But these views are descriptive, analytic, coolly distant from the details. Prescriptively, after this cascade of sheer grossness, I think it should seriously embarrass liberals and Democrats, from the activists in Iowa all the way up to President Obama, if their party cannot manage to field at least one semi-serious challenger (no, not Lincoln Chafee) to Hillary Clinton and her donor-greased machine.

The Republican Party has its share of problems; indeed, it has more than its share. But for all its dynastic and plutocratic tendencies, even the seemingly-unbeatable dynast George W. Bush faced a sustained primary challenge in 2000, and the only real scenario in which I can imagine a Republican primary field being cleared this completely for a frontrunner involves a back-from-the-dead Ronald Reagan. And you know what? Even as a shambling revenant, Reagan would at least be able to take credit for a pretty impressive foreign policy record vis-a-vis the Russians, as opposed to the Hillary Clinton-led State Department’s impressive record of signing off on the sale of American uranium production to Russian interests … Russian interests that also just happened to regard the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation as a wonderful charitable concern in need of two million-odd dollars in donations.