There’s the Hillary Clinton who is and always has been an activist, advocate, and idealist determined to advance civil rights, promote women’s equality, champion the strivers, and upend the status quo by using the levers of power to effect political and social change. But no, there’s another Hillary Clinton, a calculating, privileged member of the elite who is too cozy with power, condescends to ordinary Americans, sees herself as above the law, and manipulates every word and sentence for political, personal, and financial gain.

A surefire way to occupy our attention is to tell us a story. Stories require conflict; without conflict, there’s no change, no drama, no plot. Trump is a walking attention magnet. He’s the never-ending story, the prince of plot, the king of conflict, the drama queen of TV and Twitter. A Trump presidency guarantees change. “Even if it’s like a Nazi-type change,” in Vizcarra’s words, it will never, ever be boring.

Clinton’s ads could use Trump’s own words against him, but they may not stick; that’s why Trump has been called a Teflon candidate, as was Reagan. The Clinton campaign can try to brand Trump a liar, but though fact-checkers have given him a record number of pants-on-fires and Pinocchios, people aren’t joining or leaving him because of accuracy; that’s not what a protest movement is about.  Besides, fact-checking just plays into Trump’s applause line that the media are disgusting liars.

The aim was to embarrass and discredit her not because of her alleged missteps as Secretary of State, but as a 2016 presidential candidate. Republicans got what they wanted when their phony accusations against her of cover-up and incompetence got tons of media chatter and focus and raised the first shadow of public doubt. The doubt quickly ballooned into the image of Clinton in the mind of many as a shifty-eyed and shifty-talking candidate who every time she opened her mouth grew a Pinocchio-length nose. 

Bernie Sanders has gone from a charming, engaging, provoking, and supremely principled Democratic presidential candidate to a scheming, conniving, devious, supremely unprincipled Democratic presidential contender. In quick succession, Sanders has been accused of being a tax cheat, a special-interest money-grabber, a foreign policy dimwit, a Nixonian dirty trickster, and a racial bigot. 

The worst part is that Bernie won’t open his mouth quick enough or at all to smack down their words. This was never more glaring than with the latest to have loose jointed lips and a thought process. That’s Susan Sarandon. By now her quip that she might not back Clinton and the far worse thought that Trump might be the one to spark the revolution has burned up enough twitter and Facebook accounts with righteous indignation. 

There’s only one problem: Superdelegates are not pledged, do not vote until the convention, and have never taken an election away from a candidate who has received the majority of pledged delegates. Hillary Clinton has not “won” any superdelegates, because (a) there’s no contest to “win” for their votes and (b) delegates have not cast their votes yet, and thus can change their mind at any time.

Apparently Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama; but not Hillary Clinton. In an admission that was both refreshingly candid and intentionally vague, Hillary Clinton said that the reason only 37 percent of Americans find her “honest and trustworthy” is that she’s not a “natural politician.” Clinton essentially said: People don’t trust me because I don’t know how to suck up and lie like real politicians do. Which begs the question: Who is a “natural politician”?

They fear that he will actually be the party’s nominee. And if so, what will that do to the party? GOP leaders from House Majority leader Paul Ryan to Arizona Senator John McCain sweat that Trump could not only cost the GOP any shot at the White House but blow their majority hold on the Senate as well. The one thing that would almost certainly insure that is if the sentiment voiced by the conservative activist about Trump is not just a bad case of momentary blowing smoke.

The election walk-over for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the nightmare that has haunted the GOP party leaders from the moment that Trump and Cruz declared their candidacies. Both men are the most polarizing presidential ticket candidates since Sarah Palin turned the GOP White House bid into a running Comedy Central riff. This election go-round it’s far worse than when Palin was on the ticket in 2008 and later made some soundings about a 2012 presidential bid.