Politics Archives

Sunday

February 9, 2020

No presidency for old men

What a thrill! Last night, I was dining with a friend in Piccola Italia, a charming restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, when who should walk in but Bernie Sanders! He was having dinner (chicken parmigiana) with film director Michael Moore — more stardust! — and an entourage of about 15 people, including a low-level security detail. Half the restaurant stood up and cheered and clapped as he walked to his table. But then Bernie took the electric atmosphere and promptly switched off the power. As fans clutched his hand — one enthused, ‘Thank you for everything’ — Bernie looked like a rabbit trapped in the headlights, quietly saying, ‘Thank you’ and ‘All right’.

Saturday

February 8, 2020

Stephen L. Miller

James Carville is right. He’s also to blame

James Carville, the ragin’ cajun, former Democratic strategist and adviser to Bill Clinton, is hot. Carville has been making the rounds on cable news and on web outlets like Vox, issuing dire warnings to his party — a party that sees a base coming around to the idea of nominating a socialist. He’s acting as his party’s Jor-El, warning anyone who will listen about planet Krypton’s impending doom — and just like Krypton, no one is listening. ‘They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen!’ he proclaimed to Vox this week.

Roger Kimball

Pete Buttigieg isn’t going to win

I see that various pundits are competing to write the political epitaph for Joe 'son-of-a-bitch' Biden. That’s entirely understandable. It’s been clear for some time that Biden is on the threshold of senility, and it is only my charitable disposition that prevents me from speculating about which side of the threshold he occupies. And then there was the desolation wrought by the Democrats’ impeachment entertainment. From the start, it was clear that the chief casualty of that amateur theatrics was going to be Joe Biden and his sniff, sniff, sniffing son Hunter. Everyone who is not Bill Kristol understood that the bullet of that purely partisan hit job would miss President Trump.

Michael Tracey

The temerity of Tom Steyer

Craven audacity in US politics knows no bounds. Billionaire intruder Tom Steyer is currently running television ads in New Hampshire lamenting that Donald Trump has received a political boost from the Democrats’ botched impeachment crusade, which ended this week in failure and humiliation — as is true for most Democratic crusades. Trump is therefore going to be tougher to beat, he suggests in the new ad, and nominating an outsider like Tom is increasingly necessary. What Tom forgot to mention is that no single private individual in the entire country was more responsible than him for fomenting the hysterical drive toward impeachment.

Gregor Baszak

In defense of caucuses

Asked the morning after the chaotic Iowa caucuses to render judgment about the Hawkeye State’s voting system, Illinois senator Dick Durbin called it 'a quirky, quaint tradition which should probably come to an end'. Why would 'people who work all day, pick up their kids at daycare' head to a caucus site to spend their evening at a stuffy high school gym with a bunch of random strangers? Why indeed, when a relaxing evening binging on Netflix awaits? The fate of the Iowa caucuses is probably sealed. The consensus among all factions of Democrats seems to be that primary elections are easier, safer, more accessible to voters. Head into a voting booth at a convenient time, close the curtain behind you, pull a lever, go home. But that’s exactly the problem.

Friday

February 7, 2020

Matt McDonald

Friday fight night in Manchester, New Hampshire

If you're after a real fight, come to Manchester, New Hampshire on a Friday night. An idyllic Catholic college smothered in snow was the setting for the 895th (I think) Democratic debate, the most pugilistic yet. It all unfolded in the arena where St Anselm College usually play basketball and Joe Biden delivered the first dunk, going after Bernie Sanders for not costing out his ambitious Medicare For All proposal. In the last week, following the Biden campaign has been like watching a 16-year-old Labrador on its last legs: it seemed as if it would be more humane if someone put it out of its misery. Biden has ramped up his efforts in the Granite State since his debilitating display in the Iowa caucuses.

Wednesday

February 5, 2020

Jacob Heilbrunn

Who saw that coming? Trump acquitted

It was all going so well for Donald Trump. Then came Mitt Romney. The Utah Republican stole the show. In announcing that he would vote to find Trump guilty of abuse of power, he blew up Trump’s plan to claim that impeachment was simply a partisan affair. The president, he said, was guilty of an 'appalling abuse of public trust'. One person Trump never trusted was Romney, whom he humiliated during the 2016 transition period when he forced him to eat frog legs at Jean-Georges restaurant in the Trump Tower and cursorily dangled the post of secretary of state before him. All along Romney, who denounced Trump during the campaign, has been a thorn in Trump’s side. He finally got his chance to ventilate his frustration with Trump on the last day of the impeachment trial.

