Numb. Now, there’s a word I never thought I'd use to describe New Hampshire—the place was always bracing, even when frigid. It was sparkly snow in the sun, it was sharp and skeptical voters; it was the journo tribe drinking and spritzing at the Wayfarer, the results of the race often a mystery until the final hours. It was the best week of any political season. But then, I’m not talking about New Hampshire here, I’m talking about me, about my reaction to the New Hampshire results. Numb. This was the first New Hampshire primary I can recall where nothing surprising happened. Trump won, convincingly. Haley fell just short of the pundit-credibility line, as has become her wont: she “needed” to lose by single digits in order to “win.” She lost by eleven. She then tried an old Bill Clinton trick, the “comeback kid” maneuver: declare victory and get out of Dodge before it becomes apparent how badly you’ve lost. Yesteryear’s strategy; Trump called her on it immediately. Politics is a different place these days.
To me, the most significant events of the day took place outside of New Hampshire. One was Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who often shows intimations of sanity, endorsing Trump. Even honorable lemmings fall into line, a ratification more profound than the primary results. The other was Ron DeSantis saying this a day after he had endorsed Trump:
“When I have people come up to me who voted for Reagan and … have been conservative their whole life, [who] say that they don’t want to vote for Trump again, that’s a problem. So he’s got to figure out a way to solve that. I think there’s an enthusiasm problem overall.”
Where was that guy the past six months? Where was the Nikki Haley who—finally—brought up the glaring issue of Trump’s mental incompetence after Orange Man confused her with Nancy Pelosi and said Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6?
The newspapers had their usual five takeaways after New Hampshire. I have only one:
You don’t play dice with the devil. You can’t finesse evil. There are no clever strategies. You have to confront it. Haley and DeSantis played footsie with Trump, rather than battling him. They never said, “You lost the election in 2020 and lied about it and then tried to overthrow the government with your fake electors scheme. How is that not treason against our Constitution?” They never said, “What is wrong with your mouth? The things you say are disgusting. Do we really want our children to think the President of the United States talks like that?” Haley never said, “Are you actually making fun of my Indian ancestry, mocking the name my freedom-loving parents gave me? How dare you. My father is in a hospital bed right now, you pig.” (Some actual righteous anger—a real emotion—might have been useful.) Haley never said, “I believe in the U.S. Military. My husband serves in it. Why do you keep saying you want to assassinate its leaders?” Haley never said, “Why do you want to give Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin? What’s that guy got on you?” Neither Haley nor DeSantis stood up for the FBI, the CIA, the Justice system, the courts. They fed the deplorable Deep State delusion.
Of course, none of that would have mattered. Trump’s cult is powerful crazy. Some of them came to visit Sanity Clause yesterday, after Real Clear Politics posted my piece about the Democratic Party’s disastrous identity politics. I am a devoted reader of Real Clear Politics, and appreciate their spreading the word about this newsletter—and RCP can’t be responsible for the behavior of some of their readers. But, yuck. Vitriol was the most common currency. Some of the comments were reported to Substack by members of the regular Sanity tribe. One, since removed by the authorities, said that I was a typical Jew who hated white people. Others denied the white nationalist aspects of the Trump coalition. Others spouted nonsense about Trump winning Georgia in 2020, or other things that he didn’t really do; some of the Trumpeteers just fumed incomprehensibly. I tried to engage a few of the more reasonable commenters, but you can guess how that turned out. I know these folks are flyspecks in a latrine, but their invasion of this usually civil space made me even more depressed than I was before, contemplating the state of our disunion.
Oh, and one more takeaway: I found myself rooting really hard for Dean Phillips to give Biden a scare on the Democratic side. I’ve known Biden since 1987 and really like the guy. My mother would say he’s haimische, a good man—and apologies for the Yiddish transliteration, if I got it wrong. But, a good man, his intentions are good; unlike Trump, he doesn’t wish evil on others. His presidency has been well-played, productive, sane. But I just can’t see how he competes with the rampage that is Trump. I suspect the Democrats are going to need a faster mouth than Biden possesses. The election is likely to be played in Trump’s court, spontaneous brutality the order of the day.
Biden’s advisors seem smug and not very creative. Once again, he is paralyzed on the toughest issue for him: the border. Why the crippling silence? (I’ll have more on what he might actually do about that in a coming Clause.) Every time I read that Trump is the opponent the Biden people want, I get nervous. That is silly-buggers politics at a grave moment. No one should want a lying charlatan like Trump to be a candidate for President of the United States. It says a bit too much about the deteriorating moral state of the union that his cult even exists. And it is not impossible that he will beat Biden. If he does, it is likely that he will try to overturn every major governmental institution that defies him, including the dowdy old tradition of democracy, although I suspect he’s too incompetent and self-addled to get the dictator job accomplished. But he’s hot-blooded and Biden, cadaverous. You just don’t want to be on the cadaverous side of that equation.
Oh, and a third takeaway: For those of us who take politics and governance seriously, the next ten months are going to be excruciating.
“Trump appears to act as a sort of funhouse mirror on which the progressive elites who run most institutions, including the federal government, see themselves reflected in the most monstrous and frightening light, "Martin Gurri writes in The Free Press. "The malady now exposed is this: the elites have lost faith in representative democracy. To smash the nightmare image of themselves that Trump evokes, they are willing to twist and force our system until it breaks.”
As much as you fear Trump, the true danger may lie in the establishment's response to him.
Trump is bat shit crazy but unfortunately so is Biden.
I have voted for Democrats my entire life. In 2020, I voted for Biden. Today Biden spends billions of taxpayer dollars to protect the borders of Ukraine and Israel while our own southern border is an open sore. Millions of illegals flow in unimpeded. They are willing to work for next to nothing just to be here undercutting working peoples’ wages. Their growing numbers aggravate our national housing shortage and they are destroying the liberal cities that are too stupid to reject them. Biden supports racial discrimination against whites and Asians in the name of "equity". He believes that people can actually change their biological sex. He thinks that men belong in women's sports and locker rooms and he would put male rapists in women’s prisons. He even thinks that children should be mutilated and sterilized to attain the unattainable.
Biden’s insanity is actually making wild ass Trump appear reasonable.