And so the nation heads to Super Tuesday, where Hillary Clinton expects to take the last wind out of Bernie Sanders’ sails while the various anti-Trump forces aim to at least dent the GOP front-runner’s march to the nomination.
Clinton is desperate to crush the Sanders revolution so she can turn back to the center after having moved so far left to undercut Bernie’s appeal — and start fund-raising from the fat cats for the unprecedented deluge of attack ads so central to her strategy.
Trump likewise hopes to cement his own “inevitability” so he can start uniting the party behind him. His foes’ best hope, at this point, is a brokered convention — which would leave whoever winds up as the nominee in weak shape to face the Clinton onslaught.
If Ted Cruz can’t win in evangelical-heavy Southern states beyond his native Texas, then his strategy will have failed. Marco Rubio needs several strong-second finishes to leave him with much hope of winning once the race moves on to more moderate states.
The GOP race has turned brutal, with Rubio and Cruz hitting as hard as Trump has from the start, while The Donald now has a new, plus-sized Mini-Me — Chris Christie — slugging away on his behalf.
It’s gotten so mean that anti-Trump conventional Republicans are muttering about launching a third party — a move that could guarantee Clinton’s victory and liberal domination of the Supreme Court for a generation.
Still out there is the wild card of the FBI probe of then-Secretary of State Clinton’s illicit, national-security-endangering use of a private e-mail server.
President Obama has publicly signaled that he won’t let the Justice Department indict Clinton — but a resignation on principle by FBI chief Jim Comey over such political interference in law enforcement seems a real possibility.
Bottom line: Tuesday’s voting will bring some clarity to the wildest political year in decades, but bigger turmoil is still ahead.