BOOKMARK THIS DIARY: Jeb! Is The Republican Nominee. Hillary Will Prevail in the Democratic Primary.

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Thursday August 06, 2015 · 6:00 PM PDT

2015/08/06 · 18:00

Today is Thursday, August 6, 2015. Bookmark or hotlist this diary for future reference::

Jeb! Bush will be the 2016 Republican nominee for president. No matter what happens in tonight's Republican debate. No matter who seems to be beating Bush in the polls between now and the primaries. Jeb! will emerge as the GOP nominee. Republicans are very predictable in their voting behavior. They may seem to have a chaotic nomination process, but their nominee is almost always pre-ordained. Jeb! is the pre-ordained GOP candidate for 2016. Feel free to reference this diary when he nabs the nomination.

The only true contested primary this year is on the Democratic side. This might sound counterintuitive to you given the handful of Democratic candidates running and Hillary's overall dominance of the field. However it is more contested than the GOP nomination because the Democratic primary doesn't always ascribe to a pre-ordained trajectory like the Republicans. However, the operative word there is 'always'... more often than not the Democratic Primary follows a trajectory which leads to the conventional front runner winning. The few times when the Democrats have departed from this track are during periods of extraordinary events or system shocks. Notable examples are the nomination of Barack Obama following George W. Bush's disastrous presidency and the financial collapse that was unfolding at the time; and the nomination of George McGovern during the height of the controversial Vietnam war.

More on this perspective beyond the fold...

However the trajectory is never interrupted automatically by itself during these system shocks. There has to be a candidate who is capable of capitalizing on the shock and rallying the party to accept their candidacy as a response to said shock.

For the 2016 Democratic Primary, we have that candidate. His name is Bernie Sanders. However what is missing from the Sanders Revolution calculus is the system shock which can propel his candidacy to the nomination. I'm sure his supporters will disagree with me. They are fiercely passionate about Bernie and what he stands for. They wholeheartedly believe that these are extraordinary times with the rise of the plutocracy and the 1% hence the ground is fertile for Sanders to nab the nomination.

While the argument put forward by the Sanderistas is compelling, it is not entirely convincing. For a system shock to play an interruptive role in the nomination process it has to pass a critical tipping point with a wide enough swath of the primary electorate. While the Sanderistas will define economic inequality as the most defining issue of our time, it has not reached that critical tipping point with the broader Democratic electorate which would compel them to go with an unconventional candidate like Bernie. In other words almost all Democrats are upset about income inequality, however only a minority of us are willing to pick up the pitchforks in protest.

While George W. Bush was enough of a shock to compel the Democrats to embrace the political phenomenon named Obama and the Vietnam War was enough of a shock to propel George McGovern to the nomination, there is no comparable system shock today which has reached a tipping point with a broad enough swath of the Democratic electorate to seal the deal for Bernie's insurgent candidacy. Hence the trajectory remains. This, among other factors, is why Hillary will prevail over Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary.

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