KYLE SMITH: Parties are about to nominate two candidates Americans hate:

Sure, the Obama period has been what writer Ed Driscoll dubbed “the hateful eight years,” and President Obama has been the single most polarizing president in US history.

Until the next one.

On both sides, the electorate is saying the opposition has been treated far too kindly, that it’s time to put down the switchblades and pick up the howitzers. Get ready for an election year like no other. It’s going to be a hair-raising path to November. From here on in, it’s Mad Masses: Fury Road.

“The candidates leading the polls in either party — Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, Donald Trump for the Republicans — are not just viewed unfavorably by voters overall; they are the most unfavorably viewed by Americans out of all of the candidates running,” noted Kristen Soltis Anderson in The Washington Examiner. Over a 40-year career in and around public life, Hillary Clinton has accumulated so much baggage that the mere mention of her name (like that of Richard Nixon) has come to seem disparaging.

Read the whole thing.

(And while I was quoting Tablet magazine in my link, I appreciate the shout-out in the New York Post — thanks.)