Hillary’s inevitability lie: Why the media and party elites are rushing to nominate the weakest...

"To see the race as it really is one must see the Democratic and Republicans parties as they really are. The story going round is that they’re far apart. It’s true of cultural issues: guns; same-sex marriage; abortion; immigration. But on matters of the distribution of political and economic power and opportunity they are as close as can be. By these I mean: global trade, fiscal austerity, deregulation, information technology; use of military force and most of all what they fight hardest to defend: pay to play politics. It is against this bipartisan consensus of pay to play politics and neoliberal economics that the country, including large chunks of each party’s base, now rises up. This is nearly as true of Trump’s fascist putsch as it is of Bernie’s progressive revolution.

Voters want political reform and economic justice. They know that without reform they’ll never get justice. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who shares that opinion. The election is part of a broader revolt against a failed status quo. Clinton is an architect of that status quo; Trump, a big beneficiary. So she hides her transcripts and he hides his tax returns. Bernie is an open book. It’s why he has the highest favorability rating of any candidate in the race and Clinton has the lowest of any presidential candidate in the history of polling, except for Trump.

Trump and Clinton struggle to co-opt Bernie’s message; Trump even adopts his positions. (A fascist can do what he likes so long as he is racist, xenophobic and authoritarian.) Trump hates pay-to-play politics; or as he frames it, the venality of his opponents. He hates the Iraq War, the Libya strike, the Syria no fly zone, NAFTA and the TPP. He hates Obama’s deals with insurers and drug companies and any cut in Social Security or Medicare. In a debate with Hillary he’d own these priceless treasures. Some would say he stole them, but he can’t steal what she gives away.

It’s a debate we never have to see. Trump is a total fraud and a ticking time bomb. Clinton helped build the system voters want to tear down. Her candidacy rests on the rickety edifice of a dying political establishment that, like Trump, could blow at any time. This is Bernie’s revolution, not Clinton’s or Trump’s. If it’s anyone’s moment, it’s his not theirs. It ain’t over till it’s over."