Donald Trump is deeply loyal to country and family, if you discount the military deferments and adultery. Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon who’s worked on lots of brains, though not, it would seem, his own. Bernie Sanders is a 74-year-old small-state socialist who knows what ails America and has been wholly unable to remedy any of these problems during 25 years in Washington.

Yet they are among the polling leaders in the race for the U.S. Presidency. Even relatively early in the election season, it’s an odd, populist place for us to be–but then it’s a strange time in America.

The tax codes that spread the wealth in the aftermath of WWII have long been erased, a process that gained furious urgency in the Reagan years and was completed by Dubya. Nothing ever trickled down and the 2008 economic collapse was a storm that hit us sideways. The recovery has been a top-heavy affair that’s barely glanced the majority. If technological unemployment becomes even a fraction of what some fear it will be, the haves and have-nots will move even further apart.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. but is that what we’ll get?

Trump, who entered the race impetuously in a bid for attention to fill one of the many holes in his heart, never actually wanted to be President. He already seems bored with it all. Carson is clearly unelectable unless the majority of Americans secretly believe in the devil. Sanders probably would need the whole of the country to morph into Minnesota, desiring a national version of none-of-the-above candidate Jesse Ventura, though one of a decidedly less steroidal physique. Elizabeth Warren was likely the only true populist who had a path to the Oval Office, if a bumpy one, and she passed. Does this mean we ultimately get the same old thing and emotions further boil? Considering the alternatives, is that still the best possible outcome?

As Edward Luce writes in his latest astute Financial Times column about U.S. politics, “since the mid-19th century, no populist has ever made it to the White House.” He suspects this may be true again in 2016 but urges wariness of the media-class consensus that says the demons will definitely dissipate. The opening:

Anyone puzzled by the sustained popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders should look no further than the latest US jobs report. The share of prime age males in work is now markedly lower than it is in France. Yes, France. The share of US adults in jobs as a whole is lower than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president. Yet America’s overall outlook is better than that of France. Silicon Valley is in the middle of another golden age and the US mints new billionaires every month. It is a tale of two different Americas. It should be no surprise that the fate of the rest — and particularly America’s idle male population — is fuelling its angriest bout of populism in decades.

We should not expect it to peter out. Conventional wisdom on politics is as misleading as it has been on the economy. The first tells us to disregard opinion polls in an odd-numbered year. Voters are being frivolous. By 2016 the freak show will fade and establishment candidates, such as Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, will win the nominations of their respective parties. Perhaps so. But this is from the mindset that has been wrongfooted by the surge of outsider candidates all year.•