2016

With the entry and then exit of Mitt Romney [rather like one of those old stage farces in which a character pops out of a door and then turns around and disappears again], the 2016 presidential race is beginning to take shape.  Hillary Clinton is far and away the best prepared, most accomplished, most impressive Republican in the field.  Unfortunately, she is running for the nomination on the Democratic ticket.  [When I was young, she would have been called a Rockefeller Republican -- hawkish on foreign policy and completely in thrall to Wall Street.]    That leaves everyone to the left of the middle without a candidate.  I gave $100 to Bernie Sanders today, but that was just a quiet, personal protest.  I mean, if someone who calls himself a Socialist pokes his head up and sniffs the air, I have to do something, right?  But that is not going anywhere.

By the time another fifteen months have gone by, I will be so freaked out by the person who is winning the Republican nomination race, whomever that is, that I will be supporting Clinton.  Just the Supreme Court nominations are reason enough.  But it is hard, at my age, to contemplate going into my nineties with little or no hope of a serious leftward move in American politics.