erik lundegaard

Politics posts

Friday March 08, 2024

Who's the Kirk? Handicapping Presidential Races

Earlier this year I received a text from a woman running for office in a Democratic primary somewhere. Apologies I’m not more specific, but I quickly deleted it, or STOPped it, or STOP TO QUITted it, so I never got all the details. All I knew was she was running “against the odds,” she said, but she’s running anyway, damnit.

And that’s what made me lose interest.

I flashed back to February 2020 when I met my friends A. and B. for drinks in Seattle. All three of us are white, liberal, 50+, politically engaged and/or (in my case) vaguely aware; we’re all journalists or journalist-adjacent; and the conversation inevitably turned to the Washington state primary for the upcoming presidential election—one of the most consequential elections in our history. 

A. and B. are more politically engaged than I. Put it this way: They actually watched the primary debates to figure out which candidate aligned best with their vision of where the country should be heading. At the restaurant, they wrangled this out: Well, this candidate says this, and the other says the other, and that’s why I support the other. Washington is a mail-in ballot state, with ballots due in early March, and neither had filled out theirs yet, but I think one leaned Elizabeth Warren and the other Bernie.

And at some point they asked me who I planned to vote for.

“I already voted,” I said.

“Who?”

“Biden.”

Long pause.

“Well, you just threw your vote away.”

“Yeah, he’s already out of it.”

This was before the South Carolina primary on February 29, when Black voters saved Biden’s campaign, and (you could argue), the United States of America—let alone March 3, Super Tuesday, when ditto. I think it was before Nevada, too. Which means we’d had two contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, and in both Bernie had come out on top, with Pete Buttigieg a close second, and either Warren or Amy Klobuchar a close third. Biden had finished a distant fourth in Iowa and a distant fifth in New Hampshire. He was done. I’d thrown away my vote.

I should add: I didn’t necessarily think they were wrong. But among the Democrats running, I knew Biden was the best bet to beat Trump. Everything else was just blather. 

Who … can … win?

That’s the question Democrats don’t ask themselves nearly enough. Here’s another question Dems should be asking themselves: Who’s the Kirk?

OK, I’m going to go even further back now, to around 2000, when I used to go to the post office fairly regularly. There, I often had conversations with one of the employees, a super smart, super friendly guy, about movies and politics. Maybe this was around the 2000 election, I don’t remember. All I remember is what he said: If you want to figure out who’s going to win a presidential election, ask yourself this: Who’s the Kirk and who’s the Spock? Because Kirk wins.

My immediate reaction was “Naw, it’s not that simple.” But then, I began to backtrack.

  • 2000: Al Gore vs. George W. Bush. Gore is the epitome of Spock. Bush wins.
  • 1996: Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole. Clinton is clearly Kirk-esque. Clinton wins.
  • 1992: Bill Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush. Clinton: Kirk. Clinton wins.
  • 1988: Michael Dukakis vs. George H.W.  Bush. Did I say Al Gore was the epitome of Spock? Apologies. I forgot about Dukakis. Bush wins.

“Damn,” I said.

And since then? John Kerry was another classic Spock in 2004—and lost. Obama muddled the metaphor a bit, since he tends Spock with some Kirk swagger. I mean, Mitt Romney was definitely no Kirk but you could argue John McCain was, so 2008 was the only time the post-office guy’s handicap didn’t work. Otherwise he’s been dead on. 

Admittedly, some years, it’s tough to parse the Kirk-Spock divide—2020, for example, seemed more good Capt. Kirk vs. Evil “Enemy Within” Kirk—so for the past 10 years I tend to take a step back, squint, and ask: OK, if these two candidates were running for high school student body president, who would win? Most Americans take it as seriously as that. And that’s why I was so worried in 2016. In one corner, you had the girl with a perfect attendance record, who showed up every day to every class, got straight A’s, and maybe even reminded the teacher when they forgot to assign homework. And in the other? The rich guy who threw keggers at his house.

