Today In Both Sides Do It: Every Damn Body

On the Right, Trumps' Pandemonium Carnival has finally pounded the last stake through the heart of the Party of Lincoln.  He did not steal or snooker the nomination away from his betters, because on the Right there are no "betters".  After 30 years of relentless reshaping by Hate Radio and Fox News, the GOP has now fully embraced its core concept of "Ignorance is Strength" and finally come out of the closet to proudly present itself to the world as the racist, fascist Party of Jefferson Davis we on the Left have been warning about for decades.

On the Left, the contest for the Democratic nomination continues, with two, qualified candidates fighting hard but mostly above-the-belt over the 10% of the issues which divide them.

And squatting in the rubble we find the same Beltway high priests of Both Siderism, still knee-walking drunk on their own privilege and self-regard, still casting the same ridiculous runes and interpreting the same moldering goat entrails and reciting the same old incantations.

Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post with the usual crap:

After Election Day, Democrats, Republicans and the media have some serious soul-searching to do

Now that the contours of the general election are reasonably predictable, it is time to start thinking about the tripartite institutional reckoning that should come in November’s aftermath — for the media, Republicans and Democrats...

Former speechwriter and permanent Beltway stalactite, Michael Gerson, predictably follows suit:

Republicans and Democrats are fixated on nostalgia — and have deformed our politics

...
Both Clintonism and Reaganism, no doubt, needed updating. But the parties have gone further, essentially abandoning the two most compelling, successful governing visions of the past few decades. With the influence of Bernie Sanders and the success of Trump, American politics has launched into uncharted ideological waters.

Tom Friedman copes with Donald Trump in the same way Tom Friedman copes with everything: by unspools his 1,000th New York Times column on China, Jobs and The Internet --

-- and concludes:

Every one of these challenges can be met if we put our heads and hands together. For that to happen, though, this version of the Republican Party had to be destroyed, so a thinking center-right party can emerge. If that is what Trump has done, he’s done the Lord’s work. We also need Democrats to be a center-left party, though, and not let Bernie Sanders pull them to the far left. If both happen, maybe something good can actually emerge from this crazy election.

Even Doughy Pantsload at the National Review -- who just broke up with Joe Scarborough because Joe kept insisting that a three-way with Donald Trump would make their relationship even more awesome -- joins the Both Siderist minyan gathering around the corpse of the Republican party:

Nationalism and socialism are in full gallop in America today while conservatives are without a horse.

Donald Trump almost never uses the language of traditional American conservatism, with its emphasis on classically liberal notions of limited government, constitutionalism, individualism, and free trade. He prefers to talk about “strength” and “winning” while vowing to restore the “greatness” of yesteryear through his indomitable will. Meanwhile, the Democratic party is embracing socialism. Hillary Clinton doesn’t call herself a socialist the way her tormentor-competitor Bernie Sanders does, but Sanders has not only pulled her to the left, he’s revealed the heart’s desire of the activist base of the party.

Still, even without Sanders’ influence, Clinton’s worldview was always that of top-down technocracy. Indeed, this is what unites Clintonism, Sandersism, and Trumpism...

Of course it is not strictly true that conservatives do not have a horse.  They, in fact, have a very large dead horse which they have been energetically beating for years, and by God if they just keep at it, one day soon that pile of gnawed bones and rotting flesh will raise itself up and ride them all off to glory.  But until then it is important to remember that, somehow, it is always Both Sides...Both Sides...Both Sides...

I'm sure there are others.  Many others, because they have no longer have any capacity to react to any crisis beyond running is circles and yawping the same, miserable lies that have paid for their home and hearth for 30 years.  Inevitably, most of the Beltway's best and brightest will end up camped out under the Both Siderist freeway overpass, jostling each other for space on the "Meet the Press" and "This Week..." where they can continue to build their little piece of the Both Siderist brand.