It seems pretty obvious to me, at this point, that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican presidential nominee and that each of the other candidates is trying to position himself to be the man who leads the Republican Party out of the wilderness that will follow the defeat Mr Trump will suffer at the hands of Hillary Clinton.

I’ve been tweeting at various people about this.  For example:

and:

and:

and:

Ted Cruz hasn’t done significantly better so far than did Rick Santorum in 2012 or any better than Mike Huckabee in 2008, neither of whom emerged as the heir apparent for the next cycle. So his continued presence represents a hope that Republican voters will be slower to coalesce around Mr Trump than they were to coalesce around Mitt Romney in 2012, John McCain in 2008, George W Bush in 2000, Bob Dole in 1996, or George H. W. Bush in 1988, and that he will be able to win some of the states that won’t vote for him. That seems a forlorn hope, since Mr Cruz has drawn almost all of his support from evangelicals, and in no remaining state are there enough of them to put him over the top. His current standing would not seem likely to entrench Mr Cruz even as leader of the far-right counter-establishment, let alone as nominee-in-waiting for the 2020 election.

John Kasich also has to hope that states keep voting against Mr Trump, and if they do he can plausibly hope to be the beneficiary of that opposition. But, there is really no reason to suppose that Mr Trump’s support on the remaining primaries and caucuses will spike any less dramatically than did Mr Romney’s in 2012. If Mr Kasich’s bid ends with him having lost every state but the one where he is governor, he’ll be a punchline, then a trivia question, then a lecturer at the Kennedy School.

Many diehard anti-Trump Republicans have been touting House speaker Paul Ryan as a potential nominee if the Republican convention does not produce a first-ballot winner. Unlikely as that scenario is, a couple of weeks of discussion of it may be enough to qualify Mr Ryan as this cycle’s runner-up, and therefore as the de facto leader of the opposition to the Hillary Clinton administration.

I think this piece on Politico about the failure of the John E. Bush presidential campaign and the challenges facing the Hillary R. Clinton presidential campaign is pretty good, but it misses one key point.

In the USA, people by and large are much more likely today than they were in the past to consider their allegiance to the Democratic or Republican Party an important feature of their social identity. US presidents symbolize their parties. Therefore, when pollsters ask prospective voters their opinion of the person their party most recently elected as US president, the first reflex for many of them will be to express a very high opinion of that person.

It should be no surprise, then, that in 2013 and 2014 polls indicated that most supporters of the Republican Party expressed a high opinion of the Bush-Cheney administration. Leading figures in and around that party decided at that time to coalesce around John E. Bush as the party’s next presidential candidate.  If Republican voters liked George W. Bush so much, why not give them his brother as their next standard-bearer? When the party’s rank-and-file greeted John Bush’s entry into the race with an uncomfortable shifting in the seats and the sound of crickets was heard, party elites cast about for another candidate who could address the putative demand for a return to the Bush-Cheney years. Eventually they settled on Florida senator Marco Rubio, whose policy positions are identical to those of the Bush-Cheney administration. Four states in to the nomination contest, Mr Rubio has yet to win anywhere, and polls indicate that the states where he once seemed to have a chance are now moving out of his reach. His campaign and indeed his political career, will likely end with a humiliating defeat in his home state on 15 March.

What the elites who rallied first around John Bush and then around Mr Rubio missed is that the reflex which leads partisans to tell pollsters that they have a high opinion of the person whom they still see as their party’s leader is largely about those partisans’ reaction to a stranger asking them whether they are loyal members of their party. That reaction doesn’t necessarily predict much about the process of selecting a new leader. So when loudmouth landlord Don-John Trump rejects George W. Bush’s relaxationist stand on immigration and says that George W. Bush lied in making the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, party elites are genuinely surprised that Mr Trump’s support among Republican primary voters seems to go up afterward. Why wouldn’t they be surprised, those voters are the very people who for years told pollsters that George W. Bush had been a good president.

Except among party elites and ideological purists, support for Mr Trump is not likely to mark anyone as a disloyal Republican. Mr Trump’s image as a not-particularly-ethical businessperson who is wont to make racist and sexist remarks fits a stereotype of Republicans; that’s why he is so unpopular outside the Republican Party, but it’s also why his deviations from the party’s familiar line are so acceptable to its traditional supporters. He gives them a way to acknowledge that their party’s leaders have betrayed their interests and ill-served their country without surrendering to Democrats or radicals or foreigners or anyone else outside their ranks.

