Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, You're My Only Hope?

Let's look at the conventional media narrative here: Vladimir Putin, AKA Darth Vader, is threatening Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance, with the Death Star. Princess Leia, AKA Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has sent an urgent message to Obi-Wan Kenobi, AKA President Brandon, begging for his help against the Empire. The suspense now, although not canonical to the original Hollywood version, is whether Obi-Wan, 79 years old, is either too senile or too irresoulute to respond.

Got it? Except that even an updated version of the Star Wars salvation history isn't going to explain how things are actually turning out. President Zelensky, AKA Princess Leia, appears not to be on the same page with Obi-Wan at all:

Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told reporters on Tuesday that Kyiv considers – and intelligence reports from the West agree – that “internal destabilization” caused by panic over a potential further Russian invasion is “the number one issue,” not any potential invasion.

With this “destabilization” – leading to generalized panic and the collapse of the national currency, the hryvnia – “the Russians have nothing to do here,” Danilov asserted, according to state outlet Ukrinform.

The remarks follow multiple national addresses from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urging Ukrainians to disregard agitated statements from the administration of President Joe Biden and its allies predicting an imminent Russian invasion deeper into Ukraine than Moscow already is.

In other words, the real problem isn't Darth Vader, the problem is Obi-Wan himself. This is puzzling. How can the whole Star Wars narrative resolve itself otherwise? Is Obi-Wan misinterpreting Princess Leia's message? Is Princess Leia's message some kind of false flag meant to further Obi-Wan's secret agenda? But there are other signals from elsewhere in the Rebel Alliance, AKA the European Union, that something's hinky:

The European Union will not follow the US move to evacuate diplomatic staff and families, largely because the US hasn’t explained why we’re doing it. “We don’t have to dramatize,” EU foreign policy minister Josep Borrell told the press today as European nations met to determine their path forward in confronting Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Borrell told reporters that Antony Blinken will brief the EU later, but at least as of this morning, they don’t see any threat to diplomatic facilities or staff.

The Ukrainians vehemently agree with Borrell. Volodymyr Zelensky has already objected to the withdrawal of personnel and staff from the Kyiv embassy, calling it an “overreaction.”

In other words, Darth Vader is less of a threat to Planet Ukraine than President Obi-Wan himself, who is actually using a giant kabuki to destabilize Ukraine. Er, why would President Obi-Wan conceivably want to do this to poor Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance? A possible answer:

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg believes that President Joe Biden essentially gave Vladimir Putin the green light to invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian energy company Burisma stopped bribing him after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump.

Speaking with politics editor Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg expanded on a tweet he posted Friday suggesting that Biden abandoned Ukraine due to Hunter Biden’s corruption.

But Darth Vader didn't even need a green light to destroy Planet Ukraine with the Death Star. All Vader had to do was maneuver the Death Star in ambiguous ways, which is what Putin is doing with troops on the Ukraine border. Then President Obi-Wan can use the situation to destablilize Ukraine by making it plain that if Putin does invade, Ukraine can simply expect a repeat of Kabul, with US civilians and embassy staff already ordered out prematurely. President Brandon's mental fog and uncertainty aren't a bug in this case, they're a feature. Interesting that Europeans beyond Ukraine seem to be thinking the same.

Maybe if President Zelensky were to rethink putting Hunter back on the Burisima board, things could change? Just sayin'.

What about this morning's other great puzzle, Speaker Pelosi's decision to run for re-election to the House?

With that in mind, I’m not at all convinced Pelosi will actually serve out another two-year term. It seems perfectly possible to me that if and when Democrats get blown out in November, she’ll change her mind. As I’ve said before though, to do so before the midterm vote would be catastrophic, and she knows it.

. . . Still, politics aside, there’s something deeply disturbing about an 81-year-old politician refusing to hand over power like this. Blame it on people living longer than they used to or something else entirely, but the American government has been turned into a quasi-oligarchy, where decrepit geriatrics rule the roost, enriching themselves, and serving until they kick the bucket.

I think the pseudonymous Bonchie is getting closer here. Another election for Pelosi, another round of baksheesh. She'll cross the post-November bridge when she comes to it. For Joe, it's payback to Planet Ukraine, which stopped the baksheesh in 2016. Well, son of a bitch.

