No matter who wins 2016, he or she loses 2020.

The events to come in 2019 will spell doom for the winner.

Any material you find underlined, below, correspond to links.

The following was first published Dec 12 2015, and updated through ONLY the first half of 2016. None of what happened in the second half of the year, going up to election day Nov 8 2016, is reflected here

There are 2 components to this ensemble:

1. Why the Pro-Establishment or “Anti-Establishment” can win 2016 — and lose 2020! Because, whoever becomes President in 2017 is near-certain to commit political suicide by 2018 (for reasons we’ll get into, below).
2. If nominated, Hillary being Bern’ed will hurt a lot. Plus, the miraculous tale of how Mrs. Clinton came around — suddenly — to lovin’ Mr. Obama. A tale of “Bern’ing Love.”

(“Anti-Establishment” has been put in quotes above because it remains to be seen how anti-establishment any of these candidates, Mr. Trump included, proves to be. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, that ‘establishes’ street-cred with us.)

Note that this is an opinion by Main Street Gov that is NOT driven by any endorsement of any presidential candidate currently in the race for the White House from either party. We endorse no one until he/she pledges allegiance to — at the very bare minimum — our anti-corruption provision, detailed HERE. For certain, no one currently contesting 2016 will pledge any allegiance to that.

Going down this page, we will criticize all the major candidates, from both parties. We will start with Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. Then we will move to Mr. Trump, and head down the list to Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio.

First, a bit about what we (1) what we kind of expect will happen on General Election Day 2016, although we’re far from being sure of it, and (2) what we, in a cynical sort of way, wonder will happen if Hillary Clinton does eventually win the race for the White House.

Again, while we’re far from being sure of it … we are, after all, writing a lot of this a near full year before Nov 8 2016 … we would NOT be surprised to find a Republican, and quite possibly an “anti-Establishment” conservative, winning the Presidency. Why would we not be surprised? We’ll tell you soon enough, below.

While we would not be surprised to find a Republican in the White House in 2017, in a contorted, and perhaps cynical sort of way, we wonder what would happen were Hillary to become President-Elect on Nov 8 2016. Why on earth would we even wonder that, given how critical we’ve been of both the Clinton Administration’s actions, in 1999 and 2000 especially, and the Bush Administration’s actions, in 2007 and 2008 especially, and the road the two administrations paved together, jointly, to the Financial Crisis of 2008? The answer is: because we’re curious to see what Hillary does when the next bond-market-induced banking crisis, far more acute and destructive than the last banking crisis, hits in 2018/2019, after systemic banks run out of accounting tricks to appear solvent.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton will bail out her bankers who’d been so good to her and her husband over the years, and so good in fact that they turned the pair into centi-millionaires in short order. But:

• Who will she blame for the bailout?
• How will she sell it to the American people?
• How far will she go to contain, or even arrest, the civil uproar that follows? Will she order the Department of Homeland Security to hit the kill-switch that takes down both the internet and cellphone service, nationwide, so no one can protest her actions, or even reveal them?
• With every independent blog (producing the real news) killed with the kill-switch, will she next have Fox, CNN, MSNBC, portray the second whole-scale rescue of bankers(first in 2008/2009, and then in 2018/2019) in some fashion that is untruthful or patently false?

Aside from all that, the Economic Party has indicated that, given a choice, it prefers to face Mrs. Clinton running for re-election on Nov 3 2020, rather than anyone else, simply on the grounds of the volumes of opposition research the Party has built on her and her husband.

Worth mentioning: when it comes to opposition research, the Clintons are quite simply the gift that keeps on giving. When for example on Feb 4 2016, in New Hampshire, CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked Mrs. Clinton “But did you have to be paid $675,000?” or $225,000 each for three speaking events at Goldman Sachs, her shrugging but exasperated reply of “Well, I don’t know. That’s what they offered” instantly failed the smell-test, for we know for a fact that “$225,000” plus “a chartered roundtrip private jet, Gulfstream 450 or larger,” plus “a Presidential Suite and up to 3 adjoining or contiguous rooms for her travel aides, and up to 2 additional rooms for the advance staff” plus a whole host of other luxury perks, are standard demands — at the very minimum — of Hillary’s for “this type of event” containing a “20 minute speech” and a “40 minute moderated Q&A.” Source for all those nuggets: a letter leaked to, or found by, some big-name bloggers, and a letter signed by Mrs. Clinton’s agent, Beth Gargano, an executive at the Harry Walker Agency in Manhattan.

