Why the 2016 presidential election probably won't change much

The two weeks that I was (mostly) off from the Daily News coincided with what certainly seemed to be a cataclysmic period in the 2016 presidential race.

On the Democratic side, the candidates FINALLY debated in Las Vegas and it was a strong performance for both Hillary Clinton -- which wowed the pundits, who tend to be easily wowed -- and for Bernie Sanders, who was so impressive in his national debut that he got a celebrity impersonation (Larry David) on "Saturday Night Live," a true sign that you've made it in America. Coincidentally, their chief rivals mostly melted away -- Joe Biden ended the campaign that apparently was only real in the mind of Maureen Dowd, while Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee vanished before everyday Americans ever figured out who the hell they were, exactly, and then Clinton showed the GOP's Benghazi witchhunt to be the farce that it always was.

On the Republican side...oh boy. That short-fingered vulgarian of the TV reality show world, Donald Trump, has led the Republican polls for 100 days now, and his only real challenger is the soft-spoken, Nazi-meme-loving neurosurgeon Ben Carson. For the time being, the candidates that much of the GOP billionaire donor class would have preferred -- Jeb! Bush, Chris Christie or Scott Walker -- are, respectively, going, going, gone. Although it doesn't involve the presidential race directly, the messy race to pick a new Republican Speaker of the House -- which is slowly and awkwardly moving toward 2012 losing vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan -- has done nothing to dispel talk of a party in utter disarray.

I'll be honest, just a few months ago I was dreading (and I'm talking now as a political junkie, not as a citizen) this election. Instead, it's been arguably the most entertaining race I've seen in my adult lifetime (and the public apparently agrees, as evidenced by the boffo TV ratings for the three debates so far). The rise of outsiders like Trump, Sanders and Carson, the implosion of Bush, the Biden follies and the ups and downs of Clinton have indeed made it Must See TV.

But I can't help but wonder how much of all this will end up being, to borrow a phrase (as I so often do), sound and fury, signifying nothing. For all the excitement, there's little evidence -- no matter whether the 45th president is our first woman, or our first Latino, or our first short-fingered vulgarian -- that come 2017, the real "deciders" won't still be named Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, etc., etc.

It's hard not to despair when one thinks about how one supposed change agent, President Obama, has done so little to challenge the permanent regime of the National Security State and its unalterable legacy of never-ending war across the belt from Africa through the Middle East to South Asia; the drone strikes that kill more civilians than terrorist targets; the unwarranted spying on American citizens; the war on whistleblowers, and so on. Not to mention the fact that the so-called Leader of the Free World learned he wasn't even powerful enough to close the monstrosity at Guantanamo Bay.

Now we have the absurdity of Hillary Clinton streaking toward the White House -- getting harassed and easily brushing aside criticisms that are largely unwarranted, even as Republicans and for the most part the Beltway media refuse to challenge her on those things that are actually problematic. The idea among Republican strategists to make Benghazi the cornerstone of their attacks against the former secretary of state may go down as the dumbest political decision in the history of modern American politics, even worse than Ross Perot trying to quit the '92 race because he feared wedding crashers at his daughter's nuptials. To be sure, there were security lapses and legitimate questions about the broader U.S. mission in Libya -- these were largely addressed in the initial, more responsible probes -- but the last year or two of Benghazi overkill has been clearly a sop to Fox News and talk radio, the tails that wag the GOP dog.

What's irksome is that neither Clinton's Republican critics. nor the recent debate on CNN, truly challenged the former secretary of state on other things that truly matter: Especially the sincerity of her recent flip-flops away from a centrist but very much pro-corporate, pro-big-donor agenda on issues like trade, regulating Wall Street  and the environment. Does anyone really believe that her decision on the Trans-Pacific Partnership that she helped negotiate but suddenly opposed once Sanders started rising in the polls in Iowa, won't "evolve" again if and when Sanders is gone from the race? There's also the dodgy overlap between the Clinton Foundation, its well-heeled donors, and the ungodly sums that both Hillary Clinton and her ex-president husband have received for giving speeches while out of office.

Why, one asks, didn't the Republicans find a hook to investigate the nexus of big corporate money that flows downhill toward the Clinton family and Hillary's campaign? The answer is simple: Too many of their interests in this arena overlap between the Dems and the GOP. Indeed, I was struck by that today as I read about Ryan's likely successful, albeit seemingly reluctant, move to become House Speaker and replace the beaten-down John Boehner. Ryan has already said he won't sacrifice time with his family -- which means that his top deputy, the chief of staff, will be a very important person on Capitol Hill.

And whom might that be? David Hoppe, a former Hill aide but now one of the top corporate lobbyists in Washington. Most recently, Hoppe has been working for one of the world's richest billionaires, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his allies, to block competition from Internet gambling. Hoppe also represents such not-so-diverse interests as Amazon, Delta, Ford and for-profit colleges, so you can guess whose bread will be buttered in Congress during the Ryan era.

But would a Clinton presidency be much tougher on the oligarchy? Six months ago, donors from Big Finance were committed to either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush; today they seem likely to support Hillary Clinton..or Marco Rubio. This is change we can believe in?

There's no doubt that a new president could at least push for (there'll still be the problem of that pesky Congress) meaningful change in 2017. That would especially true under a President Bernie Sanders (heh...I just wrote that), who wants to break up the big banks and appoint judges to overturn Citizens United -- or even unto the semi-autocratic rule of (ugh) a President Donald Trump, who'd surely shake up our trade policies, among other things. But I'm dubious that enough voters will flood the ballot box enough to change the status quo, at least not next year.

That's a damn shame. The one phenomenon I've truly noted among rank-and-file voters this year is that campaign finance reform -- an issue that once was only tracked by pointy-headed elites -- is now something that regular folks are actually talking about. People know what the Citizens United ruling was, know that the money of billionaires like Sheldon Adelson is destroying American politics, and they want something done about it. The Big Money and all the Super-PACs will stop at nothing to make sure this doesn't happen. I wish I was optimistic about how this all turns out. I really do.