When his disasterous foreign policy is factored in, having alienated Russia and supporting all the wrong policies in the Middle East, he’ll be lucky to end up in the Top 20 on the presidential history list.

Well, right. At the end of the second term, there is “president fatigue”, which carries over into “party fatigue.” The messages used to win the presidency twice before no longer resonate with the electorate, and the new messages from the candidate of the same party (which are almost always “we need more of the same type of leadership” —- a must if you want the prior guy’s support — get the voters thinking “yea……thanks…..maybe not.” The Dims have a real issue in finding a candidate. A doddering Hilary Clinton at age 70 isn’t an answer; O’Malley’s a panderer, and Patrick’s managerial record in Mass is a mess. Booker’s more solid, but would have trouble getting progressives interested —- he’s far more center left than left.

Perhaps a little more to the point —- if our politics are now devolved to the color of your skin, get ready to shut out the lights. Historically, balkanization closely follows.