Yeah, it's a pretty remarkable election that way... frankly I'm surprising Johnson is not getting more traction. He seems to get 5 or 10 percent in some state polls, that can be more than enough to be decisive, but still not as much as you'd expect. Perhaps in time.

In principle of course the game is always the same, swing out to the wing in the primaries and then back to the centre for the general election. But the generally low turn-out in American elections always complicates that a little, and definitely this time... Clinton absolutely does risk losing Bernie supporters to either a third party candidate or to not showing up at all, especially among young voters who overwhelmingly back Bernie but aren't as likely to vote for a candidate they don't much like. And she might figure, with some justification, that she'll get Never Trump votes even as it stands, while courting Republicans even more openly than she's already doing would hurt her even more on the left.

But it's a good point on the Supreme Court, that's just about the only thing on which I figure Trump would have a relatively straightforward conservative policy, since it's too boring and offers too little opportunities for self-aggrandizement for him to care much either way. And if on top of that you reckon that America is made fun of abroad even when electing a comparatively competent Republican president like GW Bush, I suppose you could ask yourself what the harm is in electing a complete buffoon without any principles apart from egoism. But still.