How Did They Forget About Dylan Mulvaney?

On Good Friday, the White House issued this proclamation:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.

On one hand, OK, this isn't anything new:

Republicans are taking aim at President Joe Biden for proclaiming Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility, though the two days only coincided this year by chance.

The Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, is held annually on March 31. The date of Easter, meanwhile, changes from year to year.

But several Republicans seized on Biden’s proclamation to attack the president.

But other commentators have asked whether the White House would have made a point of the trans day of visibility if it had coincided with the start of Ramadan, which took place on March 11 of this year -- Likely not. The same might apply to the start of Passover, which often coincides with Easter.

It's hard to avoid thinking this is an in-your-face gesture, at least this year. Michael Lebron, who goes by the handle Lionel, commented on YouTube,

Biden knows his days are numbered. He has never been at a voter approval nadir like this. This is the pits, it can't get any worse. You would think, just until the election is over with, like 220 days roughly until the election, you would think that he and his cronies would say let's just play it cool for a while, let's pretend that we don't hate America, just for the time being. But no, no, no, that's not what he does. What Joe Biden does is he's declared the holiest of Christian holidays, this is critical, Easter, he calls it Transgender Day of Visibility. What the mpph does that even mean?

The problem is that "transgender visibility" to most Americans these days is turning out to be biological men forcing themselves into women's rest and locker rooms, and indeed, not even trying to pass as women, but doing things like shaving when they get there.

Johanna Ray planned a winter birthday party for her six-year-old son during the Feb. 22 open swim time at the Hamme Pool in Fairbanks. What was supposed to be a family friendly environment was quickly shattered when a transgender biological male entered into the women’s locker room as Ray’s daughters and other underage girls were undressing.

. . . According to Ray, a pool supervisor said they would see if they could arrange a better solution.

“I suggested they offer the lobby bathroom to the transgender person,” Ray recalled. “Why should all my children and all the kids invited to my party have to use one tiny lobby bathroom with no shower, and have a biological male walk right into a room of naked changing women and little girls, completely violating their privacy and trust?”

. . . Ray explained to the transgender person that a bunch of little girls were coming into the locker room to change for a swimming birthday party. She then asked if he would be willing to change in a gender-neutral bathroom.

“He said, ‘I’m not bothering you – go to hell lady,’ and flipped me off as he walked out,” Ray recounted.

She said the person attends a local high school with her older daughter and is allowed to use the girls’ bathroom at the school as well.

Episodes like this have become routine. The "rights" of transgender people have morphed into a generalized form of oppression, which normies -- even in cases like this, soccer moms who might have leaned Democrat -- are starting to resent. This has handed Trump an issue, which he immediately seized:

Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is lighting up Democrat Joe Biden and the White House for the president’s “appalling and insulting” behavior towards Christians on Easter

". . . We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Traditional media is stressing that the trans day of visibility falling on March 31 is just a coincidence, and Republicans are acting in bad faith to accuse Biden of deliberately desecrating the Christian holiday. The problem is that this is taking place just as the public is starting to calm down from the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, with Bud Light only slowly and gradually regaining its market. You do not want to identify your brand with trans.

The basic problem is that people don't trust Biden, and they're predisposed to believe he supports pretty much anything they don't like. Conversely, if Trump, or someone on his campaign staff, were inadvertently to issue a positive statement about the trans day of visibility, they'd give him the benefit of the doubt. In demanding an apology from Biden, the Trump campagin knows that's something Biden will never do, but Trump is able to put himself on the side of Middle America against Biden, who supports trans, which means men in women's spaces and Dylan Mulvaney -- and he'll never back down, which makes it a permanent issue for Trump.

This probably wasn't deliberate, just a really dumb White House move, but the problem with the visual is that it's so hard to tell the difference that it may as well be deliberate, and Trump is going to play it as though it is. Well, you can't fix stupid.

The Bridge, The Governor, And The Three Stooges

I mused briefly yesterday on why the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse seems to have captured media attention well beyond similar episodes like the Sunshine Skyway bridge collapse of 1980, in which 35 were killed, amd the 2007 Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse, in which 13 were killed. In contraast, only 6 are missing and presumed dead in Baltimore, while a potential story of competence by law enforcement, which was able to close the bridge to traffic within minutes' notice of the runaway container ship, is lost in the shuffle.

Instead, the story from Tuesday is still trending today, and not only that,

Even before most Americans woke up Tuesday morning to news of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, wild conspiracy theories about what supposedly had “really” happened were running rampant online.

The claims ranged from a cyber-attack or a ship captain impaired by side effects from Covid-19 vaccines being responsible for the crash – to claims that Israel, or even the Obamas had something to do with the bridge’s collapse.

All of these claims are entirely baseless. Officials investigating the crash said early on that there was no indication it was a deliberate act.

Rampant conspiracy theories seem to surface only around the most consequential events, like 9/11 or Kennedy's assassination. Why is this happening around the Key Bridge collapse, whose overall social impact appears to be mild? At worst, highway traffic will need to route itself the long way around the Baltimore Beltway, while other East Coast ports may each need to take up about 10% of the overflow from Baltimore's closure.

In fact, my wife and I have insurance backgounds, and the most interesting aspect of the incident for us is the insurance claims, which could bankrupt whichever marine insurer is involved, as well as putting the shipping company out of business. Almost nobody, as far as I'm aware, has mentioned this, which could well be the single greatest impact of the disaster:

The tragedy could lead to up to $4 billion in insurance claims, Morningstar DBRS said.

It was too soon to put a figure on the total insurance loss, Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters, but he said he would be "very surprised" if the event did not result in a multi-billion dollar loss, adding that "the tragedy has the capacity to become the largest single marine insurance loss ever".

So why is the reaction so out of whack? I think this goes to the visuals.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott appeared on CNN on Tuesday, and while being interviewed, CNN showed dramatic video of the bridge collapsing over and over.

During the interview, Scott said, “I’m going to be the first to ask that CNN and everyone else stop showing the video. No one needs to see … a possibility of their family member being severely injured or otherwise, over and over and over again because it’s just traumatizing our community.”

The problem is that the videos aren't "just traumatizing our community", the problem is that they're reflecting the national mood. Something beyond a bridge collapsed here, and indeed, something beyond the insurance industry. The coverage of the bridge pretty much obscured the Biden fundraiser with Clinton and Obama Thursday night, but the problem with the fundraiser video just reinforced the national discomfort:

Never Trumper Bill Kristol lamented the bad optics for Democrats as President Joe Biden chose to go to a multi-million dollar fundraiser in New York City hosted by Hollywood celebrities while former President Donald Trump attended a wake for a young New York City police officer killed on duty.

“An unfortunate day politically for the Democrats,” Kristol posted on X.

. . . A former Obama adviser, David Axelrod, agreed with Kristol, but added that the money would “probably mean more” than the look.

“Not wrong. But in the big scheme of things, the $25 million will probably mean more than the look,” Axelrod responded to Kristol’s post on X.

New York Gov Hochul, in an incredibly tone-deaf gesture, decided to insert herself into those bad optics in the worst possible way, grandstanding into the officer's wake without anticipating the consequences:

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) was not a welcome sight at the wake for fallen NYPD officer Jonathan Diller.

