Would you like to have both candidates replaced?

[Averroës Nix]

Yes, of course.

*wakes up to a Walker/Christie vs. Cuomo/Booker election* Gah!

Democrats had better options even if they weren't looking for someone to appeal the party's left: Kirsten Gillibrand, Jerry Brown, Tim Kaine, John Kerru.

(Also, worse ones... *cough* Biden *cough*...)

Republicans had a lot of awful options, most of which would have been less outwardly threatening than Trump although horrifying in their own ways. Also, Trump's rise has exposed a large number of their leaders as craven opportunists whose chief moral guide is political expedience... in a country in which we now know that a large share of voters are not bound by conventional democratic norms of rule of law, rejection of political violence, human dignity, etc. Under these circumstances, how much comfort could we really take in anyone else holding the Republican nomination?

You know, Trump supporters complain about Hitler comparisons, but the thought of what someone like Reince Priebus would do in Nazi Germany might actually be more disturbing. Here we are not talking in terms of historical parallels - which don't necessarily fully reflect the character of the figures involved, a distinction that most people seem to miss - but in terms of those vapid but ambitious men, lacking in principle, who have appeared to lick the boots of every tyrant through human history.

Look at the face of Priebus and tell me that you don't see shades of Eichmann. We can come up with similar stories for clin gets like Giuliani or Christie. Whether it's a swastika, a fascio, a hammer and sickle, or an eagle - what difference does it make to this kind of person?