The Republicans appear as an assortment of Agatha Christie personages in a remake of "And Then There Were None", waiting for slaughter. Mrs. Clinton continues to stick to her Turandot role and stretches, as long as she can, her "above the fray" tactic. All contenders will have to reckon sooner or later with reality.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is burning its fingers on all the issues it pretends to have an answer for. The list is too long and the issues are well known. The Secretary of State has become totally unconvincing and the White House Macbeth witches hide from view rather than confront a reality check.
The many Republican candidates are not uninteresting, considering that the arc covers a variety which includes both the Evangelicals and the "normal light". It is too early to predict any kind of outcome. Jeb Bush stumbled in the name of brotherly love and the more right leaning candidates look too type-cast to have long-term standing power. Until now, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie make some sense. Mrs. Clinton will some day have to open the closet where she keeps the many skeletons which need to be aired sooner or later. I doubt if her skills and triangulation talent will muster enough coherent answers to allow her to sail the treacherous waters of a campaign which will be merciless.
The American political system is absurd. It stretches forever, ad nauseam, and is corrupted by money, manipulated by interest groups, and leaves all exhausted and bored before the endline is reached. Oranges and apples don't need to be compared but, for what it's worth, most European electoral "mores" have at least the benefit of brevity and are not overweight with "pork" as is the case in the United States, where elections are more often bought than won. Remember JFK?
The timing is not good since leadership is in short supply in the White House and since most candidates want to please contradictory priorities. The Republican right sticks at least to a coherent message wherein God, gravy, anti-gay, pro-life themes rule the seas. This ideological Juggernaut takes place in the heartland, since California or New York, inter alia, are off limits for the conservative zealots.
It remains to be seen where we will stand next year, same time. One should never exclude a surprise in one camp or the other. The debates will open the "Pandora Box" of shared contradictory lies and deals. There are strange goings on in the shadows right now but the "not to be" looks for now like having the upper hand over the "to be". A major event might well redistribute the deck of cards.
There is a temptation to ridicule some and to invest a few. Americans should be more cognizant of the consequences of their extreme First Amendment interpretation. All opinions, ranging from the macabre to the benevolent, fall under the protection of the Constitution. So one has to sweat this out until the brutal finish. While it doesn't say that much in favor of the US democracy, the former is still the healthier one compared to some other models which are on life support.
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