Lights Are On ...

Some of Biden's odd gaffes.

Tulsi Gabbard 2024

Why is Tulsi Gabbard still in the Democratic presidential race?

She obviously has no hope of winning the nomination.

It might be, then, to advance her ideas—her pacifist program. But she isn’t able to do much of that, since the party establishment is determined to keep her off the debate stage.

How about this thought? Might she be keeping herself in the public eye in hopes of being nominated for Vice President? Especially in the event of a brokered convention.

Seems to me she’d make a good choice for either Bernie or Biden, were he the nominee.

In either case, she would balance the top of the ticket geographically, West and East, sexually, and in her youthfulness. She checks the intersectional boxes, so important to Democrats, as Biden or Sanders themselves do not: female, Hindu, Polynesian.

For Sanders, she might pull in more moderate voters, while at the same time seeming sympatico. Like Sanders, she is a rebel against the party establishment. She was a major backer of Sanders in 2016.

But she looks like an even better fit for Biden.

Biden might want to pick someone clearly to his left, in order to soothe the Sanders supporters. But Sanders himself is too old, and there is a grudge between Bernie and Warren supporters. AOC is too young to be legal.

Any selection on this basis also risks failing to appease Sanders supporters, who tend to be purists, while alienating the independent vote Biden needs most. The farther left, after all, in the classically cynical political calculation, have nowhere else to go.

He does not urgently need to shore up the black vote—he has been their favourite during the primaries. So there is no pressing need to pick a black running mate.

Tulsi has perhaps the best available crossover potential; oddly in both directions. A lot of independents and even Republicans like her anti-war stance. At the same time, a lot of Bernie supporters like her—see, for example, Jimmy Dore. Putting her on the ticket could also shield Biden from the charge of being a candidate entirely bought and paid for by the establishment. If, that is, he really isn’t.

Gabbard has also shown the one most valuable trait in a VP candidate: she is an extremely effective attack dog. This is the traditional VP candidate role, making the pointed attacks, so that the presidential candidate can look presidential, above the fray. Gabbard ended Kamala Harris’s candidacy in one of the most effective presidential debate exchanges of all time.

Given Biden’s age and health, Gabbard would stand a good chance of taking over during his term, or at least being given much more responsibility than a VP usually has. And she would be the natural successor in four years. Biden is sure not to be a two-term president.

If he fails, as VP pick, she still becomes the frontrunner to be nominated next time out.

I think she might stay in for that.

Joe Who?

Some are discounting this little bit of Joe Biden’s victory speech on Super Tuesday, saying that anyone might have made the mistake of confusing on which side his wife or sister were, since they were standing behind him.

But no, that cannot account for it. He also says, “And I’m Joe’s husband.”

That is, he seems at the same time to confuse himself with his wife.

Not normal, surely. The truth is that Biden, at 77, is senile. This is surely going to become apparent, and may get worse, during the campaign.

And if he becomes president, who is in charge?

Biden's Super Tuesday

Biden.

The Democratic Party establishment seems to have fallen smartly into line to keep Bernie Sanders from winning their nomination. Only secondarily, I suspect, they have thrown the prize to Joe Biden.

They have done this, it is thought, in the cause of electability. That’s pretty much Biden’s only pitch within the party.

I suspect they have the wrong man. I suspect Biden would run worse against Trump than either of the main remaining alternatives, Sanders or Bloomberg.

The political pros usually get one vital thing wrong. They look at the last significant electoral success, and try to imitate it. This means, if they are the party out of power, that they look for a clone of the guy in power, whom they will run against.

The Liberals won with a youthful Trudeau promising “sunny ways.” So the Tories nominated a youthful smiling Scheer.

Always a bad idea, and they always do it. If you like the guy in power, you are going to vote for him, rather than someone who only resembles him. If you dislike him, and are not offered something different, you might just stay at home.

You can trace this through the procession of presidents or prime ministers of the past. Obama was laid-back and restrained in his manner—“No Drama Obama.” Trump is a loud showman. Harper was grey and full of gravitas—so the Canadian electorate went to Justin Trudeau, who promised glamour and excitement. And not to the favoured Tom Mulcair, who was trying to look grey and full of gravitas. Harper, in turn, looked decisive after “Mr. Dithers,” Paul Martin. Obama looked smooth, poised, and articulate after the inarticulate and slightly boorish George W. Bush.

Note that it is more an issue of manner than anything else.

Trump is a clown. Biden is a clown. Trump is a funnier clown than Biden. Biden loses. I think he loses by a fairly large margin.

That doesn’t mean either Sanders or Bloomberg would win, but they would have more upside potential.

If the economy stays good, Trump probably gets the credit, and people will not be inclined to rock the boat regardless.

But what if the economy goes south? It looks as though we may be heading into a world-wide recession. If so, there could well have been an opening for a button-down technocrat type like Bloomberg. There might have been an opening for someone declaring the system flawed and calling for structural change like Sanders.

But do you want to put another clown in charge of an economy gone wrong?

And then, if you have a choice of two clowns, do you pick the prankster type, the one who plays tricks on others and always seems to end up on top? Or do you pick the bumbling clown, who does not seem to understand what is happening around him?

