re: #29 Brian J.

Something to learn for next time for both parties- never allow a fringe candidate on the ballot with the logic of “what’s the worst that could happen?”

There have been fringe candidates in every election cycle - Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, etc, etc, etc. There were other problems for each party this year. The Democrats didn’t have anyone else to run besides Clinton, had their been a third candidate that drew maybe 20-30% early on, Sanders would have been an after thought. On the Republican side, they had too big of a field and the establishment failed to rally around one particular candidate early enough. Really, what you want is 2-3 viable candidates and maybe 1-2 outliers that can get beat handily so you can tell the true believers that those guys are too extreme to win. Basically, you want something like the 2008 fields.