This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on August 12, 2016
This week a friend showed me the New Yorker cover from June 1, 2015 with a drawing of seven leading candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Not one ended up making the acceptance speech. If someone suggested at the beginning of 2015 that the GOP nomination would not go to Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, or Scott Walker, you’d really wonder what happened—or whether anyone got it at all. At the same time, if someone suggested to you then that Hillary Clinton would be the 2016 Democratic nominee, hardly anyone would have blinked. If someone suggested that she would face stiffer competition for the nomination than expected, that would not have seemed particularly Earth-shattering. But if someone suggested that Bernie Sanders would give Clinton a heck of a race, winning 23 primaries or caucuses in states and territories, that might
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