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He racks up majorities — she issues another alibi for why she lost. He stirs their hearts — she runs through another of her static, bloodless “look at the math” updates that wearies even that few who really want her to win.

All the fire, all the belief, all the enthusiasm, all — curiously — the novelty and freshness is with white-haired Bernie. So if Hillary does win, if after a string of state losses, after a blundering, scandal-plagued, email-tormented, Benghazi-haunted campaign she limps, staggeringly and breathlessly, across the finish line ahead, where, really, is she? Where’s her party?

The Democrats are playing against the laws of cause and effect. Hillary’s campaign is dead, and she’s winning. Bernie’s is alive, and he’s losing. How can such things be? Should she actually win the nomination, as all the journalists and pundits keep telling us she will and must, the Democratic party will have said “No!” to enthusiasm, inspiration and excitement. They will have said no to Bernie’s peoples’ campaign, and re-embraced the cynical, entitled, passionless politics of the Clinton machine.

This would be a curious strategy even in normal times. Up against Trump the Implacable it is wildly out of tune. Sanders has played fair. He has treated Hillary with respect, even deference. He threw out an assault on her outstanding weakness — the secret server and all its classified emails. He took, insofar as one can in this era, the high road. If she is still just barely winning, what hope can she really have when He Who Knows No Boundaries Whatsoever steps up to work his inexplicable magic?

The finest poet of the century just past has phrased the question more pointedly: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches towards (Washington) to be born?

National Post