Us politics

Washington, DC The Bernie Sanders campaign has always been touched by irony. Now it is turning into a mad joke. He cannot win the nomination — but, like a deranged old dog, he’s still fighting. Rather than concede defeat to Hillary Clinton, he keeps scrapping away.  He hopes somehow to win the primary in DC on Tuesday, but most of the Washingtonians I’ve met are laughing at him. 'He’s always been strange,’ one DC native told me last night, ‘Now he’s just gone crazy.’ The late-night TV comedians are doing routines about his barmy refusal to accept defeat. Sanders is determined to keep challenging Clinton all the way to the Democratic Party Convention in July in Philadelphia. ‘The struggle continues,’ he says.

Women of the world unite! Back Hillary Clinton! Otherwise, prepare to be damned to that special place in hell that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insists exists ‘for women who don’t help each other’! Exclamation marks are crucial to discussing Hillary Clinton for President. If you don’t deploy one at the end of each sentence, people might think you’re hopelessly depressed that a woman is about to become leader of the free world. We’re supposed to be excited that a woman has just clinched the Democratic nomination. It took America 227 years to get so far. Never mind that the woman in question is widely disliked by a majority of women. Ignore the fact that she was nearly beaten by a kooky 74-year-old socialist called Bernie.

Feeling the Bern lasts only so long, it turns out. Now for the hangover. One of my friends posted a message on Facebook at the weekend that sums it up. 'What is on my mind this morning is Sanders. I voted for Sanders but right now I really want him to step aside and let Ms Clinton fight the fight against Trump,' she wrote, going on to explain how worried she was about the future of the US. 'If I have to go knock on doors to get Democrats to vote for Hillary, I will. The prospect of a Trump presidency terrifies me! I will seek asylum somewhere!' Whoever thought it would come to this? Not only has the Republican party been hijacked by a thrice-married, former-abortion supporting, anti-free trader, but Donald Trump has begun to rally his party around him.

This morning, Ted Cruz bowed out of the race. Now, John Kasich has given up. As a result Donald J. Trump, the most grotesque candidate ever to have run for the Oval Office, is now the only candidate still running for the Republican Party's  nomination. And so the most powerful country on earth, a nation teeming with talent, will this November be asked to choose between Hillary Clinton or the egregious Trump. It cannot be assumed that Trump will be defeated in the presidential election itself. This week, for the first time, a poll put him ahead of her. The bookmakers give him a 30 per cent chance: this time last year, he had a 2 per cent chance of winning the nomination.

Another Tuesday, another triumph for Donald Trump. The Republican frontrunner had a clean sweep at last night's primaries, winning easily in all the states that voted. He took all the delegates from Pennsylvania Maryland,  Connecticut, and Delaware -- plus 9 of 15 in Rhode Island. After his huge victory in New York last week, that means he has won around 200 delegates in the last seven days. Before last week, it looked very much as if Trump would fall short of 1237 delegates, which is the majority he needs (in theory) to win the nomination in the first round of voting in July. Now, he is on course not only to reach that 1237 bar but to clear it comfortably.  He's won around 200 delegates in the last week alone.

Ted Cruz once suggested - it feels like years ago but was only January - that Republican voters would not choose Donald Trump because of his 'New York values'. The idea behind the diss was that Trump's elite social liberalism would not play well with the conservative majority. Well, Cruz was wrong - and New Yorkers repaid him last night with a giant slap in the face, as the Donald swept to victory in his home state. Poor ol' Ted came in a distant third. Everybody knew Trump would win in New York, but the extent of his victory is staggering. He won almost two-thirds of the Republican vote, which meant he was awarded 89 delegates. Cruz, with less than 15 per cent on the vote, won none.

Last night in Chicago, a mob of progressives shut down a Donald Trump rally. The protestors -- described as mostly young millennials -- infiltrated the University of Illinois Pavilion, in central Chicago, and set about subverting the event. They waved Mexican flags -- pro-immigrant, geddit -- and wore t-shirts calling Trump Hitler. There were violent clashes and a policeman was reportedly injured. The protestors cheered when police announced the rally would be shut down because of security concerns. They revelled in their victory against free speech, taunting the furious Trump fans with chants of 'we won'. This is American politics now: juvenile, anti-liberal, menacing. We know that Trump voters are angry.