Is this the year neither party can win the election? The two front-runners in each major party seem to suggest that it’s so. The Democrats have the leaden and scandal-plagued Hillary Clinton facing a 74-year-old socialist from a small left-wing state. And should she face legal woes, the fallback positions of the party of youth and diversity are boring old white men past or near 70 who have run losing races before.
Meanwhile, the two leading candidates in the Republican field poll very badly in the general election match-ups, with Donald Trump putting off independents and many Republicans, while Ted Cruz, who set out to make his colleagues dislike him, is finding out now that he did. In a just world all should lose badly, and would if they were not facing each other. But those who helped to make all this happen are not hard to find.
Look no further than your friendly neighborhood dynasties, the Bushes and Clintons, who tried to squeeze out other more viable candidates, while using their caches of cash and connections to prop up their clueless and cratering kin.
Part of the blame for the Democrats’ drought goes to President Obama, whose politics wiped out two cycles of Democrats. But more goes to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who from the day she conceded in 2008 made it apparent to all in their party that the nomination in 2016 would be hers. But that was before her scandals erupted — the Clinton Foundation, the Libya mess, along with the mess with the email and server, which emerged only after viable Democrats had passed on a challenge, and had neither the time nor the stomach to start one up now. Tied to a candidate who may be indicted, they have few choices left but to pray for the best and hope that the Republicans come up with somebody even more dubious — which, thanks to the Bushes, may really come true. There was no candidate drought on the Republican side when Jeb Bush dropped his shock and awe bomb on the GOP field last December, his intent being to use the money and clout built up through forty years and two generations to scare off, crush or starve in its cradle the most talented field in some years.
At the start it hampered the fundraising efforts of Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, forcing them to retrench and shift course at a critical moment, while doing nothing to help their own candidate, who, starting as the front-runner at 18 percent of the vote, fell now to a low point of 4 percent. At the same time, Bush emerged as the foil to Trump, the perfect establishment tool to beat up on, mocking his weakness, his lack of a message and the presumption with which he proceeds.
An inert figure by now buoyed only by money, Bush continues to clog up the anti-Trump channel, preventing cohesion and directing his fire not at The Donald but at his more viable rivals, spending $20 million in ads against Rubio, his erstwhile protege when they were in Florida, against whom he seems to be holding a grudge. “Trump has had few better allies than Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Bush’s candidacy,” Steven Hayes tells us, correctly. In the meantime, clueless as ever, Bush looks to his mother, now pushing 90, to help pull him out of his hole.
While the Democrats cling to the back of Hillary’s tiger, afraid to get off but frightened to be there, Jeb continues to embarrass himself and to weaken his party. Isn’t it time they went home?
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
