One of last winter’s cruelest spectacles was the harpooning of Jeb Bush’s candidacy by upstart wiseacre Donald Trump. Like a neatly dressed schoolboy vowing to eat his mashed potatoes in peace, only to find himself plunged into them face-first, Jeb consistently fell prey to Trumpian assaults on his dignity—he was boring, and “low energy,” and last in the polls.

Such indecorousness proved nearly impossible for anyone to combat. Should the victim try to stay aloof, the way Jeb did? That just made you look like a stiff. Should you try to match Trump on his own terms, the way Marco Rubio did? That just made you look silly. Should you just scorch the terrain, the way Ted Cruz did? Your opponent might just take things one step further and start insulting your wife. Only primary voters had the power to punish such a lowering of standards, but many of them were in no such mood this year. Their spite was directed toward a pompous and clueless establishment, with Jeb as its quintessential face and Trump as the overdue pie.

And now Trump is going to war again, this time with another establishment choice, Hillary Clinton. Jeb and Hillary have many political differences, of course, but many Americans now view such differences as trivial in light of Trump. Even George H.W. Bush supposedly intends to vote for Clinton, a choice that will surprise only those coming out of a long cryogenic slumber. That means we must ask an uncomfortable question: Is Hillary the new Jeb?

Let’s start with the obvious similarities. Both Hillary and Jeb are dynastic politicians, heavily reliant on the family name. While each has been elected to major political offices—Hillary to the U.S. Senate and Jeb to the governorship of Florida—the campaigns were much less self-made than those of candidates without heavy family connections and a long list of likely donors. In 2016, both were favorites of their respective establishments, fortified by bulging campaign chests and, in Hillary’s case, the favoritism of the Democratic National Committee. Neither candidacy worked as planned by the powers that be, with Jeb’s campaign sinking like a punctured yacht and Hillary’s barely escaping an upset at the hands of a 74-year-old (now 75-year-old) socialist. And, of course, both candidates have had to deal with Donald Trump.

Several months ago, people wondered if Trump suffered from impulse control or if he just played someone who did. The answer now looks to be a bit of both. Many of his controversies did nothing to speed up his nomination—on the contrary, they slowed it down—but some were indeed tactical. If the heat got turned up on something damaging to Trump’s electability (like a bad debate performance), he could create a distraction by saying something outrageous but less damaging (let’s re-do libel law to punish the press!). When it came to insulting his rivals, Trump sacrificed considerable stature of his own, looking un-presidential, but he also perceived that he was channeling a strong current of voter spite. The costs of being the pie thrower were outweighed by the benefits.

We see such calculations playing out in the presidential race, too. Trump has tried for a few weeks to stay more presidential and sober-minded—apart from breaks to freak out on columnist__ Maureen Dowd__ and former defense secretary Robert Gates—and it has been paying off. But he also knows that his rogue persona, the one that beat Jeb, has a lot of power of its own. How to reconcile these two approaches?

“The Vaudevillian dynamics of the race are becoming awfully familiar. One candidate is playing the role of straight man, the other the role of troublemaker.”

This would have been more of a challenge if Clinton hadn’t given Trump two gifts. The first, initially hailed by many as a shrewd step, was to deliver a speech linking Trump to the white nationalists of the alt-right. The second, less widely hailed as wise but widely defended, was to dismiss half of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables.” It took a while for the impact of these two things to become clearer, but now they both seem to have backfired. They allowed Trump to capitalize on his role of mischief-maker without having to do much of anything.