The Growing Socialist Threat of Sanders

It is funny to watch a lot of commentators suddenly panicking at the prospect of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee, including especially many on the left.

After all, he came reasonably close to becoming the nominee in 2016; he was the logical frontrunner for 2020 as soon as Clinton lost that time. How can they have only realized now that he is a “socialist”? How can it only be important now?

And not only is he suddenly discovered to be a socialist. It now turns out that he is, like Trump, another Russian plant. And he’s too old, and he’s hiding how bad his health is.

To some extent, every clearly established frontrunner draws fire. We just went through the taking down of Bloomberg by the other candidates. But Sanders, by comparison, is being taken down by the commentators and the backrooms. And Sanders ought to be already thoroughly vetted, since this is not his first run, and he has been the frontrunner before. It seems hysterical.

The fact that he is a socialist should not sound alarm bells for any Canadian or European. We have avowedly socialist candidates in contention all the time. The US system has checks and balances, as well, preventing any sudden political lurches. Sanders would have to get his initiatives passed by two houses of congress, then vetted by the Supreme Court as constitutional.

As for Russia backing him, it is hard to understand why it is news that Russia tries to influence American elections. After all, America tries to influence elections elsewhere all the time. Former president Obama openly endorsed Justin Trudeau during Canada’s recent federal election. It is hard to believe that only Russia interferes in the US. If the various foreign diplomatic corps and intelligence agencies are not always trying to influence elections anywhere for what they perceive as their interests, they’re not doing their job.

As to Sanders being too old, that concern is only significant if the alternative is Pete Buttigieg. Biden, Warren, Bloomberg, or Trump are almost the same age. 

An underlying and more reasonable concern might be that Sanders cannot win in the general election--because he is too far out of step with the average voter. That may be so; but by the same token, I thought Reagan was too far right to be elected. I thought the same of Stephen Harper. For the most part, people do not vote on ideology or even issues, but on their perception of the character of the candidate.

I suspect the real problem is not that Sanders is a socialist, or a Russian plant, or anything else, but the shock among the commentariat at realizing they are no longer in control even of the left. They had decided that Sanders would not be the nominee, had already taken ruthless measures to make this so, and neither the voters nor the dice have fallen in their favour.

Now Sanders is going to win the nomination at least. He will take over the party, if not the White House, and he will have reason to bear grudges and to clean house.

Shootout in Nevada

I’m sorry I skipped the Democratic debate last night. They had been getting tiresome and predictable. But this time, with most candidates facing elimination, they came with the brass knuckles.

And just when it looked as though they might have found a plausible candidate after all, in Bloomberg, the rest of the field have critically wounded him.

A lot of people are alarmed at the idea that Bloomberg might buy the election in any case. I am less so—I think that risk is self-limiting. Nobody can compel people to vote for them; and big spending can turn people off as well as on. Mulroney lost his first bid for the PC leadership because his campaign looked too slick and well-funded. Hillary Clinton outspent Trump last cycle, yet he won.

I think Bloomberg might be a formidable opponent for Trump, too, if the economy goes sour by next November—with the COVID-19 virus, a likelihood. He could come across as a steadier hand at the helm.

But I suspect now there is no way he can sneak past the Democratic primary voters.

I think Buttigieg got off the best lines of the night, on neither Sanders nor Bloomberg being actual Democrats, and on Klobuchar not knowing the name of the President of Mexico. Warren’s opening barrage against Bloomberg seems the most posted clip, but I’m not sure it helped Warren as much as it hurt Bloomberg. It was too obvious a line of attack to make her look impressive in using it. I’m also reminded of Harris landing a solid body blow on Biden re school busing, but not gaining any benefit; and Tulsi Gabbard absolutely ending Harris, and gaining nothing by it.

The strong performances of Warren and Buttigieg may boost both past Biden. I predict a Nevada caucus finish of Sanders first, but I really have no idea who will come in second, third, fourth, or fifth.

Given that Sanders comes in with a convincing first, it is going to be hard for anyone to beat him going forward.

The Northern Strategy

And the Dem establishment seems to hate the one non-white candidate still standing, as an outsider.

Consider for a moment these two lists of recent Democratic presidential candidates: LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama.

Now: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton.

What is the difference between the two lists?

The most obvious difference is that all in the first list won the presidency. The second list all lost.

But there is a second difference that is almost as consistent. Everyone in the first list except Obama came from a Southern state, a member of the old Confederacy.

And everyone in the second list came from a northern state. Gore is a bit of an outlier, from Tennessee. But Tennessee is still only a border state—and Gore did win the popular vote. And he was running against a more solidly southern candidate, in George W. Bush.

Obama, the other outlier, was from Illinois—but being black meant that he held special appeal to a large segment of the Southern vote, the black vote. He notably had that southern cadence in his speech.

Since about the Second World War, the math has seemed obvious: if the Democrats ran a Southerner, they won. If they ran a Northerner, they lost.

This was the Democrats’ own “Southern strategy.” They had to do this to, as James Carville once put it, “pick the lock” of the otherwise reliably Republican South.

