The Emperor Palpatine

This is the part of the 1953 sci-fi movie where the scientists realize the high voltage lines & atom bombs only make the monster bigger

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 2, 2017

I saw the post just above on Instapundit this morning, thinking it was a reaction to yesterday's verdict, but I suddenly realized it's dated July 2, 2017. You can say things about Trump one time, and they turn out to be just as applicable to other situations. Greg Gutfeld made a similar reference to pop-culture paradigms in last night's monologue:

The good news is that as this trial descended into an absurdity of corruption, Trump's numbers have been going up, while Joe Biden's keep falling, like Joe Biden himself. Turns out Americans love it when one man fights against a corrupt system with his back up against the wall, just as much as they detest a dementia-ridden dirtbag who's spent half a century padding his life with your money. . . . It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is America.

In other words, Joe as dementia-ridden dirtbag morphs into Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine, who Wikipedia says "has become a widely recognized symbol of evil in popular culture." Well, here's an intriguing essay on the hero in popular culture:

[I]n Pop Culture heroes, especially American ones, never seem to want to be heroes, they are forced to confront some horrendous situation. The Popular Culture hero never steps out to be heroic, he doesn’t go around looking for trouble. . . . The hero in most of these scenarios is a reactive force, a passive weapon that flips into action only when activated. . . . The hero is improvising in this reactive state, he is an action hero. The Pop Culture hero is not a thinking man, he doesn’t plan, he doesn’t contemplate the situation, he doesn’t search for alternatives only a way out. The hero is always directly contrasted to the Pop Culture villain who is portrayed as the thoughtful one, an intellect – he plans, he contemplates, he devises. The hero is portrayed as youthful talent and potential, the villain as an intellectual plotter, a seasoned decadent with an angry, vengeful axe to grind. This Popular Culture scenario plays out in American life every single day in a myriad of ways, and it is now playing out in our current political season with Pop Culture references to heroism abounding.

This was in fact written in 2008, before anyone ever thought of Trump as anything but a wealthy playboy turned reality TV star. Trump is nearly as old as Biden, but Gutfeld is correct when he contrasts Trump, the improviser who campaigns from the courtroom, with Joe the dementia-ridden dirtbag. And nobody left or right has ever characterized Trump as a thinker -- in fact, he cultivates a certain anti-intellectual persona.

Trump as a pop-culture hero reminds me perhaps most of Christian Bale's very contemporary Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, which was released in 2012, also before anyone ever thought of Trump as a politician:

[Writer-Director Christopher] Nolan has stated that, due to the eight-year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, "he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.". . . . Bale acknowledged that Batman is "not a healthy individual, this is somebody that is doing good, but he's right on the verge of doing bad". Bale clarifies that "He doesn't want to forget [his parents' deaths]. He wants to maintain that anger he felt at that injustice".

There's also a mythic pattern to the Batman character in the Dark Knight Rises's story line. Bruce Wayne becomes a recluse and abandons his role as Batman, while the police commissioner blames "the Batman" for a current crime spree. In fact, Wayne is trapped by Bane, the supervillain, and consigned to an underground prison. Bane then releases criminals from Gotham's jail, who take over the city, and has Gotham's elite exiled and killed in kangaroo courts. Months later, Bruce escapes from the underground prison, returns to Gotham as Batman, and restores order to the city.

There's something similar in Trump's current story arc. He's improbably elected president in 2016, beset by manufactured scandals and plots by the Deep State, defeated in 2020 in a stolen election, but it looks like he'll return in 2024 -- not necessarily as a good guy, maybe even as a good guy on the verge of doing bad.

There's resonance to this story. That's my takeaway from yesterday's verdict.

The Paradigm Is Shifting

Yesterday I posted on how uncomfortable I've become with the RealClearPolitics model of the election, whereby Trump leads Biden by a small aggregate anount in battleground states, and this situation hasn't changed in six months. Yet issues like inflation and illegal immigration haven't been fixed. while Biden's deteriorating physical and mental condition have become increasingly visible. On top of that, the enthusiasm levels of the Trump and Biden campaigns are increasingly in contrast.

I pointed to little-reported trends in states outside the conventional-wisdom battlegrounds like Minnesota, Oregon, and Virginia, and by coincidence, I noticed a new Roanoke College poll that says Trump is tied with Biden in Virginia.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are tied (42%-42%) in a head-to-head matchup in Virginia, while Biden holds a two-point lead (40%-38%) when other candidates are included, according to the Roanoke College Poll. The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research (IPOR) at Roanoke College interviewed 711 likely voters in Virginia between May 12 and May 21, 2024. The survey has a weighted margin of error of 4.24%.

. . . This is the first time the Roanoke College Poll has shown the candidates tied, although the polls in February 2024 and November 2023 showed them within the margin of error.

Other Virginia polls have also been showing movement. RealClearPolitics itself lists only three polls since last December, including this most recent from Roanoke College. A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll from December 15-19 had Biden over Trump 49-43. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll from December 28 to January 13 had Biden over Trump 43-40.

That there are so few polls from an important state just outside the consensus battleground group is puzzling in itself, but if those polls are showing anything, they're showing that broader opinion is moving, while the polls from the battleground states aren't. As a contrarian, this suggests to me that there's a consensus methodology that's using data from a set group of "battleground" states that were battlegrounds only in 2016 and 2020 to impose a model on the 2024 election. This feeds my sense that Rush Limbaugh was right, that the polls are meant to shape the news, not report it.

There's a more complete discussion of the problems with the battleground theory at The American Spectator, The 2024 Battleground Grows and Tilts Toward Trump.

It is not just that the states that decided 2020’s outcome are increasingly leaning toward Trump — although they are. There are also strong indications that more states could play a potentially determinant role in 2024’s outcome and that these, too, are moving closer toward Trump.

. . . There are also strong indicators that five states not considered battleground states in 2020 could be today. Then, Biden won these by seemingly safe margins: Maine (9.1 percent), Minnesota (7.1 percent), New Hampshire (7.3 percent), New Mexico (10.8 percent), and Virginia (10.1 percent). However, recent polls show that Biden’s falling fortunes are having an impact here too.

. . . The six battleground states that Biden won in 2020 by less than 3 percent of the popular vote — and all of which he now trails — account for 77 electoral votes. Five second-tier battleground states of 2020 — which Biden won and, if Minnesota and New Hampshire are indicative, are now potentially in play this November — account for another 34 electoral votes.

What this means is that Biden is defending potentially 111 electoral votes, from which Trump only needs to win 35. In contrast, Biden has only one state, North Carolina (and he is trailing in polls there by far larger margins than the one he lost by in 2020) with 16 electoral votes, with which to potentially compensate for any electoral votes that Trump flips from him.

So this is suggesting there's something fundamentally wrong with the RealClearPolitics model: right now, RCP has poll aggregates showing Trump leading Biden by 0.9% in the popular vote, although this is meaningless, since the president is elected by the Electoral College. RCP has a separate Electoral College prediction based entirely on its aggregates in the consensus battlegound states, which has Trump leading by 219-215, a similar tossup assessment -- and this also hasn't moved in months. It then has a "no tossups" total 0f 312-226, which has likewise been static for months, but if there's an explanation of what the methodology here is, I haven't found it.

By the same token, the RCP list of seven "battlegrounds" hasn't changed for many months: Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsyhlvania, North Carolina, and Nevada. But the Americn Spectator piece makes an important point:

According to RCP polling averages, Biden now trails in each and by 3 percentage points (44.6 percent to 47.7 percent) in all combined. In North Carolina, the only battleground state Trump won in 2020, Biden’s deficit has increased from 1.3 percent four years ago to 4.8 percent today.