Hochul reportedly left Friday’s reception within 10 minutes after she was greeted by a shout of “Get her out of here.” As she walked back to her car, Hochul was confronted by a man who sources said was speaking to her while gesturing with emotion.

. . . In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokesperson for the governor’s office would not confirm or deny the claim that Hochul was asked to leave.

The exact circumstances that led to her sudden departure are unclear, but

She was only there for about 10 minutes before she abruptly left after being confronted, sources told the Post.

One man, dressed in a black suit, appeared to yell at the governor as he was seen speaking animatedly and gesturing boldly as she entered her car on the way out, the Post reported.

Several cops were seen applauding the man after he confronted her, the source told the Post.

In contrast,

A spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who leads the county where Officer Jonathan Diller lived, confirmed he extended the invitation to the former president and spoke with him on Tuesday.

In other words, the constituency of Officer Diller's suburban county welcomed -- indeed, invited -- Trump to the viewing, but representatives of that same community requested the New York governor leave when she imprudently showed up. Biden at least had the sense to stay away, though his antipathy to the actual working class represented in part by police officers is clear in any case -- it's not as if he would have wanted to go even if he were welcome, and it's hard to understand why Hochul wanted to attend at all, either.

In the midst of this visual, we have Trump staffer Steven Cheung coining the phrase "the Three Stooges" to refer to Biden, Obama, and Clinton at the Manhattan fundraiser. And as all this takes place, the nation continues to be fixated on images of the Baltimore bridge collapse.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything quite like this constellation of seemingly minor but somehow consequential events.

Trump Still Moving The Needle

A new Fox poll is out, which this analysis sums up:

If the new Fox News poll is accurate, it should be sending off warning bells to Joe Biden because there are multiple elements that indicate big trouble for him.

The first is that former President Donald Trump has extended his lead over Biden in their survey. He's now up by five points in the head-to-head numbers, as well as five points ahead of Biden even when adding in the other party candidates. According to Interactive Polls this is the largest lead ever for Trump in Fox polling.

Nobody seems to have pointed this out, but the answer is in two words: Fani Willis. Trump's slow but steady rise in the polls is continuing, but the big thing that's been driving it since last fall has been the lawfare cases against him, which are continuing to backfire. I've noted here that Alan Dershowitz, one of the people who invented the Chicago Seven strategy for turning trials into street theater, has recognized that this is precisely the strategy Trump is following, and it's working every bit as well as it worked for the Chicago Seven in the 1960s.

This is because, just as Judge Julius Hoffman unintentionally cooperated with the strategy back then, the lawfare judges and prosecutors are helping it now. Even poor Judge McAfee, whose manner is thoughtful and even-handed, has clumsily cooperated with Trump and the rest of the defense by permitting Fani Willis to stay on the case, which has allowed Willis to stay in the public eye with her grandiosity and bizarre self-justification. Had he removed her, he would have done the prosecution a big favor. Instead, the circus continues, all to Trump's benefit.

And Trump is fully aware of how well the Chicago Seven strategy works:

Donald Trump once again went scorched earth against the daughter of the judge overseeing his New York hush-money trial on Thursday, posting a fiery rant to Truth Social that called her out by name.

That woman, Loren Merchan, has become the focal point of Trump’s attacks against her dad, Judge Juan Merchan, in his longshot attempt to have him ousted as the judge presiding over his criminal case in New York.

. . . “Judge Juan Merchan is totally compromised, and should be removed from this TRUMP Non-Case immediately,” he posted Thursday afternoon. “His Daughter, Loren, is a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me.”

. . . “She works for Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, and other Radical Leftists who Campaign on ‘Getting Trump,’” he said, adding that her work has created a “TOTAL Conflict.”

The story characterizes this as part of Trump's "longshot attempt" to have Judge Merchan taken off the case. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is an attempt, which could well succeed, to provoke Merchan into further angry retaliation, which will create headlines the media can't resist covering, while giving Trump more free publicity, which will continue to drive him up in the polls. As was the case in the Chicago Seven trial, rhe best strategy would have been to remove Judge Julius Hoffman, as well as probably just to drop the case. Instead, it made Abbie Hoffman, at best a very troubled figure, into a media hero.

In other words, the lawfare strategy, which is often attributed to Biden himself, is continuing to backfire badly. It focuses attention on Trump, and it unavoidably forces a contrast between Trump, who comes off as a strong figure and even a bit of a bad boy, with Biden, who appears stiff and ineffectual, having to rely on figures like Merrick Garland, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and Judges Engoron and Merchan, to do his fighting for him -- except that those figures appear to be ineffectual and even comical as well.

Meanwhile,

Donald Trump attended Thursday's wake of a New York City police officer gunned down in the line of duty and called for "law and order" as part of his attempt to show a contrast with President Joe Biden and focus on crime as part of his third White House campaign.

. . . The visit by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came as Biden was also in New York for a previously scheduled fundraiser with former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Trump has accused Biden of lacking toughness, and his campaign sought to contrast his visit with Biden's fundraiser.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in a post on X, noted Trump's visit and said, "Meanwhile, the Three Stooges — Biden, Obama, and Clinton — will be at a glitzy fundraiser in the city with their elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors."

Trump and his campaign staff are on their game, now coming up with new labels for their opponents, in contrast with lame attempts by Biden to do the same with "broke Don". Earlier in the month, Biden had suggested he'd turn things around starting with the State of the Union. Visuals like the New York police officer's wake and even the collapse of the Baltimore Key Bridge (which would normally have nothing to do with the White House) are in fact beginning a whole new series of setbacks for Biden.

As Trump's New York Trial Gets Closer, Things Get Juicy

One feature of all the Trump criminal trials so far has been that as the date for each approaches, new and often lurid details surface that throw their credibility into doubt. This certainly happened in Fulton County, and it looks like something similar may occur in New York as well. I think this is an inevitable result of the slapdash nature of all the cases, thrown together for indictments in the middle of 2023 in hopes of securing convictions in one or more of them, first by the 2024 primary season, and then by the November election. So far, this isn't working out as planned.

We probably have some vague recollection of Michael Avenatti, pictured with his onetime client, the porn actress Stormy Daniels, above:

Michael John Avenatti (born February 16, 1971) is an American former attorney and convicted felon, currently incarcerated in federal prison at FCI Terminal Island. He is best known for his legal representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against then U.S. President Donald Trump, and his multiple convictions for attempting to extort sports apparel company Nike and defrauding and embezzling settlement money from a series of other clients. Avenatti has appeared extensively on television and in print as a legal and political commentator, and as a representative for prominent clients.

Tony Seruga is an extremely colorful character who describes himself as

a serial entrepreneur and professional marketer. While Tony states publicly that he has lost count of how many companies he has started, those that are responsible for his day to day operations know that number to be somewhere above 240, much more astounding is the fact that over 70% of Tony’s start ups have been successful. Along the way, Tony developed and refined a number of proven marketing solutions into a system that works for every industry.