And the Democrats seem now to have utterly forgotten this. Look at their current crop of candidates. Sanders and Warren, New England Yankees. Bloomberg, New York. Klobuchar, Minnesota—could not get much more northern than that. Buttigieg is from Indiana, but far northern Indiana, close to Chicago. And he seems aggressively preppy. Biden is from Delaware, technically a border state.

This might be explained, in part, by a weak front bench. Who, after all, do the Democrats have to run who comes from the South? They are reduced to circling the wagons in their traditional regional strongholds. But that is not the full story—for nobody seems to have noticed or expressed concern over the lack of any prominent Southern candidate.

Sure, there is concern about the ability to appeal to black voters. But that is not the real issue. Nor is it so much about ideology. The South, black or white, is culturally distinct from the North, more emotionally attuned, and finds it hard to warm up to stiff preppy types like Buttigieg, or schoolmarmish figures like Warren. Blacks who have migrated North simply tend to preserve these characteristics.

The Democrats seem to be living in a bubble, huddled with their own, and either not interested in anyone outside their familiar circle, afraid of them, or contemptuous of them.

This shows too in their policy platforms: all the candidates seem to the left of the general public.

This is suicide for a political party.

Compare the Republicans. In their last presidential race, they scared up prominent candidates from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, and then also from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California. And the New York candidate won.

Trump was able to go after the Democratic “firewall,” in the rust belt, and take three critical states. He picked their northern lock.

Now, with excellent political instincts, he is working on the black vote. Which has great cultural affinities with the white Southern vote, to which the Democrats have lost all sensitivity. It may not take much more for them to shift Republican in large numbers, just as did the white working class in the North.

At this point, whomever the Democrats nominate, and barring some economic disaster, I call it for Trump.

New Hampshire Prediction

I expect Sanders to win New Hampshire. Buttigieg should come a strong second based on his boost in Iowa, whether earned or not. Klobuchar had a strong debate performance, so I see her surging to third. Warren fourth, Biden fifth.

With this result, Warren drops out. If she can’t do better than fourth in New Hampshire, next door to her home state, where will she do better?

Klobuchar is unlikely to drop out so long as she is surging. Who knows how high she might yet go? And Biden is unlikely to drop out, because his campaign had always written off Iowa and New Hampshire, calling for their first win in South Carolina. Unless he is running out of money.

This leaves Sanders as the sole major candidate for the insurgent left of the party, and the votes of the more moderate politicos split among Buttigieg, Biden, Klobuchar and, going forward, Bloomberg. This helps Sanders. He is closest to Warren ideologically. There is bad blood between the two campaigns, but I think the Sanders people have more reason to be angry at Warren than vice versa.

Buttigieg is likely to underperform in South Carolina. He has a problem with black voters, and I think it is insurmountable. It has to do with his preppiness. It probably won’t sit well with southern whites either. That is liable to keep the votes, and the delegate counts, fairly evenly split among him, Biden, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg for the near future.

This, it seems to me, gives Sanders the best shot at the nomination.

The Thrashing About of a Great and Dying Beast

Democracy Dies in Darkness? Democracy Dies in Des Moines

Feminist icon and 45th governor of Alabama Lurleen Wallace

With 62% in, Buttigieg seems to be edging out Sanders in Iowa.

I had predicted a blowout for Sanders.

On the other hand, the delay in counting the vote, makes the results look dubious. That, and the poll just before the vote that was pulled; and the other polls showing Sanders way up, and Buttigieg flagging.

We know the backrooms would prefer a Buttigieg win. We know the Dem establishment’s history of stacking decks against Sanders. We know the Dem establishment is prepared to rig the process, because they did in 2016.

It is generally better to assume typical human incompetence before suspecting active malice. And yet, the series of circumstances seems implausible. It seems odd that, if the app was not working, it was not possible to fall back to the system they had always used, and accept results by phone. It seems odd that, a day later, they could report only 62% of the vote, with no update since. Anywhere else, such a delay would mean only one thing: they need the time to doctor the results.

Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, and Pete Buttigieg did not win the Iowa caucuses.

But let’s pretend he did.

Conventional wisdom is that Iowa usually leaves only three viable candidates. I think that is true this time. Buttigieg has overtaken Biden and Klobuchar as the establishment favourite. They are probably done.

Sanders has established himself as leader on the left. Warren may hang on to try her luck in New Hampshire.

The other candidate still viable is Michael Bloomberg. He avoids the cut by not being present.

Buttigieg has a puny resume; and this is a weak, dubious win. Bloomberg probably has a shot at challenging him for the anti-Sanders vote once his weakness sinks in.

In the meantime, the media operatives have their lede. They are making much of Buttigieg’s supposed win as historic, in overcoming or suggesting the end of public prejudice against gays. “The first openly gay candidate to win Iowa.”

I think this is fake news. Buttigieg’s qualifications as a presidential candidate are absurdly slight. Mayor of South Bend? Being gay is almost his only qualification for the job. If we won, he won BECAUSE he is gay, not in spite of it.

And this continues a familiar pattern.

Barack Obama was conspicuously underqualified as a first-term senator when he won Iowa and the nomination in 2008. People voted for him because of the colour of his skin—as Biden noted at the time.