Wait a moment. Why is North Carolina even listed in the "battleground" group if Biden lost it in 2020 and seems almost certain to lose it in 2024? What was the logic of all those "battleground" choices? For instance, they aren't even listed in alphabetical order, it's just sort of a list without much of a reason for being there, and right now, Trump's likely to win all or most of them. So why are they "battlegrounds"? Why not start to add states like Virginia, New Hampshire, or Minnesota to the list and maybe even take states like Nevada or North Carolina off it? Wouldn't that more accurately depict the current state of the campaigns?

The current received line is that the election is a tossup, and Sean Trende is apparently in the middle of declaring that it's a tossup if the election is a tossup. This works to the Democrats' advantage by giving people like Dr Jill the credibility to say "those polls are going to turn, I’m confident of it.”

But if it were a tossup, the prominent anonymous Democrats wouldn't be freaking out.

Sean Trende: Are We Too Bearish On Trump?

Sean Trende, the Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics, is the keeper of the conventional wisdom on Trump's outlook for the election. The odd thing is that the Democrats, other than Biden himself, are the ones who've signed on to it. For instance, Clinton pollster Mark Penn takes the conventional line just this morning at RCP:

Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the Harvard-CAPS/Harris polls by about 5 points and in the FoxNews polls by 3 points as of May 24. It is closer in the Real Clear Politics average that shows a gap of only 1.1%, but swing state polls across the media show Trump routs in almost all of them.

What bothers me is that none of this has changed in six months. Public perceptions of the New York hush money trial have been, if anything, favorable toward Trump. Rallies and campaign events like those in New Jersey and the Bronx have been surprisingly well-attended. In contrast, Biden's public performance has been consistently embarrassing, and there are increasing calls for him to step aside. But the RealClearPolitics averages haven't moved in many months. I'm inclined to attribute this to Rush Limbaugh's theorem that the pollsters' aim is to demoralize Republicans and keep up Democrat hopes that Biden can still turn things around.

Now even Sean Trende is at least teasing a reassessment. At RCP yesterday, he ran a piece, Are We Too Bearish on Trump?

I think if you asked most analysts to publicly assess the presidential race, they would say it is some form of a tossup. Maybe some would give Trump a 52% chance of winning or some would give Biden a 51% chance, but most would be in the range of a 50-50 outcome.

I’m in that bucket as well, but I’m starting to rethink the wisdom of my position. In particular, I’m wondering if there isn’t some combination of “safety in numbers” and “unthinkability bias” at work. To state the first possibility more plainly, if everyone has this as a roughly 50-50 race, no one is out on a limb, and, well, they can’t fire all of us if we’re all wrong together!

More accurately, they can't fire the whole group for groupthink, but the whole group can be laid off if the company goes out of business. Trende goes through possible reasons to think the race isn't a tossup. For instance, referring to polling over Brexit, which was thought to be a tossup, but which passed 52%-48%,

. . . everyone agreed the polling suggested a tossup but thought things would eventually work out for the Remain side (mostly because they couldn’t fathom Britain voting to leave the EU). But that’s not how tossups work. If people really thought it was a tossup, about half should have been willing to predict Britain would leave. Likewise, if everyone is agreeing with a negative assessment of the playing field but then calling the race a tossup, is it really a tossup?

RealClearPolitics's own betting average this morning shows the odds of a Trump win are 51.5 vs Biden 36.3. This isn't a tossup. Trende goes on to note that Biden's State of the Union didn't change things, and neither has the New York hush money trial. He concludes,

Maybe the third opportunity, the debates, will really change things (my take: they might). But the real point is that things have to change for Biden to win. I don’t think anyone disputes that at this point. We have a word for races like that, and it isn’t “tossup.”

But then, astonishingly, but maybe predictably for RealClearPolitics, he announces, "Next week: The case for the race remaining a tossup." But this avoids the need to ask real questions like, "Why is Trump effectively ahead when the poll averages keep making it look like a tossup?" But this implicitly questions the poll averages, which are Sean Trende's livelihood, so he's going to treat the question of whether it's a tossup as a tossup itself.

This piece by Eric Levitz at Vox is much more insightful. He takes up the question of why blacks, Latins, and young people are leaving the Democrats:

2024 will witness a historically rapid shift in the demographics of the Republican and Democratic coalitions. Which is odd, considering that the two parties are running the same candidates as they did four years ago.

. . . I’ve been toying with a different theory of the president’s woes, one that makes better sense of his peculiar demographic weaknesses: Voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system are shifting rightward.

. . . Donald Trump redefined the GOP in the eyes of many, associating the party with a paranoid vision of American life and a populist contempt for the nation’s political system.

Levitz goes on to argue that issues like the COVID lockdowns and madatory vaccinations increased institutional distrust across the board, and the 2024 election is largely about institutional distrust -- and some part of that distrust is the claim that the 2020 election was "stolen".

[T]he possibility that part of Biden’s problem lies with low-trust voters is worth taking seriously — not least because, if true, it would imply that the president is actually in worse shape than polls suggest.

Distrustful voters participate in surveys, but they do so at much lower rates than high-trust voters do. Which makes sense: If you believe that you can’t be too careful with other people, you probably aren’t going to take a lengthy phone call from a stranger.

And of course, the amount of distrust in legacy media is steadily increasing, while polls and poll aggregates are the creatures of legacy media -- but even this leaves aside the entirely prudent reluctance of many people to disclose their political preference to a stranger who claims to be a pollster. Right, when the FBI inflitrates Catholic parishes looking for right-wing terrorists. Levitz concludes,

The president is reportedly averse to considering this possibility. To the contrary, according to Axios, Biden is convinced that the polls are underestimating his support. This is certainly conceivable, but there is little basis for assuming as much. And given the evidence that social and political trust might be influencing voters’ behavior, it would be reckless for Biden to run as though he’s ahead. More concretely, if the president is trailing badly — as a consequence of tepid support among distrustful voters who want change — he might be well-advised to embrace a much different messaging strategy than his current one.

Back when I worked in IT, the truism was nobody got fired for choosing IBM -- but that was in the 1980s. IBM is now just a niche supplier. Sean Trende reminds me of the IBMers of a past generation.

Dems In Full-Blown ‘Freakout’?

The big news this morning is the headline in Politico, Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden.

“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.

But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said.

Except just this past weekend,

Prominent Democratic strategist James Carville slammed his own party Saturday in a rant in which he called its messaging “full of s–t” — and accused the Biden campaign of worrying too much about the war in Gaza.

Carville, who helped run Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 White House campaign, ripped into national Democrats as polls continue to show President Biden struggling in his likely rematch with former President Donald Trump.

As early as February,

Ezra Klein, a prominent liberal columnist for The New York Times, published an audio essay Friday making his case against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, saying he should withdraw from the race and allow delegates to pick from a slate of candidates with a better shot at defeating Donald Trump in November.

“We had to wait till this year — till now, really — to see Biden even begin to show what he’d be like on the campaign trail. And what I think we’re seeing is that he is not up for this,” Klein said on his popular semi-weekly podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”

Yrt again, let's put these calls in context. The point isn't that they're coming, the point is how early they're coming in the cycle. Michael Dukakis had been ahead in the 1988 election polls until he rode an Abrams tank on September 13. That image turned things around:

On Monday, Sept. 19, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak offered perhaps the most devastating press account yet in their syndicated column. “Howls of laughter echoed through Bush headquarters in Washington,” they wrote, “where ridicule was prepared for the candidate’s speech Friday. Democratic insiders could only shake their heads in dismay.”

By Tuesday, one poll found that Dukakis had lost significant ground, with 25 percent saying they were less likely to vote for him because of the tank ride.

Election Day was seven weeks away.