On the Democratic side, we have a two person race in which one candidate has the support of every major donor, every major media organization, and virtually every elected official, while the other is an elderly Jewish socialist who joined the Democratic Party for the first time last summer. In the first four contests, the elderly Jewish socialist first fought the establishment favorite to a tie, then won by a handy margin, and finally came within four points of winning a second victory before heading into territory where he had not had time to build a campaign.

Coupled with the fact that the same establishment favorite actually lost the Democratic nomination in 2008, Mr Sanders’ early success confirms that the Democrats are going through something similar to what the Republicans have experienced with the failures of the party elite to sell either John Bush or Marco Rubio to their party’s rank-and-file. Going in to the 2008 election cycle, Democrats were telling pollsters of their deep and abiding love for former president William J. “Bill” Clinton. As their Republican counterparts would, eight years later, offer George W. Bush’s brother to their party, so Democratic Party elites in that cycle offered Bill Clinton’s wife as a presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton’s backing for the Iraq War out her at odds with the Democratic Party’s base, dooming her candidacy in 2008 as John Bush’s for a relaxationist immigration policy doomed him among Republicans in 2016. As in 2016 Mr Trump’s fit with stereotyped images of Republicans enables him to hold onto the support of the party faithful while denouncing Republican leaders, so in 2008 voting for the first black US president was so much a thing one would expect Democrats to do that Ms Clinton could not make headway by casting doubt on the status of Barack Obama’s supporters as true Democrats.

That Hillary Clinton has come back is a sign, in part of the declining salience of war and peace as an issue in a Democratic Party led by a president who is currently bombing half-a-dozen countries or more, and in part of the party’s failure to replace Bill Clinton’s Finance First strategies. By Finance First, I refer not only to Bill Clinton’s campaign strategy of lining up finance before formulating policy proposals or doing anything else, but also to the economic policy that was a corollary to that, in which his administration addressed the demands of the finance sector before attending to any other concerns.

Finance First is not an approach that comes naturally to the sorts of people who tend to vote for Democrats, and is in fact anathema to most of them. In view of the distribution of wealth in today’s USA, however, and considering that neither organized labor or ethnically or religiously based political groups can any longer turn out enough volunteers to counteract the power of the money-men, it is not obvious that any approach other than Finance First can elect a president or sustain one in office. The Democratic Party’s elites, therefore, see the presidential nominee’s job as persuading the base to accept Finance First.

Though Finance First has enabled the Democrats to win five of the last six presidential elections (falling within the margin of error in 2000, when the party nominated an exceptionally maladroit candidate,*) it has not served them well overall. When Bill Clinton was first nominated in 1992, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, most state legislative chambers, most governorships, most elected county and municipal offices, and had for decades. A quarter century into the dominance of Finance First, the Republicans hold 70% of all elected offices in the USA. Even if Hillary Clinton defeats Don-John Trump in a landslide come November, that isn’t going to change. Indeed, since the party in the White House usually takes a drubbing in the midterm elections, by the end of the first term of the Hillary Clinton administration the Democrats will probably be in a much weaker position even than they are now.

For Mr Trump to challenge the Bush-Cheney relaxationist line on immigration is not a radical departure for his party. Restrictionists do tend to cluster in the Republican Party, and the party elite can retain its commitment to a low-wage economy even without significant relaxation of border controls. Likewise for the Democrats and an issue like the Iraq War; while militarism is a central feature of the American economic system and a challenge to it would represent a profound revolt against both major parties, one can always express reservations about a particular war without standing for a demilitarization of the US economy and society. Barack Obama’s emphasis on his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq in his 2008 campaign was, therefore, within the bounds of what the Democratic Party is capable of handling.

What Mr Sanders is doing, however, is a head-on challenge to the whole Finance First model.  Even if he had worked out a viable alternative, that would be a breathtakingly audacious undertaking. If he ends up with something like 40% of the popular vote at the end of the primary season, I think we may see a great deal of effort put into developing such an alternative between now and the next open Democratic nomination. If a hardy campaign on behalf of Mr Sanders in the primary is followed by a significant vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election, I am confident that such an effort will have a noticeable effect on the Democratic Party’s overall direction.

*Then-US Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Junior.  Mr Gore likes to be called “Al.”  I call him “The Tennessee Turd.”

Yesterday I saw a piece on Politico called “Jeb Bush is 2016’s John Kerry.” Reading that, it struck me why I had thought that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker had a 90% chance of emerging as next year’s Republican nominee for president: I was unconsciously assuming that the 2016 Republican contest would play out along the lines of the 2004 Democratic contest.

In the Politico piece author Bill Scher mentions that former Florida governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush is currently registering 4% support on polls of likely Republican primary voters, then reminds us that in November 2003 then-Massachusetts senator John Forbes “John Forbes” Kerry registered 4% support in polls of likely Democratic primary voters. Since Mr Kerry went on to win his party’s nomination, Mr Scher suggests, Mr Bush might be able to follow his example and become the Republican nominee next year.