Although Mrs. Clinton reached into her handbag of honesty to insist to Anderson Cooper that “to be honest, I wasn’t committed to running [at the time of those 3 speeches to Goldman]”, we’d bet Goldman would’ve paid her more than $675,000 were it not for the optics of paying the presumptive next President of the United States $225,000 per appearance at their pay-to-play shindigs.

The not so minor tidbit in the $675,000 figure the media focused on, is its diminutiveness in the overall scheme of things. Consider: Mrs. Clinton’s final day as SecState was February 1, 2013. Within weeks — between April 18 2013 and November 21 2013 — and a span of about 7 months, she’d earn $9,655,000 on the speech circuit. 2007 thru 2014, the Clintons would report $140 million in taxable income to the IRS, a whole lot of it on the speech circuit. While her argument is something to the effect of ‘none of that would ever affect her policy decisions to rein in Wall Street,’ the year-to-year trend lines in earned income underscore a tellingly different expectation by the sponsors of the Clintons’ speeches. To illustrate:

In 2007, when Bill was raking it in and Hillary couldn’t — because she was a United States Senator from the (Banking Empire) state of New York, also called the Empire State — but every bigwig knew she was prepping for a run at the presidency in 2008, the Clintons’ income towered at $21 million. In 2008, as the election cycle started rolling, and everything Bill did reflected on Hillary, taxable income plummeted to $5.5 million. After Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Obama, became Secretary of State, and signaled to bigwigs that she’d run again after President Obama left office, the Clintons’ income resumed an uptrend to $10 million in 2009, $13 million in 2010, $15 million in 2011, and $20 million in 2012. In 2013, after Mrs. Clinton exited the Obama Administration — with everyone knowing she was running in 2016 — their joint income surged to $27 million. In 2014: $28 million.

Put all these numbers up on a bar chart, and the chart is not pretty.

Asked about the off-the-charts speaking fees in June 2014, Mrs. Clinton would tell Diane Sawyer: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.” But, as we wrote under Our Origins about Mrs. Clinton’s citation of “something like $12 million” in legal fees as cause for their indebtedness:

Unmentioned in the interview was what actually caused the inability to afford multiple houses, i.e. the cause upstream that led to the legal fees downstream — that being a charge of perjury.

There was nothing illegal in Bill Clinton engaging in consensual sex acts with Monica Lewinsky. But saying stuff like ‘I have never had sexual relations with that woman’ under oath could have been illegal, irrespective of whether “sexual relations” included giving oral sex but excluded receiving oral sex as Bill’s legal team tried to argue.

The fact of the matter is, had President Clinton not lied in a legal proceeding, we doubt the Clintons would have come of the White House “dead broke.”

If it’s Trump we have in the Oval Office on Jan 20 2017, there’ll be a lot of hopes and expectations in his followers. Breitbart’s technology editor would tell Sky News “He’ll make America fabulous again.” Wishful thinking, we’d say, but nevertheless the Donald will first have to get a few facts right, about China for example. To illustrate:

On Feb 17 2016, at a townhall, Trump double-downed or triple-downed (we’ve lost count) on his claim that one way to create American jobs is to have China not manipulate its currency, so as to weaken it for competitive advantage. To the contrary, as of this writing, China has been selling hundreds of billions of U.S. Treasury bonds to prevent its currency from devaluing. China’s communist party has instituted rigorous capital controls, under threat of severe punishment, to prevent its people from selling their local currency, in exchange for U.S. dollars, that then attempt flee the country. If China were to free-float its currency (called the Yuan), the chances are it’ll subside very substantially against the greenback, and might even begin to slide, until perhaps the International Monetary Fund makes its Special Drawing Rights the global reserve currency that replaces the dollar.

(Remember, the US-led IMF included the Yuan to the SDR’s basket of currencies on Oct 1 2016, alongside the dollar, the euro, the yen, and the pound. Reason for that inclusion: besides China wanting in, the U.S. Government was concerned that a depreciating Yuan would worsen America’s terrible trade deficit with China.)