The curret round of freakouts is taking place five months before the election. Another disastrous moment in a campaign, John Kerry's windsurfing escapade, became a decisive issue throughout September 2004, and by late that month, the Bush campaign had turned it into a devastating commercial. Before that,

YOU'D think John Kerry could be excused for wanting to spend a summer afternoon on the water.

Instead, David Letterman mocked him for windsurfing instead of campaigning. Jay Leno played the flip-flop card, quipping that even Mr. Kerry's hobby depends on which way the wind blows.

Zell Miller, who could himself be accused of being flip-flopper-in-chief, derided Mr. Kerry's swim trunks as "silly little bicycle pants."

Again, this took place, like Dukakis's tank ride, in September, during the traditional campaign season. Even Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the McGovern campaign in 1972 as vice presidential candidate after he had been nominated at the convention, 99 days before the election, although Democrat insiders had already determined that McGovern had no chance against Nixon without Ted Kennedy on the ticket, which Kennedy had refused to join.

Another unique feature of this year's campaign has been that that unlike Dukakis or Kerry, Biden hasn't been ahead in the polls at all this year, and there's been no single late campaign error like the tank or the windsurfing that turned things around. In fact, I've argued that the pervasive issue that underlies the national mood, of which more specific problems like inflation and illegal immigration are just indicators, is the sense that the 2020 election was stolen, and we have an opportunity to reverse it.

And the polls simply aren't performing their usual function this year. I keep referring to Rush Limbaugh's observation that their purpose is normally to demoralize Republicans, especially in cases like 1980 and 2016, when they simply proved incorrect as predictions of electoral results. This year, they've been focusing almost exclusively on the swing states that Trump lost in 2020 but seems likely to regain this year, and the peculiar picture they've tried to show over a period of many months is that they haven't budged, with Trump remaining narrowly ahead in most.

Data points like the Wildwood, NJ or Bronx rallies keep emmerging as surprises in this context, along with individual polls showing Trump doing well in states like Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia, and New Hampshire, which on one hand are dismissed as outliers, yet there seems to be no effort at serious followup. Are those outliers or not? Maybe the pollsters are too timid to find out.

The fact that insiders are sending up anonymous warnings so many months in advance of the traditional campaign season is just one indicator of how bad things may be for Biden.

So Early In The Cycle

The one thing I've noticed throughout this election cycle is how early everything has been taking place vis-a-vis all the other presidential election cycles I've lived through. I've mentioned here several times that previous leaks from insiders that a losing campsign isn't going well tend to happen in late summer and early fall; this time, we saw calls from influential Democrats for Joe to withdraw as early as February. Just this past week, the Biden campaign issued the ad linked above, which is a last-ditch play to win back African-American voters by taking out-of-context remarks from Trump as long ago as 1989 to prove he's a racist.

This reminded me of Jimmy Carter's failing campaign in 1980 and his desperate attempt to brand Ronald Reagan as a racist -- except this took place that September, not in May, which Biden is doing this year:

It was a mistake, tactically, to call Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign racist. Reagan’s opponent, Jimmy Carter, made that error in a September address at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. had served as the co-pastor. “You’ve seen in this campaign the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like states’ rights in a speech in Mississippi,” Carter said, adding that “hatred has no place in this country.”

. . . Carter’s statement about code words and hatred reoriented the conversation about Reagan and the Neshoba County Fair, but not in the way Carter intended. Instead of focusing on Reagan’s speech, its effect on black Americans, and what it implied about how he’d govern, the political press concentrated on Carter’s decision to chide Reagan and the tone he’d used in doing so.

Oddly, the 1980 election is remembered as one of the few in which the candidate who was leading in the polls, in that case Carter, was upset by the candidate who was trailing, in that case Reagan.

Reagan's late-breaking surge that year is generally attributed to the only presidential debate between Carter and Reagan -- held one week before the election, on Oct. 28 -- which seemed to move voter preferences in Reagan's direction, as well as the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, which reached its one-year anniversary on Election Day. After trailing Carter by 8 points among registered voters (and by 3 points among likely voters) right before their debate, Reagan moved into a 3-point lead among likely voters immediately afterward, and he won the Nov. 4 election by 10 points.

But let's apply Rush Limbaugh's insight here. The polling companies use the polls to shape the election, not report the news. Only as the election gets closer in time, "all of these polling companies are gonna want to be right when it’s all over". Carter was desperate by September, whether he was leading in the polls or not. Reagan won the 1980 election by 10 points in the popular vote and the Electoral College 489-49.

The link above attributes this result to the October 28 Reagan-Carter debate, but it's hard to avoid thinking this was to save the reputation of the pollsters, who needed some sort of very late development to explain what was a massive landslide upset by Reagan. In retrospect, the "malaise" speech of July 15, 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis, which began November 4, 1979, and even the visual of Carter collapsing during a race near Camp David that September all played a part, as well as high inflation, and the pollsters were likely ignoring the real national mood.

Carter's problem was that by the start of his fall 1980 campaign, it had already been overtaken by events, and his desperation in September was a reflection of that. But in 1980, nobody was desperate as early as May, although Ted Kennedy was running a primary campaign against Carter -- but Carter had performed well enough in the primaries to ensure his nomination by early June. Nevertheless, the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt in April did damage Carter's ultimate standing.

What we're seeing at this point now, though, is completely different. Biden had no significant opposition in the primaries; Trump also quickly became the presumptive nominee, and the presidential campaign for the November elecdtion is well under way. The consensus is that for Biden to have challenged Trump to debates and tacitly agreed to one as early as June reflects Biden's already-weak position -- indeed, the potential that a poor enough performance gives the Democrats leeway to replace him before the convention.

What we're now seeing is the Biden campaign telegraphing its intent to leverage the upcoming verdict in the New York "hush money" trial:

Biden intends to initially address the verdict in a White House setting — not a campaign one — to show his statement isn’t political, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Cough, cough. The link continues,

The Biden team’s plans are still being deliberated and could change, the people familiar said. The White House and Biden campaign declined comment.

. . . Biden doesn’t “need to engage with it, because everyone else will,” [think tank executive Matt] Bennett said. “He is the only person who could in some ways lessen the political impact of this by getting involved, because Trump could then make the case that the verdict is political.”

But whatever the outcome of the trial, and however Biden responds to it, his campaign, perhaps even more than Carter's in 1980, has already been overtaken by events -- but this is May, not September or October.

The Bronx Rally

It's hard to enumerate all the takeaways from Trump's Bronx rally, which seems to have dominated yesterday's news. It's a contrarian's paradise.

Let's go to what almost nobody's mentioned, the attempt by the left at a counterdemonstration:

When I exit the park, I happen upon dozens of police officers in riot gear. Young men and women—draped in keffiyehs and many in N95 masks—are standing behind them on a giant rock, shaking a sign that says, “[redacted] Trump / [redacted] Biden / The people of the Bronx / We run this [redacted].”

“They don’t give a [redacted] about you,” the protesters chant at the Trump crowd, clapping between words.

The police were there in riot gear to anticipate any contingency, but my impression from the few accounts in the media is that there simply weren't enough potential counterdemonstrators there to start a riot, much as they would have wanted one. I imagine that the media was disappointed, too -- a riot would have been clickbait, and it would have fed the narrative that Trump supporters are brownshirts, but it didn't happen.

This brings me to something else that didn't happen -- the George Floyd-BLM riots of 2020-2023 began the Tuesday following the Memorial Day weekend of 2020, May 26 of that year. One of the conditions that fed those was the COVID lockdowns, when the authorites from Dr Fauci on down announced that rioters were exercising their first amendment rights:

Fauci said that public health officials like himself should caution protesters to wear a mask and keep it on at all times if they do go out to protest.

