The Democrats now have a thoroughly cleaned clock set at two years and running. Still wound licking, their strategy is to distance themselves even further from the top of their ticket to defeat. That, apparently, is achieved by rallying behind an even earlier ticket to defeat. The hope now is that Hillary Clinton can, two years further down the road, achieve what she failed to achieve six years ago. Beaten then, she is now hoped to be seen as a fresh alternative, energizing her party and the polarized electorate at large. Politicians don’t have expiration dates, but wouldn’t it be great if we had advantage of some “best used by” guidance?

That’d be like the Republicans again placing their bet on John McCain or Mitt Romney, or going even further back to someone either beat in their primaries. Better to go back to someone who avoided losing by bowing out.

Eying the GOP’s future, Jeb Bush has now decided to offer himself up, despite the inauspicious legacies of both Good George and Bad George.

Hello kingmakers, name recognition cuts two ways.

Really, is the Dems’ best shot seriously thought to be Bill Clinton’s so-called better half, when either half of that name’s legacy still angers so many?

That the words “ divisiveness” and “Clinton” are essentially synonyms within our recent political history is a liability seemingly denied all recognition within some Democratic circles. That donkeys are willfully stubborn, and that elephants have long memories, is still apt branding for our two party system. Unfortunately apt, with seemingly no hope for national unity.

Governance is now in the control of the Republicans. Unlike Richard Milhous Nixon’s well deserved premature departure, Barack Hussein Obama’s questionable executive legality is still around to be kicked. But, despite the innumerable kicks he’s endured so far, he apparently isn’t completely lame. Now, without danger of any personal political price to pay, he’s off the ropes, fingers no longer needing to test the wind, and throwing a few well placed punches. Or, more Cuban handshakes. The endgame of presidential legacy is now on.

Coal producers and tar sands proponents will start the kickoff. Even with half of Republicans agreeing that Obama’s agenda to cut carbon excesses is the right thing to do, that a better natural environment makes for a better economic environment, a majority of Americans still don’t make the connection with coal, oil or gas. Clueless, they just don’t give a frig about fracking. They finally agree that climate change is real, but still can’t agree that global warming isn’t a normal cyclical event.

It’s not so much a matter of denial as just not comprehending the connectedness of the issue overall. The media could straighten them out, if they could get it straight themselves.

Pollution of our oceans recently resurfaced in what must have been a exceptionally slow news cycle. Though one prominent outlet highlighted unrecycled plastic’s ongoing marine contamination, it failed to mention a singular floating accumulation as large as the continental U.S., so large that it apparently wasn’t even noticed in a cursory Google check of the subject.

Fair and balanced needs to do better.

Some have recently accused the administration of holding public intelligence in low regard, that Dems, especially “Obamacare architects,” think most Americans are stupid. Meanwhile, showing their own environmental smarts, the GOP, in a tradition of denial and obstruction, and “Party of Lincoln” false branding, has chosen to chair the Senate Environment Committee with their chief EPA opponent, someone who still calls global warming a “hoax” conspired by the scientific community. That is how a partisan interpreted “people’s mandate” is implemented. Exhausted from their lowest voter participation ever, the electorate will likely be none the wiser.

Maybe we have indeed become Us the People. SpellCheck, not concerned with usage, certainly takes no issue with that. Robotic intelligence is, at least for the moment, still an oxymoron for the most part. Everybody has its own learning curve. Wee just knead to give it thyme.

Wall Street will try to advance their skin in the game, quarterbacked by the thirdranking Democrat in the Senate, who demonstrates that representative democracy sometimes works too well. Delivering jabs to the left has always been Obama’s blind spot, just as his decisive blows to civil liberties in the name of national security, while fast tracking a Trans- Pacific version of NAFTA, only worse, have heard few cries of foul from those supposed to be champions of transparency and the working stiffed.

Some say that Obama and his detractors are all just political theater, that those really in charge control both sides of the aisle, that a house divided stands best in housing their hidden oligarchical agenda. Luckily for “Them,” that’s far too long a money trail for most American’s to follow without getting lost. That’s not stupidity, just apathy.

Saying the game’s rigged, or that the other side rigs it more, or that participation doesn’t matter, are all cop outs to admitting that we need to choose to lead ourselves.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.