3 bits of conventional unwisdom about the 2016 election

As the author of two nervous-nelly columns in the past seven months titled "Anybody but Hillary," I was greatly relieved by the former secretary of state's confident, poised, passionate, unflappable, and downright humane performance in Tuesday night's debate. I still say that she and her husband stand a decent chance of ending up at ground zero of some as-yet-unspecified and spectacularly ill-timed scandal. (The Clintons have a way of doing that.) But for the first time since she started running for president in 2007, I caught a glimpse on Tuesday night of a candidate who just might possess sufficient charisma and skill to ride out the barrage of political storms that are bound to blow her way between now and November 2016 — and, perhaps, beyond.

Which isn't to say I think she's a shoo-in to win either the Democratic nomination or the general election. Thinking so is just as foolish as believing that the swirl of insinuations stirred up by the email imbroglio were bound to sink her. But those aren't the only examples of political silliness in the air these days.

Here are three more bits of conventional unwisdom about the 2016 election:

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1. Trump and Carson will fade

The experts have been saying this about Donald Trump ever since he bounded to the top of the heap of demagogues duking it out for the Republican nomination, and now they're starting to say it about Ben Carson, too. Surely these ill-prepared non-politicians who seem incapable of going more than half a week without making an outrageous, insulting statement are bound to self-destruct long before a vote is cast in the presidential nominating contest!

But what's the empirical, statistical evidence for this? Just the fact that a candidate like Trump or Carson has never received a major-party nomination before? Giving credence to the weight of tradition is usually a wise move. And yet: Trump has been leading in national polls for nearly three months now, defying predictions about his imminent demise.

Meanwhile, a new Fox News poll places Trump at 24 percent, with Carson statistically tied with him at 23 percent and the furthest-right "establishment" candidate Ted Cruz at 10 percent. That's a total of 57 percent of likely Republican primary voters favoring candidates that no model based on past voting behavior would predict as a potential victor. (Trump is also substantially ahead in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.)

That's a massive bloc of voters prepared to elect the supposedly unelectable. Maybe the Trump, Carson, and Cruz faction will implode, and all of those votes will migrate to a more mainstream alternative or two. I certainly hope it happens. But the truth is that until it does, the radicals are leading — and by a massive margin. We better get used to the idea.

2. Democrats will win the general election in a landslide if Republicans nominate Trump or Carson

Equally wrong is the related presumption that if Trump or Carson somehow do manage to secure their party's nomination, this will be a boon for the Democrats (and presumably Hillary Clinton). I'd love to believe it. But at the moment, that presumption, too, is groundless. An average of polls at RealClearPolitics shows that in a head-to-head match-up between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Clinton would win — but by an extremely narrow 1.6 percentage points, which is a statistically insignificant margin. And Carson? Read it and weep: He bests Clinton 48.8 percent to 43.2 percent.

Now, do I think Carson's lead will stay constant over the coming months? Of course not. The Carson polls were taken after months of Clinton floundering through the email scandal and at the height of his own recent surge. Still, the numbers are striking. Listening to Carson talk, I'd assume he was polling in the low single digits. Instead, he's handily beating the Democratic frontrunner.

The sobering reality is this: For all of its factionalized radicalism, the GOP holds both houses of Congress, a strong majority of state governorships, and a lopsided majority of state legislatures. In a country so predisposed to support Republicans, Carson's remarkable strength should focus the minds of every Democrat in the country.

3. Clinton is clearly a stronger general election candidate than Bernie Sanders

Reared on the median-voter theorem and its popularizations, political analysts and pundits (very much including myself) tend to presume as a matter of course that the candidate who's more successful at co-opting the center will win a national contest every time. It usually does seem to play out that way.

But this cycle might be different. Remember Clinton's narrow victory over Trump by 1.6 percentage points? The Democratic win grows to 4.3 percent with Sanders as Trump's opponent. In a match-up against Jeb Bush, both Democrats lose very narrowly by a similar margin. Sanders' comparative weakness begins to show up slightly in a contest against Marco Rubio, which gives Clinton a narrow win of under 2 points but Sanders a loss by 2.5 points.

That sounds like something close to a wash to me.

The only match-up that confirms Sanders' genuine weakness in comparison to Clinton is one involving Carson. Whereas polls today show Clinton losing to him by 5.6 percentage points, they show the senator from Vermont coming up short by an astonishing 10.5 points — nearly double the Clinton loss.

So Sanders isn't obviously a weaker nominee than Clinton — unless the Democrat ends up having to run against Mighty Ben Carson.

What a year...

Of course the usual caveat applies: It can be reckless to read too much into polls conducted this far out from an election. But we shouldn't blithely dismiss what they're telling us either. All signs are pointing to a volatile, sharply polarized electorate.

It's time to start expecting an unusually large dose of the unexpected.