Hillary Clinton had, on paper, qualifications to justify her selection in 2016. On the other hand, hailing her as the prospective “first female president” was another gimmick. She would be far from the first wife or a former politician to stroll into office on his coattails. Nobody hailed it as historic when Lurleen Wallace succeeded her husband George as Alabama governor back in 1967. Or when Isabel Peron succeeded her husband Juan as Argentine president in 1974. She succeeded not despite being a woman, but because she was a wife.

The moral of it all is that there is no discrimination against gays, or blacks, or women. They are systematically favoured now by the establishment, and have been for some time.

On the other hand, nobody makes anything of the fact that, if Bernie won, he would be the first Jewish president.

Certainly not the Sanders campaign. They know if they did, it would lose, not gain, votes.

Our Correspondent Reports Live from the Iowa Caucuses

‘What I was going to say,’ said the Dodo in an offended tone, ‘was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.’

‘What is a Caucus-race?’ said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’ (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (‘the exact shape doesn’t matter,’ it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no ‘One, two, three, and away,’ but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, ‘But who has won?’

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’

‘But who is to give the prizes?’ quite a chorus of voices asked.

‘Why, she, of course,’ said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, ‘Prizes! Prizes!’

Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, (luckily the salt water had not got into it), and handed them round as prizes. There was exactly one a-piece all round.

There is a reason why it is called nonsense literature.
Well done, Democrats!

Iowa Forecast

My prediction: Bernie Sanders wins the Iowa caucuses. He is surging at just the right time. Warren’s attack on him for supposed misogyny will garner him sympathy votes. And the caucus system favours candidates whose supporters are more committed. Sanders’s supporters are.

I think Biden will disappoint. It is not just that his supporters are likely to be less fervent. The caucus system also favours those with second-choice growth potential. As the front runner and with his name recognition, and running on electability, those who are inclined to support him are already on board. As well, a huge proportion of the Iowa Democratic electorate are reported in polls as undecided. It more or less follows that they are looking for someone other than Biden, whom they all already know well.

This offers a big opening for a surprise by some dark horse candidate with really strong on-the-ground organization.

I think, thanks to her assault on Sanders, Warren will perform worse than expected, which may be a crippling blow to her candidacy. The proverbial wisdom is that only three candidates tend to remain viable after Iowa. If Warren badly underperforms expectations, her support naturally moves over to Sanders; and it handicaps his most dangerous regional rival in the New Hampshire primary soon to follow.

Buttigieg’s fifteen minutes have passed; I think his support is on the decline, and so he is unlikely to surprise in Iowa.

I look to some darker horse from the second tier to surprise, but I cannot predict which one.

The Trouble with Truth

The mainstream media seems not to like Bernie Sanders. He essentially was called a liar in last night’s debate—by the moderators.

He was treated unfairly in 2015 as well, by the Democratic National Committee. Then, it made sense purely on the premise that the DNC was owned by the Clintons, that they maintained great influence in the party.

This time, we need a deeper explanation. It’s not just the Clintons.

It is not that Sanders is feared ideologically and in terms of electability, for being too far to the left. For they have given the same sort of blatantly biased treatment to Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard, with somewhat different platforms. Either would probably better appeal to independents that the candidates the MSM and DNC support.

The clue is in what they just publicly accused Sanders of: lying.

They accuse Gabbard of something similar: of not really speaking for herself, but of mouthing lines fed to her by the Kremlin. Of insincerity.

This is more conspicuous because the big draw for Bernie’s supporters is that he seems so sincere. He has been consistent in what he says, pretty much throughout his career. This is rare in a politician.

This is also what he shares with the two other pariah Democratic candidates: Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang also seem sincere, consistent, and to be expressing their own real views. Gabbard seems to stand on principle. She blew the whistle, for example, on the unfair treatment of Sanders last time, even though they do not closely align ideologically.

It is this very honesty that the party poobahs and the media elite fear and hate.

It is, in fact, also what they hate so much in Trump. They endlessly accuse him of lying, just as they now do Sanders. They accused him of being a Russian puppet, as they now do Gabbard. Same phenomenon. But in fact, Trump has been conspicuous in keeping his campaign promises. And, more generally, for not bending to polls or political correctness, but saying what he genuinely thinks. For speaking the truth as he sees it.

Why do these groups, the media and the Democratic operatives, so fear sincerity? Why do they actually prefer phonies as candidates?

They might and do say, of such candidates, that they are “loose cannon.” Who knows then what they might say or do on a given issue? Seems risky.

But this again is actually the inverse of the truth. Because they do not blow in the wind, because they operate on principles, we really know better how these four will react to any given new event.

The real problem is the one outlined in the Gospel of John. Those who do evil in darkness come to fear the light for its own sake, and will oppose anyone who speaks the truth.

This is why they crucified Christ.

The DNC and the legacy media—our social elites in general--are in a very dark place.

Doesn't She Mean "Wine Cellar"?

Wine cellar in Spain

Political junkie that I am, I did not watch the latest Democratic presidential candidates’ debate. These things have just become too tedious, everyone mouthing almost the same slogans, with the exception, in this grouping, of Andrew Yang. Who is never given any speaking time.