Chinese authorities are (at least for now) in full combat-mode against any significant depreciation, because it would set in motion the mother of all capital flights, that would tank the Chinese stock market indices more than they’ve already tanked, leading to potential existential threats to those authorities’ hold on power. Why, because the Chinese government lured a lot of its people into the stock market at its highs, with the use of leverage/margin (by those amateur investors, many of them newbies) compounding those highs. People borrowed to buy stocks, believing the government and its central bank, the People’s Bank of China, would put a impenetrable floor to any downside. An unraveling stock market would wipe out the savings of a wide swathe of China’s citizenry, leading to a possible Tiananmen Square, squared.

That’s not to say the China won’t allow a devaluation up ahead. Pegged to a degree to a strengthening dollar, Yuan appreciation has led to export weakness for China against all of its trading partners, and that’s begun to sting at home. But any devaluation will not be a manipulation per se, but a market-forced action, based on the supply and demand economics of currencies.

“Renegotiating” all “bad” trade deals, like NAFTA, is another one of Trump’s generic (i.e. non-specific) solutions to rising American joblessness in quality jobs. The problem is, less, Mexico importing what were American jobs and, more, America exporting those jobs, for reasons we’ve covered extensively at Main Street Gov.

Economic threats directed at the likes of China, tit-for-tat tariffs, and intensifying protectionism — leading to escalating trade wars with multiple trading partners — can be highly counterproductive for American jobs in a global economy heading into the deep and protracted recession we expect by 2018. As we wrote elsewhere: A cheaper Mexican or Chinese import provides the American consumer with a cheaper alternative, leaving more discretionary income in his or her hands to spend on hopefully an American-made product, for whose manufacture America has an advantage over all other international competitors. The thing is, we currently lack that advantage in a variety of manufactures, and that needs to be fixed first, to bring rising prosperity back to our now sinking masses.

To create jobs in America, Mr. Trump, we need new education and manufacturing policies, as detailed HERE and HERE. We need a lot of the bill-requests on our homepage, listed HERE, implemented. Then, in time, there’ll be good jobs to be found in abundance.

Although, a word of caution to Mr. Trump and his supporters is warranted here. On the campaign trail, Trump’s said he’ll be (quote) “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.” Nice as that may sound as a goal, as a statement of fact it is likely to fail spectacularly — why, because Bill Clinton left George Bush with a recession, George Bush left Barack Obama with a recession, and Barack Obama will leave the next president with a recession … except, the next president’s recession will make the last president’s recession look like a walk in the park under a springtime rain. (Again, reasons for why, are detailed here, here, and here.)

The problem we see rearing the ugliest head for Trump, or whoever the next president is, is related to crisis, bailouts, and a return to business-as-usual again on Wall Street, on K Street, and in Washington DC. We think the chances are near-certain that a President Donald Trump, like a President Hillary Clinton, will bail the bankers out, at the next banking crisis. Trump Incorporated will depend on the New York banks staying intact, and NOT undergoing receivership and restructuring. Absent receivership and restructuring at the next banking crisis, there will be an excruciating political price to pay in 2020. The Economic Party will see to it.

Trump Inc’s reliance on the big banks for financing cannot be overstated, especially going forward into the years ahead, when we expect to see even marquee names in commercial real estate, some of Manhattan’s prime properties included, going from “everything’s great” to strained, then stressed, and (in some cases) distressed. For a bunch of reasons:

(1) By 2015, New York City found its streets home to the most homeless children since the Great Depression. Homelessness, overall, is a rising trend in the five boroughs, and it’ll climb quickly in 2018 and spike sharply in 2019.

(2) An Occupy Wall Street, of unprecedented size, will come back with a vengeance when the megabanks are bailed out again in 2018/2019, except this time Occupy will be there to stay.

(3) After the next financial crisis, movements like Black Lives Matter will also gain mass and momentum, as African-American youth, in inner cities especially, find themselves in an even steeper descent into economic despair than they’re already experiencing, resulting in more confrontation with police, and the inevitable consequences that come of it.

