Progress

I've posted the paragraph below as an update to a previous post but it got me thinking.  In 1972 the Firesign Theatre troupe fielded its own presidential candidate: George Papoon, candidate of the National Surrealist Light Peoples Party.  I'm not even going to try to explain Firesign Theatre to people who didn't experience them.  If you did, you can probably still repeat lines from their records.
("I'm not talking about hate...")

But the point is this was a comedy group, however hip and intelligent.  And the entire Papoon candidacy was predicated on his single slogan: Not Insane.  

With Nixon in the White House (and Watergate already unfolding), the Vietnam War inexplicably continuing etc. that slogan was a sly commentary on the Zeitgeist. I probably still have one of these buttons and bumper stickers somewhere.

But in 2016, it is apparently a main argument for a major party candidate advanced by a sophisticated political commentator.  And one that Jonathan Chiat  believes will carry the day.  Following arguments from demographics and surveys, complete with charts and graphs, he concludes:

"The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party's barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority."

There it is: "Not Insane."  End of campaign.  I'm ready to vote.

P.S. Firesign Theatre is still around.