Today is the day that it could all go sideways. With five States, including Florida, heading to the polls to determine who their preferred nominee for President will be it could be all but over after the last winner is announced.
For the Democrats, it's time to see whether the perpetually presumptive one can hold off the raging socialist with no grasp of financial literacy. FiveThirtyEight thinks her majesty will but they thought the same way in Michigan and look what happened there.
The Democratic establishment is getting just a bit worried, as their party appears to be in the midst of a revolt that's not only going unreported, but which is being dishonestly reported when the media does pay attention to it.
The Republicans have the same problem, except their numbers are even worse. While Hillary has a lead in the delegate count, and is still most likely to win the nomination, her numbers point to weakness in the MidWest that make it harder for her to climb the steps to the Presidency.
The biggest problem, for Republicans, is that their candidate most likely to beat Hillary in November, is not only trailing badly in the polls, but is likely to be former candidate Rubio after today. Because if Rubio loses Florida, there is no path forward for him, and he should drop out and allow the remaining voters to cast their lots behind either the opportunist Senator from Texas, or the Bronzed Ego.
Things are so bleak on the Republican side that a brokered convention leading to a Romney re-boot is the consensus best choice of all the bad choices facing party leadership. It's either that or support Trump, which GOP National Chairman Reince Priebus has pledged the GOP will do. Not ALL of the GOP of course. Those of us who have vowed #NeverTrump won't, and neither will a lot of others who aren't as active on political social media but who will just tune out.
Of course, a brokered convention effectively ends the GOP as well, and will cause chaos among those many voters who supported Trump. The question remaining is whether or not facing down a rigged primary system is going to hurt the Democrats as well?
My early guess is no, because the Democratic leadership has a much tighter grip on the rank and file than do Republicans. Yes, the Bern has made some inroads with predominately poor, white Democrats, but his campaign hasn't been allowed to escalate into a movement as has Trumps. It is somewhat ironic that the party that, on a superficial level, supports voting rights, chooses to handle it's candidate selection process through an early network of party officials and insiders known as "Superdelegates" while the supposed vote-suppressing GOP has let the mob run wild.
And running wild they are. No group during this process has taken a harder hit to their credibility than has the so-called "conservative media". In the process of endorsing, and slathering, over Trump infotainers such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have exposed themselves as operating without principle in search of a buck. Some of the more odious players, such as Breitbart.com and Ann Coulter, have just exposed themselves as D-level shock jocks with racist and misogynist tendencies.
Their grip on what's left of the conservative movement is, hopefully, loosened. However, given the gullibility of the masses I'm unsure whether what follows is going to be any better.
I implied earlier in this that the two parties are facing much the same problems. While they are on different sides, this is true. Both the Democrats and Republicans are facing the anger of the poor, white blue-collar worker that they've ignored for years. The Democrats claimed to be a friend of the American Worker while pushing policies that decimated them. The Republicans promised prosperity that would flow if the wealthy were just "taxed a little less" and allowed to use capital to create "good-paying" jobs. These promises never emerged as the GOP donor class took those tax credits and redistributed them to their stock-holders or the corporations held the cash in reserves.
Both parties promised that Government would fix the poor-man's problems, but instead they exacerbated it by forwarding tax structures and regulatory obstacles to social mobility. Unlike what the media tells you it is not the income gap that is the problem, it's that the government has been busy for the last 20 years burning all of the economic bridges between the classes and effectively putting an end to social mobility. In effect, the government regulatory state and crony capitalism have put the American Dream out of reach for most citizens. They've rigged the game if you will.
The Democrats answer to this is to make the strata more rigid, by burning down the middle class and offering feel-good solutions such as increases in the minimum wage that will only create more unemployed. The Republicans have countered by offering to put more money in the hands of the wealthy or, in the case of Ted Cruz, implement a European-style Value-Added-Tax in place of an income tax. One that will be passed immediately onto consumers and which will be even more onerous than the current system.
Fortunately, for the campaigns of the Bronzed Ego and Angry Bernie a large chunk of the electorate that follows them doesn't understand how global markets work. Instead people are just angry that "the Government was here, and they were here to help." That the solutions offered up by El Bronzo and Captain Angry are like giving a cancer patient the flu is lost on most of their supporters.
All of which brings us to March 15th.
Today I'm afraid that the last adult in the race is going to lose his home State, and drop out of proceedings, leaving us with a choice between four adolescent candidates (and, of course, the delusions of Kasich) whose campaign strategies are nothing more than to shriek the loudest, make the most out-there promises, and control that anger all the way to the nomination and beyond.
Certainly Rubio was not a perfect candidate. He was very (extremely) weak on corporate welfare (namely, sugar tariffs) and government spying. But there has been no candidate in this race who has done a better job offering up a hopeful vision for the country than has Rubio. Except for his ill-advised dalliance with Trump's hand-size, he has been the most optimistic candidate in terms of vision.
And he'll most likely be gone after today.
What remains is, most probably, going to be the next President of the United States of America. Your choices are now going to be a man who is nothing more than an over-sized ego and a Napoleonic complex so big it is threatening to burst through its fake-tanned wrapper. A Jr. Senator from Texas who no-one seemingly likes, and who either thinks that shutting down the IRS is a viable plan or he's conning his supporters. A Governor from Ohio who's father was a mailman, and who refuses to believe that he's been beaten. An Angry Statist who has learned to mask his lack of understanding of basic financial principles behind a veil of socialism (but which is really just a crony system designed to keep the right members of the ruling class in power). Or a candidate who truly believes that it is her destiny to become President and has proven a willingness to do, say or promise anything to get there.
In short, it's pretty dire folks. The State of the Union is decidedly not strong, and it's future prospects are getting worse with each passing day. We might just look back on March 15, 2016 as the day the last, best hope (however flawed it was) abandoned the race and left us with a beggar's choice of horrible options, a political game of "would you rather?" in which there is no good choice. Amazingly, once again, it appears we're placing our hopes on Florida.
God help us all.