I don’t agree with Mr Scher’s analysis. What makes the 2016 Republican contest look so much like the 2004 Democratic one is that the early going is dominated by an unlikely insurgent, former Vermont governor Howard Brush “Doctor” Dean among the Democrats in 2004, loudmouth landlord Donald John “Don John” Trump among the Republicans this year.  In each case, the insurgency is fueled by the disconnect between the party’s elite and its mass supporters over one key issue. In 2004, the vast majority of Democrats were firmly convinced that it had been a mistake for the USA to invade Iraq the year before, while the party’s moneymen were giving their backing to presidential candidates and other politicians who supported the war. Dr Dean rose to the head of the Democratic polls as the only seemingly plausible candidate who was unequivocally opposed to the war. This time around, over 90% of Republicans are firmly convinced that immigration policy should be made more restrictive, while the party’s moneymen are giving their backing to presidential candidates and other politicians who want to make it less restrictive. As the loudest and most extreme restrictionist voice, Mr Trump has driven relaxationists like Mr Bush to the sidelines.

How did John Kerry, who voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and didn’t admit that he’d been wrong to do so until 2006, manage to win the nomination of a party whose voters were almost as solidly against that war in 2004 as Republican voters are today against the relaxationist line on immigration to which candidates like Mr Bush are committed? First, he benefited from good luck, as Dr Dean and then-Missouri Representative Richard “Dick” Gephardt allowed themselves to be drawn into a highly visible and extremely unattractive personal feud in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, an event held in a state where people famously value politeness.  That feud knocked those two men out of contention there, opening the door for Mr Kerry to win a surprise victory in Iowa which led directly to wins in New Hampshire and the other early states, turning him from a no-hoper to a front-runner almost overnight.

Second, the only people who pay much attention to a presidential campaign the year before the voting starts are enthusiasts and professionals. The enthusiasts greatly outnumber the professionals, and are not consistently focused on the ability of a candidate to win a general election. Once the voting starts, a wider variety of people check in to the process, and electability is usually one of their top concerns. Dr Dean did not look like a very good bet to beat George Walker “W” Bush in that year’s general election, and other antiwar candidates, such as then-Ohio Representative Dennis “Look at My Wife!” Kucinich and the Rev’d Mr Alfred “Al” Sharpton seemed likely to pose even less formidable challenges to Mr Bush.  Mr Kerry struck those voters as a likelier winner, and while his support for the Iraq war would prove to be an embarrassment in the general election, his background as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and as a relatively dovish senator reassured Democrats that once in office, he would be eager to end the ongoing wars and reluctant to launch new ones.

Mr Bush may yet benefit from fighting among the top-tier candidates, but the rest of the scenario that put Mr Kerry on the top of the Democratic ticket seems most unlikely to replay itself in his favor. As the brother of George W. Bush, Mr Bush has always faced serious doubts about his electability, making him an unlikely recipient of votes from people looking for a winner.  And as someone who has for decades been outspoken and firm in his support for a relaxationist approach to immigration, he has no credentials at all that would make him acceptable to Republican restrictionists as Mr Kerry’s antiwar past made him acceptable to Democratic doves. In that way, Mr Bush’s 2004 analogue is not the once-and-future peace campaigner Mr Kerry, but then-Connecticut senator Joseph Isadore “Joe” Lieberman, whose near-universal name recognition as the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee gave him a place at the top of the polls when campaigning started, but whose relentless hawkishness pushed him first to the back of the Democratic pack, and then out of the party altogether.

Other candidates who might be acceptable to the Republican party’s elites, notably former Hewlett-Packard CEO Cara Carleton “Carly” Forina and New Jersey governor Christopher James “Chris” Christie, have been making restrictionist noises of late.  If history repeats itself in the way Mr Scher suggests, it will likely be one of those two, not Mr Bush, who clambers over the wreckage of the Trump insurgency to enter the top tier of candidates.

So, how do I think the race will go?  The Republican elites who have despaired of Mr Bush are now apparently trying to push Florida senator Marco Antonio “I dreamed there was an Emperor Antony” Rubio forward. If r Rubio manages to open the voting by winning the Iowa caucuses on 1 February, he will likely go into the 9 February New Hampshire primary with the kind of momentum that swept John Kerry to victory in that contest in 2004, and like Mr Kerry will be poised to run the table of major contests, winning the nomination easily.

