them have set aside their principles and endorsed a man that they detest. I’m grateful that our governor is not one of them.
One of the candidates did try to run for president in the way candidates have always run. Hillary Clinton has been running a serious campaign against a showman.
We know Hillary. She has been in the public eye a long time. She isn’t a Barack Obama, going from the Senate to the presidency in four short years. She doesn’t have his rhetorical gifts and she doesn’t have his grace.
We know her husband too; a charmer and a man who was unable to be faithful to the woman who loves him. Of course she is flawed, as we all are.
But more importantly, Hillary is a passionate public servant who has worked on behalf of children and families for decades. Her work for social justice spans decades. She understands that an effective and active federal government can improve the lives of people that Trump has never cared about until they became necessary to put him in the White House.
Hillary will win in Massachusetts. And I hope she will win the election and become our next president. It’s not just because she will be a great president and not just because we are overdue for a woman leader.
It’s also because it’s really important for us to do something that so many Republican elected officials haven’t been able to do. We must repudiate the guy who said “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
This is a time to take a stand against Trumpism. I hope that Massachusetts and the rest of the country, through our votes, will roundly defeat Trump. I hope we will chase this bully off the stage.
And I hope that our votes will give Hillary a mandate to make American government work again.
Clare Higgins of Northampton, the city’s former mayor, is executive director of the nonprofit Community Action! of the Franklin, Hampshire and North Quabbin Regions. She writes a monthly column and can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.