He also claims elsewhere to have been an intelligence operative and a philanthropist, although most importantly, he claims to have been an acquaintance of Michael Avenatti, which frankly seems about right. He posted yesterday on X:

I spoke with Michael Avenatti who at one time had an office in the same building as one of my businesses in Newport Beach, CA (in November 2018, a few days after his arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, Avenatti's law firm was evicted from those same offices in Newport Beach… pic.twitter.com/MFnmH4NsER

— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) March 27, 2024

At the bottom of the post, he adds oh-by-the-way,

In any case, Avenatti shared details of his client Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, case and the fact that her and Michael Cohen were actually having an affair since 2006.

The whole hush money scheme was cooked up by Michael Cohen to extort the Trump Organization before the 2016 election. Avenatti seemed pleased at how deviant Michael Cohen was.

Since Michael Cohen's name has come up, let's revisit how he relates to Trump and the upcoming trial:

Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American former lawyer who served as an attorney for former United States president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018.

. . . Trump employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections began. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts including campaign-finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Cohen said he violated campaign-finance laws at Trump's direction "for the principal purpose of influencing" the 2016 presidential election. In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. congressional committees about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

. . . In late 2016, adult-film actress Stormy Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford) was speaking to some reporters and said that she had had a sexual affair with Trump in 2006. In October, Cohen and Daniels' attorney Keith M. Davidson negotiated a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) under which she was to be paid $130,000 hush money. Cohen created a Delaware LLC called Essential Consultants and used it to pay the $130,000. The arrangement was reported by The Wall Street Journal in January 2018.

Cohen told The New York Times in February 2018 that he paid the $130,000 to Daniels from his own pocket; he also said that the payment was not a campaign contribution and he was not reimbursed by either the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign. The Washington Post later noted that, by stating that he used his own money to "facilitate" the payment, Cohen was not ruling out the possibility that Trump, as an individual, reimbursed Cohen for the payment. In April 2018, Trump acknowledged for the first time that Cohen had represented him in the Daniels case, after previously having denied knowledge of the $130,000 payment.

On March 5, The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources recounting Cohen as saying he missed two deadlines to pay Daniels because Cohen "couldn't reach Mr. Trump in the hectic final days of the presidential campaign", and that after Trump's election, Cohen had complained that he had not been reimbursed for the payment. Cohen described this report as "fake news".

More recently, according to the UK Daily Mail, a letter emerged from Cohen in which

Michael Cohen claimed he was not reimbursed by Donald Trump or his organization for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a 2018 letter to federal authorities, contradicting his recent grand jury testimony,

The bombshell document, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, could throw a wrench in the works of prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Trump over the payments.

"Bombshell" or not, the claim in the letter seems entirely consistent with public claims Cohen made in 2018. The additional detail purportedly from Avenatti via Seruga suggests that there was some kind of plan behind the whole hush money scheme cooked up by Daniels and Cohen to extort a payment from Trump over something that may in fact never have taken place, and Trump seems to have been able to evade the extortion attempt. Cohen in turn may have been looking for revenge on Trump in giving false testmony about this to the grand jury.

Avenatti, Cohen, and Daniels could presumably be subpoenaed for depositions or testimony in this matter. This in turn suggests to me that we could see a very similar replay of the testimony Terrence Bradley gave in front of Judge McAfee on when he did, or maybe didn't, become aware of the affair between Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. Whatever was or wasn't established in that judicial process nevertheless destroyed the credibility of the whole Fulton County case. We'll have to stay tuned.

From Dershowitz's Lips To Biden's Ears -- Well, Maybe Not

I've made a couple of recent posts on Alan Dershowitz's red line from a YouTube broadcast last week:

If you stop supplying ammunition and arms to Israel and deny them the right to defend themselves, you have crossed my red line. I hope that doesn't happen. I now have a more open mind than I ever thought I would have about whom I will vote for in this election. The Democratic Party cannot take me, the people who listen to me, the people who vote the way I do, they can't take us for granted, sorry.

As of yesterday, there was a sorta-kinda answer from a "senior defense official" via Breitbart:

Regarding the question about security assistance, you know, security assistance, which is a longstanding feature of the U.S. Israel relationship and the U.S. Commitment Israel security, it has flowed more rapidly than ever since the attacks of October 7th. And the secretary ensures — said very clearly that we will continue to stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself.

Since Dershowitz's YouTube remarks last week, he's been in Israel, and in a second YouTube posted from Israel yesterday, he made it clear why he's there:

At 0:20, he says,

Today I'm meeting some Israeli leaders and speaking to a group of young people, but I'm also reconsidering something that I've been doing for the last 60-something, 60 almost 65, years. I've never voted for a Republican candidate for president since I voted for John Kennedy in 1960. I've always voted Democrat. I've only regretted one of those votes, my second vote for Barack Obama, who I think was the worst second-term president in modern American history, certainly in foreign policy. I wish I had voted for Mitt Romney.

This is an astonishing admission for Dershowitz to make, but as I re-watched the video to prepare this post, I caught his body language and his tone -- he's quiet, he's outwardly relaxed, but he's seething with anger. The Breitbart story at the link above refers as well to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who must certainly be among the "Israeli leaders" with whom Dershowitz met yesterday:

The abstention [from the UN Security Council vote] infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who canceled an Israeli delegation visit to the White House. The trip to the Pentagon by the Israeli defense minister, however, proceeded.

Where, I assume, some version of Dershowitz's red line statement was transmitted. I was skeptical of the reference in the story to Netanyahu being "infuriated" until I took my more careful look at Dershowitz in yesterday's YouTube. I've got to figure they're both angry, but it's a quiet, seething sort of anger, not the sort where anyone blows up in public. But apparently this isn't new. Last November,

Expressing outrage over former President Barack Obama’s call for an end to Israeli "occupation," Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz expanded on why he’s never talking to the Democratic president again.

"I think he always had a deep hatred of Israel in his heart. He hid it very well. He called me to the Oval Office and he said to me, 'Alan, you've known me for a long time. You know I have Israel's back.' I didn't realize he meant to paint a target on it," Dershowitz said Friday on "Mornings with Maria."

. . . Dershowitz’s commentary comes after he claimed Thursday that any relationship with Obama is "over" following the 44th president’s onstage statements about the Israel-Hamas war.

. . . The Harvard professor on Friday accused Obama of lying "through his teeth" about what the former president called an "unbearable" occupation of Gaza.

But as I said yesterday, Deshowitz is arguably the most prominent and influential US Jew, and that Obama would have called him into the Oval Office to reassure him in the past is simply a reflection of that. But Dershowitz isn't just a successful appellate attorney and a Harvard prof, he's a strategist. He was involved in developing the Chicago Seven defense; he was invovlved in the OJ Simpson acquittal; he secured a reversal of Claus von Bülow's muirder conviction on appeal, and amazingly, he extricated himself from the Epstein scandals.

He and Netanyahu are talking strategy, I've got to assume. Neither one is going to be satisfied with reassurances on background from "senior defense officials". The problem is bigger than that, it's bigger than Biden, Netnyahu in particular is playing a longer game than the 2024 election, but the game most definitely involves 2024 and US Jews' ongoing poliical alignment.

As If We Needed More Evidence That Joe's Judgment Is Shaky

There's a consensus that the Biden administration is shfting its policy away from supporting Israel. Via Politico on Kamala's threats of "consequences" over the weekend:

[I]n the interview this weekend, she didn’t dismiss a possible backlash as the administration continues to warn Israel against a major invasion of Rafah.

