DEMOCRATS ARE STUCK WITH HILLARY, Richard Fernandez writes:

Washington is now beset by a bane once exclusively associated with monarchies and authoritarianisms. Washington has a succession problem that has been growing for some time. This is astonishing for a system which once surprised Adolf Hitler by taking Franklin Roosevelt’s death in stride.

It has become unaccountably fragile for reasons that are not hard to understand. The thinning bench of the Democratic Party, the replacement of a broad national consensus by a crazy quilt of identical political issues, the weakening of constitutional constraints, and the rule of law in favor of cults of personality have all contributed to make the system unpredictable. It is no longer the constitutionally constrained system of former times, but one dependent on the caprice and health of individual human beings. It has become like the USSR America laughed at in its last days, with Kremlin watchers eagerly waiting to see if Brezhnev could stagger to the podium without assistance.

Suddenly the politically easy things become hard. These are signs, like Hillary’s falls, of something progressively degenerative. The poverty of the presidential field is suggestive of seizure: despite the seething activity of millions of individual American who know something’s wrong all the political system can inarticulately utter is “Hillary” or “Donald.” It is almost as if the nation itself were standing beside the Scooby-Doo van of the history, helpless, waiting to be lifted by events to whatever awaited.

Read the whole thing.