Journalist Andrew Sullivan speculated in New York magazine earlier this month that US democracy is ripe for a tyrant, and that the candidacy of Donald Trump is potentially “an extinction-level event.” Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, who seems to me (and to the Financial Times) the shrewdest of the current crop of US political commentators, thinks Sullivan’s widely-read essay is “one of the most important things written about the phenomenon of Trump.” I think it is bunk. What about the Sanders phenomenon? The outcome of the long primary season is best understood as fatigue-turned- protest against the initial…