I don't know how far this aligns with the view over here in general but my view is:
Hilary Clinton is a pretty typical "third way" politician in the mould of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair or Barrack Obama. I think Bill had more (political) integrity though, Hilary will literally say anything to anyone to get votes. She's very skilled at saying nothing in such a way that everyone thinks they heard what they wanted to hear.
The problem for her this election is that Bernie's pushed her way to the left of where she wanted to be and, should she win the nomination, it's going to be interesting to see how she reels that back in.
I think things are changing though. In various places we've seen the rise of anti-austerity parties/candidates who question the economic status quo. Obviously Bernie Sanders represents this in the US. It's becoming a popular position which can win votes across the traditional political spectrum and the party is really failing to respond to it because they're stacked with third-wayers.
Hilary is so far up the arse of big money that even she can't straddle that particular set of issues and when she tries it rings very hollow, especially in the context of the Goldman Sachs speeches. If the popular narrative moves where it looks like it's moving with regard to the kinda stuff Bernie's talking about then the Democratic Party risks becoming ideologically estranged from its base, which it would not weather well.
In any normal election Hilary would stand very little change in a general election, her unfavourables are ridiculously high. This isn't a normal election though, the GOP have failed to field a viable candidate so she has a potential shot at winning (I'm not saying Trump isn't viable, but he's not really a GOP candidate in any meaningful sense. I'll get to that).
And she probably is going to be the nominee. Bernie's not totally out of it, most of the states so far have been particularly favourable for Hilary, the states where Bernie stands a decent chance are up next - he *could* take it to the convention but it's an uphill battle (but really he's had an uphill battle all the way, he's done amazingly well for a Jewish, secular, non-corportate-funded socialist).
Trump is another kettle of fish. Trump is entirely the fault of the media and politicians - they've spent the last 50 or so years dumbing down the political discourse, minimising ideology and policy in favour of the sound-bite and treating politics as a popularity contest which is entirely about money and how much 'speech' it can buy rather than a discussion.
In the context of the climate they've created, Trump is the *perfect* candidate. He stands for absolutely nothing but will say anything and he grabs headlines and airtime by saying and doing stupid shit. Which, to a woefully uneducated electorate looks like "straight talking" and "telling it how it is" and "being tough". The fact that he has no actual policy doesn't matter. The fact that he doesn't mean the stuff he uses as a stand in for policy ("we'll build a wall") (he's been recorded, off the record, as saying he has no intention of following through on that, he just says it to get votes) doesn't matter. As he said himself during one of his speeches - he could literally go out and shoot people in the street and it wouldn't matter, he wouldn't lose votes.
Trump is a(n imbecilic) monster created by the media and politicians. What matters is whether his support has a ceiling (I suspect it does) and whether he destroys the GOP (I suspect he will) which is going to be *very* interesting in the long term.
If the GOP was going to do anything to stop Trump it really had to happen before now. Rubio stands a mathematical chance of being competitive but it's looking less and less likely (though he was helped by Cruz claiming a few states on super tuesday).
Trump is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Republican. So the GOP either just grins and bears it or they split. The Republican party should really be about 5 separate parties anyway - the neocons have very little in common with the libertarians who have very little in common with the religious right who have very little in common with the moderates who have very little in common with the traditional constitutional conservatives. It's a wonder they've managed to hold together so long really (well, it's not, they use bullshit token issues like gun control and abortion, which are basically settled issues - when it comes to policy the parties aren't at all far apart on these issues. They're used as a wedge to artificially polarise the electorate). Anyway, I think Trump will be enough to make those cracks within the party properly rupture.
Which could actually be good for the country. Since you currently essentially have two centre-right parties. If the Republicans split into 3 parties (neocons+moderates, conservatives+libertarians and religious right) and the dems split into two (third-wayers and actual (modern, anti-austerity type) leftists) then a far broader spectrum of political views, and ones with far more internal logic, would be represented.
EDITED: 4 Mar 2016 02:17 by X3N0PH0N