The Sunshine Empire

Those who feed their families on the grind of political commentary have already begun the arduous process of deciding what caused the political death of Hillary Clinton whilst the corpse of her Presidential aspirations is still warm.  In August of last year, in anticipation of this election cycle I read Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s classic Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ‘72.  I remember on a flight to Cleveland I wrote in a notebook that being the front-runner seemed to be a death sentence in Democratic politics.  At the time in 2007 Hillary Clinton was looked at as all but assured of the nomination.  This much like Dean in 2004, Hart in 1984, and Edmund Muskie in 1972, all front-runners that were consigned to history’s dustbin of might have beens.  Now it looks like Hillary Clinton will join that group.

Yet with such a formidable advantage in the money, and brand, she was defeated by a man that would seem to have everything going against him at the beginning of the political process.  Many reasons have been introduced to answer such questions, but no one has talked about one possibility.  How much is this just a matter of finally ridding itself of the insidious Europeanesque tendency of aristocracy and pseudo-monarchy that we’ve been slipping into in the last 25 years.   The American people could not stand the idea of a Clinton or Bush in the Executive branch from 1980 to at least 2012.  I think Democratic voters have had enough of voting for families.  I can only assume the lack of Jeb Bush on the Presidential campaign trail says that Republican voters have had the same proper change of heart.