If you think Donald Trump cannot be elected the GOP candidate for president look at what just happened in Britain in the Labour Party once the stronghold of Tony Blair.
Jeremy Corbyn who started out as a 100/1 longshot and who voted against Labour Party policies more often than Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has just been elected party leader.
Not just a narrow victory either, he won almost sixty per cent of the vote and smashed rivals who were from the Blairite wing of British politics.
It is easily the equivalent of Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic nomination or Donald Trump the GOP standard bearer race.
Corbyn is as far left as British politics can go. Among his many comments were regrets that Bin Laden did not get a fair trial and comparisons between US troops in Iraq and ISIS.
For the British public he is known as a close friend and warm supporter of Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein which the tabloids have used mercilessly.
Yet Corbyn has caught the world wide wave of dissatisfaction and disgust with contemporary politicians that spans the western world these days.
Jeremy Corbyn
Everywhere it seems the old certainties are falling apart, Even in Ireland, Sinn Fein and independents are expected to get very large votes in the Irish general election.
The times they are a changing which brings us back to Trump.
He too has caught a wave of dissatisfaction which has spread through GOP ranks but is also discernible among Democrats where Hillary Clinton is suddenly struggling.
We may well be looking at a new form of politics driven by grassroots like those who supported Corbyn in Britain and now right wing grassroots who support Trump in the USA.
Their message is clear but also incoherent which may seem a paradox.
They want change at all costs but have not articulated how that change should happen.
Trump has issued one policy paper on immigration which bordered on the racist. Yet his supporters hardly seem to care.
He insults women but his support is leaping among them.
Right behind him is a former neurosurgeon who has never run for dogcatcher and is African American to boot.
Likewise in Britain, Corbyn, 66, was an almost forgotten backbencher long thought to represent an old faded vision of British socialism.
Years ago the Labour Party elected an old lefty called Michael Foot who became a standing joke and led the party to electoral disaster. Yet suddenly he is back in style.
Watching Trump on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon I was struck how young the audience was and how embracing of his vision they seemed. Millenials may elect him yet.
We have reached a crossroads in western politics, where the entrenched powers are facing their toughest challenge ever. Blair’s brand of politics became utterly discredited after his support for the Iraq war. Here in the US being part of the political system, no matter your party, has become a massive disadvantage.
That’s why Trump leads the field and former Texas governor Rick Perry, after two terms running America’s second largest state was polling 1 per cent when he stepped down.
Corbyn has shown the impossible can happen. Will Trump now follow suit? Suddenly it seems entirely possible.
Comments