It was a dream for many, a nightmare for more. But there was no doubting America was prepared for what had long seemed inevitable. It had been years in the making, each step carefully measured to crack, then shatter that glass ceiling and reach the promised land of unbridled progressive power. It would only take the voters of America making the obvious choice.
President Hillary Clinton.
Okay, so it didn’t turn out that way. But we can certainly dream of what it would have been like, as we did here at Liberty Nation in the mythical first 100 days of the Hillary presidency. But the good folks at CBS went further, devoting the first episode of their show The Good Fight to a fully produced alternate reality: how these last three years might have looked if Hillary had not called millions of people deplorable, and bothered to visit Wisconsin and … well, you know the rest. It is part spoof, part message-based commentary, and – most surprisingly – even occasionally a call out to their own people.
Now, it is undeniable that primetime network shows have generally descended to the point of open, if cleverly veiled, political indoctrination. Hollywood’s leftist values – all illegals are victims, women are always smarter than men, conservatives are greedy, corrupt climate-deniers et al. – are hard to miss. They draw you into the series with excellent production values, fine acting, and intriguing plot lines. Then, once you’re hooked, they feed you a steady stream of virtue-signaling talking points enveloped in gauzy or horrifying stories of down-on-their-luck victims of the man.
Of all the shows aired by CBS, and perhaps on the entirety of primetime TV, The Good Fight has been the most transparently anti-Trump. Most of the shows settle for references – slights, usually – to fictional conservatives, but this one is aimed directly at the actual 45th president. It takes you deep into the mind of the resistance. It features Diane Lockhart, a highly successful lawyer at a prominent left-wing law firm and political activist so repulsed by Trump over the first three years of the show that she approaches a psychotic break. But then comes episode one of season four.
It opens with Lockhart watching the same TV that drove her to drink in reality, watching Trump take the oath of office, but this time she’s witnessing the inauguration of the first woman president. She can’t believe what she’s seeing, addled by the memory of three years of a real-life Trump presidency, but she starts to celebrate wildly, as if Trump’s victory was just a bad dream, a nightmare.
In a fog, she heads to her law office and is told President Clinton’s press secretary is ready to meet. Beyond confused, she has to ask coworkers if Trump isn’t president. Of course not, she’s told. Hillary won the election by three million votes. Message: Abolish the electoral college.
Asked about her dream by colleagues incredulous at the thought that Trump could possibly have won, even in a nightmare, she lays out the house of horrors: “He kept calling Nazis very fine people. He did a Senate campaign for a child molester. He put children in cages.” When asked why, she replies predictably, “anti-Semitism and racism were on the rise.” She recoils in horror at the thought of it all.
But there’s a monkey wrench. Asked where the Obamas were during this nightmare, she replies, “they had an overall deal at Netflix.” So, not all the slings and arrows of this retrospective fantasy are directed at Trump and the right. More on that later in the show.
Lockhart is astonished to learn that Merrick Garland and Elizabeth Warren are on the now majority-progressive Supreme Court. She is a majordomo at her left-wing firm (though, hilariously, the cast includes a single black partner who supported Trump and is continuously beaten about the head for it), and nobody there even knows who Brett Kavanaugh is. They discuss how they must emphasize income inequality in order to win Justice Warren’s vote on a key case pending before the court. Message: If only Trump and the Russians hadn’t stolen the election, imagine the new progressive frontiers the high court would have opened up by now.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg because, yes, the Hillary era has produced Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, a comeback by polar bears, salvation of the rainforest, and – are you ready? Are you sure? – a cure for cancer! But Lockhart is warned that conservatives are still on the prowl over Hillary’s emails, Bill’s $500 haircut, Benghazi, and even the travel office scandal when she was the first lady. Two messages:
- Conservatives – and the vanquished Trump, who was relegated to starting the now fast-fading Trump TV – would have nothing more than imaginary scandals about which to complain if the election turned out properly. Because Hillary has cured cancer, halted global warming, and saved the rainforest. Duh.
- Even as she presides over a cure for cancer, for heaven’s sake, Hillary never gets credit for anything. Just like always.
But then, a bolt from the blue, a double whammy. As both a prominent leftist attorney and head of an activist women’s group, Lockhart is charged with representing and honoring – wait for it – Harvey Weinstein, that longtime benefactor of the feminist movement. She knows what her colleagues don’t about his sexual exploits, but when she explains, the activists dismiss her stringent objections. They say Hillary is president, so the women’s movement is secure, all is well, and Harvey is beyond question as a major supporter of pro-choice causes for decades. In fact, Lockhart is actually asked by Hillary’s people to delete the hashtag she is now attempting to popularize: #metoo. Message: The feminist movement might have gotten too comfortable – and the #metoo movement would likely never have happened – if the 2016 election turned out as they hoped and fully expected.
Lockhart does eventually wake up to learn the three-year-long nightmare was real – but not before understanding the essence of her mystical experience. The Trump era may be a wasteland for leftists, the unthinkable fulfillment of their own worst fears, but a Hillary era might not have been all it was cracked up to be either. For this message alone about the unintended consequences of our political choices, we should be grateful.
After all, we now approach what could have been the home stretch of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for re-election.
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Read more from Tim Donner.
