Trumpocalypse

In the Guardian article entitled For the Republican party it's Trumpocalypse Now, Christopher Barron argues--or actually summarizes what we know--that Trump's ascension means the Republican party is out of the hands of its former masters:The Trump campaign and its stunning success represents a fundamental reordering of forces in the Republican party. If you are traditional, limited government conservative in the GOP, this Super Tuesdsay will truly have made you exclaim “the horror, the horror”.

Barron characterizes the change as populist and nationalist, though you'd have to define those two words in a particular way to make that a definition, but hey we all know what he means.  Don't we?

As the GOP goes off in at least two directions--away from and towards Trump--especially until the mid-month winner-take-all primaries add more data--everyone is faced with this erupting ugliness without definition beyond that.  A panel assembled by New York Magazine that tried to predict what a Trump presidency would look like, came up pretty much empty, and at great length.  Nobody knows.  That this is a familiar trope from fiction about the rise of an American dictator, as well as from history elsewhere, is a source of stomach-churning dread.

Fortunately, what the GOPer Establishment apparently didn't see coming, the Democrats are seeing clearly, with plenty of time before the onslaught of the general election campaign.  Even within Trump's victories there are signs, noted by Jonathan Last at the Weekly Standard (via Margaret Hartmann) using numbers from the GOPer Never Trump campaign:

The single most shocking number from Super Tuesday might have been this poll showing voter awareness about various aspects of Trump: Only 27 percent had heard about his reluctance to denounce David Duke and the KKK; 20 percent about Trump University and the fraud lawsuit; 13 percent about the failure of Trump Mortgage.

At some point, those numbers will all be at 90 percent because someone will spend a lot of money putting ads about them all over television in battleground states."

Last also offers other evidence suggesting that Trump has peaked.  However, Trump has trumped that so far by attracting hordes of "new" voters (they haven't voted in recent elections), while the Dem primaries see turnout below Yes, We Can levels.

But also fortunately for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has improved as a candidate and Bernie Sanders is a statesman--he's signaled more than once that there will be no disunity among the Dems, that he's no Ralph Nader.

But it's going to be ugly, ugly, ugly.  Welcome to Trumpocalypse.