It seems there was one dramatic exchange. Elizabeth Warren accused Pete Buttigieg of holding fundraisers in a “wine cave full of crystals.” He responded, “this is the problem with setting purity tests you can’t pass yourself.”

Commentators on the right all seem to think that Buttigieg destroyed Warren in the exchange. Commentators on the left all think Warren destroyed Buttigieg. It is as though we experience separate realities.

A possible insight into the difference emerges from a focus group of California Democratic voters. They seemed to hold to the idea that anyone who is very rich is morally corrupt. Accordingly, holding a high-price fundraiser shows that you are in league with the devil.

Conservatives presumably do not think so, and believe that wealth can be acquired either honestly or dishonestly.

But I still think the position of the leftists is illogical. If this is the assumption, Buttigieg’s response should also have been effective: he pointed out that he was the only person on the stage who was not himself a millionaire or billionaire.

So why do the leftists think Warren won? Two possibilities:

1. It is the power of the image: “wine cave filled with crystal.” Never mind that it is simply prejudicial language used to describe something common in politics. In other words, they want pleasing fantasies, not truths.

2. While the rich are evil, present company is always excluded. These are not real people they are thinking of, but fat cartoon people who wear top hats, spats, monocles and pinstriped pants, and smoke cigars. So no problems for themselves and those they know—no matter how rich they are, they are the good guys.

The hidden enemy of us all.

The real rich must be invisible, snickering unseen in their “wine caves.”

Inevitable Democratic Nominee Drops Out

Kamala Harris

So Kamala Harris is out of the race to become the Democratic US presidential candidate.

Honesty obliges me to note that I had picked her as most likely to win.

To be fair, I did also note that she was inexperienced and untested, and so might implode.

She imploded.

So now, who do I think will win?

The matter is clouded—clouded enough to have prompted some late entries to the race. Everybody seems to see the race as up for grabs.

But right now, I’d put my money on Bernie Sanders.

Granted, the media star of the moment is Pete Buttigieg. But these sudden surges to the top of the field are not to be taken too seriously. Each candidate seems to get their turn in the spotlight, and then fall back. If Buttigieg is surging now, it is probably too soon to serve him well by the time the Iowa caucuses come around. Instead, he may be killed now by raised expectations not being met.

Buttigieg is also unappealing to black voters; they may not matter much in Iowa or New Hampshire, but that will kill him in the later primaries. I don’t think this is something that can be fixed by outreach. Pete is too preppy.

And fundamentally, it is just nuts to nominate the mayor of a small Midwestern city, sans anything epoch-making in his platform. For comparison, Lloyd Henderson, former mayor of Portage-la-Prairie, a comparably-sized Canadian city, ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 1968. Anyone else remember? He received no votes.

In the end, it would be a profound embarrassment to the Party to nominate Mayor Pete. Is this really the best they can do?

His relative inexperience as a politician also makes him vulnerable, like Harris but more so, to either a fatal gaffe or some previously undiscovered closet cadaver.

Yet a reasonably strong Buttigieg candidacy tends to split Biden’s vote. If he can run first or second in Iowa and New Hampshire, it guarantees that Biden cannot take those contests.

At present, Sanders is in second place in both early states. He stands to benefit if Buttigieg falls short, and he stands to benefit even if Buttigieg takes them, then fails in later contests: he has staked his ground as the alternative, the non-Buttigieg and champion of the radical wing. Meanwhile, the moderate delegates will be split between Buttigieg and whatever candidate inherits the more moderate vote in later primaries.

Biden is still leading in the national polls. But national polls matter less than Iowa and New Hampshire. Biden is not close in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even if Buttigieg stumbles before those states vote, they like to do something surprising and transgressive. Voting for Biden does not fit that profile, since he is the nominal front-runner and the most familiar of the candidates. Voting for Biden would be boring. More probable would be a surprise surge by Yang, or Gabbard, or Steyer.

So Biden’s strategy, of necessity, is to take losses in both states, then start winning in South Carolina and the South.

That strategy has never worked before. The negative media resulting from the two losses, plus the buzz around the winner, tends to kill all momentum. Biden’s strategy is Rudy Giuliani’s strategy in 2008. Giuliani led the national polls too. And Biden is actually running not second, but third, in both states. He is not even establishing himself as the natural alternative.

For a while, the centre lane in the race was uncrowded, while candidates were all shuffling left. In particular, Elizabeth Warren’s strong candidacy was splitting Sanders’s natural constituency. That made Biden look strong. Now that situation seems reversed. Warren has fallen dramatically in the polls. Having had two campaign revivals, I do not think she is likely to rise again. Her insincerity has finally sunken in with Democratic voters. Sincerity is more important than it used to be. Perceived lack of sincerity sunk Kamala Harris, and it looks like it is sinking Warren now almost as decisively.

In the meantime, new candidates have been poaching Biden’s following. Buttigieg has moved to sound more moderate; Steyer, Bloomberg, and Patrick have entered the space. Steyer and Bloomberg seem to be posting significant numbers. Those are numbers largely bled from Biden.

