…for a presidential election now only nine months away: It begins as Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination with the acquiescence, if not support, of Republican Respectables like Bob Dole, Orrin Hatch, and Charles Grassley. (They know he’s a demagogic madman but they simply can’t stand Ted Cruz’s rudeness in the Senate cloakroom.) Trump then names Scott Walker as his running mate, reassuring the Respectable Right-Wing base, i.e., National Review and its readers, that if he gets to the White House at least there’ll be a sane conservative around to restrain him (as if Trump were ever to be restrained by a mere vice president).

At the same time, Hillary Clinton, a candidate so flawed she had a hard time putting away a 74-year-old Brooklyn socialist, takes the African-American and independent vote for granted by naming as her vice presidential running mate Julian Castro, former mayor of San Antonio, overlooking (1) existing tension between the African-American and Hispanic base, which would diminish the African-American vote; (2) the fact that mainstream middle Americans, though not xenophobes, would have second thoughts about putting a young, little-known Hispanic named Castro one heartbeat away from the presidency; and (3) with Donald Trump, the “Mexican immigrants are rapists” candidate as her opponent, the Hispanic vote would have turned out if she’d named Donald Duck as her running mate (a Donald they’d consider preferable to the one she was running against).

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders supporters, as lunatic in their ideological purity as their Right-wing counterparts, place a Nader-like third-party candidate on the ballot in key states, and…

No. It’s all too far-fetched. Trump is a political hula-hoop, a fad that will soon pass way. It can’t happen here.

 

Sound bite to remember

Those princes who gain their princedoms by principled means do so with difficulty.

–Machiavelli, The Prince