(4) The ultra-rich will increasingly ‘escape’ the Big Apple. Consider the title of an article in The Guardian about Davos 2015:

As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes

In that article, a Robert Johnson, one of those über-rich at Davos, was heard saying: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”

Inequality will go stratospheric in 2018. The Gini coefficient tells us that the nation’s seats of political pull and political power, namely New York City and Washington DC, are the worst centers of inequality in America. Besides New York City itself, the last we checked New York State registers the worst Gini coefficient (highest inequality) of all the 50 states. Only the District of Columbia, the seat of our government, fares worse.

When a significant percentage of the ultra-rich begin to leave, and real estate taxes rise to bridge the gap, extremely pricey real estate in Manhattan, of all kinds, will have its day of reckoning.

Already, commercial real estate can be among the most mis-priced of asset classes, and by mis-priced we mean generously overstated in value on the accounting books. The “evergreening” of commercial real estate loans — i.e. the issuance of new loans, for the purpose of servicing old loans — is something we’ll see a lot of in the years to come.

Rolling over credit that’s gone bad, multiple times, to hide losses on underwater properties whose collateral values have sunk to substantial subpar against actual loan values, will (as usual) keep the façade of well-being going on for a while. But, as we see it, even that façade will crack in this last cycle that’s lying in wait up ahead.

Will a President Trump surprise us and NOT rescue Wall Street in 2018/2019, even if it risks his own well-being and that of his family, accustomed to an opulence rarely seen outside of royalty? Maybe. But we seriously doubt it.

Will a President Ted Cruz surprise us? Conventional wisdom dictates that the likelihood is high that he will not.

What about a President Marco Rubio, if there were to be one? Will he be willing to once again allow Wall Street to privatize its profits and socialize its losses? Or will he surprise us? As an Establishment favorite, alongside Jeb Bush that is, a President Rubio most definitely will not.

Time and time again, the Republican Party has shown itself to be the Banker’s Party. Time and time again, the Democratic Party has shown itself to be the Banker’s Other Party. It’s hard to have faith that those equations are suddenly non-equating.

Perhaps the only one who may give receivership/restructuring and a return to Glass-Steagall a try in 2018/2019, is a President Bernie Sanders, because he does appear to care, genuinely, about downsizing and then restraining Wall Street — might explain, to some degree, why poor old Bernie is worth only a couple of hundred thousand bucks after a quarter-century in total in Congress.

But even if Sanders does become the Democratic nominee (a big if), and wins the presidency (an even bigger if), the question is: how knowledgable is he of the obstacle-path there is to successfully resolving and dismembering the banks, not the least of which will be to bring conservatives and progressives together, on something they actually agree on, in a way that does not devolve into extraneous acrimony.

To succeed, we believe, a President Sanders would have to understand — and fully appreciate — the philosophy of the Economic Party. It’s doubtful he will, because he appears to harbor dogmatic views that are in clear conflict with a number of central tenets held firm by the Economic Party. For one, both the good Senator and the Economic Party believe in a quality wage. But, while Sen. Sanders thinks that can be enacted by decree on the private sector, the Economic Party sees a jobs-market-based approach as the only way towards “full employment at a living wage.” As good-intentioned as it is, the approach Sanders is pushing risks increasing mechanization of industry, and decreasing humanization of nearly every task that the low or marginally skilled worker performs now.

If by any chance Michael Bloomberg enters the race because Hillary got indicted and/or her campaign fell apart for some unforeseen reason, we can guarantee you that a President Bloomberg will bail out the banks, with that guarantee being 100%. Actually, there’s more chance Mr. Bloomberg will issue open-carry permits for assault rifles to all U.S. citizens, than there is chance of him NOT bailing out the banks.

Hopes and expectations will likely be dashed by the next president — matter of fact, we’re pretty-darn sure of it, as were the attendees who participated in the banking Resolution Conference of 2013, convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, on Oct 18 2013, in the Colonial Room of The Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in Washington DC, a meeting of minds that amplified the absolute certainty of a taxpayer backstop to systemic banks at the next financial crisis, a backstop that will, for political theatrics, be openly disparaged but surreptitiously embraced by both parties in government and whoever its president is.

The next president is the final set-piece on a stage that Barack Obama was the earlier set-piece. President Obama disappointed a great many by 2012. Except Mr. Obama had no domino’ing banking meltdown to contend with on his watch, leading up to his re-election day in 2012. A President Clinton, or President Trump, most assuredly will.