W James-Antle-Iii

Iowa offers more questions than answers

The results from Iowa are still trickling in, but however much confusion there is in Des Moines, the choices that lie ahead for Democrats are clear. There are some questions the party’s leaders and voters can’t put off answering for much longer. How long will they prop up former Vice President Joe Biden? Whoever is ultimately crowned the winner in Iowa, Biden was among the losers — a distant fourth place finish from the nominal frontrunner and establishment favorite in the kind of state he is supposed to be able to win back from President Trump. We’ve seen establishment candidates survive weak showings in the early states only to right the ship in a state like South Carolina before, usually on the Republican side. But nobody has had to do so from such a position of weakness.

Chadwick Moore

Five priceless moments from Trump’s State of the Union address

As Democrats watch their single accomplishment, impeaching the president, go up in flames before their eyes and the nation remains stunned at the chaos and incompetence of their botched caucus in Iowa, President Trump addressed America on Tuesday’s State of the Union from a position of stability and growth. The very stable genius, in fact, showed us that side, at least compared to the frothing leader of the Democrats sitting behind him. For a Trump speech, it was quite civil, perhaps his best production yet, with very limited trolling, save for a direct slap to Congress’s socialist contingent by bringing ousted Venezuelan leader Juan Guaidó as a guest, who he referred to as ‘Mr President.

Tuesday

February 4, 2020

Roger Kimball

Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address was nothing less than magnificent

One of the many things that F. Scott Fitzgerald said that sound good but isn’t true is this: 'There are no second acts in American lives.' Consider the life of Donald Trump. Five years ago he was a dubious real estate developer and professional celebrity. Now he is not only president of the United States, but he is, three years into his first term, the most ostentatiously successful president in memory. Donald Trump is a walking refutation of what is perhaps Fitzgerald’s second most quoted line. Possibly Fitzgerald’s first most quoted line is this: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' That isn’t true, either.

Amber Duke

Pelosi ‘might as well rip up any plans for attracting independent voters’, says Trump spox

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh condemned Nancy Pelosi for ripping up a copy of President Trump's State of the Union address at the end of his speech. ‘She might as well rip up any plans for attracting independent voters,’ Murtaugh told The Spectator.‘Pelosi and the Democrats sat on their hands through all of the good news for Americans in that speech. It’s a sad place to be when good news for America is bad news for Democrats.’ https://twitter.

Chadwick Moore

Pete tops Iowa

Come on, guys, we all know that Mayor Pete doesn’t come out on top, no matter what the internet says. The dwarf from South Bend is already claiming victory in the disastrous Iowa caucus debacle, but there is absolutely no way Mayor Pete is a viable candidate for the Democratic party for one glaring reason: blacks. Mayor Pete doesn’t even register on polls among black Democrats. That’s 0 percent support. In order to show how down with the struggle Mayor Pete is, he’s posed for the cameras with fried chicken and Al Sharpton, drank malt liquor from a brown paper bag on the streets of Inwood, attended black churches in the Carolinas, and sent out surveys to his staff about microaggressions. White people were prohibited from filling out the survey.

Jacob Heilbrunn

No one saw Pete Buttigieg coming except himself

Small wonder that Joe Biden skedaddled out of Iowa as fast as he could to New Hampshire. It looks like generational change, once and for all, is coming to the Democratic party. If the numbers hold up, Mayor Pete is headed toward a confrontation first with Mike Bloomberg, then Donald Trump.Even if Bernie Sanders comes in second, it has to be counted as a disappointment for him. Sanders was counting on a triumph. Instead, he will head to New Hampshire with his claim to be attracting masses of new voters looking about as hollow as Donald Trump boasting about his towering IQ. Turnout in Iowa appears to be about where it was in 2016. The socialist elixir is something that even many Democrats aren't willing to quaff.

Freddy Gray and Matt McDonald

Has Mayor Pete won the Iowa caucuses?

