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Unlike the previous snoozers where all the candidates pretended to like each other, the debate in Nevada ahead of their caucuses, was exciting. It’s what happens when six politicians, picked to be on a stage together, stop being polite and start being real. But it’s unlikely to make a blip of difference. For one thing, most of the candidates didn’t do what was in their self-interest. Joe Biden had one real job — take the nomination away from runaway train Bernie Sanders. Instead, he let the Mike Bloomberg media campaign get into his head. Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot in Nevada and he isn’t on the ballot in the next contest in South Carolina either.

You wait decades for a Jewish candidate for the White House, and then two come along at once — like buses, except these two are running in different directions. With Biden having no idea where he’s heading, and Warren and Buttigieg going nowhere with swathes of the primary voters, the nomination race may, like a round of golf in Boca Raton, turn into a struggle to the death between two elderly Jewish men from the Northeast. It’ll also be a public airing of the American Jewish split over Israel. What happens in Vegas on Wednesday night won’t stay there.Sanders and Bloomberg have nothing in common ideologically. Both of them, however, have had as little to do with the Democratic party as possible.

While a successful politician in many ways, Joe Biden’s attempts to become president are marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid. What would American democracy be without Joe Biden garlanding astonished voters with insults and imprecations of every kind? God bless that man. Biden has been making a fool of himself at these events for so long now that I’m fairly sure Alexis de Tocqueville observed this phenomenon in a celebrated passage from his Democracy in America (1835):'I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers — and it was not there...in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there...

It might be a stretch to compare the ugly-but-not-violent warfare of American politics in 2020 with the explosive politics of the 1960s. But history does repeat itself, as the hackneyed old phrase says: first as tragedy then as farce. Consider the common thread linking these two political epochs: the rise of a messianic left that sabotaged two attempts by the Democrats to take over the White House, which eventually forced the party to change direction and move to the center. In 1968, the Democratic leadership wanted to campaign on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historic civil-rights legislation and his efforts to reinforce the foundations of the welfare state with the Great Society programs, steps that enjoyed wide national support.

Joe Biden has blown it. His era is over. The obsequies for his campaign are pouring in. Michael Hirsh in Foreign Policy thus announced today that Biden’s vaunted experience on the foreign stage has turned out be a lead balloon: 'It appears many voters across the spectrum don’t want a restoration of anything—including, apparently, US global leadership and the decades-old status quo that Biden is identified with.'Maybe so. But to conclude that Biden’s campaign is finished may be wholly premature. For a start, Biden is in a place where voters may start to admire his gumption and grit at continuing a campaign that looks to be on life support. A comeback story, like the one Amy Klobuchar is currently enjoying, happens to be something that the media feasts upon.

Now that ‘entrepreneur’ Andrew Yang has ended his presidential campaign, can we all admit what a sad commentary on the millennial generation it was? Yang was a policy quack who instantly won a cult following among young people who had never before taken the slightest interest in politics — in the other words, low-information voters. Yang seemed pleasant enough on the debate stage, and when he’d take a break from his pop-socioeconomic jargon — ‘fourth industrial revolution’ — he occasionally voiced some simple truth, like the importance of valuing the contributions of stay-at-home mothers, even though they aren’t included in measures of GDP. But such common sense was not the core of his campaign, the snake oil was.

'Is there a concert on tonight?', a bystander asked a cop at a traffic light outside the Southern New Hampshire University arena. If only. In fact Democrats from all over New Hampshire (and, let's face it, probably Boston and Vermont too) descended on Manchester's Elm Street for the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club dinner. Supporters of various candidates stood out in the bitter cold, cheering the names and slogans of their choice for president. A small contingent of Trump supporters also braved the weather in hoodies, one of whom had brought along a large cereal box labeled 'Biden's Corn Pops'. While branded as a dinner, in truth what unfolded was more like a sporting event. Think WWE without the surprise guests, or drama.

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.

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.

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.

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.