COLUMN: Trump vs. Sanders: Too good to be true?

For the past year we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton is the inevitable Democratic nominee and that Jeb Bush is her virtually certain Republican opponent in the 2016 presidential race.

But oh how the mighty are fallen!

Last week, Clinton fell behind socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, by seven points in the most recent poll for the New Hampshire Democratic primary. And in the Real Clear Politics average of New Hampshire polling, Sanders is just one point behind.

Clinton does better in Iowa, and she maintains a substantial lead in national polls, but the writing is on the wall for a humbling but face-saving departure from the scene sometime in the next several months. Thanks to her inability to extricate herself from the scandal surrounding her rogue email server, her failure to adequately answer questions about Benghazi, and her genuinely inauthentic political persona, Hillary is already a mortally wounded candidate.

If you needed any evidence of that, just watch the wolves starting to circle around her as she limps toward her withdrawal announcement. Vice President Joe Biden is poised to launch his bid for a one-term caretaker presidency (presumably to provide first-aid to the tattered Obama legacy), and even Al Gore has come back from the edge of irrelevance to ponder a comeback to rescue his own tattered political reputation.

To make it even more interesting, if either of those establishment hacks gets in the race, can Sen. Elizabeth Warren be far behind? Presumably, she would consider it her duty to save the country from the big money of Gore and the nearly untranslatable meanderings of Biden.

And that’s just the mess on the orderly, polite Democratic side.

As for the Republicans, is there a human being alive who hasn’t heard of Donald Trump at this point? He is not just the anti-Obama; he is also the anti-Jeb. Whereas President Obama is all about unctuous homilies, Trump is all about bawdy spontaneous sputtering. If they were comedians, President Obama would be Bill Cosby, and Trump would be Lenny Bruce. Cosby, of course, would be much more comforting and Lenny Bruce would be much more likely to offend you, but consider which one you could ultimately trust to tell you the truth. (No fair looking into Bill Cosby’s soul to find the answer!)

As for Jeb Bush, he shouldn’t worry about comparisons with his brother George as much as with Mister Rogers. A Jeb Bush presidency would be one long ponderous lecture about “acts of love” and “getting along.” Can you say “thousand points of light”?

But really, the world may not have to find a way to accommodate the passionless platitudes of Jeb after all. He’s loitering in the low single digits in Iowa, topping off at about 10 points in New Hampshire, and barely above that in nationwide polls, where he is solidly entrenched in distant second place to Trump.

Yeah, Trump — the dyspeptic billionaire who can’t learn to keep his mouth shut and who was considered to be a joke until it turned out that all the other candidates were at the receiving end of the punch lines. Trump the nationalist. Trump the buffoon. Trump the target of Fox News. Trump — the guy who wants to make America great again. And most importantly, Trump, the guy who is not a professional politician and thus might be trustworthy.

Who knows if Trump can survive the onslaught of attacks he will receive from the media mavens, the Republican poohbahs, and the politically correct progressives over the next six months? If he does get wounded though, two other non-politicians are waiting in the GOP wings to rescue the country from its downward spiral. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson is second in Iowa polling, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is coming up on the outside after a knockout performance on the undercard during the first GOP debate night. Throw the GOP’s perennial Peck’s Bad Boy, Ted Cruz, into the mix, and you’ve got four candidates who together win the support of half of all Republican voters in a field of 17 candidates.

Can I put this plainly? People are fed up!

The chattering class in D.C. always likes to remind voters that Congress has a 10 percent approval rating, as if the reason they have that miserable rating is because they are currently led by Republicans.  That might make sense if the Republicans had ever once accomplished anything that Republicans support, but they haven’t. If they don’t like Congress, it must be because they don’t like Congress going along with every dang fool (probably unconstitutional) program that President Obama proposes. Because that’s all they have done for the past seven years.

If you want proof, look at those polls that measure support for the “direction of the country.” Five major polls in the past month, when averaged together at Real Clear Politics, reveal that only 28.6 percent of Americans think our country is on the right track while 62.6 percent think we are on the wrong track. That is truly pathetic.

If you think Hillary Clinton is going to get us on the right track, then go right ahead and vote for her. Same for Mr. Squish, er, Bush. If you think he’s going to restore greatness and pride in America, then send him your 20 bucks to go along with the $100 million he has acquired from a few close friends. I’m sure he will appreciate it.

But if you want to try something different, you’ve got two good choices in Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. These two guys are the real deal, and they are proud of who they are — Trump the billionaire capitalist and Sanders the tax-’em-till-they-bleed socialist. If you want a clash for the ages, an election with a clear choice, and a choice with real consequences, then do your part to support Sanders and Trump.

Let’s find out what America really thinks. Are we socialist or not? Are we going to stand up for ourselves or not? Do we have a Constitution or not?

Stay turned. This election may finally deliver the answers.