I’m still worried about 2024, but at least Biden seems the right candidate for the Dems. He’s Kirk with a touch of McCoy. The other guy, “Enemy Within” Kirk, is crazier than ever. He’s ready to take the Enterprise down with him as he rants away into the viewscreen.

And my friends A. and B.? The latter is in California now, and I’m not sure which way he’s leaning. But A. is still in Seattle and hasn’t changed much. On Instagram he recently posted a selfie of himself mailing in his ballot. “Uncommitted,” he wrote. Another winning choice. Boldly going where Democrats have always gone before.

Posted at 08:47 AM on Friday March 08, 2024 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Friday March 01, 2024

Trolling Thunder

They released the Hunter Biden transcript on Thursday, and amid the bloviating there's some expert trolling of Donald Trump and the monstrously hypocritical Republican party by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Warmed my heart.

SWALWELL: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?

BIDEN: No, he has never operated a hotel.

SWALWELL: So he's never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?

BIDEN: No, he has not.

SWALWELL: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?

BIDEN: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.

SWALWELL: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?

BIDEN: No. And I don't think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.

SWALWELL: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?

BIDEN: No, he has not, thank God.

SWALWELL: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: That's all I've got.

Encore. 

Posted at 09:17 PM on Friday March 01, 2024 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Thursday February 01, 2024

The Do-Nothing Party

“For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something ... and then do nothing about it. One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!”

-- Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), on the House floor in November. “He got no answer,” says Jennifer Rubin in her op-ed “The GOP's blunders take their toll.” Sad part is it's not tolling hard enough for them. “Most Republicans voted against the overwhelmingly popular infrastructure bill. Now they routinely claim credit for it. Only occasionally do they get called out for hypocrisy,” Rubin writes. “As with infrastructure, Republicans have largely escaped blame for causing economic havoc thanks to Democratic votes for keeping the government open and avoiding a default on the debt.” The legit media is really to blame for this. It'll never get better as long as they pretend both sides are culpable, or ascribe blame to an entity called “Congress.” 

Posted at 07:58 AM on Thursday February 01, 2024 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Friday December 08, 2023

Exit, Pursued

“A shape-shifting, flip-flopping, over-promising, self-serving politician is nothing new. Where Mr. McCarthy truly distinguished himself was in his willingness and ability to debase himself in the service of Donald Trump — even as he occasionally pretended to still have a spine. 'My Kevin,' as Mr. Trump so delighted in calling him, certainly did his part to aid Mr. Trump's political revival after the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. In a turnaround so dramatic it must have given him whiplash, Mr. McCarthy went from saying that Mr. Trump needed to 'accept his share of responsibility' for his role in the attack to, some weeks later, slinking down to Mar-a-Lago for a grotesque photo op with the former president. ...

”By empowering the most extreme elements of the Republican conference, he made an already fractured, fractious chamber even more dysfunctional. Worse, by shoring up Mr. Trump after Jan. 6, he helped put America back on a crash course with a dangerous, antidemocratic demagogue looking for political revenge. ...

“Thanks a lot, Kev. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.”

-- Michelle Cottle, “Was It Worth It, Kevin?” The New York Times Opinion page

My questions about his resignation revolve around whether Mike Johnson is paying attention—how can he not be?—and what lessons he's drawing. I get the feeling he's drawing the wrongs ones. As for Kev: Why now? Why not stick it out for another year? He says he plans to stay in GOP politics, but how? In supporting more centrist candidates or in continuing to be lickspittle and lackey to the crew that undid him?

Posted at 09:40 AM on Friday December 08, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Tuesday November 07, 2023

Gibbering Oafish Party

“It's worth reflecting on how Republicans got to a place where they are about to nominate someone who is a frequent flier in the American court system, facing 91 criminal charges spanning four state and federal indictments. For one thing, it didn't help that nobody in the GOP field ever seriously took him on—even after January 6, when Trump sicced his supporters on the Capitol. But they also failed to highlight that Trumpism doesn't necessarily scale, as the 2022 midterms proved. In August, polling showed that only 63% of Republican voters wanted Trump ”to run again.“ But instead of making a case as to why they were a viable alternative to Trump, the non-Trump field treated the ex-president with kid gloves; they almost completely ignored the orange gorilla in the room and instead bickered with each other—so much so that they appear to have lost the plot entirely.”