On the other hand, apparently holding a Trump campaign rally during the pandemic was not an equivalent exercise of first-amendment rights, as Trump canceled a good many throughout that campaign, and those he did hold were heavily criticized:

President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies led to more than 30,000 coronavirus cases, according to a new paper posted by researchers at Stanford.

. . . The researchers found that the rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. They also concluded that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees.

On the other hand, the "researchers" didn't find any equivalent spike in COVID cases after the BLM riots!

Protests against systemic racism held in 300-plus U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd did not cause a significant increase in coronavirus infections, according to a team of economists who have published their findings in a 60-page paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research; these somewhat surprising results are supported by Covid-19 testing data in many populous cities where demonstrations were held.

I was intrigued to watch one discussion of Thursday's Bronx rally where a commentator minimized it saying that Trump had huge crowds everywhere in 2020, but he still lost. No, actually, he didn't, he canceled a good many rallies throughout 2020, and the COVID moral panic attached a stigma to attending the ones he did hold. There was a contrarian opinion in 2020 that the COVID panic was generated specifically at least in part to limit Trump's ability to campaign via rallies, and whether the intent was there, it certainly succeeded in doing this.

In addition, BLM riots were tacitly endorsed by the public health authorities, while Trump rallies were discouraged, so BLM riots became one of the few outlets for people with cabin fever to vent their frustrations, when Trump rallies were represented as a public health menace. This year, people at least have a clearer choice between Trump rallies and BLM riots, and so far, with the campus pogroms as the exception, people seem to be choosing Trump rallies.

I doubt if there's time to gin up a new epidemic to have an equivalent effect before November -- the 2020 lockdowns began, after all, that March. Instead, we have the New Jersey and Bronx Trump rallies establishing powerful countervailing media examples -- in 2020, media coverage of BLM riots gave the impressionable "permission" to use them as an outlet, while "permission" to attend Trump rallies was implictly withheld.

In 2024, with the media somewhat befuddled and definitely behind the curve, Trump rallies are major media events. Trump is an entertaining figure in his own right, but South Bronx residents wearing MAGA hats are also a man-bites-dog story that the media has to cover in spite of itself. And the Bronx rally took place just before a slow news holiday weekend.

Do you seriously think Trump doesn't understand this? He's had four years to recalibrate and rethink his strategy, but it's also better to be lucky than smart. Trump at this point is both.

More Kevin Morris And Nixon's Smokng Gun

I've long thought the whole public narrative about Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden's "sugar bro" who is generally reported to have "loaned" Hunter upwards of $6.5 million to settle his tax case and pay his rent and legal expenses, just doesn't fit. For starters, I'm not his accountant, but he and his wife have eight-figure homes in both New York and Malibu, he has a private jet, and their living expenses have to be through the roof. Morris himself is a failed writer and doesn't seem to have worked as an attorney for years. Nobody like that has $6.5 million in mad money.

I posted last week that sources close to Morris had told Politico that he could no longer afford to pay Hunter's legal bills. My suspicion was that Hunter's lawyer Abbe Lowell, who is reported to bill as much as $1500 an hour, had secured liens on Morris's New York and Malibu properties to be sure he gets paid, and Morris's wife, the Hollywood agent Gaby Morgerman, apparently the actual family breadwinner, had put her foot down. Others have speculated that either Morris or his wife had looked at the $6.5 million as an investment, hoping for some sort of future return from Joe, but reassessing Joe's prospects for reelection, had decided to cut their losses.

Considering how little we actually know, either of those expanations, or indeed any number of others, could be true. But new revelations add another wrinkle to the whole story:

The CIA appeared to instruct the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for Delaware, Lesley Wolf, to block an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) team’s investigation into Hunter Biden from using his benefactor, Kevin Morris, as a witness, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley said in an affidavit the House Ways and Means Committee released Wednesday.

Shapley, as a lead investigator for the IRS Criminal Division, was heading a probe into Biden in August 2021 when Wolf informed him that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had been summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Wolf, Morgan and the CIA discussed Hunter Biden’s associate and benefactor, Kevin Morris, Shapley said in the affidavit.

Shapley and his team were considering using Morris as a witness for their case against Biden, but Wolf apparently shut the possibility down.

“AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness,” Shapley stated.

According to Just the News,

It remains unknown why the CIA intervened in the case, how they became aware that the IRS investigators had targeted Morris as a witness and most importantly, who at the CIA issued the directive.

“We don't know whether it's that Kevin Morris has some sort of asset for the CIA, whether he has some sort of target or whether they have other derogatory information about him being a national security threat. But whatever it was, it was enough that Lesley Wolf and the prosecution team said we're not going to put him on the stand,” Tristan Leavitt, whose organization Empower Oversight is representing Shapley, told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Wednesday.

This story may provide some context for Morris acting in some type of intelligence capacity, however remote and ill-advised:

The State Bar of California is investigating an ethics complaint brought against Hunter Biden’s attorney and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris by filmmaker Phelim McAleer, who wants the wealthy Malibu lawyer disbarred for allegedly infiltrating the set of his movie “My Son Hunter” using false pretenses to gather information for the first son.

to Se complaint, filed last week and obtained by The Post, McAleer alleges that Morris, who made a fortune representing the co-creators of “South Park,” flew on his private jet in November [2021] to Serbia, where the Hunter Biden biopic was being filmed, and pretended he was an independent documentary filmmaker producing content for “South Park streaming.”

“Kevin Morris was Hunter Biden’s lawyer who used deception and misrepresentation to spy on a movie project about his client to gather information to help his client,” the complaint alleges.

Again, the reaearch I've been able to do on the web about Morris suggests that by the time he met Hunter in 2019, at best, he had no regular income of his own, and in the link above, he described himself to McAleer's people in 2021 as a "retired attorney" -- he had in fact formally left his own law firm in 2020, but since 2009, he'd been attempting to make a career as a novelist, which ultimately failed. Who was funding the flight on his private jet to Serbia to poke around McAleer's movie project? Now the CIA can't be ruled out.

But this also brings to mind one of the biggest presidential scandals ever, Watergate, and the so-called "smoking gun" in which Nixon tried to use the CIA to thwart another investigation. In a famous tape,

Haldeman explained to Nixon the cover-up plan: "the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this ... this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it.'"

Nixon approved the plan, and after he was given more information about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, he told Haldeman: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructed Haldeman: "You call them in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it."

We may or may not ever learn the answers to the questoins Just the News asked -- "why the CIA intervened in the [Kevin Morris] case, how they became aware that the IRS investigators had targeted Morris as a witness and most importantly, who at the CIA issued the directive", but it's certainly within the realm of credibilty that orders came, as they did from the White House in 1972, to tell the CIA to wave another investigation off.

What won't go away for me, regardless of what does or doesn't come to light, is that nothing we've been told so far about Kevin Morris fits.

The Real Issue In The 2024 Election Is The 2020 Election

Let's face it, the whole New York hush money trial has been a distraction. Each day has new breathless headlines: will there be a hung jury? will Trump testify? what if Trump is convicted? what will Judge Merchan do next?

None of this matters. If there's a hung jury, Trump's progress will continue. If he's convicted, the pattern up to now has been the one since last fall: every time he's lost in a New York courtroom, his poll numbers go up. If he's jailed, I suspect his sons and other surrogates will campaign on his behalf, and his poll numbers will go up even more -- except I think even his opponents recognize this would be a disastrous outcome for them.

This view from the far left actually outlines the real issue with surprising insight:

[A] sizable number of voters either don’t remember or misremember the four turbulent years of the Trump administration. But paradoxically, educating voters about the potential consequences of a Biden defeat could annoy and alienate them by pushing Trump fatigue to new heights.

