Predictions about the future, Yogi Berra observed, are tough to make.  Retrodiction, with the help of hindsight, is much easier.

A Commentary article got me ruminating on an alternative present day — one where Hillary Clinton actually campaigned in Wisconsin and didn't lose the Midwest to a Queens-born parador magnate. 

In President Clinton's America, some differences would be immediately notable: a woman occupying the Oval Office; a libidinous man as first gentleman,; gelded progressive activists not marching in the street in black fatigues or pink vulva hats; a stronger ISIS caliphate; an otiose nuclear deal still in place with Iran; full coffers at the Clinton Foundation; a new war in the Middle East, possibly with Qatar.

That's merely a menu of conjectures.  I'm convinced, however, that one difference between the Trump administration and a Clinton administration redux is certain: the reputation of social media.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of the attention-monetizing programs occupy a unique political space.  While our partisan factions bicker endlessly on topics ranging from the best fast food restaurant to the epistemological nature of reality, they agree on one thing: the malicious influence of the digitized agora.

Conservatives, for the most part, have maintained a healthy skepticism of social media, and the internet more generally.  Edmund Burke decried democracy as rule by the "swinish multitude."  The briefest browsing reveals the internet to be much the same, with hardcore pornography and school fight videos swelling out limited server space.  Some high-profile conservatives have ditched the toxic mire of social media, urging others to follow their lead.

Liberals, on the other hand, applauded the liberating effect of the internet.  On social media, the left swooned over its organizational possibilities and ability to catalyze informal support for a cause, as long as it was progressive.

"Social media's progressive credentials were impeccable," Christine Rosen writes.  "Countless trend stories praised the skill with which Barack Obama's presidential campaign had used data and social-media platforms."

In 2012, the Obama campaign didn't just assiduously use Facebook to its electoral advantage; it wittingly broke the platform's rules to collate voter data.  And Facebook executives looked the other way, currying favor with the administration just as its data collection efforts accelerated.

"President Obama's enthusiasm for Silicon Valley's promises lasted throughout his administration, undisturbed by any concerns about potentially harmful side effects to democracy," Rosen continues, citing numerous mainstream headlines about Obama's forward-minded use of big data.

Of course, liberals have completely reversed field in having case on social media.  The Russian skullduggery from the last presidential election, which any digital marketer will tell you was ineffectual, poisoned the well of goodwill the left had for Facebook and Twitter.  More so, it was Democratic voters who fell hardest for "fake news," heretofore known as propaganda.  Rosen cites a study from Zach Goldberg of Georgia State University that found "social media contributed to the radicalization of white liberals on identity issues in the late Obama years."

Think back to the palmy years of Obama's second term, when movements like Black Lives Matter and radical concepts like gay "marriage" became cause célèbre for the left-leaning.  Facebook introduced avatar skins for sympathizers of leftist causes to signal their support.  An army of rainbow-shaded profile pictures invaded the Facebook timeline when Obergefell was decided —t echnology for progress!

It all seems twee, sitting here in 2020.  Mark Zuckerberg has gone from harmless naïf to imperious Sauron, with a panopticon-like vantage of billions.  Almost every Democrat running for president wants to bust his massive digital trust.  Elizabeth Warren is inveighing against Facebook's advert policy, which allows for the traditional campaign tactics of fibs and truth-stretching.  Some on the right are adjuring President Trump to strip big social media channels of their legal liability protection.

Facebook, in response to critics of its hands-off approach to Muscovite rapscallions during the 2016 election, has bowed to public pressure and curtailed its news feed functionality.  The upshot was countless publications issuing big stacks of walking papers, or shuttering.  With one algorithmic change, Zuckerberg eliminated thousands of jobs, crushing an industry under Facebook's iconic ashen thumb. 

Twitter and Google have adjusted their ad policies in response to liberal demands — the former eliminating political advertising entirely, the latter binning much of its micro-targeting options.  And just like that, Democrats have self-handicapped, cutting off a potent tool that helped their party capture the presidency eight years ago.

The great social media pullback of the lasts three years wouldn't have happened had Hillary Clinton won.  Under President Clinton 2.0, the digital publishing industry would be thriving.  The Clinton re-election campaign would be blasting 30-second teaser videos to urban, upper-class whites with advanced degrees in social science.  No campaign would be wasting money on Twitter's meretricious ad platform, but that's beside the point.

Hillary's loss made social media an enemy of the left.  The change of heart must have come as a surprise to the many Google employees who wept after Trump's victory. The moral of the story is that "no enemies to the left" no longer cuts the progressive mustard. Anything that inhibits leftist politics, no matter how tenuous, must be abrogated. 

Democrats may be about to learn a tough lesson come November: shooting inside the tent isn't a good way to make friends. They usually resent it, or end up dead.