Molly Jong-Fast, “Imagine If 2024 Republicans Actually Tried Taking on Trump,” on the Vanity Fair site. As I noted on Threads, yesterday was a year from the day after the 2024 election. So get ready to fight the fucker. Because the GOP is too weak and un-American to do it. 

Posted at 11:49 AM on Tuesday November 07, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Thursday October 19, 2023

Kraken Released?

“You don't give a no-jail plea deal unless that person's got something very good to say that will help your case against the others.”

-- former NJ govenor, federal prosecutor and current GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie after it was learned today that one-time Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors (for six years of probation) in the Georgia RICO case focusing on Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. The New York Times say it's “the first time that anyone who was closely tied to his attempts to stay in power had reached a cooperation deal with the authorities.”

Posted at 09:14 PM on Thursday October 19, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Tuesday August 29, 2023

Mets, Marlins, Nats, Braves

It's been a busy month so I apologize for neglecting the fourth Trump indictment—the RICO case in Atlanta with his 17 or 18 co-conspirators. I did like this retweet from George Conway that he reposted on Post. (Yes, retweet reposted on Post. Sue me.)

I told my cousin Amy, a longtime Phillies fan, that Philadelphia has to get off the schnied. 

Jokes aside, it's still up to GOP voters, and GOP politicians, to take it all seriously. We know what Trump is; we've known that forever, and he'll never not be that way. But we weren't always this way. Rush and Fox News forged the path and all of it has to be owned up to, particularly by mainstream media outlets such as NYT and NPR, who have ignored it for way too long. It's all about the how, though, and no one has the answer. I certainly don't. But a few more GOP leaders actually showing leadership might help. 

Posted at 09:47 AM on Tuesday August 29, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Sunday April 30, 2023

Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

I believe I first heard about Harry Belatonte from Archie Bunker on an episode of “All in the Family.” I remember the line, I just don't remember what prompted it:

“Harvey Belafonte ain't black. He's just a good lookin' white guy dipped in caramel!”

My mother or father (or both) may have laughed at the line, which I didn't get at all. Who is Harry Belafonte? Why is he not black? Oh, he is black? So why did Archie say it? Why is that funny?

I grew up in the '70s, not Belafonte's heyday, and I didn't see either “Buck and the Preacher” or “Uptown Saturday Night,” so where did I next come across him? Somewhere in the '80s. Through...

  •  His daughter Shari?
  • “Beetlejuice,” featuring “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and (my personal favorite) “Jump in the Line”?
  • “Parting the Waters” by Taylor Branch?

That's part of the irony of Archie's line: that good-looking white guy dipped in caramel was all over the Civil Rights Movement. He was a front-line man. He was a race man. In the index to Branch's book, under “Belafonte, Harry,” these are some of the subcategories:

  • Albany Movement and
  • Atlanta concerts of
  • Birmingham campaign and
  • Freedom Rides and
  • King's imprisonments and
  • King's meetings with
  • March on Washington and
  • 1960 elections and
  • R. Kennedy's meeting with
  • SNCC and
  • voter registration and

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s great 1996 New Yorker profile of Belafonte begins with that week in Feb. 1968 when Belafonte hosted “The Tonight Show” for the vacationing Johnny Carson. At the time, Gates was a young college student, radicalized, and Belfaonte didn't disappoint. He brought the truth. He talked bluntly about race and power. He welcomed guests such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy. It seem an era of possibilities. And within four months both men were dead of assassin's bullets. One wonders how '68 didn't break him. How do you deal with all that? How do you go on?