The next president is likely to be the flip side to the same coin Barack Obama got on. There will be euphoria to celebrate his or her election in 2016, as there was euphoria to celebrate Mr. Obama’s election in 2008. Then, as 2018 comes to an end, the elation, jubilation, and perhaps even rapture from some quarters will be put to the ultimate test, in a seismic economic event the world has never before seen. The President will (we believe) fail that test, and then the coin will self-destruct, paving the way of real anti-Establishment to march in.

Until then, of course, perfectly circular firing squads have begun to form within both the Republican and Democratic parties. As the primary season rolled into South Carolina, intra-party candidates could routinely be seen taking aim at each other with varying forms of arsenal, with some blasting away, showing little regard to the damage being inflicted upon his or her party.

We are not defenders or water-carriers for Trump or anyone else in the 2016 race. (For the record, none of us who are in Florida voted for any of the candidates, Republican or Democrat, in Florida’s primary, March 15 2016.) But we couldn’t help but wince at some of the circular firing squads that were forming.

After Mr. Trump dominated Super Tuesday, some members of the GOP elites, long entrenched in the Establishment, began to openly court the idea of throwing their support to Hillary, over Donald, were it to come to that in November.

Some pondered the idea of sabotaging the delegate allocation process at the Republican Party convention, to deny Trump the nomination if his winning streak went on. Amazing, we thought — had America’s democracy descended to that, where backroom deals could be struck to defy the will of a plurality of people?

So that no one assumes we’re tone-deaf to what’s going on at Trump’s rallies, in Trump’s speeches, and Trump’s barrage of periodic (but hardly infrequent) insults, we find the tone of Trump’s campaign to be rancorous and divisive.

We think the calls for a mass deportation of undocumented aliens — by both Trump and Cruz — to be hyperbole and pandering to the most blood-red of their base. From a human standpoint, the threat is cruel, and, from a popular-vote standpoint, it’s stupid — in places that allow voting with just photo ID, think camp Hillary will demand a Certificate of Naturalization or a U.S. Passport of someone before she allows that person to vote for her? Because if you do, we’ve got both a bridge and a river we’d like to sell you. As for those who argue that it’s the electors that elect a president, and not the majority, let us simply say: true, and we have everlasting respect for the wisdom of our Founding Fathers’ original intent, but wouldn’t winning both the electors and the majority be vastly more conducive — and facilitative — to governing?

Sure, in all fairness to the guy, Trump’s been on the receiving end of the brunt — if not the totality — of mainstream media bias, and we can sympathize with anyone who may want to let loose, with their own cannon-ball, under such an onslaught, but wanting is way different from actually doing. Trump’s been known to fire off an entire salvo at anyone who (even in the slightest) slights him. For his reflex to counterattack anyone who says anything about him that he does not like, we find him to be lacking in necessary steel. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me, is something we try to learn as kids. Sometime between childhood and adulthood, it’s supposed to sink in as: learned.

In March 2016 we got to watch Trump go after Heidi Cruz, threatening to “spill the beans” on her, referencing quite possibly her past battle with bouts of depression. We doubt the “beans” had anything to do with her executive ties to Goldman Sachs, because Trump’s own ties to executives at Goldman are not insubstantial. Within days of the first salvo directed at Mrs. Cruz (for some steamy photo of Mrs. Trump, put out by some SuperPac that Mr. Cruz may not have had immediate control over), Trump would sink to a new low and ridicule Mrs. Cruz for her looks. It was an awful thing to do.

And it was not the first time he’d sunk that low — “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?” he’d say of another woman, Carly Fiorina, who, like Heidi Cruz, is a lovely woman in her own right.

Does Trump wish to lose a majority of the votes of all the women in America that never made it to the cover of Vogue, like his model wife did in that photo? He’s inviting that.

Again: Yes, we realize Trump’s been taking hits from all sides, and feeling besieged, and caged even, the natural tendency could be to lash out, but he should remind himself that this is no mixed-martial-arts cage fight in some octagon at the UFC, but a race for the highest office in the land, an office attended to by the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. And, thus, he should muster the presidential fiber to rise above the fray.

