The Establishment: a New Hope

The Establishment is truly on the ropes.  They could not even get their act together enough to convince Marco Rubio to make a sincere play to be Trump's V.P.

Rubio, given a rare second chance to make a quick political comeback, stormed off stage like an infant when things didn't go his way. He won't get another chance by anyone.

Marco Rubio exits the stage of history. Rudio's double flameout illustrates how the training of junior Establishment members has fallen on very hard times. The bench is very thin.

Getting Trump's V.P. slot should have been everything. But they never saw the whole thing coming, so there was no plan. Instead they botched their last true opening with Rubio, and we are looking most likely at a Trump-Carson ticket (but things are so volatile with V.P.!)

On the Republican side, there seems to be no organized plan at all to keep the Establishment relevant within the party, other than to go with the flow for now. The Bushes are too stunned and hurt. The didn't realize that the public was ready to follow a different narrative than the media, over which the Establishment has utter domination. People have simply walked away from them.

Absent weird twists in this election cycle, the best hope for an Establishment resurrection in the near future is to keep control of the Democratic Party, and to run a strong Establishment candidate in 2020. After November, Hillary and Bill will be in the junk heap of history. So long as they don't leave in disgrace (still a possibility), they will give Chelsea (and her children) a shot at staying part of the inside group of "families that run the world," at some point down the line when they are ready to do so.

In the meantime the entire edifice of the Democratic Leadership Council will be swept aside. They won't have to be deposed by force. They will have done so to themselves. In many ways, it will a golden opportunity to completely revamp the whole institution of the Democratic Party. In a way, Donald Trump will have given them to opportunity to do so.

For the Establishment, that is not a good thing at all. If the party is not to fall completely into the hands of the Sanderistas, and maybe even the Greens, then they will need a true champion of the Establishment, in the old school, to come forward and make a strong play to be party leader.

It seemed hard to imagine who that would be, until this morning. I would almost go as far as saying that he has no challengers for the time being. Before Trump, a viable Clooney candidacy may have seemed unlikely, but aren't we living by a new rule book now? Won't Donald Trump's success give rise to a whole new class of unorthodox candidacies? Shouldn't the next one be a Democrat?

Clooney attacking Trump. His remarks earned a tweet back from the Donald to the effect that Clooney was "no Cary Grant." It is a talent of Trump's to attack people at their vulnerable points, but only after they come at him in a way that opens the door for it. Clooney, the Handsome Ham, will wind up looking like a buffoon for the incident and whatever follows, but this is hardly a concern to the Establishment. They know he is popular and well-loved. He can make these kids of mistakes. Perhaps his charm will be  as valuable to them, as Donald Trump's was destructive. Will Clooney 2020 be the next big surprise of American electoral history?