One area that the Biden administration will surely address is policing and racial justice. The Justice Department can bring accountability to police reform by returning to practices the Obama administration put in place to monitor and reform police departments, such as the use of consent degrees. More difficult reforms require redressing how mass incarceration caused widespread voter disenfranchisement in Black American and Latino communities.

Presidential primaries became somewhat more influential after World War II, when some candidates adopted a strategy of running in presidential primaries. Other candidates avoided running in primaries and relied on a traditional strategy of courting the party’s elite who would be delegates at the convention. Running in presidential primaries was a risky strategy: A candidate who lost in a primary could see their presidential bid end, but even someone who won every single primary would not earn enough delegates to secure the nomination.

Parties address an important issue in democracies: People have the freedom to ask government to do things, yet the voice of any single individual is quiet. Parties amplify individual voices by combining them into a louder, cohesive message. Such organized input is necessary for reasonably effective governance, which prevents rebellion. Second, particularly among voters with little political knowledge, party affiliation simplifies voting.

It is becoming clear as the election nears that the Clinton base is relatively narrow and getting narrower. The stubborn “Berniecrats” and distrustful independents are a problem with a neat solution in doubt as the election nears. Yet another problem is the early assumption of solid support from non-white Americans has shown to be weaker than expected. The vaunted Clinton ground game may have been limited in key markets by the distraction caused by a much stronger primary campaign that drained assets meant to be used in the massive run-up to the November election.

Hearing her biography over and over during the Democratic convention confirmed one undisputed fact about her: she’s not only “from the Sixties,” as she said at a Democratic debate last year, but she’s of the Sixties. And she’s of a very specific side of the Sixties, the earnest activists who wanted to transform the world by digging deep into policy and challenging outdated norms and practices. For these activists, the popular phrase “question authority” had both a political and personal meaning.

All successful people, particularly those in the public eye, have a sneaking suspicion that they’re really just frauds, and that when the public takes a closer look and stops praising their “genius,” then they’ll be found out. For most high achievers, that bit of insecurity is a motivator, the drive that allows them not to settle for the mundane and to keep the bar high for everything they do. But that’s not the same for mediocre people like Trump, the ones who lack the tools to reach that higher bar. So, in lieu of reaching high, they go low.

Clinton’s ads could use Trump’s own words against him, but they may not stick; that’s why Trump has been called a Teflon candidate, as was Reagan. The Clinton campaign can try to brand Trump a liar, but though fact-checkers have given him a record number of pants-on-fires and Pinocchios, people aren’t joining or leaving him because of accuracy; that’s not what a protest movement is about.  Besides, fact-checking just plays into Trump’s applause line that the media are disgusting liars.

Trump has now emerged as the likely Republican nominee come this fall’s election. The Republican establishment — through Super PAC's supporting Jeb Bush — burned through more than $130 million in an effort to stop Trump, yet he continues to surge in the polls. Donald Trump’s appeal, however, should not come as a surprise if it is seen in sociological terms.

The election walk-over for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the nightmare that has haunted the GOP party leaders from the moment that Trump and Cruz declared their candidacies. Both men are the most polarizing presidential ticket candidates since Sarah Palin turned the GOP White House bid into a running Comedy Central riff. This election go-round it’s far worse than when Palin was on the ticket in 2008 and later made some soundings about a 2012 presidential bid. 

So the question that once seemed absolutely ludicrous to think let alone ask is now a question that can be seriously asked and even to an extent answered. Just how would Trump govern? There’s little reason to think Trump is suited to patient, give-and-take negotiation and compromise to get his initiatives through Congress. His style is to bellow, bully, and harangue to get his way. As for the issues, Trump has been on the political scene long enough to have enough of a paper trail to piece together from his statements in debates and interviews and speeches a fairly accurate picture of what he will say and do on the big-ticket issues.