The West Wing has supported Harris’ willingness to nudge out slightly ahead of Biden, who spent decades as one of the Senate’s foremost supporters of Israel and has been loath to appear like he is turning his back on the country even amid his growing disdain for its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, two administration officials not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions said Harris’ remarks have created more space for Biden to slowly — and privately — offer his own rebukes of Netanyahu and his conduct of the war.

But the prevailing stance inside the administration is that Biden and Harris are reading from the same script even if it’s with different emphasis.

“In our view, there’s no daylight and she’s completely in line with the president’s approach,” said a third senior administration official who was granted anonymity to provide the administration’s response and internal thinking.

Via the Washington Examiner:

The Biden administration declined to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution on Monday that aims to limit Israel’s ability to win its war against Hamas. Washington’s action is short-sighted and counterproductive.

. . . For months, the U.S. has worked to prevent the passage of Security Council resolutions that condemned Israel or limited its ability to defend itself. That policy is now at an end. And it’s worth asking why.

The Biden administration has faced growing criticism from the anti-Israel Left, including members of Congress such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and other factions of its progressive base. By some accounts, the administration is concerned about turnout in Michigan, a battleground state in an election year, and hopes to appease anti-Israel members of its coalition.

Unfortunately, domestic political concerns seem to have trumped sound strategy.

As of yesterday, Alan Dershowitz posted a YouTube broadcast from Israel, and if he's over there, it must be for a reason. This story calls him "Netanyahu’s 'attack dog' in the international arena" and "a long-time friend and advisor", but Dershowitz is arguably the most prominent and influential US Jew. I don't think it's a coincidence that Netanyahu responded to the administration's change in policy with Dershowitz apparently nearby:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he will not send a delegation as planned to Washington after the United States refrained from vetoing a U.N. Security Council proposal calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, said that Washington's failure to block the proposal was a "clear retreat" from its previous position, and would hurt war efforts against Hamas, as well as efforts to release over 130 hostages in Gaza captivity.

"In light of the change in the American position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided the delegation would not leave," his office said.

I've already posted on Dershowitz's warning via YouTube last week that he has a red line over his November vote in the general election, specifically any refusal to supply Israel with the arms needed to defend itself. Vice President Harris's veiled threat of "consequences" over the weekend is likely being taken seriously by Netanyahu and, by extension, Dershowitz.

What's beginning to emerge is a counterthreat from Netanyahu and Dershowitz that a reversal of US support for Israel -- a bipartisan element of US policy since Truman -- would likely trigger a departure of Jews fom the New Deal Democrat coalition, equivalent to the departures of labor and Catholics that have already taken place. About all that will be left will be, as James Carville puts it, "preachy females":

“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females … ‘Don’t drink beer, don’t watch football, don’t eat hamburgers, this is not good for you,'” he said. “The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.'”

Preachy females joined the Democrat coalition in the 1960s and 1970s and ever since have been driving the traditional elements like labor, legal immigrants, Catholics, and Jews out. I can only think Joe Biden's judgment has been badly clouded if he enables this.

Joe's Schedule Update

I posted last week on what seemed to be an unaccustomed flurry of activity on The President's Public Schedule following the State of the Union address. But this past weekend he seems to have reverted to his normal pattern of leaving for Delaware on Friday and returning Sunday night or Monday morning. I've expressed my doubts that he could keep the earlier schedule up for long.

Beyond that, he seems to have begun to rely on Vice President Harris as a surrogate. As of this morning in The Washington Post,

As the campaign for the White House intensifies, Harris has been thrust to the forefront of President Biden’s efforts to hang on to young and minority voters — groups that are vital to his reelection but that may be losing enthusiasm for his candidacy. This month, Harris has championed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in Nevada, discussed marijuana legalization in the White House with rapper Fat Joe, and called for a cease-fire in Gaza at a commemoration of Bloody Sunday in Alabama. On Friday, she was in Puerto Rico to highlight the administration’s support for the territory.

.. . In interviews, many of these voters expressed frustration with Biden’s handling of a variety of issues, including the Israel-Gaza war, inflation, voting rights and immigration. Some have raised questions about what exactly Biden has done for them in his first term, often fretting about the rising cost of living.

Increasingly, Biden’s team hopes Harris can provide an answer to these concerns.

Over the weekend,

In a wide-ranging new interview with ABC News, Vice President Kamala Harris suggested there could be "consequences" for Israel if it moves ahead with a planned invasion of Rafah in its pursuit of Hamas fighters.

. . . "We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake," Harris told ABC News' Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott in part of the interview that aired Sunday on "This Week."

This didn't play well with pro-Israel commentators, who represent a Jewish constituency that, like Alan Dershowitz, is losing enthusiasm for Biden and Harris. The theory seems to be, though, that if Harris says these things, Joe has deniability, or something like that, but the Michgan pro-Hamas voters will still be satisfied.

With no public political events on Joe's schedule today, Kamala will fill in:

Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet on Monday with President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala as the U.S. grapples with an influx of migrants to its southern border, thousands from that Central American nation.

. . . As the 2024 election heats up, immigration has become a rising bipartisan concern. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress say the system is broken, but efforts by lawmakers to address the problems have failed. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has tasked Harris with working to address the reasons people choose to leave their homelands to migrate to the U.S.

But as with Joe, if you ask for Kamala, you get the whole package:

Kamala Harris is being roasted on social media after she was seen clapping along to a protest song – before awkwardly realising that they were protesting against her.

The vice president visited Puerto Rico on Friday to highlight the Biden administration’s actions in supporting the island nation’s recovery and renewal efforts.

. . . In video footage from her visit to the community centre, Ms Harris is seen gleefully clapping and smiling as Puerto Rican protesters banged on drums and sang in Spanish.

However, Ms Harris’ cheerful mood came to an abrupt end when her aide appeared to inform her what they were singing about.

Here's my answer to people who think the deep state still has a plan, for instance to get Trump off the ballot by flipping the House. If that were the case, you'd see much more smug confidence. Instead, we're seeing increasing panic. Again, just over the weekend,

[James Carville] told Maureen Dowd that Biden's low approval ratings are like “walking in on your grandma naked. You can’t get the image out of your mind.” He said that Democrats don't want him to talk about the poll numbers but he can't not talk about that subject. He's acutely tuned into things like poll numbers as a career political strategist and adviser. He can't unsee them.

The Democrat establishment, whose talking points so far have failed, is currently trying to throw Trump's characterizations back at him, without much success:

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has amassed a fortune of over $100 million over her political career, has suggested that Donald Trump is a grifter.

In an interview with former White House Press Secretary turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki, Pelosi said it was “very clear” that Trump swindling his donors.

. . . “Well, I think it’s very clear that Trump is a grifter,” Pelosi responded. “That is the way it is. Integrity which is something we all want to always deepen in politics and government has just flown the coop with him.

As of late January,

The Biden-Kamala Harris campaign, enabled by Haley's line of attack against Trump, this week for the first time went after Trump's cognitive health in an ad. The spot, however, is almost all Trump, a highlight reel of his misstatements, with Haley spliced in, questioning Trump's mental fitness. Biden appears only at the end, with his photo and the voice-over, "I'm Joe Biden and I approved this message."