. . . A host of data shows that a crucial slice of the electorate has relatively sunny memories of the Trump years and a vague understanding of the extremist agenda his allies are putting together for a second term.

. . . The basic idea is to change perceptions of Trump the amusing and irreverent outsider to Trump the salesman for deeply unpopular policies and practices.

. . . But in an election Biden can win only by making it about his opponent, he’s lucky that in Trump he faces a challenger who is so eager to become the center of attention and offers daily evidence that he won’t go away gracefully.

But isn't the whole subtext here that right now, the big issue in the election is actually Joe Biden? The writer acknowledges that the electorate "misremembers" the Trump years as being sunny, but the inevitable follow-up is that they've concluded the wrong guy got elected in 2020, which is another way of saying the election was "stolen". So the strategy he's proposing is that the electorate should be told that Trump is really an awful guy, even worse than Biden.

This is the playbook James Comey is following in the MSNBC interview Tuesday night:

I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden, you must vote for him because the consequences on the other side are too severe.

Those conmsequences being, as Comey lays out,

serious for the Justice Department and the FBI, because Trump is coming for those institutions. He knows their power. And I think he has regrets that he didn’t work hard enough to corrupt them last time. So he’s coming for them.

But the problem, as the electorate is beginning to see it, is that the deep state, not just the FBI and the DOJ, but the intelligence community, which unanimously declared Hunter's laptop to be Russian disinformation during the 2020 campaign, and even the National Institutes of Health, which foisted the COVID fraud on the public with lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and social distancing, all worked together to steal the election.

I cited an academic study yesterday that claimed that if the COVID death rate were 5% less, Trump would have won three of the swing states he lost in 2020, giving him an electoral college majority -- but it's generally recognized that the COVID statistics were heavily manipulated. If someone died in a motorcycle accident, for instance, he was counted as a COVID death if he happened to test positive.

This is why the various show trials, the New York civil cases, the New York hush money case, the Fulton County case, and the federal indictments, resonate with the electorate -- and they do; Trump's rise in the polls began in September-October 2023, corresponding with the start of his New York civil fraud trial under Judge Engoron. Trump has claimed on a near-daily basis since then that these cases are "election interference", and this is essentially an extension of the claim that the 2020 election was "stolen".

So far, the proposed counter-strategy from the Democrats, to convince the electorate that Trump is worse -- he'll ban abortion, say, or he'll disband the FBI -- isn't working. The main difficulty is that although the Democrats were able to hide Biden's worst shortcomings in 2020 by using COVID as an excuse, since he's been president, some level of public exposure is unavoidable, and in recent months, he almost never appears without some level of slurring, malapropisms, gaffes, and confusion. The electorate has factored in that this was largely hidden in 2020, which furthers the impression that there was something not legitimate in that election.

So what's the Democrat alternative? Incressingly, the calls are for Joe to drop out.

If the polls still look this bad in early August, after a big debate and tens of millions more in spending, Biden must make a big decision.

. . . even Biden will have to explain why an historically unpopular president is losing to a historically unpopular opponent.

. . . The Biden campaign understandably wants to project the idea that this race isn’t over. If it can’t remove by early August the suspicion that it is, it could be that the real race hasn’t even begun.

But the pieces that try to game out any such scenario all have the air of fantasy. None mentions Vice President Harris as the single likeliest successor to Joe if he does drop out; they all do, however, list the usual Plan C suspects, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and astonishingly, J B Pritzker or Josh Shapiro -- neglecting to consider the far-left wing of Democrats will never tolerate a Jewish nominee. This is a measure of the dream world these pundits inhabit.

But another aspect of this wishful thinking is the almost certain response of the electorate should Joe drop out in August and be replaced with anyone -- the public will see it as simply one final, desperate attempt to steal the election. An attempt to portray, for instance, Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer (with Pritzker and Shapiro ruled out) as a "normal" candidate who will restore decency in the face of "extremist" Donald Trump would be seen as cynical and yet another attempt to steal an election with a sudden do-over when the orignal candidate doesn't work.

The issue that won't go away, barring some miracle, is the 2020 election. That's what the 2024 election is really about.

The COVID Morning After

It's been a long time since I've seen anyone in church, in a store, or even on the street, wearing a mask; it was a long, slow process -- but it's also irreversible. In fact, LA County tried to reinstate masks in health care environments just this past January, at a time when I was having to go to Kaiser pretty frequently. So starting then, I put a mask in my pocket just to be sure -- and Kaiser had in fact put up masks-required posters here and there. But when I got to the waiting room, I asked the assistants if masks were mandatory, and they said no -- in fact, they weren't wearing them, and most of the people in the waiting room weren't, either.

Even Kaiser, specifically ordered by the health department to reinstate masks, tacitly ignored the order. The county dropped it again a month later.

We've actually entered a belated period of official, or at least semi-official, never-mind acknowledgement of a COVID moral panic. For instance,

Testifying earlier this year in a closed-door interview before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, a transcript of which was released this week, former NIH Director Francis Collins confessed that the government’s sweeping social-distancing guidance wasn’t backed by the science we were all supposed to be following.

. . . “I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point,” Collins replied.

But what about four years later?

“Since then, it has been an awfully large topic. Have you seen any evidence since then supporting six feet?” the staffer asked.

“No,” the former NIH director conceded.

There is even a recent tendency to acknowledge unofficially that COVID vaccines had serious side effects:

The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca on Tuesday [May 8] said it is withdrawing its COVID-19 vaccine worldwide citing low demand and a "surplus of available updated vaccines" since the pandemic.

. . . The vaccine — called Vaxzevria — was one of a number of shots released onto the market by pharmaceutical companies aimed at preventing people from catching COVID-19.

The company said it would proceed to withdraw Vaxzevria's marketing authorizations within Europe. The vaccine was never approved in the U.S. by the FDA.

. . . According to the Telegraph, AstraZeneca admitted for the first time in court documents that its COVID-19 vaccine can cause rare side effects such as blood clots and low blood platelet counts. The admission came via a U.K. class action lawsuit that sought $125 million for almost 50 victims of AstraZeneca vaccine side effects.

According to the New York Times, in a May 3 story,

[T]housands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600.

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

. . . The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

. . . Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

In New Jersey, all charges against the gym owners who famously defied Gov Murphy's lockdown orders in May 2020 were finally dismissed:

Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti — co-owners of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr — racked up the summonses after they kept their workout spot open in May 2020 despite Gov. Phil Murphy’s mandate to close non-essential businesses.

At one point, cops even arrested some gym rats as they left the building — and the owners were hit with scores of summonses and eventually ordered to pay about $165,000 in fines for violating public health emergency rules, according to NJ.com.

Several of the charges — which included violating a governor’s orders, operating without a mercantile license, creating a public nuisance and disturbing the peace — could have landed the duo in jail for six months, according to their attorney, John McCann of Oakland, New Jersey.

But late last month, a municipal judge in Winslow Township dropped the charges — following a nearly four-year legal battle, McCann told the outlet.

What we're seeing is the result of a gradual, but pervasive, reevaluation of the COVID moral panic, especially the recognition that a moral panic is what it was. There has also been a fairly widespread, if never offically acknowledged, assumption that the COVID panic affected the 2020 election -- but see even this academic discussion, The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election:

Our results indicate that COVID-19 cases had a significant negative effect on the Trump vote share in the 2020 presidential election (in comparison to 2016). . . . In particular, the negative impact of COVID-19 incidence on Trump’s support is stronger (1) in states without a formal stay-at-home order, (2) in states that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election, (3) in swing states, and (4) in urban counties.

