Dems want to win? Then dump Clinton

Only Clinton could lose to Trump and vice versa. What a depressing election.

Opinion polls increasingly show the presidential election getting closer, but either major party could have ensured victory by doing just one thing: nominating someone else. That’s how poorly both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are regarded by most Americans, if not by most members of their own party.

Of course each party is responsible for its own nominee. But each party is also somewhat responsible for the nominee of the other party and will be somewhat responsible for the disaster that will befall the country if the other party’s nominee is elected. For the awfulness of each party’s nominee has been an inducement for the other party to nominate the candidate it has chosen. That is, both Trump and Clinton have substantially lowered standards for the presidency.

Trump is so awful that many Democrats have thought that they can foist anyone on the country, even the corrupt, cliched, and wooden Clinton. Clinton is so awful that many Republicans have thought that she can be defeated even by Trump, a megalomaniac, narcissist, ignoramus, and serial bankrupt.

Clinton embodies everything repulsive about politics — the greed and corruption, from her cattle futures “trading” days in Arkansas to her foundation’s taking donations from foreign governments while she was secretary of state; and the incompetence and dissembling, from her botching the first big opportunity for a national medical insurance system to her igniting civil war in Libya to her lying about mishandling her classified State Department emails.

Trump is the receptacle for all the anger and revulsion about politics — not just its corruption and its having run the country down in recent years but also the political correctness in which it has wrapped itself to deflect and intimidate criticism. Unfortunately, this anger and revulsion have made many people apoplectic, pushed them to the point where they no longer care about alternative policies or even the simple decencies. No, all they want to do is smash things up, and even smash people up.

Trump sensed this rage six months ago when he told a campaign rally in Iowa, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

That’s why it makes no difference to so many people how erroneous, insulting, and even vile Trump gets. All that stuff only gratifies them more by increasing the contempt that is heaped on the government by their support for him.

Far from an attempt to “make America great again,” this is only nihilism — dangerous in a national leader, fatal when it infects a whole people. So Democrats especially should beware: The country will take a big step closer to this nihilism next week upon Hillary Clinton’s nomination. Conditions in the country are not improving, and if anyone can lose, Clinton can. Double driving tax At last Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has admitted why the state Transportation Department is joining other states in a study of taxing motorists by the miles they drive. It’s because state government really might switch to such a tax regime.

This is only partly the usual tax hunger of Democratic administrations. Additionally, the governor notes, motor vehicles are becoming more fuel-efficient and the state’s fuel taxes are producing less revenue. In 20 years, the governor says, revenue from fuel taxes may fall by half — and that is the main revenue source for the state’s transportation system, which is in serious need of improvement.

But anyone can see the danger here. Fuel taxes are already mileage taxes, and a new mileage tax won’t just substitute for fuel taxes, won’t be revenue-neutral. Instead it will become a tax surcharge, with motorists paying both taxes and state government collecting far more money, even as University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst’s salary goes up to a million dollars per year.