So far, the claim that Trump is the one who's senile -- which Biden echoed in his Gridiron Club address -- isn't working. Trump continues to project an image of someone who's struggling against stereotypical, almost comic book supervilains like Judge Engoron, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, and Letitia James, and winning. Trump is a winner, Biden is a nebbish who, at this point, now seems to need Kamala Harris of all people to fight on his behalf.

Strategies developed at the last minute in panic when earlier plans don't work out probably aren't formulas for success.

Threat To Trump In November If Democrats Flip House?

Over the past couple of days, I've seen two references to a potential problem for Trump, even if he continues to do well in the polls, if enough Republicans resign from the House to give the majority to the Democrats.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) will retire from the House months before his term ends next year, setting up a scenario where House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could have a one-seat majority.

. . . Gallagher's departure will bring a math problem for Johnson as the chamber seeks to fill a slew of other vacancies announced over the last few months. As of next week, there are four empty seats vacated by Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Brian Higgins (D-NY), and Ken Buck (R-CO), whose last day in office was Friday.

With Gallagher's absence, that brings the Republicans' majority to 217-213 as of April 19. That will be further narrowed for Republicans after the special election for Higgins, which is expected to favor Democrats, bringing their majority to just 217-214, meaning Republicans can only afford to lose one vote on any given measure to pass the lower chamber.

The biggest worry from a worst-case scenario, as articulated by YouTuber Robert Gouveia above and Emerald Robinson below, is that a Democrat majority in both houses could block Trump, either from the ballot or, as Robinson suggests below, via the electoral count.

The early retirements of Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher are part of a scheme by the uniparty cabal to stop Trump from winning the 2024 election.

How? They want to flip the House blue in time to nullify the electoral vote via the 14th Amendment.

— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) March 23, 2024

Robinson doesn't go into detail, and she's a reporter, not a constitutional lawyer. Gouveia, while he's a criminal defense attorney who has specialized in DUI cases, is also not a constitutional lawyer, and so far, I haven't seen any takes from the usual constitutional law commentators like Glenn Reynolds or William Jacobson (I, of course, am no attorney at all). But here is Gouveia's take in the YouTube link above:

[I]f the Democrats retake the House, . . . they may have what it takes to get Trump off the 2024 ballot, and they're going to be able to hang their hat on the SCOTUS decision in Anderson, which of course was the Colorado ballot removal case, which came back out 9 to 0. . . . Why are [Republican Congressmen Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher] leaving right now? . . . If the House flips to the Democrats, . . . we're gong to talk about how this might implicate a ballot removal strategy in five steps.

The steps he outlines are:

1. Dems retake House
2. House Dems pass legislation declaring Trump insurrectionist
3. Senate passes
4. Biden signs
5. Trump removed supported by 9-0 Supreme Court

He explains further, relating to Anderson,

Here is what this opinion says. For its part, the Colorado Supreme Court, which was wrong, they overturned it, they concluded there must be a determination before you remove someone and disqualify them under the 14th Amendment. That's the Insurrection Clause. "What is the deermination?" you're asking. "Who gets to decide?" This was the whole point of the ballot removal case. Jenna Griswold and the Colorado courts, they thought they could make the determination. The Supreme Court said no, you don't get to make that determination. You know who does? Congress.

He doesn't go into any detail on exactly how Congress could make this determination, and at least in Anderson, neither does the court. However, I think he leaves out several key steps. One is that the Democrats have just as slim a majority in the Senate as the Republicans do in the House, and it's questionable whether certain Democrats like Manchin and Sinema, who have announced their retirements, would support this putative "determination" that Trump is an insurrectionist.

Second, the Republicans could invoke the filibuster, requring a 60-vote majority, which would be another obstacle, even if some Republicans like Mitt Romney supported it. In the 2021 Trump impeachment, even though some Republicans voted for removal, only 57% of the Senate voted for it. Although removal requires a two-thirds majority, the "yes" votes didn't even reach the 60% that would be needed to invoke cloture.

Third, any "determination" that Trump is an "insurrectionist" short of a trial and conviction for violation of a specific insurrection law would almost certainly be a bill of attainder, which is prohibited under Article 1 Sections 9 and 10 of the US Constitution. This legal dictionary defines a bill of attainder as

A law that sentences a person, or group of people, to suffer punishment for a crime without being able to exercise their judicial rights in defending themselves.

One of Trump's arguments already before the Supreme Court is that he was already tried for "insurrection" by the Senate in the 2021 impeachment and acquitted, and there has been no other conviction for such a charge; the Washington January 6 case is currently on hold and unlikely to reach a verdict before the election, much less survive inevitable appeals. Thus any congressional action declaring Trump an "insurrectionist" for the purpose of keeping him off the ballot without a trial and guilty verdict would be a bill of attainder. Trump would likely appeal such a "determination" directly to the Supreme Court.

So far, I think linking the resignations of RINO Republicans frustrated with the Freedom Caucus and others is multiplying entities without necessity. The congressmen like McCarthy, Buck, and Gallagher have simpler motives; the're unhappy that the Republican balance is shifting away from Bush-era moderates. I'm sure they have no good wishes for either Trump or Speaker (for now) Johnson, but I don't think there's a deep state plot behind them.

On the other hand, I think Robert Gouveia is normally a better commentator. In this case, he's not thinking things through.

Yeah, It's So Wacky, It Had To Come From Joe Himself

Following up on yesterday's post, I've found a few more data points that make me think Joe is actually driving key parts of foreign and military policy himself, although it's in the context of Robert Gates's assessment, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

On Ukraine, Seymour Hersh remarks on Substack,

President Biden’s foreign policy problems in the Middle East and Ukraine are daunting, especially in an election year, but the war between Russia and Ukraine could be nearing a military endgame, and not via negotiations. Vladimir Putin’s military is more entrenched inside Ukraine than ever, and the undermanned and under-equipped Ukraine military is facing a stalemate at best and the permanent loss of four oblasts. In essence, it is a defeat.

. . . Even amid a difficult and costly war that he initiated, Putin remains firmly in control of Russia, despite a series of Western sanctions and wishful thinking in Washington that its military expertise, weapons, and enthusiasm for the war would loosen his grip on power. Blindfolded by ideology, Biden wants the candy of regime change, but Putin has proven to be an iron-clad piñata.

It's difficult to parse out what Biden's strategic goala are here, except that there doesn't seem to have been any policy recalibration since early 2023, when the retired generals were still predicting Ukraine would retake Crimea by the end of the year. By November, with no progress on the battlefield, Zelensky canceled elections. At this point, although we hear of Joe shouting and cussing out his staff over the polls, we see no similar impatience over Ukraine.

Maybe he's just happy with things as they are. We still don't have a clear idea of who paid him for what in 2015 -- except that he seemed to work very closely with Victoria Nuland and several Ukrainian oligarchs, who seem to have worked to put us where we are now.

Then there's Gaza:

President Joe Biden’s plan for the U.S. military to construct an artificial port to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza puts U.S. troops at risk for political reasons, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

. . . However, key aspects of the plan remain undeveloped, including how the administration will ensure the safety of at least 1,000 U.S. troops involved in the mission, calling into question how deeply the administration thought through the plan before announcing it, experts told the DCNF.

