Nationally, Sanders Is Almost Even with Hillary; Trump Is Rolling Conventional wisdom: "Look, Bernie Sanders has had two good early primary performances, but it's rougher from here on out, he's a boutique candidate, he can't appeal to Democrats across the country . . ." Quinnipiac: "In the Democratic race nationwide, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has 44 percent, with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 42 percent, and 11 percent undecided, unchanged from February 5." Quinnipiac's poll also finds Donald Trump way ahead nationally, with 39 percent to Rubio's 19 percent and Cruz 18 percent. After that, it's Kasich 6, Bush 4, Carson 4. All of the non-Trump candidates remain convinced they'll win a one-on-one matchup against Trump. Does that really look like a safe bet at this point? Should Ted Cruz's campaign expect to automatically pick up, say, Ben Carson supporters? Would Rubio automatically pick up Ted Cruz's supporters? And under what scenario can we envision the race coming down to Trump and Kasich? If Trump becomes the nominee, a big reason will be that all of his rivals convinced themselves the best strategy was to let him be and focus on attacking all of the other non-Trump candidates, and then wait until there was a two-man race, and the majority of the party would have no choice but to support the non-Trump option. It was the prisoner's dilemma. Everybody wanted somebody else to do the dirty work of wrestling down Trump, and to benefit from that fight; nobody wanted to do the fighting themselves. Right to Rise PAC didn't spend any money on ads specifically criticizing Trump until February 12, even though Trump led the race starting in July. There are times the criticism of the "consultant class" can be overwrought, an all-purpose scapegoat, but this isn't one of them. Our Long National Nightmare of Envy, Scapegoating, and Blame-Shifting Will Continue Tom Nichols initially described this column in an intriguing series of Tweets . . . Today, Americans live—at least in a virtual sense—in other people's homes every day. They stay connected on social media, constantly inundating each other with pictures of vacations, graduations, and other life achievements and trophies. This occurs despite the fact, as Charles Murray recently pointed out, that people of different classes spend less actual time around each other in real life than ever before. The actual gulf among classes is wider, but the distance between them online is nonexistent. This preoccupation with other people's lives isn't healthy. We know it isn't healthy, not just because it's common sense, but because it's actually been studied. Frequent Facebook users, for example, who tended to compare their own lives to those of their friends "experienced feelings of envy" and "were more likely to identify with statements corresponding to depression." Well, of course they do: social media is like that. As if this weren't bad enough, the faux egalitarianism at the center of post-1960s liberalism has created a sense of entitlement that is drowning every social class in America. It is especially toxic when wedded to our therapeutic culture, in which human failings mean nothing. If you're not as rich as the guy you friended, it's not because you're untalented, it's because things are unfair. If that house on the Internet isn't yours, it's because some "elitist" rigged the game. If you can't get it, someone has to pay. If Trump is the candidate of the disappointed white working class, what can they reasonably expect from a Trump presidency? Would building a border wall, deporting all illegal immigrants (then letting "the good ones" return in an "expedited" manner) and big tariffs on Chinese exports really make them feel like their prospects for the good life are dramatically improved? I guess it depends upon what work they're looking for: The new Pew Research Center analysis also shows that in most states--39, plus the District of Columbia--the largest number of unauthorized immigrant workers are found in service occupations, which include maids, cooks or groundskeepers.1 Construction and production occupations also have large representation of unauthorized immigrant workers in many states, according to the new Pew Research analysis. However, when looking at the occupation in which unauthorized immigrant employees are the highest share of the workforce, in most states, it is farming. In New Hampshire, 16 percent of voters in the Republican primary had a high-school education or less. Donald Trump won 47 percent in this demographic; the next-closest candidate was Cruz with 13 percent. A September analysis of Trump voters found "One half of his voters have a high school education or less, compared to 19 percent with a college or post-graduate degree." If you only have a high school education, your economic prospects are going to be limited, no matter who is president. We can argue about whether employers overvalue college degrees, but it's hardly been a secret that employers in the highest-paying fields aren't interested in job applicants with only a high-school degree, or high-school dropouts. Today, lot of Americans are telling anyone who will listen, "I got screwed." You risk an apoplectic frenzy if you dare respond . . . "Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain that your disappointing life circumstances aren't a result of the decisions you've made? At all?" If a man looks at his life, and concludes his prospects for a better future are slim, how much of that is society or the economy's fault, and how much of it is his fault? It's a lot easier to blame Wall Street or the richest 1 percent or the elites than to acknowledge our own mistakes and bad decisions. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I keep running across "victims" who don't seem like actual victims. Was the housing bubble really just an endless series of Wall Street fat-cats and "predatory lenders" going after well-meaning, hard-working Americans who just dreamed of owning a home? It had nothing to do with people buying houses they couldn't afford and assuming they could sell them quickly? Back on January 26 of last year, the Washington Post wrote a lengthy profile piece presumably meant to be a heartbreaking portrait of victims of the housing bubble in Prince George's County. The article showcased Comfort and Kofi Boateng, legal immigrants from Ghana, who "struggle under nearly $1 million in debt that they will never be able to repay . . ." Wait for it… "on the 3,292-square-foot, six-bedroom, red-brick Colonial they bought for $617,055 in 2005. The Boatengs have not made a mortgage payment in 2,322 days -- more than six years -- according to their most recent mortgage statement." These folks have lived in a six-bedroom house and haven't paid a dime for six years, and we're supposed to believe they're the victims here? The Post continued, "Their plight illustrates how some of the people swallowed up by the easy credit era of the previous decade have yet to reemerge years later." Wait, living in a house for six years for free is a plight? You probably remember this poster boy for Occupy Wall Street: "Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, [Joe Therrien] set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion--puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand . . ." (Don't worry; these days Therrian is using his puppetry skills in a show, The Seditious Conspiracy Theater Presents: A Monument to the Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera.) Look, before you take on five or six figures in debt, maybe you should take a little time to think about how much money you'll be able to earn when you're finished. That's not "the system" being unfair to you; that's supply and demand. Promoting personal responsibility is hard enough without political leaders who keep rushing to the cameras to tell Americans that nothing is ever their fault; it's always the work of these nefarious sinister, powerful forces. Is there any sign that Americans have learned the right lessons from the Obama years? Doesn't it seem like we're hungrier than ever for new scapegoats? Progressives Suddenly Realize Obama Is Leaving the Country in Terrible Shape No, really, this Kyle Smith review of Bill Press's new book, Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down, makes the book sound fascinating. "We voted for hope and change, Mr. President, but what did we get?" asks progressive radio host Bill Press, a longtime voice of the left on CNN shows such as "Crossfire," in his new book "Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down" (Threshold Editions). The answers are saddening: "stagnant wages, a struggling middle class, rising income inequality and a diminished social safety net." Press issues a withering indictment of virtually every notable event of the Obama years: "In the end, the Affordable Care Act pleased few." "Obama's claim that everybody could keep his own plan and doctor was so far from true that Politifact actually gave it the worst possible designation: 'Pants on Fire.' For all the promises to abandon the Bush-Cheney policy of 'anything goes' in the war on terror, Obama would, for the most part, not only continue down that same path, but expand it. "The place where progressives anticipated the most change is where, to their shock and chagrin, they found the least." . . . Press spends a chapter noting that the $787 billion 2009 stimulus (remember how that was going to fix the economy?) "fell way short of expectations" . . . In a better America, we would learn from this. Smith says that Press ends the book by telling Bernie Sanders, "Just be yourself." Wait, wait, wait. If Obama overpromised and under-delivered, if he hand-waved away questions about the details, if he underestimated the costs and overestimated the ability of the federal government bureaucracy to handle basic tasks like setting up a web site, protecting sensitive material from hackers, not turning rivers mustard-yellow . . . why are you so convinced Bernie Sanders is going to do better? What makes you think a Sanders administration won't have projects miss deadlines, and blow past initial budget estimates, that it won't waste money, that Sanders won't put his old friends in powerful positions, that he won't excuse their failures or that he'll hold the massive government workforce accountable for bad results? ADDENDA: So, if you're one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks Antonin Scalia was murdered . . . why would the sinister powers wait until now to do it? 'Yes, I know the Trilateral Commission could have taken out Scalia at any point . . . it just sort of slipped their mind . . . I told the conspiracy to take out Scalia back in 2011, but they just ignored my memo, held meetings, sat around . . . Do you have any idea how many layers of federal bureaucracy this giant government conspiracy has to deal with?' 
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