Just sayin'. All those Europeans are pretty darn realistic, if you ask me.

Biden vs Kennedy vs Nixon

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand.

No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the crisis was a tour de force. Indeed, Khrushchev's performance was the opposite and led to his removal.

Let's look at Kennedy's television address to the nation on October 22, 1962. The first thing to note is its position in the timeline.

October 14, 1962: A U.S. U-2 spy plane piloted by Maj. Richard Heyser takes hundreds of photos of newly-built installations in the Cuban countryside. . .

October 15: CIA analysts spot launchers, missiles and transport trucks that indicate the Soviets are building sites to launch missiles capable of striking targets nearly across the United States. . .

October 16: President John F. Kennedy meets with a team of advisers known as Ex-Comm, to discuss how to respond to the missile threat. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presents JFK with three options: diplomacy with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a naval quarantine of Cuba, and an air attack to destroy the missile sites, which might kill thousands of Soviet personnel and trigger a Soviet counterattack on a target such as Berlin.

Kennedy rejects the attack, and favors a quarantine to buy time to negotiate a missile withdrawal. JFK and his advisers are careful to call it a quarantine because a blockade is considered an act of war.

October 22: In a dramatic 18-minute television speech, JFK shocks Americans by revealing “unmistakable evidence” of the missile threat, and announces that the United States will prevent ships carrying weapons to reach Cuba, while demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles.

Meanwhile. U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler delivers to a letter from JFK to Khrushchev. Kennedy writes: “the one thing that has most concerned me has been the possibility that your government would not correctly understand the will and determination of the United States in any given situation, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war which it is crystal clear no country could win and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor.”

. . . October 28: Khrushchev concedes, writing an open letter to Kennedy saying that the Soviet missiles will be dismantled and removed from Cuba.

The Kennedy White House portrayed the withdrawal as the result of the president’s tough stance in the face of Soviet aggression. In reality, as Kornbluh says, “the resolution of the crisis owed to the president’s commitment to negotiate and find common ground in a dangerous nuclear world.”

Kennedy's television address was also rhetorically brilliant in itself, I would guess, again, because his staff was capable and had read Cicero.

The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.

Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation, which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required--and it is under way; and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.

Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

. . . The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are--but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high--and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- -not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There are certainly echoes of Churchill here, and they're entirely appropriate. The problem right now is that the contrast with Biden couldn't be greater. The Ukraine crisis has been festering for weeks, and Biden's main contribution has been his stumbling remarks on January 19

President Joe Biden on Thursday sought to clarify his stance on a potential Russian incursion in Ukraine, cleaning up remarks from the prior day's news conference during which he suggested a "minor incursion" by Russia would elicit a lesser response than a full-scale invasion of the country.

"I've been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any -- any -- assembled Russian units move across Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I've discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin,"

But it's plain that his response has been essentially panic, ordering embassy staff to be evacuated from Kyiv:

The European Union will not follow the US move to evacuate diplomatic staff and families, largely because the US hasn’t explained why we’re doing it. “We don’t have to dramatize,” EU foreign policy minister Josep Borrell told the press today as European nations met to determine their path forward in confronting Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Also,

A Ukrainian journalist asked State Department Spokesperson Ned Price why the U.S. was evacuating personnel in the capital city of Kyiv, which is 500 miles from the border with Russia, and whether that meant the capital was a target of invasion.

Ukraine and the EU are displaying far more calm and resolution than Biden, who has so far abdicated any pretensions at being the Leader of the Free World.

But I mentinied Nixon. Right now, Biden is looking much more like Nixon:

President Joe Biden broke his 2020 campaign promise Monday not to bully the news media when he called Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” on a hot mic in response to a question about inflation at the White House.

Doocy took the insult in stride, later joking that no one had “fact checked” the president’s claim. On Fox News’ Hannity, Doocy revealed that the president had called him to tell him the insult was not “personal,” though he stopped short of saying that Biden had apologized.

Biden’s insult was only the latest example of an irascible attitude toward the press that has dogged him throughout his media career. Last week, for example, he snapped at a reporter during a press conference: “I assume you got into journalism because you liked to write.