“I think the administration is looking for a way to look like they’re increasing aid to Gaza, in some sense to placate their own domestic constituencies,” Michael DiMino, a fellow at the Defense Priorities think tank and former intelligence officer, told the DCNF. “It’s a terrible idea.”

. . . Experts said the plan appears rushed, leaving questions that should be answered already regarding security for U.S. and NGO personnel and the logistics of aid distribution without putting American boots on the ground.

As I noted yesterday, the plan seems so muddled that Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to think the only reasonable use for the port will be to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza, something he would likely appreciate, but the only foreseeable destination for the evacuees would have to be the US. Otherwise, the question remains open how US military and civilian personnel at the port would be protected in a war zone, and precisely what they are expected to accomplish, other than evacuate Palestinians.

Meanwhile, although historically the US has intervened to resolve crises in Haiti, nothing seems to be in the works this time around:

But if the arrival of a multinational security mission seems far off, any hopes for an American intervention appear to be the stuff of history books; US operations in Haiti have so far focused on evacuation flights for American citizens, an undertaking that only started Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the air above Port-au-Prince buzzes constantly with private flights for diplomats and the well-connected.

"Multinational security missions" have always been a euphemism for US intervention:

Headlines have reported that Haiti has requested intervention. This is inaccurate. It’s Haiti’s premier, Ariel Henry, who has requested it. Henry more or less appointed himself prime minister following last July’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. He has never had any sort of constitutional authority and indeed, is implicated in Moïse’s assassination. The people he claims to speak for revile him. His only constituency is outside the country. Over the past 15 months, the US has insisted that the opposition, a remarkably broad-based coalition of civil society leaders, activists and popular organizations, negotiate with him.

The last big intervention also began with a “request” by an unelected official. This led to a UN peacekeeping force called Minustah, brought in to “stabilize” Haiti after the US-backed removal of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It stayed for 13 years.

The one thing we can be sure of is that under Joe, there won't be any new ideas.

I'm Starting To Wonder If Joe Has Thought This Up Himself

Sometime around February, it looks like the message started to go out to Democrats: we're backing off Israel. My reflexive attitude up to this week had been that this was the brainchild of the big guy's handlers, and they were just feeding him talking points. Now, I'm not so sure. What's changed my mind starts with a Fox News op-ed from Clinton pollster Mark Penn:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., set off a firestorm of his own making last week as he decided to intervene in Israeli politics by telling Israel to abandon its leader right in the middle of sensitive negotiations with Hamas.

I don’t think Schumer will do that again. He heard from pretty much the world and it’s clear that Schumer is out of touch with Israel or he would have known that telling Israelis what to do is likely to produce the opposite result.

But OK, here's Schumer, apparently not a very observant Jew, but a Jew nonetheless, who represents New York Jews, an important constituency not just in terms of US politics, but in terms of world influence roughly equivalent to Israel itself, and he's throwing Israel under the bus. Mark Penn, who has worked for Israeli politicians as well as the Clintons and others, seems to have a pretty good grasp of how this is playing among Jews and mainstream Americans alike:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired right back, calling it inappropriate to tell an ally and a democracy when they should hold elections and who they should vote for, especially during a war. Israel is the only democracy within the region which otherwise features everything from monarchies, theocracies, Putin puppets, and terrorist regimes. In fact, 72% in the February Economist/YouGov poll see Israel as an ally and friend, while most Americans (57%) see "Palestine" as an enemy and unfriendly.

. . . By about 82 to 18 Americans support Israel over Hamas in this conflict and nearly two-thirds believe that any ceasefire should occur only after Hamas releases the hostages, according to the latest Harvard CAPS Harris poll.

. . . The danger in the politics of what Schumer and Biden are doing is that it emboldens Hamas and actually complicates arriving at any kind of peace. If Biden had remained steadfast in his support for Israel and put the blame on Hamas for creating a tunnel city intertwined with civilian life instead of singling out Netanyahu, Hamas would be fearing extinction and would be much more likely to send out the hostages.

So it isn't bringing about peace in the region, and Penn's argument is very similar to Alan Dershowitz's the other day, that after all, there was a cease fire in effect on October 6; going squishy simply encourages Hamas. But Biden isn't helping himself domestically, either. Penn continues,

The truth is that the electorate is about 2% Jewish and less than 2% Muslim and when asked to name the most important issue, 2% named the Israel-Hamas policy.

In Michigan, 100,000 votes for uncommitted is a small fraction of the 10 million people there and just how likely are they to help elect Donald Trump? And the more Biden has waffled on Israel, the lower his Israel approval ratings have sunk.

. . . Playing domestic politics with the issue will only backfire.

The fact that this idea seems to be so counterproductive in any important way is what suggests to me that Joe came up with it himself. He seems to have a visceral reaction to Netanyahu:

President Biden unexpectedly crossed himself Wednesday [September 20, 2023] during a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in Midtown.

The 80-year-old Roman Catholic president made the conspicuous hand gesture — touching his forehead, stomach and left and right breast area with his right hand — as the Jewish leader began speaking.

And it's hard to avoid thinking the White House has sent the message that senators must get with the program.

In an early general election-phase gift to Republicans, incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio was reportedly caught on video saying he "frankly" doesn't "trust" the government of Israel to abide by a ceasefire any more than he does the Hamas terrorists seeking to eliminate the Jewish state.

. . . After some pre-approved questions were answered by Brown and Booker, according to [TikToker] Jordan's retelling, he decided to ask one of his own as the event was ending. "Do you support a ceasefire in Gaza?” Jordan asked while recording with his phone.

"I would answer that question for weeks, 'no,' only because I don't trust that either Hamas or frankly Netanyahu would live up to that ceasefire," Brown said in his off-camera answer.

After capturing Brown's answer, Jordan said in a TikTok recapping the meeting that a staffer for the senator asked Jordan to delete the video and at one point asked for Jordan to "Give me your phone," two requests with which Jordan did not comply.

. . . the reactions from Brown's aides once they realized his comments had been recorded seem to speak for themselves.

Another indication that Joe is running the administration's Gaza policy comes from Netanyahu himself:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly suggested that the new US-built makeshift port off Gaza, which was installed to help ship aid to the besieged enclave, could be used to deport Palestinians.

. . . [S]peaking at a private meeting of the Knessett's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Netanyahu suggested the port could also facilitate the removal of Palestinians from Gaza.

Netanyahu said there was "no obstacle" to the Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip apart from the unwillingness of other countries to accept them, according to a Kan News journalist.

Isn't this just the sort of idea Joe might come up with, importing a whole new set of refugees with a whole new bundle of angry demands on top of the millions already coming over US borders? If Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt don't want that sort of thing, then hey, we'll take them ourselves!

But the actual threat is more immediate:

The New York Sun reported Monday that Old Joe and his henchmen are “reportedly considering leaving Israel short of the armaments it needs to fight Hamas.” The veiled threat was there on that same day, during the callow but thoroughly indoctrinated National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s White House press briefing. A reporter reminded Sullivan that “the deadline for Israel to comply with the National Security Memorandum 20 is coming up on Sunday,” and asked him: “Has Israel responded in writing?”