We think Trump should use his Twitter account to spread insight, rather than slight. We think there should only be substance to Trump’s debate, and no vitriol. We think he spends way too much time kissing his own ass. We think anyone who idolizes himself, as Yoda, on matters of foreign policy or whatever, saying (quote) “I [consult] myself, number one, because I have a very good brain” should remove that brain off the altar of self worship and idolatry, and return it to its rightful place, inside a human skull, where it will — by its innate vulnerability — learn the meaning of humility.

Still, love or hate the guy, Trump deserves to be treated fairly for his merits. And his merits are measured by the great many millions of votes he’s been garnering, state after state, all across the country. And nobody can — or should — take that away from Mr. Trump, regardless of what they think of him, personally.

The establishment’s multiple machinations to derail Trump reminded us of a story we read in Politico in March 2015, later acknowledged by reporter Ben White, that:

“[Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd Blankfein has indicated he would be fine with either a [Jeb] Bush or [Hillary] Clinton presidency.”

With Jeb long gone by Super Tuesday, it looks as if the party elders — who connive themselves into thinking that they know what’s best for the country and its peasantry — have decided Blankfein’s right, Goldman’s right, and that those commoners who voted for Mr. Trump, all plebs and schleps in their pedigreed estimation, must be wrong. It got so Daliesque at some point that even Rep. Paul Ryan, sitting in some chamber on Capitol Hill and representing a small congressional district in Wisconsin with just over seven hundred thousand people, had to reject an entreaty made by the Party machinery’s chief machinists to usurp the nomination in the event Mr. Trump, or Mr. Cruz, fell just short in securing a majority of delegates.

“I am not going to be the nominee. I am not going to become the president through [the convention in] Cleveland,” said the Speaker of the House after the Donald dominated the map on Super Tuesday and won Florida by a landslide, with TrustTed nipping at his heels, somewhat.

If you’re gonna ask Paul Ryan to be the Party nominee, why stop there? Why not ask Kanye West, too, while you’re at it!

The duty of the nobility is NOT to nominate who they like, but to nominate who the people chose. Donald Trump may be a jerk to some, just as Ted Cruz may be a jerk to others, but they are our nation’s candidates — as are Hillary and Bernie, on the other side. As such, whether we respect them or not, individually, their votes must be respected.

Sure, if candidate Cruz comes within striking distance of candidate Trump as the race rolls, and the lead of the leader becomes indecisive over his nearest rival at the end, then there might be tolerance towards a brokered convention — provided, that is, only Trump and Cruz (and no one else) are the two contestants for the coronation.

But if the lead is decisive, the leader’s rightful claim to the crown should be honored. As wrong as that sounds to those anti-Trump factions that sincerely believe the GOP nominee should be a lady or a gentleman, and not a boor or a bully, the question needs to be asked: Where do you draw the line the next time, if you re-draw it this time? The definition of a democracy is linear, and clear. Is it right to re-draw the line every time it fails the pleasure test?

The answer may seem simple to the Dump-Trump crowd. But is it?

We are not blind to the argument by John Kasich, and others, that someone like Mr. Kasich might be more likely to beat the presumptive Democratic nominee (who is, as of this writing, Hillary Clinton). But are the primaries and caucuses of the two mainstream parties about electability, or actual vote count result? Yes, it’s a tough question to answer — but, again, is it?

And don’t for a moment underestimate the kinetic energy there is to Trump’s vote-count dominance in the Primaries, eventually delivering inertia to electability in the General.

As for our critique of Ted Cruz, the way we see it: it was not enough of his wife to take an unpaid leave of absence from her managerial duties at Goldman Sachs to help with his campaign — she should have resigned and promised not to return to the firm, or any other related firm, for as long as he was a legislator, for the simple reason that spouses of active politicians (be they in the Senate or the House) must be fully divested from any financially beneficial affiliation to Wall Street.

The major problem we have with Cruz, or Kasich for that matter, is their abject failure to grasp the single most elusive but dangerous threat facing the United States at the time of their candidacies. (As for those who claim it’s ISIS, we suggest you temper that insistence by first contemplating the origins of ISIS, and who first financed the “pro-Western” militants — the antecedents to ISIS — that later metastasized into the anti-Western extremists we see killing innocents in Europe and America. You can find that discussed HERE.) Again, the single most elusive but dangerous threat facing the United States, is detailed at the links we presented right at the outset of this discourse: here, here, and here.

