The MSM has one thing right-this election season breaks all the rules.
Not only has Donald Trump run a campaign where nothing the media throws at him has any effect whatsoever-a sort of reverse kryptonite which makes him stronger, but not just some, but near 100% of their prognostications and memes about him have all crumbled to dust.
Instead of a triumphant media gently guiding the public along whatever establishment track they have decided on, we see a spectacle where the television talking heads sit crestfallen trying to serve up any crumb of hope that Trump might fail whilst moaning "the other candidates won't attack Trump."
If it were not for their unbounded arrogance one might feel a pang of pity for the likes of for example Nate Silver, once the golden boy of psephology, whose star is dimming as his unfailing attacks on Trump ("I give him a 1% chance") go down in flames.
But they have brought it on themselves after the hubris of having brought Barack Obama to power.They felt omnipotent and their elitism knew no bounds, but they have tripped over their own hubris.
But nature, especially political nature abhors a vacuum and the impotency the pundit class and the partisan bloggers have felt has now found a
re-ingorging of rising blood which has found an outlet by turning against the very party they support.
The Republican Establishment has a real dilemma, with Senator Cruz in second place they have nowhere to turn. Part of the donor class is now coming to terms with Trump whilst the Beltway Establishment is staying out of the fray in the hopes that somehow both Trump and Cruz will self destruct.
However the traditional conservative class the Brooks, and the National Review team, the likes of Ross Douthat, are making a do or die effort to bring down Trump.
That they have a zero chance of doing so but are mounting the effort shows either their massive disconnect with the mass of conservative and populist voters who are utterly fed up with exactly the forces they represent, or they are committing a sort of clique mass suicide.
On the left the apparent stately march to a coronation that was expected for Hillary kept the liberal media and progressive blogs quiet-even though the liberal element would have preferred someone more to their taste.
However, as the campaign has progressed and Hillary stumbles and Bernie Sanders has picked up support to the point where he leads in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire all the frustrations with the Obama administration they have held suppressed have exploded in the last few weeks.
All of a sudden the media has markedly turned against Hillary. It is seen in article after article along the lines of "Hillary is in trouble". The progressives of course are not so restrained and have commenced a partisanship against their own party not seen since their attacks against Sarah Palin in 2008 when she threatened Obama's campaign.
The 2008 Obama/Hillary battle was fought out on the left with vigor certainly, but with Sanders seeming to offer the progressives their first chance for a genuine radical president since McGovern it is all on.
If Trump "runs the board" through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina the Republicans will settle down with the Cruz and Bush factions licking their wounds but eventually getting behind Trump.
His broad tent building which, with Palin on board now includes the Evangelicals, the Tea Party, populists, elements of North Eastern businesspersons and pride, the Perot-ite blue collar folks and, I suspect shortly, the Paul-ites will be too big for the remnant Establishment to sit outside the tent flaps.
For the left though, if Sanders pulls it off in the first two states there will be an explosion of activists who will take no prisoners against an ageing, mechanical and outdated Clinton. Watch the re-invigoration of theEzra Klein led media "JounrOlist conspiracy" allied to the progressive blogs rip into the Democratic
Establishment with a force which will threaten their very existence.
If they win, and Sanders is the nominee, the fractured party will not be so easily put together and the basis for another McGovern type massive defeat will be in place.
Iowa and New Hampshire may provide the leftist media gunpowder lit by the progressive fuse which will, to the surprise of all observers, fracture the Democrats and not the Republicans-strange times indeed.
