I once thought that the American presidential election was going to be a battle between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, between the country’s two legacy families, the Clintons and the Bushes.

I am still right, at least so far, that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. In fact, I believe so now more than ever after her spectacular victory yesterday in South Carolina, capturing over 73 percent of the vote and over 80 percent of the African American vote. She simply trounced Bernie Sanders, and I believe this pattern will repeat itself in the primary contests in the slew of Southern states, also with large and important African American constituencies, on Super Tuesday in two  days. And, then, the race is more or less over.

But, obviously, I was wrong about Bush. His legacy did not carry him for long, or really not at all, as his candidacy whimpered out after only four primary contests, in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. He was a bad campaigner, almost pitiful, and although he tried to stand up for what the Republican Party used to stand for, he had no chance in the toxic climate created by Donald Trump, the GOP’s “Frankenstein monster,” as foreign policy expert and Brookings Institution scholar, Robert Kagan, writes in a scathingly critical article of his old party in today’s Washington Post.

Trump has picked up, Kagan writes, where Republican pundits and intellectuals had already had taken the party and where they had left it off, “tapping the well-primed gusher of popular anger, xenophobia and, yes, bigotry that the party had already unleashed.” So let’s be clear, Trump is the party’s creation, “its Frankenstein monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker.”

For Kagan, a former Republican, the only choice in November is to vote for Hillary Clinton, as the “frantic efforts” within the Republican Party to stop Trump have failed, according to a report in today’s New York Times. There was talk of the “Republican establishment” stopping Trump, but who is that and where is it? No, it now seems too late to stop Trump, as all the polls on the doorstep of Super Tuesday point to many more victories for the New York businessman.

What a sad turn of events!