Consider the Nikki Haley campaign as analogous to Dennis Kucinich’s campaign in 2004 — the last person standing kind of. Kucinich described his path to victory as a change of decision at the convention as the issue of war becomes paramount — the delegates come over to Kucinich. It was all a pile of fantasy, but Kucinich continued to be an irritant and that for Kerry. Haley is, I guess, apt to the same approach — indictments and court cases will take their hold, and she is the one person standing there as it falls apart. The same sort of fantasy. As to whether she is a real irritant to Trump — it is hard to say. She has to be addressed. I see a sort of psychological analysis tea reading in his declaration that “the party is united as never before” after losing 40 percent of the vote — though this is the sort of doubling down rhetoric a normal politician may take. But there is not much Trump might do to sneak away the 40 percent. The total of Kerry’s handling on Kucinich came down to having Howard Dean as a surrogate at an Oregon primary race appearance, the better to get Kucinich down to single digits.

The question for the most important comparison purpose — how long is it going to take for Haley to get back to supporting Trump? Kucinich came around to that in 16 years — Haley it depends on what her point is.

The current political moment of lunacy makes me want to flesh out a pile of political figures history generally looks unfavorably on, but who have their defenders / supporters / sympathizers. A guidepost on how Trump could get sometimes related to by “dissident” historians of differing levels of respectability.

Charles Lindbergh. Favored somewhat by Kurt Vonnegut, upon his controversial speech squirmed that that won’t go well in the ptess. Roosevelt considered the guy a nazi, basically. His wife wrote a dreary book of historical interest spelling Democracy’s death and — in that Brown / red alliance that tends to favor the lot of the browns — foretold that as the wave of the future we need to give spiritually toward. Kind of looked the other way, pretending it never happened after Pearl Harbor. Lindbergh did perform admirably in the war period, a sympathetic senator clandestinely shuffling him to some fighter plane inspections — probably just busy work to allow him some pride in being against a hostile administration. A best selling book related counter-factual “what if” history on the isolationist turned fascist Lindbergh presidency — invariably ending with his disposition and the good guys winning. Justin Raimando wrote favourably on him in his anti-interventionist writings, claiming historical smear jobs.

Neville Chamberlain. Whipping boy of history, and why politicians are no longer able to carry umbrellas when trying for negotiations. He ends up on my mind simply because I see Joe Scarborough rattle on that is a mistake to compare Trump and his Republicans to Chamberlain — who was an honorable man. There are historic considerations — and in trying to ascertain what is to be done to keep Britain moving in some amoral sense, I am broadly considering the state of American politics in the 1850s — the North anti-slavery politicians reaching settlements with the Southern slave states and historically wise to do so as the military might is out of whack. When war did come, Chamberlain was in the war, as best he could muster.

Huey Long. Always a tad surprised by how much casual support he garners in various spheres. Untold history, supposedly — he drove FDR to actual action. Him and the Communists. Though when last I saw Huey Long love, it was relating the political figure of Hugo Chavez. I do not know if we are getting that for Putin and Orban — been a while since Dreher has his writings up at the American Conservative. In practice, Trump is that extra step beyond what Long aspired toward — history unclear on what would have happened had he not been shot, though as always your cinematographers write the Huey Long golden era counter-histories.

Imagine it were 2004. An official report comes out about President George W Bush. It exonerates him of wrong-doing, but in the process of doing so characterized his decisions as being based on his relationship with his father, a n over-correction to not make the mistakes of his father’s term in office and to show him up, with some added dimension of needing to show up Jeb Bush after a long career of him being presumed the heir Bush apparent. Skip a few years and the report adds some things about him clinging to women in the administration as some need for the maternal.

Effectively Biden was just handed an exoneration letter, which did as much. The headliner grabber of senior old fart was the cherry on top for a whole pile of crap about his long history of thinking himself a very important figure, and that is how the report characterized his keeping of lots of documents — just one egomaniac refusing to shred anything — why won’t this guy shred documents, damned it?

Both President Trump and President Biden present curious hypotheticals on the nature of the presidency and what I want, find acceptable, against public opinion. The problem is they are hypotheticals, and get buried by the actuality — if Trump were this and only this and not that, that would be an interesting president and not a harmful one. One with characteristics that were slammed that a different president who does things I actually want to see. Ditto a bit with Biden — an anti-Trump in the sense of quietly does his business without huge fanfare “look at me!” events, the big brouhaha tonight is him not doing the Superbowl interview — as though I care to see any Superbowl interview. Will we as a nation ever be willing to “Keep Cool with Coolidge?”. Deflecting any “cult of personality”, the problem there being the sense that there is a reason. Still a chance with Biden – – he only needs the nation to affirm him at the two and four year points, and then only against the competition.