National Security Memorandum 20 . . . . is only a few weeks old, dating from Feb. 8. It seeks, among other things, to “prevent arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.”

. . . [Y]ou will be absolutely unshocked to learn that Old Joe’s new rule is being applied selectively. The Sun notes that “In reality, arms are sold to foes and allies alike in all five continents, with little notice of rights violations. Mr. Biden urged Congress last month to approve the sale of F-16s to Turkey, even as it massacres Kurds in Iraq and Syria.” No one asked Jake Sullivan at Monday’s press briefing if arms sales to Turkey would be cut off.

Alan Dershnowitz, in the YouTube I linked Wednesday, said at 21:00

Everybody has their red line. I'll tell you what my red line is. If you stop supplying ammunition and arms to Israel and deny them the right to defend themselves, you have crossed my red line. I hope that doesn't happen. I now have a more open mind than I ever thought I would have about whom I will vote for in this election. The Democratic Party cannot take me, the people who listen to me, the people who vote the way I do, they can't take us for granted, sorry.

This particular issue is causing me to move away from the idea that Joe is somehow less than fully functional, at least in certain areas. I really think he's capable of making at least some decisions -- they're just bad ones. If he's losing Dershowitz, which he clearly seems to be in the process of doing, he has a problem of political judgment that goes beyond some potential issue of medical diagnosis.

Joe's Schedule

Over the past couple of weeks, I thought I was beginning to see a pattarn of increased activity from the big guy, if only due to the increased coverage of his fumbles and gaffes on the road. It turns out I was right, I checked his daily public schedule. Yesterday and today, he's in Texas. Tuesday,, he was in Arizona. On Saturday, he gave the Gridiron Club address; on Sunday, he had St Patrick's Day activities.

Last week, he was in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There's been a flurry of activity ever since the State of the Union, but before that, it was business as usual, long weekends at Camp David or in Wilmington. although there were similar campaign trips in February. This is in major contrast to his schedule last year; via the Washington Times,

Leisure time has become a factor in the White House — and the Republican Party is tracking the trajectory of it while providing the damning numbers as well.

“President Biden requires a lot of vacation. In 2023, Biden spent 142 days — 38.9% of the year — on vacation. That includes at least 30 trips to Delaware, 10 trips to Camp David, portions of two visits to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and vacations in Nantucket and Lake Tahoe,” said Jake Schneider, director of rapid response for the Republican National Committee.

“After nearly three years in office, Biden remains well on track to outpace each of his modern-day predecessors in leisure,” he said in a written statement shared with Inside the Beltway.

It's become clear that the big guy is under pressure to look like he wants to keep his job. His public activities over the past couple of months, though, are campaign appearances, aimed at November, which is still eight months away, and this current level of appearances is quite a bit more than he's been used to. Beyond that, they aren't having the intended effect. In the Washingtonm Examiner, Democrat pollster John Zogby observed,

The newly energized president hit the road with a message of real projects for communities, while Vice President Kamala Harris made an historic first visit to an abortion clinic, emphasizing a key issue for Democrats in the fall.

But Biden’s approval rating barely moved. He is still at 40% approval. The national polls continue to show a close race between him and former President Donald Trump, whether in a two-way or five-way race. And, only one in four feel that the country is headed in the right direction. I could possibly copy this report card so I can paste it another time when I need to.

The problem continues to be what Nate Silver has been pointing out, increased public appearances mean increased opportunies to wander around stages, utter gaffes and malapropisms, lose his temper, and chat up pre-teen girls. So far, it's the same problem Hillary Clinton had, the more people saw of her, the less they found to like. This is an important contrast to the conventional wisdom on Biden's lawfare campaign against Trump, for instance from Byron York:

So far, the lawfare directed at Trump — two federal indictments from a special counsel appointed by the Biden Justice Department, plus two local indictments from elected Democratic prosecutors, plus a financial lawsuit from another elected Democratic prosecutor and a sex-and-defamation lawsuit financed by a Democratic megadonor — has backfired at the polls. It helped boost Trump to a runaway victory in the Republican primaries, and so far, it hasn’t hurt him in general election matchup polls against Biden.

. . . But the lawfare campaign is already having another effect on Trump. It has put the former president under severe financial stress in two ways. The first is the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees Trump has already spent defending himself against the onslaught of criminal charges and lawsuits. The other is the crippling financial penalty, $454 million, in the lawsuit brought by the elected Democratic attorney general of New York, Letitia James.

The difference is that, even if James seizes Trump Tower, the Donald still lives at Mar-a-Lago, and he's still ahead in the polls. He's still got a constantly mutating version of the Chicago Seven defense, for which Alan Dershowitz, who helped originate it in the 1960's, gives Trump his grudging admiration. Instead of a single Judge Julius Hoffman, Trump has an expanding range of foils, not just Judge Engoron, but now, in addition to Letitia James, he's got Fani Willis, Nathan Wade, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and no doubt more. It's not just publicity, it's comic book villain-vs-superhero material. (Isn't there an element of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne in Trump's image?)

This is what Joe, basically an over-the-hill nebbishy mediocrity, has working against him, he's a bore, but even more so is the calendar. He's having to conduct a national campaign, which normally lasts from September to November, that's already begun in early March. I don't think he can sustain it.

Alan Dershowitz On Biden's Two-State Solution

He begins his discussion above:

The war in Gaza is becoming a major issue in the American political campaign. . . . What we're seeing is a very, very nasty debate over support for Israel, with the hard left of the Democratic Party saying to President Biden that they're not going to vote for him if he continues to support Israel, and there's no way, even if Biden were to abandon Israel, there's no way he would ever give the hard left enough. They don't want a cease fire, they want the end of Israel. . . . They don't want a two-state solution. The problem is that Biden has a two-state solution. His two states, however, are Michigan and Minnesota. . . . He's particularly focused on Michigan, because Michigan, has a population of several hundred thousand Muslims and Arabs, who will never be satisfied with a president who supports Israel in any way, and the ceasefire is just a pretext.

This is a continuation of the Democrat dilemma since the 1960s: as their middle American appeal has gradually fallen away, by the Pelosi-Biden era, they've had to appease their hard left fringe to maintain a steadily shrinking majority. But caving on hard left issues from unlimited abortion to same-sex marriage to unisex restrooms and now to Israel has driven away large swaths of their traditional base, first Catholics and now, apparently, Jews as well.

On one hand, it's understandable that Biden would cave on Israel -- he's tired, he's focused on re-election, and he seems to see Netanyahu as a lesser Satan nearly as bad as the Great Satan Trump. But this is pushing him into foreign policy, his weakest area. As the Bush-Obama fusion defense secretary Robert Gates put it, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” It also seems as though Senate Majority Leader Schumer has now bought into the Pelosi-Biden cave:

“The world has changed — radically — since [October 7], and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” Schumer said in what was described as a major speech.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way,” Schumer added, “by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”

Schumer went on to accuse Netanyahu of aligning with “far-right extremists” who are “pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.”

The State Department has gone so far as to nuance the administration's stated position on "defeating" Hamas:

State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday that the U.S. shares the goal of “degrading” Hamas — avoiding the use of the word “defeating,” in an apparent shift of U.S. policy on the Gaza war.

