The Deep State Doubles Down

What a surprise!

Con-law professor Jonathan Turley angrily — well, angrily for Turley — ripped FBI director Christopher Wray for his prevarications to Congress as his agency and the Department of Justice stumble through a series of scandals. Wray offered only a “false appearance of contrition and substance” in a “maddening” performance, dodging questions about Hunter Biden, the censorship regime in which the FBI played a central role, and more.

“He could have answered some of these questions,” Turley told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “He just chose not to”.

I could have saved Prof Turley the trouble, I knew that was going to be Wray's take from the start -- and I also knew the Secret Service was going to be at a total loss over whose cocaine was left near the Sit Room. This is a pretty clear signal of how the deep state sees 2024: they're behind Biden, and they're doubling down. So far, Conservative Inc isn't getting the point. Ryan Saavedra writes at the Daily Wire this morning:

Top Democrats are reportedly reaching out to rising stars in the party and are telling them that President Joe Biden is not running for re-election.

CNN reported that the “top Democrats and donors” have reached out to “possible replacements” for Biden and had conversations about them getting in the race as Biden struggles in the White House.

Who, pray tell, are the rising-star Democrats? John Edwards is 70. Gary Hart is 86. Bill Clinton is 76 and can't run again. Are there any younger, attractive white guys left? Or even a Barack Obama? The Daily Wire story lets the cat out of the bag:

The Democrat who has seemingly tried to raise their national profile in recent months as Biden stumbles, both literally and figuratively, is California Governor Gavin Newsom.

This piece at UnHerd lists two other pssibilities, who nevertheless share a "consistent record of poor governance":

This applies not only to Newsom, but to Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, both of whom are widely pitched by Democratic operatives as possible Biden replacements.

Both are uninspiring machine politicians who likely couldn't unify the Democrats in the face of third-party threats from both the far left and the center.

At this point, the deep state is staying with the strategy it's had since the 2016 election: use the organs of state security against Trump and assume the election will be between Trump and a minimally acceptable Not Trump, necessarily Biden, because there's no good replacement for Joe. There are three problems with this strategy. The first is that the Republican nominee might not be Trump, although potential replacements so far are faltering. The second is that leftist and centrist third-party candidates could split the Democrat vote and elect the Republican, Trump or not. The third is that irrespective of some criminal smoking gun involving Joe and Hunter, Joe is one stumble, one fall away from a major health crisis. I would put that possibility as actually more likely than a smoking gun.

At this point, I'm somewhat skeptical that the Comer committee or some other Republican investigation can uncover enough about Joe and Hunter that we don't already know from the laptop, and one thing we are in fact learning as various e-mails gradually leak out is that Hunter has been executing Joe's business plan all along, and both the Democrat establishmenmt and the deep state have always been on board with it. The deep state will continue to slow-walk and stonewall investigative efforts, which they've made even clearer in the past few days.

The big thing that would change would be a health crisis for Joe that would put Vice President Harris in office, either before or after 2024. So far, nobody is gaming this out, although they really should. I'll make a start on this tomorrow.