If the never-Trumpers dare to dump Trump to crown Kasich, then Kasich (we think) will be toast come November, for obvious reasons.

Trump is tapping into the economic anxiety gripping much of the nation, while it’s not clear what Kasich is tapping into … except himself … Kasich keeps repeating that he is “experienced”, “qualified”, and “knowledgable”, making him sound like an across-the-aisle clone of Hillary.

Moreover, one needs to be counterintuitive in one’s logic sometimes, and this election season might end up the very definition of ‘sometimes’.

Let’s take a moment to apply counterintuitive logic to opinion polls, for example….

Keeping in mind that:

• a Republican needs neither plurality nor proximity, in the popular vote tally, to win the presidency

and also keeping in mind that:

• a Republican does not need to run up the electoral college scorecard in California and New York and Illinois, either,

wouldn’t it seem common-sensical that pollsters, crunching out the prospects of a conservative winning the presidency, discount somewhat (or disregard altogether) the numbers coming out of California and New York and Illinois, when figuring out a percentage point lead or deficit, in the polls, for one or the other candidate?

Perhaps discount or disregard Texas as well for good measure, since, out of our country’s 5 most populous states, the only battleground happens to be Florida.

Don’t believe the head-to-head match-up polls this time around. Worth recalling:

• In 2008, when “Change You Can Believe In” got believed by a combination of mass-induction and mass-hypnosis, 57% of the caucus-goers in Iowa, from the Democratic side, had never attended a caucus before — meaning a near 6-in-10 voters were at their very first caucus, ever.
• Nearly half of adults in the U.S. don’t own a landline telephone to take a pollster’s call.
• The number of people willing to participate in polls, even when they are reached on the phone, has been dropping.

And, now, onto why Trump can win in November if he’s nominated in July…

While many may dismiss the suggestion, an “anti-Establishment” ticket could defeat Hillary in 2016 for the simple reason that there will be about 230 million eligible voters by Nov 2016, about 100 million of whom did not vote in the last presidential election in 2012. We think a potentially critical number of them could vote at the next. And, if they do, the odds are they won’t be breaking for Hillary. Why? Because nearly half of those 100 million or so inert/dormant voters (we’ve heard the number “47 million” being bandied around, as an estimate) are what the core of Trump’s support looks and feels like.

Why else do we believe an “anti-Establishment” ticket could defeat Hillary in 2016? Couple of reasons, but before we get into those, a not so minor matter to keep in mind: the Economic Party’s analytics of voter-turnout at the general election of 2012, on a state-by-state and district-by-district context, indicated that a sizable majority of those 2012 no-shows were likely to be at least somewhat conservative and decisively anti-Establishment, those analytics being based on regional demographics as well as permutational probability.

The analytics also seemed to suggest that a lot of them would find a way to a polling station, through hell or high water, if threatened (in particular) on their Second Amendment rights. And, in that regard, we consider the following issuance by Mrs. Clinton, at a New Hampshire townhall on Oct 16 2015, with respect to mandatory gun buyback programs, to be a substantial strategic mistake that could come back to haunt her on November the 8th:

“Australia is a good example, Canada is a good example, the U.K. is a good example. Why? Because each of them have had mass killings. Australia had a huge mass killing about 20, 25 years ago, Canada did as well, so did the U.K. And, in reaction, they passed much stricter gun laws.

“The Australian government, as part of trying to clamp down on the availability of automatic weapons, offered a good price for buying hundreds of thousands of guns. Then, they basically clamped down, going forward, in terms of having more of a background check approach … but they believed, and I think the evidence supports them, that by offering to buyback those guns, they were able to curtail the supply and to set a different standard for gun purchases in the future.

“I do not know enough detail to tell you how we would do it, or how would it work, but certainly the Australian example is worth looking at … and worth considering … if that could be arranged.”

As Iowa became the center of focus, Hillary Clinton — worried by the size of the crowds Bernie Sanders was attracting to his campaign rallies — deflected to the left of Bernie Sanders on guns, arguing that Sanders opposed a bill that would have held gun manufacturers liable for any shooting death unrelated to any defect in the firearm — the equivalent of making knife, hammer, or even shovel manufacturers liable for homicides caused by stabbing, bludgeoning, or blunt force trauma. This, too, could come back to haunt her on November the 8th, because even the most open-minded amongst us at Main Street Gov would consider that bill so over-the-top, that it is for all sakes and purposes: un-American.

