WASHINGTON – The morning after, the nation awakes asking: What have we done?
Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away. The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with the second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage – money, experience, name recognition, residual goodwill from her husband’s successful 1990s – yet could not put away until this week an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.
Bernie Sanders did have one advantage. He had something to say. She had nuthin’. Her Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still can’t get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?
So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton, unloved, untrusted, living under the shadow of an FBI investigation.
Instead, they nominate Donald Trump – conspiracy theorist, fabulist, admirer of strongmen.