2020 democratic primaries

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’.

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.

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.

By impeaching Donald Trump on December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives declared that the offenses contained in the articles were among the most grave ever committed by a US president. As every squawking TV and Twitter pundit now knows, this was only the third impeachment ever in US history. The House taking such a dramatic step was a clear signal that it believed Trump’s actions were so uniquely grievous that they warranted a measure as extreme as impeachment.

Just four months ago, Elizabeth Warren seemed poised to storm the Democratic nomination. In the first days of October, she briefly eclipsed Joe Biden atop the polls. Her supposed rival on the left, Bernie Sanders, had just suffered a heart attack. His candidacy appeared to be fading. Suddenly, Warren was all the rage: she was a woman, which matters a lot to the Democratic media. She talked like a radical leftie, but she didn’t frighten the establishment horses in the way Bernie did. The bookmakers made her strong favorite to win: everybody assumed Warren would hoover up Sanders’s votes as his presidential aspirations vanished once again. Well, the opposite has happened. Bernie Sanders’s campaign has ended up devouring Warren’s.