From Gates' profile, I learned that in the late 1940s Belafonte was friends and rivals with Sidney Poitier at the American Negro Theatre in Harlem, and the two men were befriended by the already legendary Paul Robeson, and all three would meet a bar on Fifth Avenue off of 125th Street and drink and talk. How is there not a play about that? “One Night in Miami” but in Harlem in the late 1940s. “He was very fond of Harry,” Poitier said of Robeson. “And Harry loved him.”

While Poitier was starring in Hollywood movies by 1950, Belafonte wound up with another path to stardom. Here he is on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. It's a year after Emmett Till. He's shirtless but for a vest, and gorgeous, and romantic, and one can only imagine how this fucked up the racists of the world—not to mention their wives.

He had six gold albums between 1956 and 1961. He had #1 singles in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium. He had TV specials and sang with Odetta. And he organized.

I didn't know until recently that the whole “DAAAYYYY-O” thing was about laborers; and I didn't figure out until writing this that “Mr. Tally Man” was just the guy who tallied the bananas that the laborers brought in. I thought it was a spectre of some kind. But it's just another way of saying “accountant.” 

Everyone always talks about lowering the ladder for those coming after you. Belafonte manned the ladder. He built more ladders. He wondered why others weren't manning and building more ladders. He spent a lifetime doing this.

Posted at 08:35 AM on Sunday April 30, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Wednesday April 26, 2023

GOP To-Don't List

I like David Frum's lede in this Atlantic article, talking about the five things Republicans knew they needed to do to make 2024 viable:

  1. Replace Donald Trump at the head of the ticket with somebody less obnoxious and impulsive.
  2. Capitalize on inflation and other economic troubles.
  3. Offer plausible ideas on drugs, crime, and border enforcement.
  4. Reassure women worried about the post-Roe future.
  5. Don't be too obvious about suppressing Democratic votes, because really blatant voter suppression will provoke and mobilize Democrats to vote, not discourage them.

And they haven't done any of them: Trump leads the pack, the GOP's debt-ceiling recklessness is the biggest U.S. economic problem, they have no good ideas for anything, and, as the clickbait goes, “No. 4 is the worst one!”

Frum, or one of his editors, calls the piece “The Coming Biden Blowout,” which I initially thought meant Biden would blow out. Or maybe the Atlantic is hedging its bets. Either way, here's hoping all of this backfires on the GOP. Awful things should happen to awful people for a change.

Posted at 01:37 PM on Wednesday April 26, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Wednesday March 29, 2023

When?

NPR has an article on the Nashville school shooting earlier this week, in which former student Audrey Hale, 28, who identifies as male, killed three adults and three 9-year-olds. It's entitled “4 Big Questions about the Nashville School Shooting,” and those big questions are:

  • What was the shooter's motive? (Seemed to be targeting the school but no individual within it)
  • Could police have confiscated the suspect's guns? (Not in Tennessee. Because Tennessee.)
  • Is it a hate crime? (The Josh Hawley trope. The school is Christian, so it's a way of deflecting from the discussion about “access to weaponry.” Which feels like the more important discussion.)
  • Will lawmakers pass gun control measure? (Spare me)

Classically NPR, all of their questions are within the parameters of what the NRA and GOP make permissible. There's no thought outside that.

Which is why they leave out the real question. I call it the Jon Stewart question

Earlier this month, for his Apple TV+ show, “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” he interviewed Oklahoma state senator Nathan Daum, a Second Amendment absolutist, about gun matters. And Stewart went right to the heart of a longstanding NRA/GOP talking point. Whenever a mass shooting occurs, these guys say the problem isn't guns; it's too few guns. More guns were needed to keep us safe. It's the good-guy-with-a-gun thing. Some thinktank asshole thought that BS up, and the GOP's been running with it ever since. 

Stewart addressed it early. He looked at Sen. Daum and said this: 

“You're saying more guns make us more safe. So ... when?”

It's the best argument I've heard on the topic. And the whole 8-9 minute interview is fantastic: reasonable while still being very, very angry. It puts the onus on them, which is where it belongs. It's remind them that we create order out of chaos everywhere else, so why are we're not doing it here. It reminds them that for the most fundamental right in an American democracy, the right to vote, you still have to register. And they don't want that done for owning a killing machine?

