In November, The Economist wrote “If the Republican campaign is to return to normality, it will do so in South Carolina” due to the state’s ability to filter out the unserious candidates. We are now a month out from the South Carolina primary, and a lot could still happen, but if you’re one of the people who think the government should do less spying on citizens, less intervening in the market, and less mindless spending on the DoD procurement program, you’re in a for bad time: Trump is at 49% chance of winning, Cruz 18%, and Rubio 13%.

These last few months I’ve specifically avoided talking about Trump for many reasons, but the most important is that he has a low chance of being the Republican nominee. I would maintain that, even now. The full might of the Republican Party establishment has not coalesced behind another candidate. I’m almost certain that had Jeb’s last name not been Bush, he would already be the nominee. But since it is, he never got the full support, and he eventually collapsed. Trump has also been getting a disproportionate amount of media coverage considering how tenuous his (still early) polling lead is. If there is any shift in media coverage from now until February 20, Trump could be harmed disproportionately to other candidates. And a shift could easily occur if Ted Cruz wins in Iowa (538 gives Cruz a 50% chance to win in Iowa right now).

Nonetheless, it’s time to face the fact that not only have polls been favoring Trump, but betting markets: contracts for Trump to win are at 46% at PredictIt, between 36% an 41% at Predictious, and 41% at Predictwise. Even if I think these are overestimates (my 2016 Predictions had Trump at 20% chance of winning the nomination), the alternatives aren’t great either: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are the only candidates the markets have any confidence in besides Trump. How bad is it? This is Peter Suderman in Reason writing about a possible Trump-Cruz nomination fight:

I find the failure to represent libertarian ideas both disheartening and frustrating, especially given how influential those ideas have been in recent year. But there’s an even more generalized failure in the works: A Trump-Cruz contest means that calm, rational individuals who are not liberals, and who do not support either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, have essentially no place to go in the general election. Trump and Cruz are running angry, hysterical campaigns full of hyperbole, misdirection, and easily provable lies. They are running campaigns based on fear and nativism, and are utterly untethered to the practical realities of politics and governance. For those who find that approach incredibly distasteful but who also find much to object to in both the flippant semi-socialism of Sanders and the cynical, corrupt-seeming center-leftism of Clinton (and yes, I fall into this group myself) there is little to latch onto in this race, and more than a little reason to despair.

I wanted to put some some numbers to the position that libertarian-leaning voters find themselves in, so I filled out the political quiz from isidewith.com and got 94% agreement with the Libertarian Party:

And so let’s see what libertarian voters like me get with the candidates:

Of these 8 listed candidates, only the bottom 4 candidates have a chance to be president (I think I put Hillary’s chance of winning the nomination at 90%). Obviously Trump is the worst of any option: his small score here reflects his poor grasp of economics and fascist authoritarian undertones, but it doesn’t quite capture the full self-delusion of Trump. If we included some measure of his fundamental ignorance of simple geopolitics and international relations, he would score even lower. Clinton has a higher score than Trump, but there’s sort of the opposite problem: she’s so good at playing the game, we really don’t have any idea what she will do. Most likely she will mold to whatever center-left policy positions are most popular at the time, along with some shrewd center-right popular posturing. To trust in Clinton is to trust the median American voter. Yikes.

You’ve already read Peter Suderman’s discussion of Cruz. Rubio might have more credit as a real politician willing to work with others, as well as a concrete understanding of free market principles, but he is also probably the most hawkish candidate running for president; he’s Dick Cheney 2.0. All in all, if Marco Rubio is the best bet for libertarians to look for in this election, well then it seems Mr. Suderman’s despair is well justified.

If you take a look at the big signature legislation of the past 30 years, many of the reforms really stopped being libertarianish almost 15 years (and 2 presidencies) ago: tax reform, ending of the Cold War, and welfare reform all predated the turn of the millennium. Since then, the big legislation has been reduction of civil liberties, large expensive wars, health care reform with no market mechanisms, and huge bailouts. We might also add in the failure of any entitlement or immigration changes. Will the lack of any libertarian reforms for another 4 or 8 years have bigger ramifications after 2 horrendous presidencies? It’s hard to know.

Of course, it seems silly to be too upset. Politicians have been implementing bad policies in America for years and life here really has never been better. And if you look beyond federal legislation, many things are moving in the right direction like marijuana legalization and gay marriage. And, of course, the market will always route around the roadblocks the government puts in place. Market innovations don’t have to wait for political reform or political dialogue to shift in the direction of liberty. But it sure would be nice.