On Monday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that President Joe Biden shared Israel’s goal of “defeating” Hamas, but believed it was not necessary for Israel to attack Hamas in the last stronghold of Rafah to do so.

On Tuesday, as Breitbart News reported, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his view that while he was happy to talk to the Biden Administration about it, there was no way to defeat Hamas without entering Rafah.

. . . Later, on Tuesday, Patel was asked to respond to Netanyahu’s statement. Patel said that the Biden Administration was looking forward to discussions with Israeli officials in Washington about “alternative approaches” to “target key elements of Hamas, help secure the Egypt-Gaza border, and do so without a major ground operation in Rafah.”

Patel then referred to “our shared goal of degrading Hamas,” which is significantly different from “defeating” Hamas.

Schumer himself seems to recognize where his stance on Israel puts him with his Jewish constituents and Jews nationally:

Mr. Schumer said he spent hours after his speech talking with conservative Jewish constituencies whose members were enraged. On Tuesday, he addressed a broad spectrum of Jewish American leaders, facilitated by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, by Zoom. In a statement after the meeting, the group said “our membership continue to have deep reservations about Senator Schumer’s speech.”

In the interview, Mr. Schumer was characteristically more eager to recount the kudos he received. “Did you see Nancy today?” he said of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, who in a CNN appearance on Sunday called his speech an “act of courage.” He directed an aide to share a letter he received from Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, that called him “honest and ready to step forward and say what needs to be said.”

Pelosi, of course, isn't Jewish; she's a nominal Catholic who has nevertheless been denied communion in her home diocese. It appears that Schumer is now simply part of the Democrat movement away from traditional religious affiliation, to the point that even liberal Jews are beginning to have second thoughts about the Democrat party.

At about 12:00 above, Dershowitz says,

If Hamas knew that Israel had the unequivocal support of the United States, and it would never back down, and it would always veto resolutions at the Security Council against Israel, Hamas would not continue fighting. They would give back the hostages, call for a cease fire, the war would be over. So yes, I am pointing a finger of Blame at President Biden for not doing what he should have done, which could have ended the war more quickly, it could have saved more lives. Hectoring Israel doesn't save lives. Threatening Israel doesn't save lives.

The problem is that Biden is tired, and whatever it may specifically be, something ails him, he's sick, and he's being pushed into an area where he's never had strengths, foreign policy. He's the creature of his handlers, who right now are sending him out on grueling campaign trips that are doing nothing to help him in the polls, apparently in hopes of keeping their jobs just a little longer, and which he almost certainly can't maintain. But whatever his fate between now and November, handlers of one sort or another will be in charge, and there's not much anyone can do before then.

The Cheneys

I'm a little puzzled at Dick and Liz Cheney. The Buish dynasty's time has come and gone, the Bush family itself seems to have decided to keep quiet, but the Cheneys are raging on. Last week, "Sleazy" Liz Cheney Loses It After Bombshell Report Claims She "Suppressed Exonerating Evidence" With J6 Committee, The story refers to a Mollie Hemingway piece in The Federalist that claims she helped the January 6 committee suppress exculpatory evidence for Trump:

Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops. In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now.

Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato’s first transcribed interview with the committee was conducted on January 28, 2022. In it, he told Cheney and her investigators that he overheard White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows push Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to request as many National Guard troops as she needed to protect the city.

. . . Not only did the committee not accurately characterize the interview, they suppressed the transcript from public review.

According to Wikipedia,

She represented Wyoming's at-large congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017 to 2023, and served as chair of the House Republican Conference—the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership—from 2019 to 2021. Cheney is known for her vocal opposition to former President Donald Trump.

. . . She was once considered one of the leaders of the Republican Party's neoconservative wing, and was critical of the foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration while consistently voting in favor of Trump's overall agenda.

However,

Because of her stance on the Capitol riot, her impeachment vote, and her opposition to Trump's false stolen-election narrative, pro-Trump Freedom Caucus members of the House Republican Conference twice attempted to remove her from party leadership. With House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy supporting her removal, Cheney was removed from her position in May 2021.In July 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Cheney to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Two months later, she was made vice chair of the committee. As a consequence of her service on the Select Committee, Cheney's membership in the Wyoming Republican Party was revoked in November 2021. She was censured by the Republican National Committee (RNC) in February 2022.

On August 16, 2022, Cheney lost renomination in Wyoming's Republican primary to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman in a landslide, garnering just 28.9% of the vote.

Among other things, this suggests that Trump's influence in the Republican Party even while out of office has been underrated. And generally, Liz Cheney's star has waxed and waned with the influence of the Bushes and her father; she carried little weight on her own. Wikipedia:

Cheney worked for the State Department for five years and the United States Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. After 1993, she took a job at Armitage Associates LLP, the consulting firm founded by Richard Armitage, then a former Defense Department official and later the Deputy Secretary of State.

. . . In 2002, Cheney was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, a preexisting vacant post with an "economic portfolio", a mandate to promote investment in the region.

. . . After two years, Cheney left her State Department post in 2003 to work for the Bush–Cheney 2004 reelection campaign. She participated in the campaign's "W Stands for Women" initiative to target female voters.

. . . On February 14, 2005, she returned to the U.S. State Department and was appointed principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and coordinator for broader Middle East and North Africa initiatives.

She lasted another year at the State Department until Condoleeza Rice, the Secretary at the time, dissolved her area of responsibility in response to adverse press reports. Her father as vice president seems to have been unable to secure other work for her in the State Department, and it's hard to avoid thinking the jobs she held there were effectively sinecures.

In June 2007 Cheney signed on as one of three national co-chairs of Fred Thompson's 2008 presidential campaign. . . . After Thompson dropped out of the race, Cheney joined Mitt Romney's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy advisor.

After that, she seems to have had a series of failed career attempts, ranging from founding a short-lived advocacy group with William Kristol and Deborah Burlingame, to guest-hosting on Fox News, to a failed primary bid for the Republican-held Senate seat in Wyoming. Only in 2016 did she succeed in running for a House seat, but by 2021, she'd managed to ruin her career prospects as a Republican. By May of that year, it emerged

Rep. Liz Cheney secretly masterminded an extraordinary Washington Post op-ed authored by top military leaders, just three days before the Capitol riot, it has been claimed.

The letter published in the Washington Post contained a stark warning from 10 Defense Secretaries from both parties.

. . . The letter from the Defense Secretaries stated that the time for questioning election results 'has passed' and said involving the military in electoral disputes would take the nation into 'unlawful and unconstitutional territory.'

It was a key break as members of the military, lawmakers, and retired statesmen issued public statements in an effort to promote a transition in power despite Trump's refusal to concede the election.

'She was the one who generated it, because she was so worried about what Trump might do,' Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney's and career diplomat who served as national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, told the New Yorker. 'It speaks to the degree that she was concerned about the threat to our democracy that Trump represented.'

But it's hard to avoid she was also casting about for a new career option, given Trump's electoral loss, her limited ability to work with other Republicans in the House, and her father's diminishing influence in the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, Trump's prospects continue to improve -- in part, that's because he can use figures like Liz Cheney as foils.