That should be the slogan anytime we get a mass shooting. When? Anytime anyone in the NRA or GOP opens their piehole on the topic. When? Everytime more children are killed. When? You say we're getting safer. That doesn't seem to be the case. So ... when?

Posted at 03:11 PM on Wednesday March 29, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Monday March 06, 2023

At 2023 CPAC, Bannon Trumps Trump

At least via this article from John Hendrickson in The Atlantic. I remember when I didn't even know CPAC existed. Fun times.

Hendrickson says Trump's two-hour, rambling and complaining speech gave off a “1 a.m. at the party” vibe rather than anything  vibrant and angry, and he wondered if this wasn't “the last gasp of CPAC.” In the next sentence, he finally unburied his lede—or at least the most interesting fact about the event: Fox News wasn't there. It wasn't a sponsor. Instead, the thing was sponsored and attended by the grabbag of kooks and grifters that hope to fill Fox's void if Fox ever leaves a void: Newsmax, The Epoch Times, Right Side Broadcasting Network, America First, One America News, Lindell TV, blah blah blah.

According to Trump, the 2020 election was still stolen, the state is still deep, the U.S. is becoming a “crime-ridden, filthy communist nightmare,” and we put up illegal immigrants at the Waldorf Astoria. “My wonderful travel ban is gone,” he lamented at one point. That made me smile, remembering the horror of it. And remember how he always said he was the only one who could fix a seemingly unsolvable problem even though he couldn't solve 2+2? He's latest unsolvable only he can solve is Russia-Ukraine. One assumes by backing Russia:

“I stand here today, and I'm the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent—and very easily—World War III.” (Wild applause.) “And you're gonna have World War III, by the way.” (Confused applause.)

It was Bannon who attacked the true enemy:

Late Friday afternoon, he marched onto the stage in all black, three pens clipped to his shirt, and attacked Fox News for its alleged “soft ban” of Trump. He referred to the Murdoch family as “a bunch of foreigners” and said, “Note to Fox senior management: When Donald J. Trump talks, it's newsworthy.” He fired up the crowd: “We're not looking for unity. We're looking for victory!” He pounded his hand on the lectern, summing up the theme of the weekend: “MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!”

That's dipshit American for “Tora! Tora! Tora!” 

Posted at 08:42 AM on Monday March 06, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Wednesday March 01, 2023

Lid-Tard

“I know it violates the sensibilities of the innocent and tender-minded, but in the real world you sometimes have to employ extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose laws you're violating.”

-- G. Gordon Liddy, in a Playboy magazine interview years ago, vis a vis his discussion with other operatives on how to assassinate journalist Jack Anderson. It's detailed in Mark Feldstein's recent article, “The Nixon White House plotted to assassinate a journalist 50 years ago,” in The Washington Post. I know a lot about Nixon, and Watergate, but I never knew this story. Seems insane, and Liddy seems more sociopath than I realized. Feldstein quotes the above after writing, “Liddy offered to stab Anderson to death and make it look like a routine robbery by stealing Anderson's watch and wallet.” Apparently a few days after Howard Hunt briefed Charles Colson on the matter, the hit was canceled, or at least put on pause, so they could bug Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. It's possible that Frank Wills not only helped expose the underbelly of the Nixon administration, he might've saved Jack Anderson's life, too.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Wednesday March 01, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Tuesday February 07, 2023

Republicans Just Want Trump to Die

“In his recent book Thank You for Your Servitude, my colleague Mark Leibovich quoted a former Republican representative who bluntly summarized his party's plan for dealing with Trump: 'We're just waiting for him to die.' As it turns out, this is not an uncommon sentiment. In my conversations with Republicans, I heard repeatedly that the least disruptive path to getting rid of Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for his expiration.