We see the first thrust of what will be an unrelenting one note campaign on Biden, and I do not know that it can be successfully parried. I have seen this story play out already. Nothing wrong with Biden — I will not give a straight forward opinion on his presidency, but I can say he is not equipped for the performance aspect of the job. He is going to continue to make mis-speaks, casually referring to one foreign leader for a different one and referencing old leaders instead of new ones all in passing — and his re-election counts on the public not caring against the backdrop of this getting hammered away constantly and wrapped in a knowing prior of ” everyone holds this except brain dead partisans! “. Good luck on this bet. Or — hold on tight, the negative appeals are going to have hold as much or more than the positive appeals, and it is a tough ask.

If I had my way, I would switch Biden out for Kentucky governor Andy Beshear right now. And, no, I know little about Beshear except for two things – – one, he is politically within bounds of mainstream Democratic politics, or — he is not the last Democratic governor of Louisiana. And two: political instincts in winning twice stateside in Kentucky are transferable to winning the necessary voting bloc in Pennsylvania Michigan Wisconsin. The dreariness of the 2020 slate of Democratic candidates showed up a pile of candidacies lost in the twitter-sphere, not seeing the Internet was not real life. So. Biden it was. Barely elected, and with a sizable chunk able to move to him with an assumption that — he will stand for a term. This is the “every thing for every one” nature of coalition building to get to the 270 electoral votes — we need different people to think they are voting for different things and not necessarily what the other people voting with you are voting for. The two shadow candidates — Newsome and Harris– have obvious political drawbacks. (They will run against a “poop in the streets of San Francisco” with Newsome, and Harris has the unfortunate habit of talking to the public like they are ten.) Today I see Ramaswamy play his kooky “They are going to swap in Michele Obama!” game. Doing his best Dick Morris “Hillary versus Condi” fever dream of storytelling that titilates even as it has no basis in any reality.

I do wonder with Biden if there aren’t a couple things with the Eisenhower campaign that can be studied. Lean into the internationalist — “He has met world leaders, has the respect of blah blah.”. Or, more so than Trump. In the necessarily bunch of contradictory polls that are getting scoped out with a micro-scope, the ” winning the oldsters” number states at us — isolationist Trump shredding the Reagan legacy — why did they vote for Reagan again? Funny times, all.

Stare long enough at the American political situation and I do not budge an inch in my lack of comprehension. Big defeat for the Republicans, I am assured, the core that can’t shoot straight, and they failed to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas. That is neat. They will be able to do so next week, though. The reason for Mayorkas’s impeachment, in case you are curious, is because he is doing a job where there are problems in that job.

We sort of tumbled around to a full 360. I recall a thought from somewhere in the National Review quoting Trump on how immigration on the Southern border came to be his defining issue in 2016. He noticed decreased energy when he discussed anything else on the campaign hustling, and a charge from the crowd when he went back to immigration (or, rather immigrants), so that is where he landed. The National Review commentator speculated that it looked like “trans-stuff” will be it for this campaign. And, it seems not — that skipped past everyone, and we are back to immigration (or, rather, immigrants), as that go-to speech due line. (Also, I guess, he himself). The polls say it is the winning issue for Republicans, a flip of how it polled through the Trump administration, and the Republicans… (Trump himself not a winning issue). This even as it beers into sickening “nullification crisis” territory on the part of certain Republican governors.

… Might be right in not allowing Biden to sell out on it? Maybe? Well, he was trying to do that for most of last year. To be fair, you can not say it is a “sell out” — transactional always, was he. And they are also wrong by means of their claimed policy, so I gather not. I suppose we are stuck in Why I was muttering “hold it” when hearing some ICE protesters with a kind of moral clarity of assumed priors in the last administration — see how much you can stick through in the next administration.

I am informed by a pile of MSNBC YouTube images that MAGA is obsessed with Taylor Swift in an unhinged manner. I would think of this were the case, the Fox News and assorted right wing clips on the YouTube page would inform me of it, and not the MSNBC and politicized late night hosts. The pulse of what is presumed is the pulse is off — but I guess it makes for good marked mocking.

Stare at the headline. “Amber Glenn becomes first LGBTQ+ woman to win U.S. Women’s Figure Skating Championship”. I have one question. Transgender? Because if the answer is no, there is no story, headline, controversy — even “bogus” “cultural war” — in this. And it would make that interesting twist as against the overall twists in general — I would assume it would be transitioned to men that would start dominating that field. (An obnoxiously subjective one of measuring “grace” points when skating). And there I scroll down the page. I catch a photograph of some pretty looking man. For a second I think — maybe that’s the same person as the woman earlier shown at the podium. And no. It is not. That is some cis-guy in the men’s competition. So this story is boring. Biological woman wins skating contest, and we can knock off the letters at “l” if interested in her personal life — and maybe you are — because everything else confused the actual story. Wake me up when she transitions to manhood and wins a contest — then we have something to debate.

