2020 election

'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.

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.

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.

The term ‘social justice warrior’ is usually a pejorative hurled at those who hold socially progressive views, particularly those who take their views to extremes. But there is genuine injustice in American society. A host of groups have been oppressed for too long due to their gender, sexual orientation, race or other categorizations. Protecting the civil liberties of these groups has usually been a task of the left or the minority of libertarians on the right. Now, that task falls to Donald Trump.

The Senate is not going to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and to all appearances the whole thing is nearly over. Acquittal is imminent, and supposedly serious commentators are on Twitter wailing in unison with Democratic activists. But what they are saying does not make any sense — it’s contradictory. On the one hand, they say that the case against Donald Trump is open-and-shut: so utterly persuasive in objective terms that only the Senate Republicans’ bad faith has prevented them from admitting it.