Anywhere else, a wild statement like this would confuse readers.

To you, this wildness identifies Bob Whitaker better than a fingerprint would.

So, as usual, I begin by explaining where the HELL I am coming from.

One of my themes has been that Whites have almost zero chance of winning in a two-way race, and that the whole picture changes if the number of serious candidates changes.

BBG did an illustration of this by listing the vote for Lincoln and the percentage each of his three opponents got.

Lincoln got 40% of the popular vote, which is the percentage that went to Hoover and Goldwater, each of whom represents a catastrophic defeat in their two-way race.

But for Lincoln, 40% gave him an overwhelming victory in 1860.

What happened was that Lincoln did not get a single recorded vote south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Every slave state refused to put him on the ballot.

In 1860 the North seceded from the South.

In 1856 there were three parties on the ballot.

But after 1856 it was clear that if the Democratic coalition of free and slave states broke up for just one election, the Republicans would win.

And a lot of people, including US Grant, knew that the South would not stand for a president who represented a separate nation.

Nobody can make a living as a popular political writer if he tries to explain the ongoing campaign as a part of the political history.

It is barely an exaggeration to state that everybody who gets published today has to talk about
1) this election and only this election; and
2) Which celebrity farted.

The night of his total defeat in 1964, Goldwater called the moderates and liberal Republicans and turned the Party back over to them.

I doubt Trump will do that.

Unlike professional conservatives, Bernie Sanders is neither an idiot or a coward.

If he could get on enough ballots, Bernie could have destroyed Ice Station Hillary’s chances of winning the 2016 election.

But the mechanics of getting on the ballot are totally forbidding.

THIS year.

So if Trump does not call up old Republicans leadership for an Unconditional Surrender the way Goldwater did Bernie can have anything he wants in return for not going on the ballot in 2020.

What is the likelihood that Bernie and Trump will unconditionally surrender their respective parties to those who now own them?

The election of 1856 made what happened in 1860 inevitable to happen eventually.

And 2016 is beginning to look like 1856.