Maybe not literal. But something pops out in watching news coverage on a California Senatorial debate. When discussing the war in Gaza —

Lee urged for a permanent cease-fire in the conflict.

“The only way Israel is going to be secure is through a permanent cease-fire,” Lee said. “The only way that is going to happen is with a political and diplomatic solution.“

Porter said cease-fire is not a “magic word – you can’t say it and make it so.”

“But we have to push, as the United States, as a world leader for us to get to a cease-fire and to avoid another forever war,” Porter said.

And Schiff defends Israel’s right to self defence and probably in tacking on that dream of forcing a two state solution amongst two parties that have ceased showing they care for it. Okay. Steve Garvey? Maybe he has a baseball analogy, or hopes to get in the Trump sweet spot of being simultaneously hawkish with respect to Israel and pooh-poohing “forever war”.

Forever War. Another one, key word “another”. Like, one that just spring up as a war just now, never a war before Biden (or Bush’s Forever Wars), not like essentially a continuous war since the 1940s.

Maybe not forever, but with our short attention spans and short historical memories, essentially one.

There is this amusement to be had in contextualizing one way and another that big Donald Trump Iowa caucus triumph. Not a big vote, they say. It never is, the weather was rotten, and the contest was half a contest. The biggest margin of victory of any contested Iowa caucus, bigger than the Dole smash of Robertson in 1988. Yep. Served Dole well. But wait! The guy is basically an incumbent and 50 percent as an incumbent sure is not good. Sure. Now we have to go by these new standards, and I have to look up how Buchanan did against Bush in 1992. The Iowa republican caucuses were cancelled, it tells me — I want to know why — setting up Pat Buchanans showing in New Hampshire, which depending on whether we set this as an incumbent or contested election — means Haley either has to clear Buchanan’s percentage with New Hampshire or win something. To be sure, the Buchanan analogy comes to play with some Republican Trump surrogates acting as pundits on … CNN or one of the networks … making the case that after all these years of “us” stomaching and being urged to pull the vote for the Romneys and the Bushes and the Doles and the McCains, it is up to the Romneys and the Bushes and the Doles and the McCains to do the deed for their guy in Trump. That would make for a static electorate if no one she’d away from different nominees of the parties and no breaking point existed with selling from the other guy. But. Haley is not even bothering to do against Trump what Buchanan was doing with Bush, and won’t even get the same consideration of a primest time convention speech for her efforts.

The exciting Iowa caucuses. An over / under on whether the DeSantis or Haley campaigns will beat out the Bill Weld 2020 total of one delegate. And I guess they will. Weld got a bigger bang for his vote total, though, and the … 33 percent? of non-Trump votes coming in tonight will land on … less than ten delegates. I assume. I suppose we could figure we have a guaranteed delegate — unless that off locale has it that the one Trumpeter is the only person strangling in out of the horrid weather.

Facing an election where at least a chunk of the Democratic electorate are going to dribble off due to the Israeli – Palestine conflict. A curious matter in listening to some progressives with a prior of assumption that Israel is in the wrong, more or less en toto. A supposed history lesson on the history of Zionism gives the statement that in its long inception of a fight and through its history it was oft to right wing politics. And the thing leaves off the reality that at the time of its actual proclamation as a nation, it was associated with liberalism — and a dream of a sorta quasi socialism under Prime Minister Einstein sat there. Tangling in there in terms of American politics, I see a story from, oh, Mother Jones claiming far right wing (antisemite) jackass figures are claiming the mantle of Palestine in trying to get in with the Left (jackasses). Sure. As they always have. And more to the point, let us take a look at The Nation magazine circa 1948 into the 1950s versus The American Mercury magazine.

Lastly a casual diss of Biden. “Can’t really stomach that genocide thing”. Yeah. I do not know if you are talking about the Israelian government (and our noxious Netanyahu backed settlement governance) or Hamas. Or I do, but only because of the context of your priors.

I see this msnbc clip on youtube. It winds its way through the manner that Epstein is getting covered by the right, a tricky wicket of insinuations where every person of big import has imposed with the man. And then the host mentions Trump’s dealing, rolls out the old quote from him –something about how he knows Epstein, he likes the ladies, and he likes them a little on the young side. The host brings in Robert Kennedy Jr explaining that, yes, he was on the plane with Epstein a couple times, and there the host has to reiterate “no evidence of anything more.”

And then the take away. ” There is only presidential candidate running with no ties to Jeffrey Epstein. And that man is named Joseph Biden. “

Laying aside he perhaps rightly tossed aside some of the Republican aspirants — question Nikki Haley now I guess — what is interesting here is… He just categorized Robert F Kennedy Jr as a “major presidential candidate”. A list of three.