Politics

A Biden-Trump rerun would be a sick joke White House aides want you to know that the president is irked. Grumblings to New York Times reporters reveal a top team irritated by the whispers in Democratic circles that running Biden for a second time might not be in the party’s best interest and annoyed at the idea that the president be subjected to anything more onerous than a hassle-free coronation ahead of 2024. Biden, already the oldest president in US history, would be in his mid-eighties by the end of a second term. He has cue cards to remind him how to perform the most basic of tasks (“YOU take YOUR seat” would be a good title for a book about the Biden presidency). He is absurdly bad at even the most perfunctory, bromidic parts of the job of being president.

Are abortion rights guaranteed in the Constitution? In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a judicially creative interpretation of the 14th Amendment in the case Roe v. Wade, claiming abortion was like other privacy-based rights (such as the rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, adult sexual acts with a consenting partner, and interracial marriage). That is, unenumerated rights, rights inherent in the Constitution but not listed by name, like the right to free speech and the right to bear arms. So that's it. The current decision is illegitimate. Abortion is constitutional! The Supreme Court in its decisions creates precedents, meaning judgments they're supposed to follow in the future. That's the doctrine of stare decisis.

Cockburn tuned into The Joe Rogan Experience the other day, Rogan’s 1837th episode, in case you were wondering. The guest was unwoke former Disney actress Gina Carano, though it was Rogan himself who said something that made Cockburn smile: Gina Carano: Are you throwing out any support towards anyone or are you gonna hold off? Didn’t Elon Musk come out recently for DeSantis? Joe Rogan: Yeah, I think Ron DeSantis would work as a good president. I mean, what he’s done for Florida has been admirable. That's impressive coming from a former Bernie Bro. Rogan continued, “You know, he's not perfect, he’s a human being, but what he’s done is stand up for freedoms.

Since it debuted in 2016, The Donald Trump Show — the televised meta-commentary from hell we've all been living in — has been through many reinventions. Its first season was a tautly plotted election thriller that managed to make the impossible seem possible; its middling stretches were a darkly comic take on The West Wing. It even proved later on that it could continue without its main character, introducing a new president, Joe Biden, who ushered in elements of slapstick humor and cringe comedy. Now, with last night's episode, The Donald Trump Show has veered into Kiefer Sutherland territory. The testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson before Congress was one of the program's most dramatic moments yet.

A few mornings ago, Cockburn caught Hillary Clinton on one of the CBS morning shows. As it turned out, she was on to discuss the recent Dobbs decision, and she had some choice words for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “I went to law school with him," she said. "He’s been a person of grievance for as long as I’ve known him. Resentment, grievance, anger...women are going to die, Gayle. Women will die.” Clinton is entitled to her opinion (though who is she to call anyone else resentful?) but her sentiment on Thomas's statements has been contradicted by none other than Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Thomas’s ideological opposite on the Supreme Court.

Cassidy Hutchinson’s day in court Did Donald Trump rush a Secret Service agent in attempt to take the wheel of the Beast and drive himself to the Capitol on January 6? That is what former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said she was told happened in her testimony before the House January 6 Committee yesterday. Hutchinson’s appearance was a surprise addition to the committee’s hearings and it made for easily the most compelling and headline-grabbing of the public sessions yet. There were wild details to the stories, many of them second-hand, relayed by Hutchinson. The former aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows said she “overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.

While on Bret Baier's Fox News show Special Report, Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan said there should be no abortion restrictions at all, establishing himself as radical even by pro-choice standards. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, Ohio passed a heartbeat bill that restricted abortion after six weeks. Yet Congressman Ryan believes this is too strict. In fact, he believes any kind of restriction is too strict. Ryan said, "Look, you got to leave it up to the woman, because you and I sitting here can’t account for all of the different scenarios that a woman, dealing with the complexities of a pregnancy, are going through. How can you and I figure that out?

Will Biden listen to Macron’s energy warning? “I had a call with MbZ… He told me two things. I’m at a maximum, maximum… This is what he claims… And then he said… Saudis can increase by 150… Maybe a little bit more, but they don’t have huge capacities before six months’ time.” Emmanuel Macron delivered this oil-production update to Joe Biden after a phone call with UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan at yesterday’s G7 meeting in Germany. Whether a genuinely candid moment or a conversation deliberately started by the French president within earshot of the assembled press, mics picked up the exchange.

Cockburn may indulge in more liquor than he should, but even he would never shove a child. So imagine how shocked he was to see Nancy Pelosi elbow aside a kid during a photo-op. Mayra Flores was recently elected to finish out a term in Texas’s 34th Congressional District, which has historically been a safely held Democratic constituency. Flores ran on a pro-life ticket and won the largely Hispanic district in South Texas. During her swearing in, Flores’s children stood next to Nancy Pelosi. At one point, Pelosi pushed Flores’s daughter with her elbow, which triggered a media outcry. Flores tweeted: “I am so proud of my strong, beautiful daughter for not allowing this to faze her. She continued to smile and pose for the picture like a Queen.

While Cockburn is never one to look for trouble, trouble often finds him. And so it was, following his habit of daily strolls through DC's hotspots, he unthinkingly meandered past the Supreme Court this past weekend. The crowds there had diminished in size a few days off from the Dobbs ruling, but they have grown no less fervent. On Saturday, Cockburn encountered speakers touching on subjects of race, revolution and fighting back against the system. There were several signs, along with pro-abortion stickers and pamphlets. At one point, somebody actually gave him a pamphlet featuring rules of revolution (Saul Alinsky would be proud), detailing diverse ways to topple the current governmental system and “replace it with something that benefits everyone.

Will Dobbs galvanize the left? Sometimes, defeat is just what a party, or a movement, needs. Hard lessons are learnt, uncomfortable realities are acknowledged and the group in question emerges more serious, more competitive, more potent a political force. In recent years, liberals and conservatives have often failed to learn the right lessons from their losses because they won’t accept defeat in the first place. From crackpot theories about Cambridge Analytica swinging 2016 for Trump to the idea that 2020 was stolen by Joe Biden four years later, both sides of America’s political divide have opted for comforting fictions over hard truths. But Dobbs represents unambiguous victory for the conservative movement and impossible-to-ignore defeat for progressive America.

I just went for a stroll down Main Street here in our little blue-collar New Hampshire town, and noticed the telephone polls festooned with Pride flags.  This was odd enough, given that our town had never observed Pride Month (known as June on the Gregorian calendar) before. What was really shocking, though, is that the town is flying the plain old rainbow flags, not the new “Progress Pride” flags. Ours don’t have the new chevron honoring America’s two most hallowed minorities: trans people (white, pink and blue) and people of color (brown and black). Activists claim that the chevron specifically represents trans people of color. Maybe that’s true. What’s infinitely more likely, though, is that gays and lesbians have been passé since Obergefell v.