Don't underestimate Bernie Sanders

Anti-Washington sentiment is the determining factor

hile we wait for Homeland Security to deal with the snow in Washington, D.C. (their motto: “If you're not with us, you're with the snow.”) it's a good time to speculate on the 2016 election.

My take: even if Barack Obama pardons Hillary Milhous Clinton, forget her—she is a frozen leftover Thanksgiving turkey, and her goose is cooked.

Her most definitive line so far was not “What, like with a cloth or something?” or “What difference does it make?” but “I am a real person!”, which Andrew Stiles at Washington Free Beacon noted was just one in a long line of factually challenged statements. (He fact-checked it and declared it “Inconclusive”).

The anti-Washington sentiment that saw Donald Trump taking over the GOP also exists in the Democratic party. For all his faults, Bernie Sanders, the Simon and Garfunkel candidate, is untouched by Benghazi and uncontaminated by Obamolonium. Unlike Hillary, Sanders is not only a real person but is honest about what he stands for. He's forthright about his status as a Damn Yankee socialist. Unless some dark horse shows up, Sanders will therefore walk away with the nomination.

Elections are decided by emotion, empathy, and economics. The two minor factors, ideology and identity politics, are important only for a minority of voters. That is why NRO's special issue, for all its intellectual sophistication, comes off as a commemorative collector's edition of anti-Trump hitpieces. Trump is a centrist, not a conservative. But it is the conservatives who did nothing, like Paul Ryan, that make all of NRO's reasoning irrelevant.

NRO has broken the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Right or wrong, that's what voters will notice. If Trump continues to break it, the voters will notice that, too.

Diary of a new president

The next president is going to have a busy, busy first day in office.

Rand Paul
4:00 - President Rand Paul meets with head of NSA
4:01 - Rand Paul issues executive order banning NSA surveillance
4:02 - Paul bans CIA from spying
4:02:30 - Rand Paul drinks coffee, mysteriously falls into coma
4:02:31 - Vice President Rubio assumes office; reinstates NSA and CIA spying mandate
4:02:32 - President Rubio makes Spanish the official language of the United States; calls up Raul Castro; no one else in White House speaks Spanish, so no one knows what is discussed

Donald Trump
6:00 - President Donald Trump wakes up, starts combing hair
6:05 - 7:00 eliminates Obamacare
7:00 - 9:30 Coffee break; Maxwell House Corporation stock rises 400%
8:30 - Trump finishes combing hair
10:40 - President Trump issues first statement: "The economy is gonna do sooooooo great. You will be amazed at how great the economy is gonna be!!!"
10:41 - Trump calls Putin, offers him a deal: Ukraine for casinos in Moscow and 15,000 missiles
10:45 - Trump issues statement: "I've just made a tremendous deal with Putin. You will be amazed at how wonderful it is. It's going to be sooooooooo great!!!!"
10:46 - Trump pardons Hillary, makes her secretary of state: "We just made a deal, and she's going to be sooooooooooooo great, you're going to be amazed at how great she's going to be!!!"
10:47 - Trump buys Syria; opens combination embassy/casino in Damascus; sizable increase in government revenue; makes uuuuge profit by selling Alaska back to the Russians
10:47:30 - Federal budget balanced
10:48 - Articles of impeachment drawn up against Trump
10:48:01 - Trump fires all 100 senators and 451 representatives
10:50 - Supreme Court rules that Trump has exceeded his authority, can only fire appointees, not elected officials
10:50:01 - Trump fires Supreme Court

Ted Cruz
3:30 - President Ted Cruz wakes up
3:30:05 Cruz Abolishes IRS
3:31 - Cruz eliminates Obamacare
3:31:10 - Washington Post and New York Times simultaneously publish hit pieces against Cruz; NRO tentatively agrees hit pieces make good points
3:32 - Google expunges all pro-Cruz websites from its search engine
3:33 - Bob Dole makes more comments about "cataclysmic" future for America
3:34 - Vice President Donald Trump stages coup, is defeated
4:15 - Cruz reopens Guantanamo, banishes Trump there as the only inmate, Trump renames the island Elba, vows to escape

Jeb Bush
7:00 - 3:30 President Jeb Bush has marijuana break, eats six bags of Doritos; discovers Carly Fiorina was right about it not being the same as the marijuana he smoked forty years ago; has hallucination, decides Putin is a Tyrannosaurus Rex; starts World War III
8:31 - President Bush legalizes marijuana; Surgeon General Ben Carson advises him to "lay off that stuff, man."

Chris Christie
7:00 - 3:30 President Chris Christie has coffee break, eats box of donuts
3:31 - Chris Christie's surgeon general, Ben Carson, tells him to cut down
3:31 - Christie begins War on Marijuana; declares Jeb Bush a pusher; has Bush arrested on drug charges

Ben Carson
10:30-ish - President Ben Carson's alarm clock goes off; wakes up, skips coffee. (it raises his blood pressure, makes him too nervous); checks latest issue of JAMA
10:31-ish - Bans high fructose corn syrup, sugar
10:32-ish - Coca-Cola Corporation declares bankruptcy