Clinton and Trump: Sadly, It's Politics as Usual

In the film Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman plays a struggling actor. After an audition, the casting director tells him they need someone shorter. "I can be shorter," he says, taking the lifts out of his shoes. "Well, we need someone younger," comes the reply. "I can be younger," Hoffman pleads, mimicking a child's voice." "What I mean is, we need someone else," the director finally hammers home.

In a case of life imitating art, voters in the 2016 presidential campaign have also made it clear that they need someone else. Of 48.7 million primary votes cast, 58 percent have gone to the combination of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz, the three candidates who openly snubbed their noses at the political establishment. Each has aspired to be the "someone else" in the race. Only Trump remains. Yet neither he nor Hillary Clinton, an establishment candidate if there ever was one, are that someone else. While 2016 may seem to be a starkly different election year, underneath the surface the saying is still true: "the more things change, the more they remain the same."

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