Another reason why Trump can beat Clinton: The presumption of invincibility of the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, the Establishment favorite, combined with the first-ever woman commander-in-chief narrative, advanced to no-end by the Establishment media. If you keep telling voters who vote Democratic that Hillary will win because she’s invincible and has a vagina, as the mainstream media polls attested to on both counts, guess what? — some of those voters won’t feel there’s any pressing need to get their behinds out of bed to go vote for her “cuz, what’s my vote gonna do that’s so special, if she’s winning without me anyway?”

Another reason why Trump can beat Clinton: Evangelicals. With the Supreme Court in the balance, count on them to vote for Trump even if they have to hold and close their noses, doing it. If Trump puts an evangelical on his ticket, to be his running mate, they won’t even bother with their noses.

Other reasons can be extrapolated by asking the question: sure, Obama was popular with his base in 2012, but what else is there to explain Romney’s loss in 2012?

• Did Romney entice apathy in a lot of voters? Did enough of a sliver of the electorate consider both Obama and Romney to be “of the Establishment, albeit from opposite sides,” with Obama representing the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, and Romney representing the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party, making Obama’s base vote enough to trounce Romney?
• Romney’s business at Bain Capital, of slicing away at blue-collar jobs to enrich white-collar investors in private equity, was made to look cruel and inhuman. What can we say? — private equity can be cruel and inhuman, more often than not.

This excerpt from “Our Origins” on Main Street Gov also tells a lot:

With the President facing Mitt Romney of Bain Capital in 2012, and with Mr. Obama somewhat shaky with independent voters, his 2012 re-election handlers had to connive about relatives versus absolutes. “Elections are not referendums — elections are choices,” insisted Mr. Obama’s chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod. If Axelrod had been kind enough to paraphrase, and brave enough paraphrase sans nuance, here’s what we think he meant:

If our guy got a C-minus grade in office, it’s irrelevant — because, had it been Mitt sitting in the Oval, he’d have got a D.

Between the Bain Street guy and our Main Street guy — our guy’s still Main Street, we swear — you know the Bain Street guy’s a whole lot worse.

Just as Americans settle for Spam out of a can when there’s no money for ham, Americans should settle for canned this November. Besides, our guy may be out of a can, but their guy looks so preserved he’s practically mummified. And if you flip their guy over, you’ll see he’s even marked “Not for Human Consumption” on the bottom.

And if you still haven’t figured out who to pick on November the 6th after all of that, then ask yourself the question: Is it better to be in the frying pan or the fire? Because, with our guy, you may be in the frying pan — but, with their guy, you’d most definitely be in the fire.

Everything’s changed, this go-around. Just ask Jeb Bush. Right to Rise, his super PAC, raised more than $103 million in just the first six months of 2015, and where did that get him? Not far, would be an understatement.

Political dynasties, like the Bush’s, are on their way out. Question is, will the Clintons buck that trend. Anything’s possible, especially if Hillary’s general election opponent ends up a careless and clumsy buffoon that hands her everything she needs to eviscerate him. But if he were to run a well thought out campaign, and saturated the crowds and airwaves with everything there is on the Clintons to air, he should not find himself snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

We shall see.

We’ve referenced Martin Armstrong in a number of places on Main Street Gov. We’ve referenced this trailer for the German documentary about him, entitled “The Forecaster”.

Mr. Armstrong has written:

“The cycle of political change is 309.6 years. [Then] we reach a crisis in government.”

For that “crisis in government” Mr. Armstrong has predicted:

“The worst is between 2015.75 and 2020.05”

That translates to between Oct 1 2015 and Jan 19 2020.

The next president, in office Jan 20 2017, is not going to politically survive that “worst” part, the way we see it.

Anyway, as we’ve long expected, and now see happening, the formation of circular firing squads in both parties is part-and-parcel to a progression of redemption, absolution and, ultimately, salvation of American politics.

If you thought 2016 was weird, in the way the system — the whole order of things — was being upended, then watch 2018, and especially watch 2020.

Now, for the second component of this ensemble, entitled: “Bern’ing Love.”

Click HERE for that.