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The Democratic Establishment has chosen suicide over evolution. In their absurd bid to get the She-Clinton elected they’ve denied their base its wish, and their party a future. In throwing forth the most Establishment candidate in this, a time of unusually high cynicism, it’s very possible Trump will win. The Overton window is spinning all the way to the Right, and the shards are about to peeper our faces.

But why did they choose this? To keep the status quo. In the same way Nixon was desperate to prevent progressive governance abroad (Chile to Cambodia), the DNC did their darnest to disallow a socialist president at home. Bernie Sanders was undermined in a way that brought to mind Henry A. Wallace’s mistreatment in 1944. Even though it was the Old Man – only him – who possessed a clear lead over Trump (recent polls have put the latter and Hillary at almost equal footing, with him leading in key swing states).

What the Democratic elite and their sympathisers are willfully blind to is this: the current system – labelled “oligarchical” by Princeton political scientists – can not be saved. No amount of polish or steady steerage will do it. Not even with – good grief! – Clixon and Kissinger at the helm. To borrow from the banner: capitalism isn’t in crisis, it is crisis.

(After-all, as Alexander Cockburn once wrote in ’08, it was the mega-rich who were reaching for Das Kapital as the left flailed. Those in the know know its over, as they move from the giblets to the marrow.)

If the Left aren’t the ones to oversee the transition from late capitalism to goodness-knows-what, the Right will be. As Stewart Hall and Ralph Miliband once warned Old Labour, if leftists are not willing to become radical when History demands it, their enemies will inevitably set the next consensus. Britain is still suffering the aftershocks of Thatcher’s Revolution because of chronic cowardice Labour showed.

The only thing we appear to learn from history is that no one learns anything from history. American liberals, shirking imagination as they do, have made exactly the same mistake, this time with Clinton II. They’ve bought the line that open corruption, in the form of cash-for-favours with Earth’s dodgiest dictators; obvious opportunism – marriage is between and man and a woman until it isn’t; and outright lying (remember her “life-threatening” entry into Bosnia?) are all fine, worth fighting for even. What we deserve.

Hillary is no longer subject to a FBI investigation, but there are – if the US has any conception of justice left – some areas that could still open her up to legalistic challenges.

And, of course, there’s always the court of public opinion should the traditional channels fail. With every drip from the email leak, we are finding more depths to which she will sink. How fitting would it be for the name that made itself privatizing Arkansas state would meet its downfall as a result of making the public private during its time as Secretary of State.

1. Her shady dealings with aforementioned international crooks, brutes and murderers – Mark Rich to Nazarbayev to Mubarak – in a process subverting extremely lax caps on campaign contributions. In other words, she is using a “charitable organisation” as a front while blood money is funneled to her vanity project. (Todd S. Purdum did an iexcellent investigation into this.)

2. Using her position in the State Department to remind all of Central and South America just who is boss. Not since Reagan have we seen the USA so committed to de-weeding its self-declared backyard: Hillary helped undermine the democratic government of Honduras and add legitimacy to the military thugs who stole power through a phony election. She pressured reluctant neighbouring states to toe this line and join in the “normalization of relations” process. In plainer language: accepting that might equals right. I imagine dear Eric Blair would spew he could.

3. Her money laundering in channelling DNC funds (money for the party and not an individual) toward her campaign. Note: this is also anti-democratic, seeing as it’s leaving Bernie Sanders at a serious disadvantage… should anyone care about that sort of thing anymore.

4. Her on-going and strident support for a Saudi elite which, from what little we can discern, played a pivotal role in 9/11. Turns out the aiding state actor wasn’t Iraq after-all! Congress, in acknowledgement of this, have recently approved a bill that will allow its victims to sue the Gulf monarchy.

(4. is potentially most damaging for Clinton Corp. Not even the center-left could allow themselves to stand for that. Promising mass-surveillance and promoting mass-murderers maybe A-ok, but surely not that.)

When Trump’s militia are patrolling the streets and the opportunity for progressive politics has been lost to another generation, maybe then the Democrats will finally realise that a pathological pursuit of compromise just ain’t good enough. For all the good it’ll do.