So Sanders and Buttigieg come out of Iowa and New Hampshire as the two leading candidates. Most likely with Sanders on top, Buttigieg underperforming based on prior expectations. Then Buttigieg fails in later primaries, because he cannot appeal to the black vote; and because he is no longer so fresh. Moderate vote splits between Biden and Bloomberg and Buttigieg, at a minimum. Bloomberg can stay in the race as long as he wants, being self-financing. Quite likely Steyer as well. But the radical vote quickly coalesces around Bernie.

I think a sudden surge by some dark horse, a stealth win or near-win in Iowa, may yet overturn the race. But that is more or less unpredictable. Based on what is predictable, I see Sanders as the most likely nominee.

Regime-Change Wars

A 19th Century British political cartoon.

I like the sincerity of Tulsi Gabbard. I believe she would be the strongest candidate for the Democrats against Donald Trump. And I think she is being treated dishonestly by a corrupt Democratic Party establishment and media. 

But what about the merits of her central issue, ending American involvement in “regime-change wars”?

She has a point in international law, or what international law said until Kosovo. Until then, intervening in another country’s internal politics, no matter what, was considered unprovoked aggression.

But then there was the Rwandan holocaust, and opinion shifted to holding France morally responsible for not intervening.

I at first resisted this new principle, that there was an obligation upon other nations to intervene in defense of human rights. I was, on reflection, wrong.

This, after all, is the same moral principle as our obligation to intervene if we see someone being raped or stabbed or beaten up. “None so guilty as the innocent bystander.”

So it follows that America, because it has the capability, has the moral obligation to intervene against any regime that is flagrantly violating the human rights of either its own or some other people. It is not okay to gas Jews. It is not okay to stand aside and let it happen. Sorry, Tulsi.

I believe Gabbard sincerely sees it differently, for the simple reason that she is a Hindu.

Hinduism or Buddhism can endlessly tolerate injustice without a moral obligation to intervene because of the doctrine of karma. If someone is being raped or stabbed or otherwise viciously mistreated, if some group is being systematically wiped doubt, it is no doubt just reward for some terrible thing they have done in a past life. No injustice is possible; no cause for us to get involved.

I leave the reader to decide how they feel about this stance; but from it follows the conclusion, for example, that having a criminal justice system is illegitimate.

Gabbard and her supporters would no doubt go on to argue that recent “regime change” wars have not just been costly, but have not worked. They will cite Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have actually had several recent case studies, since this new doctrine has become accepted: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

In the first case, the Western allies stayed on to establish stability, and, after some years, Kosovo has emerged as a functioning multi-party democracy. In Kosovo, it seems that the “regime change” war did work. One might also mention the postwar experience with Germany, Japan, or Italy, although WWII was not just a “regime change” war.

In the second case, Iraq, some stability did seem to have been achieved, after some years of struggle, then lost by what looks like a premature US departure. After some limited re-engagement, Iraq looks more stable. In Afghanistan, relatively low-level conflict continues. In these two cases, long-term results cannot really be determined.

Appalled by the cost of these two interventions, however, when things then turned nasty internally in Libya, the West tried a different tack: go in, take out the regime, and leave. This is, to be honest, what I too thought would be the better policy. You can lead a nation to democracy, but you cannot force them to be democrats. It’s a contradiction in terms.

But this approach seems to have turned out worse: Libya remains in chaos, and human rights abuses remain common.

Disappointed again, when Syria then went south, the West reverted to the old, pre-Rwanda approach: do nothing.

And this has worked out worst of all: an ongoing holocaust of historic proportions, a refugee crisis flooding the borders of Europe, and the intervention of other foreign powers less friendly to human rights: Russia, Iran. As none have the strength to force a resolution, conflict looks to continue indefinitely.

So we’ve tried all the possible approaches, and in terms of defending human rights, the option of intervention, however costly, is visibly the best.

Americans, of course, are historically tempted to ignore the rest of the world’s problems, protected they are by oceans vast and deep. That may or may not be wise—but it is not the moral way.

Those alert to history may realize that Britain, in the nineteenth century, faced the same choice. Protecting the human rights of foreigners was actually the sentiment upon which was built much of the British Empire. Britain spent a lot of "blood and treasure," as the modern clichéd usage goes, ending the slave trade, thuggery, piracy, suttee, the caste system, banditry, endless local conflicts, and the like.

Honesty compels us to admit that, no so uncommonly, colonialism is actually a good idea.

Mrs. Warren's Impression

Elizabeth Warren’s support down in the Estados Unidos is visibly collapsing, and it seems to be because she rolled out the details of her health plan.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders’s support is steady and now stronger, with a more radical and expensive plan.

The problem seems to be that Warren’s plan now looks like a fudge. She’s delaying the costly part of it three years to mask the real expense. And, of course, she has resisted even saying that taxes would have to go up to pay for it.

This illustrates Andrew Scheer’s problem here in Canada. It is not that his rather mainstream views are too radical. It is that he seems to be fudging. He looks dishonest. Not a good look.

I’m tempted to say the electorate has become too smart for that. But really, they are not that smart. Elizabeth Warren’s dishonesty has been obvious to all at least since her DNA test results. Biden’s has been obvious since the 1980s. It usually takes a while.

