So what's behind Trump's shocking resurgence in the polls, barely three weeks after the entire establishment and mainstream media had written him off as the complete joke they'd always hoped he really was?
Well, obviously we're seeing what potential there is with better campaign management - one that shifts gears to bridging divisions instead of fanning them. But more fundamentally, we're seeing the ever fuller exposure of the utter bankruptcy of the status quo in Washington and more generally the elite ruling class as a whole.
This is far, far bigger than Hillary's specific credibility problems which only seem to get worse and worse in regards to the deleted State Department emails and the "pay-to-play", "non-profit" Clinton Foundation...at issue here is ultimately the very legitimacy of the system itself - or more specifically, the way it's gamed or "rigged" to favor a select few vested interests and interest groups with the right access channels.
Our democracy has been "captured" by all manner of corporate and special-interest lobbies for so long now, which has so glaringly segregated our society into relatively few "haves" and a far wider cross-section of "have-nots", that the very notion that we should just continue "business as usual" is becoming anathema to much of the electorate. And critically, this is especially true of the largely independent-leaning center, which has long seen through the deceptive veil of our increasingly pointless culture and ideology wars to recognize how an effective duopoly of national politics has systematically entrenched a virtual monopoly of the most deep-pocketed rentier-plutocrats.
As this long-running exposé of our country's particularly polished form of corruption reaches an ever broader audience with ever intensifying scrutiny, the likes of Hillary and the political establishment of both parties is getting their butts grilled...and unless they have a genuine change of heart, this is just the beginning of their pathetic meltdown.
In the past, they could hide behind the tried-and-true excuses: "We're still the best country in the world!", "Everyone still wants to come to our country!", "Democracy is still the least bad form of governance compared to all the others!"
The reason this defense is crumbling is that even the most compelling apologies for the status quo have their limit - and if we haven't reached it in the 2016 election cycle, we're pretty darn close.
We're collectively a society heading in the wrong direction - effectively regressing towards second or even third-world standards and practices, however gradually and insidiously...this is completely unacceptable, not least because much of the poorer developing world is in fact experiencing an improvement of governance just as we're experiencing a decline.
In this environment, it might hardly matter to the Democrats that their lame-duck incumbent is enjoying stellar approval ratings (50+ percent) for a lame-duck in an election season; it's becoming entirely possible for a cool-headed, independent-thinking voter to respect Obama in his twilight months yet also conclude that some radical break is needed with the status quo.
When something's broken or bankrupt, no amount of kumbaya or good feelings can substitute for a dangerous conviction that those responsible must be held accountable and can't be allowed to keep doing what they've done before.
What's really behind Trump's resurgence is that Hillary and the Democrats have already made their most compelling case - that America remains the exceptional and indispensable nation...as if that deeply ingrained belief wasn't the source of our disillusionment with the country's current state to begin with.
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