Evidence that the journalistic job of covering politics is generally boring can be found in the shelves and shelves of political memoirs. With a few exceptions, their greatest usefulness comes as an alternative to a sleeping pill. Yet the political reporters have to try very hard to inject their coverage of the mundane political world, with its petty rivalries, leaks, lies and spin doctors, with some sort of drama. But every four years or so, their job is suddenly made very easy for them - there is an election. And there is indeed genuine drama now happening in the battle for the Republican and Democrat nominations for November's US presidential election. The second primary elections in New Hampshire have been won convincingly by the two non-establishment candidates, billionaire property mogul Donald Trump and avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders. In the first primary in Iowa, Trump was soundly beaten into second place but Bernie Sanders lost to Democrat establishment favorite Hillary Clinton by the thinness of a few ballot papers. Now both outside candidates have actually triumphed, gaining clear leads on their rivals. For Clinton, the defeat was the more telling, because in a two-horse race, she trailed Sanders by some 20 percent of the vote. While she had been expected to lose in a state where Vermont's Senator Sanders is highly popular, no one predicted the severe drubbing that she has taken. Now the candidates move their campaigning to South Carolina and Nevada where over seven days from February 20, both parties will hold their primaries. If no clear establishment front-runner appears for the Republican ticket, Trump will head for the voting in 15 states on March 1's Super Tuesday with every chance of building an invincible win. Republican party bigwigs are surely now leaning on their crowded candidate field to have some of them pull out. Former Hewlett Packard boss Carly Fiorina, the dubious doctor Ben Carson, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and even Jeb Bush, once the party's favored pick for the White House are sure to be pressured to quit as part of a Stop Trump campaign. The choice for the Democrats is even starker. If Clinton does not win big from now on, the party looks set for damaging division at its July 25 Convention. Leading Democrats simply cannot see their way to backing Sanders, who has denounced their elitism every bit as loudly as he had criticized Wall Street and big business whose deep pockets fund the massive campaign spending that now characterizes US elections. Sanders says these contributions are very far from being disinterested. Those who write the big checks expect equally large political favors in return. Even voters who find Trump's racist bombast abhorrent and who feel deeply uneasy at Sanders' radical redistributive policies are, nevertheless, thoroughly disenchanted with the whole American political process. They are disgusted by a Congress that has repeatedly ridden the US budget debate to the very edge of national insolvency. They are appalled that no top bankers have been brought to justice over the frauds and deceptions for which the institutions they ran have been fined billions of dollars. Democracy and market regulation are supposed to make political and business leaders accountable. In the US, they have utterly failed to do this. Hence, the remarkable surge in support for an ignorant, loud-mouthed buffoon and a radical socialist whose politics bear little relation to the American Way.