. . . These effects not only are significant and robust to many robustness checks but they are also quite sizable. A simple counterfactual exercise shows that, ceteris paribus, if the number of COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower, Trump would have won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—likely resulting in his re-election.

This academic conclusion, based on at least one group's statistical analysis, corresponds to the widedly held but officially discredited view that the 2020 election was "stolen", at least in the sense that COVID has always been thought by some people to have been a manufactured crisis that was in fact intended to sway the 2020 election. The revelations we're beginning to see are reinforcing that view and reinforcing the view that the respectable consensus line on COVID was deliberately deceptive.

Nobody is really saying much about this in current public discourse -- even Trump himself has tended to drop claims that he often made last year that the 2020 election was "stolen" -- except that we might even say he's made that particular point, or perhaps more accurately, he's more recently been making a slightly different point that they're now trying to steal the 2024 election.

There can be no question, though, that respectable opinion has completely missed the effect of the great COVID reassessment on the country's political mood. There's been an unspoken reassessment of COVID, an unspoken reassessment of the 2020 election, and an unspoken reassessment of Trump.

"Are You Staring Me Down?"

Via the Huffington Post:

Chaos enveloped Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan Monday afternoon after a defense witness verbally tangled with Judge Juan Merchan, causing the courtroom to be cleared ― and earning a severe rebuke in return.

The drama began when the witness, an attorney and longtime Rudy Giuliani associate named Robert Costello, appeared to be upset at Judge Merchan for sustaining a series of objections from the prosecution about his answers.

. . . [T]he judge asked the jury to leave the room while instructing Costello to remain seated.

“I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom,” Merchan told Costello.

“I’m the only one that can strike testimony in this court,” he said. “You don’t give me side-eye, and you don’t roll your eyes. You understand that?”

Wait a moment. I'm not an attorney, but I'm a big true crime fan, I've watched lots of trials on TV from Perry Mason onward, and I've seen several trials in person as a juror and in the audience. What puzzled me about this exchange right away is that the judge and the witness both face in the same direction, toward the attorneys and the audience beyond them, as shown in the sketch above. The judge wouldn't normally see the witness's face, much less what he's doing with his eyes. But let's go on:

Costello proceeded to glare at the judge.

“Are you staring me down?” Merchan asked. The judge then cleared the courtroom, including members of the press, who were hastily shuffled into an adjoining hallway.

Based on my experience watching court sessions, and as illustrated in the sketch above, it would be physically very difficult for a witness to stare down a judge. The witness would need to turn his head over 90 degrees toward the judge and look up at him, and the judge likewise would need to turn his own head 90 degrees, look down, and hold the witness's gaze. At minimum the witness would be trying to stare the judge up, not down, tacitly acknolwledging the judge's superior position, which wouldn't work in terms of body language. Something's wrong here.

Alan Dershowitx, who was attending the trial, made things much clearer on Hannity last night (via partial transcript at RedState):

I sat in the front row, literally just feet away from where all the action occurred. I rolled my eyes when the judge made some rulings that were absurd. Any first-year evidence student would understand that he was making biased rulings in favor of one side.

I stared him down, but Costello didn't. He acted like a normal witness and the judge went berserk. The judge violated Trump's constitutional right to a public trial by kicking the media out of the courtroom. I don't know why I wasn't kicked out, and I heard him lecture Costello... "What you did was contemptuous. You looked at me contemptuously...”

. . . I'm sure Costello was trying to hide his contempt for the court, but the judge had such a thin skin that he threatened him. He said he would strike the testimony and hold him in contempt if he rolled his eyes again. You have a constitutional right to roll your eyes and to stare at anybody. It was absurd!

So OK, that begins to clear it ip. Nobody was twisting his neck to stare at anybody, Dershowitz, probably the most distinguished living attorney in the country, was sitting in the front row at the trial and rolling his eyes at the judge. The judge blew up -- in Dershowitz's words "went berserk". In the version of another attendee, Paul Ingrassia, Merchan then shouted "GET OUT OF THE COURTROOM, NOW! GET OUT OF THE COURTROOM!"

Merchan grows irate, begins EXCORIATING Robert Costello on the stand for making a few off-handed remarks and rolling his eyes during the testimony.

Merchan: Are you staring me down right now?

Costello: I'm not.

Merchan: GET OUT OF THE COURTROOM, NOW! GET OUT OF THE COURTROOM!…

— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 20, 2024

Except that Merchan made it clear that Costello was to remain seated in the witness box to be admonished while everyone else left. But the order to clear the courtroom didn't work, only about half the people left, and Dershowitz stayed. I strongly suspect that the order to get out of the courtroom was in fact directed at Dershowitz, who likely knew better than anyone that he was perfectly entitled to stay, and that's what he did, which only infuriated Merchan more.

As I've been saying since last October with Judge Engoron, Trump's strategy, at least in all the New York cases, is based on the Chicago Seven defense, something Alan Dershowitz recognizes, and Dershowitz worked for the defense on that case. Both Trump and Dershowitz recognize Trump can't get a fair verdict in any of the New York trials, so his strategy is to provoke the judges into losing their tempers and making reversible errors -- or, from a media standpoint instead of a legal one, to make monkeys of themselves in front of a national audience.

Clearly this has worked with Judge Merchan. Consider the pressure that's been building on Merchan. I don't think he envisioned that the trial would get the national attention it's received -- but as a direct result of his threat to send Trump to jail for contempt, which itself was an outcome of Trump's Chicago Seven strategy, US senators, the Speaker of the US House, and now the most distinguished living US attorney, Dershowitz, have been attending the trial in clear support of Trump. And the most distinguished living US attorney, Dershowitz himself, rolled his eyes at the judge and stared him down.

The trial for Merchan is actually going worse for him than the Chicago Seven trial went for Judge Julius Hoffman, who continued his career after the Chicago Seven case, although he was eventually sidelined by being given no new cases to preside over. Judge Merchan, now the subject of ethics complaints and potential misconduct allegations, likely won't fare as well. He's got to be recognizing that the people involved in the highly political cases against Trump are coming under scrutiny, and like Fani Willis, not only are their particular cases collapsing, but other corruption and misconduct are coming to light.

I don't think any of this is what Merchan had in mind. By threatening to put Trump in jail for contempt, he played into Trump's hands, and he's gotten in way over his head.

Not In The Polls

The RealClearPolitics headlines are usually tepid, cautiously juxtaposing a slightly right-of-center piece with a rabid left winger under the pretense that they're somehow bipartisan, reflecting someone's wish dream of conventional wisdom. But for some reason, this morning's titles are oddly unanimous: 7 Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (And What He Should Do) by Ezra Klein at the New York Times, Alarmed Dems Run From Biden in Battleground States by Alexander Bolton at The Hill, Biden Can Save America From Trump by Dropping Out by Jeremy Mayer at USA Today, and How Lawfare Turned Trump Into a Superhero Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics.

None of them mentions the national popular-vote poll aggregate, which always tops RCP's list. Some of them mention the battleground-state aggregates, but even then with some skepticism. As Ezra Klein puts it in the lead piece,

Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also won Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Now he’s behind in those states by six points, nine points and 13 points in the latest Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll.

. . . [T]o the extent polls have been wrong in recent presidential elections, they’ve been wrong because they’ve been biased toward Democrats. Trump ran stronger in 2016 and 2020 than polls predicted.

Sure, the polls could be wrong. But that could mean Trump is stronger, not weaker, than he looks.

In February, Klein had argued that Joe should drop out to save the election. He seems still to hold out for this as a last-ditch alternative if the first debate goes south:

The June debate will be his best opportunity. Doubts about age are really doubts about capability, and all Biden needs to do is persuade enough voters that he is more capable than the erratic criminal defendant across the stage, who turns 78 next month. But if the debate goes poorly, or if Biden’s numbers deteriorate further, Democrats will need to decide between a Biden-Harris ticket that is very likely to lose or an open convention.

