Back at the start of the year, when the market was plunging every day and I had the time and mental energy to devote myself to topics besides charts, I wrote this post called My Presidential Election Prediction. The core thesis was, "Status Quo means Hillary. Financial Mayhem means Bernie. Fear means Trump."
So far, it seems Status Quo is winning. The status-y quo-ish stuff that's happening is:
+ No terrorist activity or threats;
+ Ridiculous amounts of calm and optimism in the financial markets;
+ Yellen is large and in charge of the stock market
+ Absolutely nothing going on with the whole Hillary/FBI/Email scandal thing;
+ The establishment mounting a divisive campaign against Trump
I know there's a certain bloc of folks, particularly large on the likes of ZH and Slope, which feels that it doesn't matter, it's all rigged, and so on and so forth. I'll be the first to admit that the occupant of the oval office doesn't really affect my personal life much at all. Whether the past 8 years had been Obama, Mitt Romney, or Yosemite Sam, the stuff that matters in my life (my family, my home, Slope, my dawgs, etc.) would have been pretty much the same.
The unfortunate thing is that if the status quo does more-or-less persist, the person who's going to be sworn into office in January is going to be cankles Hillary, in spite of the fact that pretty much everyone, including her supporters, hates her guts, and that she makes Nixon look like an innocent choirboy. It's stunning that someone so obviously venal and corrupt would be screeching her way into office relatively effortlessly.
The one truly moral man, Bernie Sanders, is still fighting tooth and nail, and part of me hopes that by some miracle cankles Hillary will be perp-walked off the national stage, her enormous rear end completely engulfing television screens across this once-great land of ours.
There is one and only one good thing about the near-inevitable Trump/Clinton match-up. It's going to be endlessly entertaining. Seeing her fume, squirm, and hiss for months on end as Trump brings a whole new meaning to ad hominem attacks will almost make up for the fact that we'll soon have to endure 4 years of the most instantaneously-despised president in the history of the United States.