Update 2/6 1:30 a.m. ET: On Tuesday evening we posed the question ‘has Mayor Pete won the Iowa caucuses?’ Thirty hours later, we still don’t have a conclusive answer. When 62 percent of the vote was reported, it looked like Buttigieg had a lead of 1.7 points over Bernie Sanders in the delegate count, with Bernie topping the overall vote share in both the first and final counts. Now, with 97 percent of the vote in, Pete’s lead has been slashed to 0.1 percent. As it stands, Buttigieg has 550 in the state delegate equivalents to Bernie's 546. The discrepancy between where the delegate count is now and where it was on Tuesday won't do much to quell the 'Mayor Cheat' accusations being thrown around by the Bernie camp.

Stephen L. Miller

NeverTrump 2020 died in Iowa

In a night that saw a nightmare ending (or beginning) for the Democratic party in Iowa, one thing became resoundingly clear — Donald Trump will still of course be the nominee for the Republican party in 2020. The NeverTrump cable news showcase candidacies of Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, kept afloat by a handful of anti-Trump donors (Bill Kristol) and scam PACs, are over with, and with them any notion that a NeverTrump delegation of leftover 2016 has-beens will serve any purpose besides on Don Lemon’s panel show for personal giggles. The professional NeverTrump contingent cared more about opposing Trump than they did preserving their brand of conservatism or trying to win over voters.

Kate Andrews

Iowa Democrats couldn’t have picked a worse time to mess up

What happened — or didn’t happen — in Iowa last night is unbelievably bad. It is an international embarrassment, one that will raise legitimate (as well as silly) questions about the state of American democracy and accountability. The failure of this new app to collate and transmit voter data from the Caucus will have especially painful consequences for the Democrats — not just for their candidates, but for the party as a whole.The delegates up for grabs in Iowa matter very little in the overall race to the Democratic National Convention this July (just 41 pledged delegates could be claimed last night), but the attention paid to the Iowa Caucus is practically priceless as far as candidate’s campaigns are concerned.

Michael Tracey

Void the Iowa caucus results

Perhaps the most annoying response to last night's Iowa debacle are the haughty scolds from journalists and pundits chastising anyone who might proffer a sinister explanation for what unfolded. No, there is not yet evidence of some grand conspiracy — and as ever, the likeliest explanation almost certainly involves an astronomical dose of standard-fare incompetence. But for such a catastrophic failure to have happened in the first place — still zero votes counted at the time of writing, at least three campaigns claiming fraud or illegitimacy, seismic technological and human error, et cetera. — there had to have been some malicious intent involved.

Charles Lipson

Why the Iowa voting fiasco matters

The Monday night caucuses were the biggest moment in four years for Iowa Democratic party. They screwed it up beyond belief. They had one task: to produce timely, accurate, and reliable vote totals, and they failed completely. TV anchors sat around filling time, waiting for Godot to show up with election returns. None appeared. The candidates themselves began flying off to New Hampshire for next week’s primary. It was a fiasco, a huge embarrassment not only for state officials but for the national party. It denied the winners their big moment before the TV cameras on election night — and the fundraising bonus that goes with it. It left the losers wondering if they’ve been robbed.

Daniel McCarthy

Goodbye Biden. Hello Bloomberg

Biden might have been embarrassed by the Des Moines Register poll right before the Iowa caucuses, but he got lucky: the poll couldn’t be released because of a methodological error. He may have been the beneficiary of the glitches that prevented the Iowa Democratic party from announcing any results the night of the caucuses, too. But he heads into the New Hampshire contest next week a condemned man, likely to be beaten by Bernie Sanders in the Granite State before running into the billionaire buzzsaw that is Michael Bloomberg on Super Tuesday. A Biden win in South Carolina or Nevada (or both) between those contests would only prolong his ordeal. Joe Biden is a dead man walking — this year’s Jeb Bush.

Dominic Green

Punch-drunk Biden gets a beating in the gym

Joe Biden once promised to take Donald Trump behind the gym and beat him up. Early results in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa caucuses suggest that he won’t even make it out of the gyms of Iowa. The Iowa Democratic party, which polls its members in gymnasiums across the state, delayed releasing the results of its caucuses on Monday night due, it said, to ‘inconsistencies in the reporting’. But why start now? Inconsistency in the reporting has been the hallmark of this Democratic nomination campaign, regardless of whose reports you believe.The inconsistent Biden, incapable of controlling his talking points and his dental plate, staggered out of cryogenic storage and into this campaign as the all-but-official candidate of the DNC.