Jeremy Mayer at USA Today is also ignoring the national aggregate and focusing on the battleground state polls:

Recent polling of Biden against Trump looks ugly.

Really? This morning's RCP national popular-vote aggregate has Trump up by a mere 0.9 point. Doesn't this feed the recent wisdom that the November election will be razor-thin? It doesn't sound like Mayer believes it.

Biden's poll numbers are awful. America, brace for a Trump victory in November.

But then he looks at the bright side. What if Joe drops out and there's an open convention, as Ezra Klein has been advocating?

If Democrats were to nominate Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, he'd beat Trump like LeBron James posting up Kevin Hart.

The obtuseness here is astonishing. According to Wikipedia, "At a young age, Shapiro started a worldwide letter-writing program, known as Children for Avi, on behalf of Russian Jewish refuseniks. He attended high school at Akiba Hebrew Academy[.]" The far-left faction of Democrats will veto even the thought of a Jewish nominee, and that goes for J B Pritzker as well. If the issue were even raised at the convention, it would be disastrous.

In fact, there would be serious problems with any move to nominate anyone but Kamala Harris -- even Cory Booker would be anti-woman -- who would fare worse in the general election than even Biden, although she might be able to avoid debating Trump if the timing of Joe's withdrawal would allow it.

But another problem is the assumption that Trump himself is a problem candidate. Mayer says,

Republicans are stuck with former President Donald Trump. Unless he dies or is incapacitated medically, he’s their nominee. He may have to win to stay out of jail.

But Frank Miele's piece has a more realistic take on Trump's current standing:

In fact, the persecution of Trump for his role as the leader of a populist political movement has so angered Republican and independent voters that instead of destroying him, his opponents have elevated him into a superhero – someone virtually impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

If you don’t believe me – or the polls – then watch the video of Trump’s campaign rally in Wildwood, N.J., where he drew a huge crowd three weeks into his so-called “hush money” trial.

. . . Moreover, the seeming injustice of Trump being turned into a political martyr by his opponents has resonated with the black community. Minority voters and young voters are turning to Trump in part because they see him as the victim of a rigged system, just as many of them have been. If blacks and Hispanics propel Trump to victory, that will be further proof of his superpowers.

We seem to be moving farther along stages of grief over the potential November election results, maybe at the moment someplace between denial and anger, buit certainly major pundits and major outlets are starting to say out loud that Biden is going to lose. Again, as I've been pointing out for a while, it's unprecedented for this discussion to be taking place so early in the cycle.

Jacked-Up Joe?

At RedState:

Trump spoke at the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner on Friday.

. . . “Although he has agreed to debate, so I don’t know, maybe they know something. He’s going to be so jacked up for those debates, you watch.

"I'm going to demand a drug test," he declared.

"I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union,” Trump said. “He was high as a kite.” By the end of the evening, Trump said, Biden was “exhausted.” “We’re going to demand a drug test.”

Even on the right, there's been a certain amout of pearl-clutching about this, from pretty much the same people who worried that he thought Hannibal Lecter is a real person. For instance, Jazz Shaw at Hot Air seems to think this was a serious proposal:

If Biden refuses to do this, there isn't much that Trump could do about it. Nobody, including elected officials or candidates, can be forced to release their private medical records, although they are free to do so voluntarily.

Gee, Captain Obvious, d'ya think? Incredibly, he goes on:

Donald Trump has not yet said that he would submit to a drug test ahead of the debate, though he hasn't refused to do it either. Further, the results of the tests likely wouldn't have any impact on whether or not the debate moved forward. A typical pre-employment drug test using a urine sample typically takes one to five days for the results to come back. If either Biden or Trump were being given any sort of "enhancers" in advance, the test would probably have to be done within a couple of hours of the event to be effective.

And the man thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person on top of it! This idea is completely impractical, but worse, it's probably illegal! The level of obtuseness at nearly all the alt sites is exasperating, although Hot Air has historically been Never Trump.

Clearly what Trump is actually trying to do here is address a problem that commentators have brought up since Biden responded to Trump's debate challenge: in 2020, expectations for Joe's debate performance were so low that when he exceeded them, even minimally, and didn't self-destruct with some absurd gaffe, he was thought to have "won" the debate and proved his fitness for office. His performance at this year's State of the Union achieved a similar minimalist goal, although it's significant that it didn't have the intended extra result of improving Joe's standing in the polls.

The problem for Joe all along has been the incongruity between his day-to-day performance of stumbling, slurring, and malapropisms and his occasional ability to avoid these on the most critical occasions like debates and State of the Union addresses. All Trump is doing is raising this unspoken issue to the level of public discourse, which in some circles is considered to be impertinent or impolite, but to others is simply necessary. It goes directly to the question of Joe's fitness -- if he consistently performed at his day-to-day level, he wouldn't be taken seriously as a leader, but if he occasionally does slightly better, that makes it all right.

It's a phenomenon that's actually recognized by everyone, and it must have a cause. One explanation, which I think is at least reasonable, is the one Trump is putting forward with calculated hyperbole, that Joe's getting some kind of a shot, vitamins, stimulants, whatever, that puts him just over the goal line. Another view, which I think is at least simpler, is that Joe is normally drunk (one of the biggest lies alcoholics tell is that they aren't drunks), but he lets his handlers keep him sober for long enough before his most important events that he doesn't show it with stammering, hypercorrection, slurring, and random pauses.

For now, one explanation is as good as the other. The most important thing is that Trump has been the truth-teller who raises the question of why this happens. This circumvents yet another attempt to set the bar for Joe's performance so low that when he does just a little bit better, he's somehow won. On the other hand, I still think the debates will be irrelevant, the issues will be settled sooner.

What Does This Say About Joe?

Fr Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast in recent weeks has been moving through First and Second Samuel, with its dysfunctional story arc of King Saul and King David. It's hard not to see Biblical reverberations in King Saul, a failed ruler intensely jealous of his eventual successor, David, but there's now the additional parallel that US Catholic bishops, beginning with Cardinal Gregory. are criticizing Joe for being a "cafeteria Catholic", which faintly echoes Samuel's mesaage that God has rejected Saul as king.

But an even closer parallel is the story of David and his strange, almost codependent, relatonship with his entitled son Absalom.

He was a great favorite of his father and of the people. His charming manners, personal beauty, insinuating ways, love of pomp, and royal pretensions captivated the hearts of the people from the beginning. He lived in great style, drove in a magnificent chariot, and had fifty men run before him.

Absalom had his half-brother Amnon, David's eldest son, murdered in revenge for Amnon's rape of their sister Tamar. Fr Schmitz stresses David's apparent hesitation to do much of anything about this whole situation, and although David sends Absalom into quasi-exile, Absalom is able to manipulate things to get David more or less to rehabilitate him, upon which, once Absalom returns to Jerusalem, he attempts a coup d'etat.

This starts a civil war, which ends when Absalom's hair is caught in a tree during the climactic Battle of Ephraim's Wood. David's general Joab finds him, and against David's explicit instructions not to harm Absalom, has him killed. Fr Schmitz stresses the inapprpriateness of David's public grief at Absalom's death:

2 Samuel 18:33 Then the king trembled and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And this is what he said as he walked: “My son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!”

At this, Joab slaps David upside the head:

2 Samuel 19:5-7 Then Joab came into the house to the king and said, “Today you have shamed all your servants, who have saved your life today and the lives of your sons and daughters, the lives of your wives, and the lives of your concubines, 6 by loving those who hate you, and by hating those who love you. For you have revealed today that commanders and servants are nothing to you; for I know today that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then it would be right as far as you are concerned. 7 Now therefore arise, go out and speak kindly to your servants, for I swear by the Lord, if you do not go out, no man will stay the night with you, and this will be worse for you than all the misfortune that has happened to you from your youth until now!”