This is a big reason for the Tories not to turn now to Peter MacKay. No politician has shown more blatant dishonesty than he, in his pact with David Orchard long ago to take the PC leadership. Electing him would be like grabbing at a grenade with the pin missing.

Does the Left Hand Know What the Left Hand Is Doing?

Main man of the Yang Gang.

I was unable to find a live feed last night for the US Democratic Presidential debate. I am only able to review someone else’s selections of highlights today.

Tulsi Gabbard seemed to be appealing for Republican support. She expressly disavowed talk of impeachment and Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark. She spoke of her personal friendship with Trey Gowdy.

This strikes me as good strategy. The rest of the field has been leaning left; she has less competition for Democratic moderates. Biden was doing well on this basis, but Biden is probably flaming out, with the Ukrainian/Chinese scandal. In addition, the Republican race is sewn up. No interest in their primaries. In such a case, Republicans may tend to cross over and vote in the Democratic primaries. So a Republican outreach may help her get the nomination.

And should she get the nomination, it will certainly help her in a general election.

Andrew Yang was the other candidate who seemed to have something to say. The rest were, for me, painful to listen to: it was all boilerplate, sloganeering, lacking any spark of insight. Yang said different things. With his talk of jobs lost to automation and his GAI, he is making a pitch to the working class guys in the rust belt.

And he gives the impression of understanding the new technology, and having some valuable insight. He inspires confidence.

Yang and Gabbard are, I think, in terms of sheer electability, the Democrats’ best options. Gabbard at the debate endorsed Yang’s main plank, the Guaranteed Annual Income. It’s a dream, but together, they’d make a good team. Yang for economic policy, Gabbard for foreign policy.

But something even more interesting. Yang made a strong case that jobs are rapidly disappearing: everyone is seeing their local main street shutting down, and all the automated kiosks now at Target and Macdonald’s. It must be said that the employment figures do not bear this out. Instead, US or Canadian employment is at historic highs. Yet these are jobs being visibly lost—let alone what must be happening in factories. Truck driving is the most common job in Canada, or America, and it looks as though it might be replaced within a few years by self-driving vehicles.

It might be an example of what Marshall McLuhan inaptly once called “the dinosaur effect.” Things in society and technology often seem to be at their highest point of ascendancy just before they collapse. It might be true of the job market. A strong demand for labour may itself hasten the arrival of the machines.

Nobody else on that stage challenged Yang on his claims. They all saw this as a big issue. And I have seen the same said elsewhere—recently, some economist advised that 40% of all American jobs would be gone within a dozen years. Nor is Yang the only guy in Silicon Valley warning of this; and those guys in Silicon Valley have a good track record for seeing what is beyond the horizon.

Now let’s shift focus to the current Canadian campaign, and our most recent leaders’ debate. There, someone made the familiar boilerplate point—can’t recall who, this time—that Canada needed its historically high level of immigration, because we need more workers to sustain our social programs. And everyone present agreed. Not even Maxime Bernier challenges this. He wants fewer immigrants overall, but he wants to select for needed job skills. . He would only cut down on other categories of immigration.

These two universally held truths are plainly incompatible.

If the American Democrats are right, we are setting ourselves up for a pending social catastrophe.

And how is it that nobody is talking about this discrepancy?

Politics as Entertainment: The Provisional Oscars

BoJo the clown.

I am hoping Boris Johnson wins the UK Tory leadership. Because politics is entertainment, and he is a skilled entertainer.

I make no apologies for this view. Politics otherwise accomplishes very little. And should probably not attempt to do more, since anything it does is coercive. The best a political leader can do for any electorate is to entertain and inspire, to get them through the mire in better spirits.

Most people, whether fully aware of it or not, also seem to choose political leaders for entertainment or for inspiration value, not really for any other reason. They choose someone they want to see regularly on their TV for the next four years. This was Hillary Clinton’s fatal flaw, and Barack Obama’s strength.

Will Ferguson wrote a humorous history of Canada called Bastards and Boneheads, evaluating each of Canada’s prime ministers. He got it gravely wrong. He ranked first ministers in terms of whether they managed to impose their will—“bastards”—or had others’ wills imposed on them—“boneheads.” Very wrong, I think, in a democracy, totalitarian in tone, and cynical.

I think it far more meaningful to rank the PMs in terms of their entertainment or inspiration value. A far better measure of their real relative success in the job.

Citing only the premiers I remember personally:

Any excuse to run a picture of John Diefenbaker.

John Diefenbaker 

Probably the greatest Canadian political entertainer in my lifetime. Unfortunately, he was perfectly cast for the role of opposition leader, not prime minister. His specialty, honed in the courtroom, was righteous indignation. In power, he was paralyzed by a lack of enemies. He did his best, but it was no longer plausible. A comic who lost his straight man.

Lester Pearson 

If Diefenbaker was shaped by his experience as a defense attorney, Pearson was shaped by his career as a diplomat. His instinct was to stay out of the camera frame. His idea of leadership was to let each minister make of his or her portfolio what they would, while he just tried to keep them on speaking terms. This led to vastly entertaining politics, the emergence of stars in supporting roles like Judy LaMarsh, Walter Gordon, Paul Hellyer, Jack Pickersgill, and Joe Greene, not to mention Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, and Jean Chretien; but it served Pearson’s own career poorly. And led to a period of over-government.

