Obama, he says, never shies away from stating his convictions; and unlike Muskie's opponent, George McGovern, Obama has much of the establishment on his side.
As Danny goes about his errands, he runs into a full crew of ranters, malcontents, and solipsists: an enraged right-wing radio talk-show host (Miguel Ferrer), a self-destructive Pilager heiress (Daryl Hannah), a radical journalist planting seeds of doubt about the establishment on his Web site (Tim Roth).
His instinct is to have all the establishments on his side: Wall Street, the military, the mainstream media; the most profitable corporations in all but the most signally failing industries; and that movable establishment (which disappears and reconstitutes itself), the quick-take pulse of popular opinion on any given issue.
Barack Obama alone shattered this family duopoly over the past quarter century – and only by taking on his party establishment and stopping Clinton's last tilt at the presidency with smart grass-roots campaigning and glorious oratory.
Nor did he note that despite his talk of being a "Washington outsider," in Washington he is regarded as one of the rising young stars of the inside-the-Beltway establishment, quick on his feet, good with issues and unusually personable (People magazine once called him Capitol Hill's "sexiest politician").
Trump has torn through some establishment restraints on his conduct, but his weakness is still the major story of his presidency.
And yet, while Mr. Romney has a crucial strategic advantage for gaining delegates on Tuesday and an overwhelming list of establishment Republicans on his side, Illinois is not shaping up to be the effortless romp some had presumed.
In Hamer's movie, Dennis Price, the gay, Oxford-educated son of a brigadier-general, gives his greatest performance as the aggrieved Edwardian shop assistant revenging himself on the establishment for his mother's humiliation, and he's certainly not overshadowed by Alec Guinness's protean virtuosity.
The anniversary was also marked by renewed efforts to gain a pardon for the mathematical genius, who died by poison at the age of 41 after being hounded by an ungrateful establishment on account of his homosexuality.
He returns not to Amy, but to a daughter of the Melbourne establishment who insists on his real name, "Alvyn".
And Reed, who came to the campaign from outside the Democratic political establishment, is working on his own.