If Mr Rubio does not win Iowa, the likeliest winner there is Dr Benjamin Solomon “Ben” Carson, whose deep well of support from the Christian right virtually ensures that he can stay in the nomination race as long as he likes, taking 10%, 20%, 30% of the vote in state after state until the last primaries on 28 June.  Dr Carson has no plausible path to the nomination, but his supporters are so devoted and well-organized that no foreseeable event that will force him to drop out of the field.

If neither Mr Rubio nor Dr Carson wins Iowa, then the winner there is likely to have been Texas senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz.  Mr Cruz is running a campaign that strikes many observers as the most similar to a winning campaign of any in the field at the moment, he has been concentrating his efforts on Iowa, and his hard-right profile might appeal to Republican caucus-goers.  If Mr Cruz does win Iowa, he will probably go directly to South Carolina for a showdown with Dr Carson.  If Mr Cruz wins both Iowa and South Carolina, he might consolidate the support of the Republican right-wing; if not, he will struggle to stay in the field, no matter how well-balanced the structure of his campaign may be.

New Hampshire’s primary is the least predictable of the early contests.  Seven candidates have a real chance of winning there: Mr Rubio, Mr Christie, Mr Kasich, Ms Fiorina, Mr Trump, Mr Cruz, and Mr Bush.  While New Hampshire is typically leery of hard-right figures such as Mr Cruz, the presence of so many other candidates, coupled with the possibility of a boost from an upset win in Iowa, makes it possible that he might win there with 20% of the vote or so.  And Mr Trump’s strong polling in that state is to be taken relatively seriously, as New Hampshire residents do check into the process a bit earlier than do most Americans.

If Mr Christie, Ohio governor John Richard “Ouch! My Back!” Kasich, Ms Fiorina, or Mr Bush should win the New Hampshire primary, that candidate would become an alternative for Republican elites in case Mr Rubio falters.  It would be very difficult for any of these candidates to follow up such a win, however, since none of then is currently operating an organization in or raising funds from even half the states where the nomination will be decided.  And none of those four can continue without a win in New Hampshire.  But Mr Rubio is in many ways an extraordinarily slight figure; he does not lead the field in national polling, early-state polling, fundraising, cash on hand, organization, endorsements, or any other measurable index of strength.  He is a first-term senator who would be facing an uphill battle for reelection were he trying to become a second term senator; only 15% of Floridian voters say they would like to see him as president.  So he might collapse after a loss in New Hampshire, and one of these four might move into the elite-favorite role.  If that is Mr Christie or Ms Fiorina, that role might culminate in the nomination.  Mr Bush and Mr Kasich, however, are so badly compromised in so many ways that even the united support of the establishment probably could not get them past Mr Cruz or Mr Trump.

If the winner in New Hampshire is Mr Rubio, Mr Trump, or Mr Cruz, those elites will have only Mr Rubio available to them as the sort of candidate who makes them comfortable.  That would suit Mr Rubio’s interests, of course. However, it may also suit Mr Trump or Mr Cruz.  Those men do not want to gain the support of the party’s establishment; they want to revolutionize the party and replace its establishment.  If the GOP’s principal moneymen rally around Mr Rubio after New Hampshire, Mr Trump or Mr Cruz may choose that moment to drive the message home to the party’s restrictionist base that Mr Rubio is as much a relaxationist as Mr Bush.  Drop that hammer, and the Rubio 2016 may seem less like an army to march with and more like a burning building to be trapped in come the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses of 1 March.

So there are a number of ways that the race could play out.  It is quite possible that Mr Rubio will win every major contest.  It is equally possible that after Super Tuesday, Mr Trump and Mr Cruz will be the two candidates fighting it out for the nomination.  The “smart-money” pundits seem to be expecting a Rubio-Cruz showdown; I don’t see a lot of scenarios where those two men are both viable candidates after 1 March, though certainly some of them are possible.  And one of the other four elite-friendly candidates could win New Hampshire, pick up the wreckage of a Rubio collapse, and go on to edge out Mr Cruz or Mr Trump after a hard-fought primary season.

