BY the time you read this, America will be voting for a new president. A Trump victory would arguably represent one of the biggest intellectual and moral setbacks for humanity since we cast off our tails and evolved opposable thumbs. In that context, and that context alone, a Clinton victory would feel like redemption, for now. However, Hillary’s rule will be dangerous if the Bernie Sanders coalition, Black Lives Matter and the genuinely progressive American left don’t find a renewed sense of strength and purpose fast.

When Sanders stood against Clinton, he called her the candidate of Wall Street and the American billionaire class. It’s an apt description. The Clinton family are the serious insiders in America’s corridors of power. “You know I love having the support of real billionaires,” she gushed during the campaign. The billionaires returned the love: at one stage, the super rich were donating 20 times more to Clinton than to Trump. That’s why, sadly, Trump was correct to say that Sanders backing Clinton is like an Occupy activist endorsing Goldman Sachs.

Of course, billionaires are humans too. Even they are embarrassed at the idea of having their country led on the world stage by a tax-dodging, ogreish alleged serial rapist with old-fashioned views straight out of Prince Phillip’s joke book and a hairpiece that looks like toxic yellow smoke. However, the mega wealthy will expect a return on their Hillary investment. Bill Clinton’s time in government meant low taxes, limited government and free trade deals, and they’ll expect more of that under Hillary. Happily, she’s already announced that she sees the Trans-Pacific Partnership as the “gold standard in trade agreements”.

The Clinton consensus that links tech billionaires and feminists, hedge fund managers and lefty activists, old Republican elites and Bernie Sanders, Pentagon hawks and peace protestors, deserves far greater scrutiny. Trump is the world’s most effective pantomime baddie. But Clinton threatens something else. She threatens a future of official corporate political correctness where the battle for real social justice is surrendered.

Many Black Americans gained a new sense of recognition when Obama became president. However, the poverty rate increased, police violence escalated, and the prison-industrial-complex that amounts to legalised slavery went on as before. And while Obama was essentially a concerned liberal with good intentions that were sadly contradicted by his behaviour in power, Clinton is a born neoconservative.

Clinton’s real politics are clearest when we move from domestic to foreign affairs. Nobody consistently supports launching motiveless wars like Hillary Rodham Clinton. Historically, she’s been provoked to armed force quicker than Yosemite Sam.

Indeed, Clinton has the notable distinction of having a war named after her. The Libya intervention of 2011 has been dubbed “Hillary’s war” because she moved with such aggression to push Obama into it. The result has turned a relatively stable and well-off autocracy into a dystopian wasteland of warlords and poverty.

And even as she masterminded the Libyan War, Clinton still found time to sell the Iraq invasion as a “business opportunity” for American corporations.

Then there’s Trump, who, after all, promised a wall with Mexico (Hillary only voted for a fence), a ban on Muslims, aggression towards China; he also said he’d “bomb the shit” out of Daesh. Certainly, his subscription to Peace News has long lapsed. But for pure, unsullied American imperialism, for pointlessly bombing the bejesus out of everything that moves, for the pathetic machismo of a spotty teenager playing Call of Duty, nobody beats Hillary Clinton.

In spite of all this, I still genuinely hope she wins. Angela Davis is right to say that protesting against Clinton will be much easier than protesting against Trump. I agree, 100 per cent. Clinton has a confused mandate that combines billionaire interests, militarists and progressives. Trump has a mandate to do and say whatever he feels like, and, generally, he feels like doing and saying something awful. A Trump victory will probably strengthen the shaky electoral coalition between the Left and the billionaires, in opposition to Trump’s despotism; a Clinton victory could allow room for an independent left agenda. And that’s what the world needs right now.

This election is ultimately a case of what might have been. All the polls showed that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump hands down. As things stand, we’re heading towards a narrow Clinton victory after a campaign that’s sullied American politics and disgraced the name of “democracy”. In that sense, by standing Clinton over Sanders, the Democrats ensured that Trump’s movement will win no matter the result. Vulgarity and corruption have defined an election that could have been a huge victory for social justice. It’s a long road ahead for the American left.