”Their rationale was straightforward: The former president is 76 years old, overweight, appears to maintain the diet of a college freshman, and believes, contrary to all known science, that exercise is bad for you. Why risk alienating his supporters when nature will take its course sooner or later? Peter Meijer, a former Republican representative who left office this month, termed this strategy actuarial arbitrage.

“'You have a lot of folks who are just wishing for [Trump's] mortal demise,' Meijer told me. 'I want to be clear: I'm not in that camp. But I've heard from a lot of people who will go onstage and put on the red hat, and then give me a call the next day and say, ”I can't wait until this guy dies.“ And it's like, Good Lord.'”

-- from “Republicans' 2024 Magical Thinking,” by McKay Coppins, on The Atlantic site. Coppins adds that though Trump turns 77 this year, his mother lived to be 88, his father 93, “so this strategy isn't exactly foolproof.”

I'm sure it'll all work out fine, GOP.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Tuesday February 07, 2023 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Tuesday December 20, 2022

Our Screwed-Up Times in a Paragraph

From “How Trump jettisoned restraints at Mar-a-Lago and prompted legal peril” in The Washington Post:

In the two years since he left office, Trump has re-created the conditions of his own freewheeling White House—with all of its chaos, norm flouting and catering to his ego—with little regard for the law. With this behavior, Trump prompted a criminal investigation into his post-presidential handling of classified documents to compound the ongoing one into his and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election results—which presents potential legal peril and risks hobbling his nascent bid to be elected president again in 2024.

It's the word risks that does it for me. We get his aberrant behavior, his disregard for the rule of law, and the two huge, ongoing criminal investigations against him, and, oh yeah, he's still running for president and we guess all that risks such a run.

I'm not critiquing the writers, by the way. The paragraph perfectly encapsulates our screwed-up times. 

The article is long but good. It's Trump in winter. How he's surrounded himself with only the most sycophantic. How they spend much of their time trying to buoy him up. How he has no one to tell him, “You know, that might not be a good idea.” One former aide describes the situation as “sad”—which, remember, with exclamation point, used to be one of Trump's many Twittery catchphrases back in the day. What goes around. 

More sad for him, good for us: Yesterday, the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attacks formally recommended criminal prosecution for Trump on four counts: inciting insurrection, obstructing an act of Congress, conspiring to defraud the U.S., and conspiring to make a false statement. It's the first time Congress has recommended criminal prosecution for a U.S. president ever. We'll see what DOJ does now. 

Posted at 01:46 PM on Tuesday December 20, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Monday December 12, 2022

Trump Done/Not Done

“The official campaign for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination is barely three weeks old, but there is one clear takeaway so far: Donald Trump is running against himself—and losing.

”From his low-energy announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago to his dinner with the Hitler-praising Kanye West and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Trump has courted more controversy than votes since launching his bid in November. He has held no campaign rallies and hired no campaign manager. He has hosted a QAnon conspiracy theorist and helped raise money for the indicted insurrectionists of January 6th. More classified items have been found in his possession, and his Trump Organization was convicted in New York of a major tax-fraud scheme. He has scared away neither prospective opponents nor prosecutors, and, while openly courting extremists, he seems to be running on a campaign platform that is somehow even more nakedly driven by self-interest than his previous two bids. Just last week, he suggested jettisoning the Constitution so he could be reinstated to the office he was thrown out of by the voters in 2020. ... Has there ever been a more awful start to a campaign?

“For all of that, it's not clear just what kind of Trump car crash we're watching. Is this the end-end of Trump, the long-anticipated Republican jailbreak? Or merely another moment when the false hope of Trump's imminent demise is indulged for a few days or weeks before being once again disproved? ... For all the breathless coverage, Trump retains the support of more than 40% of the G.O.P. electorate in recent surveys—more than enough to win the Republican nomination in a crowded field.”

-- Susan B. Glasser, “Trump's 2024 Campaign So Far Is an Epic Act of Self-Sabotage; But is this really the end of an error?” on The New Yorker site

Posted at 04:49 PM on Monday December 12, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  
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