--The American economy is looking very dicey. The Fed will lower rates, but assets are deflating across the whole economy, led downward by housing stock. The only immediate cure for asset deflation is currency inflation. This Fed would be bold enough to apply it. But that medicine has many nasty side-effects, especially for seniors and low wage-earners.

--The government-enabled madness of Wall Street over-leveraging has collapsed, and the fall into prudence will discourage investing for many months. This Administration is incapable of assessing, much less coping with, its gross failure to do even the mild regulation that might have helped avert the calamity.

It does not have the tools or will to assess blame and develop remedies. For that reason, it cannot generate sensible responses. The Treasury's efforts have been conspicuous for their insignificance, especially in comparison to the Rubin-Summers efficacy in fixing nearly every mess on their watch.

--Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Pakistan: in none of these countries does the United States even have a competent plan for peace and progress in place. Not since before the Second World War has America been so incapable of influencing events in this vital region.

--Although Congress has passed a decent energy law, and after the Democratic Sweep this November will do far better under the leadership of Ed Markey in 2009, on an international level the United States has no plan for addressing climate change. It is completely obvious that trade policy, World Bank lending, State Department treaty-work, and many other aspects of statecraft need to be put to the comprehensive goals of abating carbon emissions and mitigating the ineluctable effects of global warming. Instead, American government sleeps.

--Time Magazine's bizarre selection of Putin as Man of the Year does not speak well of the world-view of the editors of that declining magazine (what anymore is the purpose of a magazine?), but does at least remind one of the complete absence of any coherent American policy as to our former enemy and currently ambiguously positioned fellow large nation.

One could go on.

These trends make a Democratic victory this November highly likely. As a result Clinton's eight-year effort to position herself close to the Republican position has become unnecessary. Edwards, from far to her left, beat her in Iowa. She put herself in what she thought was the center, and found the real center had moved to her left. A month or so ago, she decided she was for change -- a synonym for left-of-Republican -- instead of a return to the centrist politics of her husband. While the nuances of these positions might be obscure, the rhetoric is clear enough. Barack has been for change; Edwards for more change (and less consensus); and Hillary is for the same change she asserts she has been producing for 35 years.

You can't produce change for 35 years. After 35 years, you are doing "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," or "back to the future," or "history repeats itself."

The new Clinton message doesn't compute. It is bolted on to the old message of inevitability and experience. It is a new paint job, but the car is the same.

And that car, headed back to the past, isn't the vehicle to drive the country through the emerging, complex, largely unprecedented problems that all the trends describe. At least that's what the electorate (unaffected to a large degree by the monumentally ignorant commentary of the mainstream media) appears to sense. I would be surprised if Senator Clinton did poorly in New Hampshire, but it seems to me that South Carolina is another state where she could well finish third again. And if that occurred, the inevitability meme would be gone.