"Donald Trump (or any candidate) may not be a solution in himself, but an outsider at least can be an instrument to dislodge an elite and replace it, for a while..."

"... with an elite less habituated to using public power to favor and enrich itself. With Mrs. Clinton, as with Mr. Obama, a voter naturally struggles to understand what the overarching vision is. There isn’t one. They exist to deliver the wish-list of Democratic lobby groups for more power over the people of the United States. Period. A few weeks ago Mrs. Clinton was the 'safe hands' candidate. If she wins, it now appears hers will be an embattled and investigated presidency from day one. Moderates will flee. Republicans will find it hard to cooperate with her. She will be forced back on the hard left of her party. The same who already are drawing up 'blacklists' of potential appointees suspected of sympathy for the private sector. The same who hesitate least about using government power to attack enemies (see Exxon). The same who are most comfortable relying on administrative diktat to impose policies the public doesn’t support and never voted for."

Writes Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. at The Wall Street Journal, in "Hillary Clinton Becomes the Unsafe Hand."

I'm getting ready to hate the new President, and it's a good thing too.

What a golden age we live in. Maybe it doesn't look that way to you now, but looking back, you will see it. We love Obama, the person. Oh, maybe some of you only like him, but you've got to at least like him, the most likeable person who ever ambled onto the American political scene.

I mean, I know some of you hate him, personally, but you are a tiny group. Those who don't like Obama's policies and his methods still overwhelmingly like or love Obama the man.

You might not notice this pleasant feeling, but you will. Just as you don't notice physical comfort and mental peace, you will notice when it's gone. And the feeling of loving the President is about to become very obvious, because we are not going to love the new President.

But that's a good thing. We need our distance, so we can look critically at what is being done to us and to the world. We're going to feel bad — even those of us who vote for the winner — and we should. It will keep us alert.

I haven't had the feeling of hating the President since early 2001, when George W. Bush first took over. Unfortunately, I lost that hating feeling later that year. I'm getting ready to hate the new President, and I don't want a repeat of 2001. I don't want to have to lose that feeling of critical distance from the President of the United States, and I know exactly the kind of thing that could wreck it for me again.

Hillary Clinton is so far ahead — so seemingly almost locked in — and yet she still can't get to 50%.

Clinton's RCP average in a 4-person race is only 44.4%. You've got to imagine the missing top of this graph. Picture an empty space that's larger than what you see here, which tops out at 45%:



That's more than 55% of voters who do not support Clinton, and you've got to figure a good portion of those who do support her only support her out of rejection of Donald Trump. In fact, that's the main argument her campaign is making for her. She also lays claim to all the liberals who loathed her in the primaries and wanted Bernie Sanders. We're headed into what could be a landslide victory for someone that almost nobody likes.

I'm searching for an up side to this. Perhaps it's bad to have a beloved President. Is Obama beloved? Yes, to a great extent he is. Here's his approval rating over time. It doesn't look that great, but I think we Americans are mostly liking and trusting him and, as a consequence, not getting as outraged about things that should be bothering us. The new President will not be loved and may very well be hated. And all the things we've let slide as we indulged the well-liked Obama are going to fall heavily into the lap of the new, loathed President who we're not going to cut any slack.

I'm trying to say there's some good in that: 1. We'll have to face reality (or something close to that), 2. We'll break out of our complacent funk and get back to our old tradition of sharply criticizing the President, 3. We'll stop looking to the President for spiritual uplift and pseudo-religious hope of salvation.