Mal Fletcher comments on the US presidential primaries

Mal Fletcher

"National politics and elections are dominated by emotions," wrote Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, "by lack of self-confidence, by fear of the other, by insecurity, by infection of the body politic by the virus of victimhood."

Though not writing specifically about this year's US presidential primaries, Ramadan succinctly expressed some of the driving forces behind them.

For many of us who are privileged to visit the USA from time to time and who profess to be Americanophile in outlook, the current presidential primaries are mystifying.

On the Republican side, momentum remains largely with billionaire wheeler-and-dealer Donald Trump. A man with more than a sniff of P. T. Barnum about him, Mr. Trump has drawn large and boisterous crowds, inspired opposition and divided opinion.

He is the present front-runner for his party's nomination, but may yet fail to garner enough votes to qualify for automatic selection. In that eventuality, the GOP would go into a brokered convention.

The Republican presidential candidate would then be decided by various internal party procedures. I don't profess to fully understand these - and I suspect a great many of the party's members don't either.

Driven by a deep dislike of Mr. Trump and his nearest competitor Ted Cruz, party establishment movers and shakers may choose to back the likes of Ohio governor John Kasich. The governor has, at the time of writing, won only one primary - in his home state.

The convention may even opt for an individual who hasn't appeared at all in this year's primaries - such as Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 race.

The former House Speaker, John Boehner, has already endorsed Ryan to be the Republican presidential nominee, believing that he would heal a fractured party.

If the GOP took this route, however, it would likely further stoke the anger and intense frustration with politics-as-usual which have largely underwritten Trump's extraordinary support.

In the end, a substantial number of his supporters - both conservatives and liberals - would probably opt out of voting altogether. The GOP would therefore, by default, hand the presidency to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

If, however, Trump achieved the minimum votes required for automatic selection, the face-off between he and Clinton would be a miserable choice for many Americans.

I daresay that in their heart-of-hearts millions of Americans, outside of the core constituencies of both candidates, do not want either to win the White House.

There will be many who do not savour the idea of another Clinton in the Oval Office. One Rasmussen poll suggested that her overall support among registered Democrats sits at around 58 percent.