No idea which of those other clowns will make it, though.  John Kasich waited a year too long to start campaigning, Marco Rubio has too many skeletons in his closet, Jeb Bush doesn’t even have his own mother’s sincere endorsement, and none of the others is at appealing to the GOP donor class.  Maybe Messr.s Kasich, Rubio, and Bush will all stay in the race long enough to divide the mainstream Republican vote and allow one of the protest candidates to squeak in as the nominee.  Probably not- probably Bush will be the next to go, and Kasich won’t catch on beyond the scale of John McCain’s 2000 campaign, and Rubio’s closet door will stay tightly enough closed that his skeletons won’t prevent him facing off against Hillary Clinton.  But still, it is a remarkably volatile situation.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: Mega-billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch seem to have settled on Mr Walker as their preferred candidate, and most of the other super-rich guys who finance the Republican Party seem satisfied with their choice.  Some eccentric billionaires might choose to boost other candidates, and there are candidates who might be able to keep their names on ballots throughout the process without big money backing, but the way the US process works, the Kochs (pronounced “Cokes,” as in what may as well be Mr Walker’s personal anthem, “I’d like to sell the Kochs the world, to do with as they please/ I’d like to sell the Kochs the world, and make the workers scream…”)

Former Florida Governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush: Entered the race as the presumed front-runner, has struggled to stay in the top tier.  Perhaps he ran for president of the wrong country.

New York real estate heir-turned-reality TV star Donald Trump: Has attracted a large following among Republicans while espousing ideas that do not fit with the anti-tax, ultra-free trade orthodoxy of the party’s Washington-based policy elite.  I grant that his ideas are not good ones, but the interesting thing he has demonstrated is that there is a market among Republicans for ideas that Grover Norquist wouldn’t like.  Perhaps the next cycle will feature a Republican candidate or two who has ideas that are both unorthodox and good.

Democrats:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: 99% chance of being the Democratic presidential nominee.  If something unforeseen happens to her while the filing deadlines for the primaries are still open, or after she has accumulated a majority of delegates, then Vice President Joseph Biden will likely enter the race and the party’s moneymen will transfer their loyalty to him.  So Mr Biden has a 0.9% of being nominated.  If both Ms Clinton and Mr Biden become unavailable for some reason, then the establishment will find some other stooge to put in that place; former Vice President Albert Gore has been mentioned in that connection, but it could be any of a number of people.  So I’d give “Some Other Stooge” a 0.09% chance.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley: If, due to some freak occurrence, Hillary Clinton becomes unavailable after the filing deadlines have closed and before a majority of delegates have been selected, then an already announced candidate would likely win the nomination.  Mr O’Malley’s campaign seemed at first to be premised on this remote possibility, that he might be the person to step in should such a thing happen.  He carries some pretty heavy baggage, though, and it’s hard to imagine that the party would rally around so obviously flawed a candidate in the turmoil that would follow Ms Clinton’s sudden implosion at so inopportune a moment.  Therefore, I wouldn’t assign a very large fraction of the 0.01% chance that the party will nominate someone other than Ms Clinton, Mr Biden, or Some Other Stooge to him.  Perhaps 0.001% might be a fair estimate of his likelihood of being nominated.

Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders: A vote for Mr Sanders is a vote for the Democratic Party to move to the left on economic issues, and so I plan to cast my ballot for him.  Were he a viable candidate for the nomination, however, it would be necessary to oppose him vigorously.  I’d say that the biggest problem with US policy in Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa is that we are too supportive of Saudi Arabia’s various projects, as the biggest problem with our policy in Europe and Northwest Asia is that we are too supportive of Germany’s ambitions.  In each case, the tail has wagged the dog so strongly that the US has waged multiple wars that do not promote any identifiable national interest of this country.  Mr Sanders not only does not see it this way, but actually calls for the USA to show even greater deference than it already does to Saudi Arabia.  Be that as it may, Democratic voters are if anything less likely to turn to Mr Sanders as a safe harbor in the event of a Clinton collapse than they are to turn to Mr O’Malley.  The “socialist” label he has from time to time embraced will likely scare many of them off, his ludicrously feeble response when two or three people from Outside Agitators 206 confronted him a couple of weeks ago left him looking like Abraham Beame, and any aggressiveness he might muster in an attempt to breathe life back into his flagging campaign would also alienate the Clintonite voters who would become available in that event.  So 0.001% is a generous estimate of his chance of winning the nomination.

Former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee: As a bland moderate who is attracting no support the polls can measure, Mr Chafee will probably not have made a negative impression on anyone by the time the voting starts.  Therefore, if he can file delegates, he will be in the best position to become the substitute candidate should something happen to knock Hillary Clinton out of the race between the end of December and the beginning of April.  Perhaps his chance of winning the nomination should be rated as high as 0.005%

Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb: I’ve left 0.003% unaccounted for.  I wouldn’t give more than about a 0.0001% chance to Mr Webb.  I like him a lot, but he isn’t the sort of fellow today’s Democratic Party would find at all appealing.  The other 0.0029% is a reserve in case something entirely unforeseen happens, like a deadlocked convention or a genuine insurgency on behalf of a non-establishment candidate or an asteroid striking the earth and canceling the election, something that is theoretically possible and should be given some kind of numerical value, though it can be disregarded for all practical purposes.