This is the puzzle for me in the relationship between Joe and Hunter. According to Politico, as Hunter heads for trial on his gun and tax charges,

While aides insist that the White House will have no involvement in the case, brought by special counsel David Weiss, some fear it could dramatically impact the president himself, more psychologically than politically.

Three advisers granted anonymity to speak about private deliberations said they, and members of the First Family, are worried about the weight Hunter Biden’s trial will place on the president at an already difficult time for him politically. Biden has expressed fears to them about the possibility that his son will serve time in prison.

“He worries about Hunter every single day, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep,” said one of the three advisers. “That will only pick up during a trial.”

But it's probably an even bigger issue that Hunter seems to have been banned from the White House since last July and the baggie-in-the-cubby episode. As I posted then,

From the little we hear, Joe has been at least in part preoccupied with Hunter's legal problems, and the baggie-near-the-Sit-Room scandal appears to have forced Joe to move Hunter out of the White House -- for whatever he was worth, Joe seems to have needed Hunter as an important adviser/enabler. If that had even a minimal effect in distracting Joe from better uses for his time, it served its purpose, but the focus now is on Joe himself.

In fact, the strategy for Joe's handlers was to get Hunter out of the public eye, and this has been remarkably effective -- Hunter has since been out of the tabloids, and there've been no new kerfuffles over special treatment. It looks like he's headed for trial, his uber-fixer lawyer Abbe Lowell has ben remarkably unsuccessful at pulling strings ever since the diversion agreement was scuttled, and now it looks like Kevin Morris can't even pay Lowell to keep representing Hunter.

But all this has done has been to put the focus on Joe. One issue was this: whatever Hunter was, he wasn't Joe, and the antics over Lunden Roberts, their daughter, Hallie, her sister, the Russian escorts, and the whole laptop fiasco did in fact serve the purpose of distracting attention from Joe himself. Joe's handlers got Hunter offstage last summer, but that just left the spotlight to Joe -- and that's precisely when Trump began his long march in the polls.

But the whole Hunter story and its shadowy impact on Joe's psyche still leaves one question -- what does all this say about Joe and his personal qualities that he should have allowed Hunter to have the position he had? Commentators are beginning to point out that Joe will now be forced to pardon Hunter if he wants to keep him out of prison, which is a real dilemma that will affect his place in history. It all seems even to go back to David and Absalom.

Kevin Morris Is Out of Money

Things haven't been going well for Team Biden in recent days, not least because Hunter's "sugar bro", Kevin Morris, has told associates he is tapped out. According to Politico,

Kevin Morris, a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who has long supported the president’s son, has told associates that he has run out of resources to help fund Biden’s legal defense, according to a person close to Morris who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Whoa, let's parse this one out. First, I live in Hollywood, and I know something about the place. Tinsel Town is built on hype, and Kevin Morris is nothing if not a creature of hype. Here's the standard line as printed in the New York Post as of 2022:

Morris is a successful lawyer and big-money Democratic Party supporter who has become Hunter Biden’s newest fixer and “sugar brother,” allegedly loaning the president’s son $2 million to help pay off his overdue federal taxes. . . . The lawyer, who counts Chris Rock and Matthew McConaughey among his celebrity clients, is also a prolific fiction writer of two novels and a collection of short stories.

But a year later, the Post itself reported he was under an ethics investigation by the California State Bar and in 2020 had left the law firm he founded. He now describes himself as a "retired" attorney and no longer appears to represent former clients like Matthew McConaughey, Chris Rock, Courteney Cox or Minnie Driver.

His career as a novelist was brief as well. I looked at this in detail last June.

In 2009, Morris decided to become a writer or something, and he did what every aspiring writer does, he "found a writing space in Santa Monica", one of the most expensive places to rent a space you can imagine. And as a struggling young writer (born in 1963, he was 46 at the time), he tried and failed to get his first novel published.

In fact, it looks as though after 2009 at the latest, he lost interest in his law practice, and I've got to think his former partners were working to push him out of his own firm at least by that time. But although he became a full-time writer in 2009, it took him until 2014 to get anything published, a collection of short stories, White Man's Problems, and then two novels, All Joe Knight (2016) and Gettysburg (2019). After Gettysburg, he seems to have dropped any literary aspirations, and I can't imagine he ever made any money as a writer. As I said last year,

Novelists can't make money off their writing alone. Even if one of their books makes it to the best-seller list, that just gives a spike in income that lasts only a short time, and then they have to write another novel to pay the bills. As a result, in the modern age, they have to get gigs as creative writing professors, which is how they make any sort of steady income.

. . . The only way a writer can get rich off writing is to have a novel made into a Hollywood blockbuster, which is how Steinbeck and Hemingway got rich, more or less, although much of that money went to their ex-wives. But Kevin Morris, despite his wife being one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood, has yet to see any of his stuff made into a movie.

What's interesting here is that in 20l9, the year it must have become clear to him he wasn't going to make it as a writer, he discovered his next big project, Hunter Biden. Exactly how much Morris spent paying Hunter's living expenses and legal bills since then isn't completely clear. According to the Washington Examiner,

Bills of Biden’s paid by Morris have ranged from the desperate — divorce dues owed for Biden’s ex-wife, child support long overdue to Biden’s illegitimate daughter — to the decadent. In an arrangement that reportedly infuriates White House counsel, Morris has paid nearly a million dollars for the amateur Biden’s artwork.

. . . Per the admission of both Morris and Biden, Morris has spent some $6.5 million in direct payments on Biden’s behalf. It is only because of Morris’s payment of Biden’s back taxes that the latter was even considered in good enough standing with the IRS to negotiate the Justice Department’s attempted sweetheart plea deal to keep him out of prison.

. . . It’s clear enough that $6.5 million is the floor, not the ceiling, of what Morris has paid in his pursuit to keep Joe Biden in the White House and his friend Hunter Biden out of prison.

But, in light of Morris's faded legal career and his failure as a novelist, where did he get six million dollars-plus? Well, he's married to one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood, but even powerful agents have credit limits. In January, I concluded,

I think Morris is starting to look like one of Hunter's marks, and I'm just not sure he's all there. I've got to assume Abbe Lowell has got liens on Morris's properties to be sure he gets paid.

When I said "Morris's properties", I of course meant Morris's properties which are probably community property in his marriage, and as I noted in another post from January:

I can't imagine that Mrs Kevin, AKA Gaby Morgerman of the William Morris agency, is thrilled with this, and I suspect that marriage is on borrowed time due to Kevin's involvement with Hunter.

. . . I wouldn't hire Kevin Morris to get me out of a speeding ticket, much less solve my tax, drug, or gun problems.

I can't avoid thinking I was on the right track about this earlier this year. As Stein's Law puts it, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Which brings us to yesterday's news and the Politico link above:

The person close to Morris said that the Hollywood lawyer faces financial constraints that present “a huge problem” and that there are concerns about how Biden will pay for expert witnesses to testify for him at his Delaware trial. It is unclear precisely how much Morris has spent thus far to support Biden, but in a January letter to the House oversight committee, Morris’ lawyer said Morris had loaned Biden more than $6.5 million.

. . . It’s not clear how much Lowell, or the other lawyers working on Biden’s cases, are charging for their services. In other recent cases, Lowell has sought fees of $855 per hour and over $1,500 per hour.

It looks like Mrs Kevin has staged an intervention, and she's cut Kevin off. I doubt if Abbe Lowell will be representing Hunter much longer.