The complete entertainer. And you knew I was going to run this picture.

Pierre Trudeau

Trudeau was well aware of being a performer—he has said as much, in critiquing his early performances. And he did a great job of it; he understood the importance of style. The role he played was a matinee idol, roughly in the 60s tradition of James Bond. He was both inspiring and entertaining.

Joe Clark

Anyone immediately following Trudeau was sure to get bad reviews. Clark was physically and verbally awkward and had no stage presence. “Joe Who?” was not just a comment on the public’s initial lack of familiarity with him. It lingered long after that. It was his inability to play any kind of recognizable part.

John Turner

Turner shared with Clark the misfortune of following Trudeau. Running the cartoon after the main feature never works. Just like Clark, by comparison with the master, he always seemed physically awkward, and as though he could never get into character. He was always too aware of being on stage. He could not say his lines with conviction: “I had no choice.” “I happen to believe you sold us out.”

Brian Mulroney

Mulroney by contrast had it easy. To win, he only had to come across as more interesting than John Turner, who seemed to give the term “empty suit” a bad name. Mulroney’s rhetorical talent was limited, but he had some. He failed, in the end, because he thought he had more than he did. Things he said to inspire instead came across as hollow boasting. He could not make the audience believe.

Jean Chretien

After Trudeau, Chretien is the master. But in a lesser way. Trudeau could both entertain and inspire. Chretien could only entertain. He had a fine and a long run with his nicely rough-hewn “p’tit gars de Shawinigan” persona. It was more than a little corny, but he was great, and lovable, at it.

Paul Martin

To some extent, Martin failed for the same reasons Clark or Turner did: the public had become accustomed to someone more interesting. He was perhaps the best finance minister Canada ever had. But that takes different skills to be PM. He could not convey a character or a conviction. That’s why he got the “Mr. Dithers” label. It was his equivalent of “Joe Who?” 

Just look into those steel-grey eyes. And don't try anything funny.

Stephen Harper

Harper is the anomaly in this thesis. He is conspicuously grey and boring. And yet he won several elections. Partly, he was lucky in his adversaries: Martin, then Dion, then Ignatieff. Compare the ahistorical surge of party three under Jack Layton: at least the NDP had given the public someone interesting to watch.

It is also not entirely fair to see Harper as a bad actor. He was really a good actor who chose the role of a quiet manager, a part that required avoiding histrionics. It is far from easy to be a great straight man. And a great straight man is also entertaining. I don’t know about others, but for me, Frank Shuster was always more interesting to watch than Johnny Wayne. Martin was more interesting than Lewis. George Burns was more interesting than Gracie Allen. The greatest comedians are often straight men: Emmett Kelly, Buster Keaton.

Harper seemed to be well aware of what he was doing, too. He more or less told Canadians that there are more important things in life than politics. Like hockey. “No surprises” and “no hidden agendas” were pretty much the watchwords of his administration.

Why didn’t Harper get tagged with a moniker like “Mr. Dithers” or “Stephen Who?” Because he did not bill himself as offering thrills or high drama. That is the key: he did not fail at a role. He succeeded brilliantly.

Justin Trudeau

Petit Patate is well aware of the need to entertain, which he surely learned at his father’s knee. That may be why he gravitated to substitute drama teaching in the first place. He just turns out to be utterly talentless.

It is painful, as with his India trip, to watch him try. Pure Gong Show.

On this basis, Boris Johnson is the UK Tories' only hope to remain in power. He may be their only hope to remain a major party. Nigel Farage is just too entertaining.

Le deluge.

Now, on this same principle, you might ask, who’s the best bet down in the old Etats-Unis?

Trump, I say, is probably unbeatable. Who was ever more entertaining than Trump? He honed his routine on reality TV, and he knows exactly what he is doing.

But among the Democratic contenders, who would be their best bet?

Not Biden. Biden is a decent red-faced clown, but Trump is also a red-faced clown, and Trump does it better than Biden can. The Democrats’ only hope is that the public may be bored with red-faced clowns. They need to try a change of pace. Like in an old variety show. What act best follows a red-faced clown?

But of course: the pretty woman on the high trapeze. 

Tulsi Gabbard. You can’t say she’s not nice to look at. She comes across, so far, as more sincere than anyone else in the pack. And her seriousness and dignity contrasts well to Trump’s clownishness. If people are sick of Trump, she is the anti-Trump. If he tried to insult her as he does Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton, I think it would only earn her sympathy. At least from all the men.

Bernie Sanders is probably next best. Again, it’s the apparent sincerity, which is another way of saying he is a skilled natural actor. He’s like the tall magician in black who pulls pigeons out of his hat. He promises impossible things fiscally, and voters are liable to want to see how he intends to pull it off.

Andrew Yang is the other name that comes to mind. Same act.

Unfortunately, such magician acts do tend to be easily parodied and disrupted by a red-faced clown.