Journalist Daniel Schorr was number 17 on Nixon's enemies list, and early in the Nixon administration

he angered the President by reporting, accurately, that there was no evidence to support Nixon's claim that he had programs ready to aid parochial schools. His reward: Nixon ordered the FBI to investigate him.

All politics is domestic, which Kennedy understood. This is not a good sign.

What If Things Keep Getting Worse?

It seems to me that the Ukraine situation could potentially work out for Biden the way the Cuban missile crisis worked out for Kennedy. According to this article,

President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis significantly contributed to his strong overall job approval scores. From the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1962, his approval ratings held steady at almost 80 percent (table 10). They then slowly, but steadily, subsided, dropping to a low of 61 percent in mid-October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis then pushed approval up to 74–76 percent from November 1962 to January 1963.

Should Biden manage to appear strong and decisive and then manage to look as if he'd forced Putin to back down in some way, he'd achieve a reset -- though as the link points out, Kennedy already had high job approval, well above Biden's. On the other hand, Putin isn't Khrushchev, who was in power for about a decade before being removed, while Putin has been de facto chief of Russia for 23 years so far, continuing to rule via both elections and other political maneuvering. His final term could theoretically end in 2036.

Khrushchev was reckless and not entirely stable; in Cuba he overplayed his hand and was removed largely in consequence. Putin is a more careful opponent who is focused on methodically reassembling a traditional Russian empire. I don't need to repeat Obama's own reported assessment of Biden's abilities. As a result, I think a Cuban missile crisis style outcome isn't likely for Biden; something like his existing precedent in Afghanistan seems more probable.

But an Afghanistan style outcome would be just one potential further disaster for the party in power. Another, as I've been thinking about since last week, would be new focus on Hunter and Joe's financial arrangements with him. As of last night, new allegations are emerging:

The Biden family scored $31 million from five deals in China, all with individuals with direct ties to the Chinese spy apparatus, according to a bombshell new book.

Multiple financiers with direct ties to Chinese intelligence partnered with Hunter Biden during and after his father’s time as Vice President — including the former head of the Ministry of State Security and the head of foreign intelligence recruitment — and some of those relationships remain intact, according to Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer.

. . . “The hazard of a Chinese businessman with close ties to the top ranks of Beijing’s spy agency conducting financial transactions with the son of the U.S. vice president cannot be overstated. How this did not set off national security or ethics alarm bells in Washington is a wonder in itself,” Schweizer writes in Red-Handed.

Another problem is that Ukraine was also a major sphere of Hunter's activity, and the potential fallout from events there could also prove extremely damaging to Joe. Just one potential angle also came out yesterday:

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg believes that President Joe Biden essentially gave Vladimir Putin the green light to invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian energy company Burisma stopped bribing him after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump.

Speaking with politics editor Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg expanded on a tweet he posted Friday suggesting that Biden abandoned Ukraine due to Hunter Biden’s corruption.

“Hunter Biden was paid by Burisma $80,000 a month to simply sit on the board,” Nunberg told Boyle. “Fortune 500 companies don’t pay $80,000 a month to board members . . ."

Beyond that,

Two Republican senators are demanding answers after the Secret Service refused to hand over details about Hunter Biden's trips to Kazakhstan, Russia and China.

Biden, now 51, was granted Secret Service protection while his father was vice president from 2009-17 - although he requested it cease in July 2014.

At the time, he was a globe-trotting businessman, and Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa are investigating Biden for 'his use of government-sponsored travel while he conducted private business.'

The senators have requested documents relating to Biden's travel, and so far have received 259 pages from the Secret Service. But in a letter to director James Murray, they said that they 'have serious concerns about the production'.

They note that the pages are heavily redacted, which they say is unnecessary for members of Congress, and they complained that they were missing entire years - 2010, 2011 and 2013.

I've got to trust that responsible members of both parties are recognizing how quickly things could go south and are mulling appropriate strategies for negotiating a Plan B. Even third-rate thinkers are now suddenly remembering Spiro Agnew.

What Are The Lizard People To Do?

Two third-rate minds of the center right have come to the same conclusion. Glenn Reynolds, a moderate Hefnerian and a transhumanist, wrote in the New York Post,

It’s time to admit it. Less than a year in, Joe Biden’s is a failed presidency. Biden knows it, the press knows it, and voters know it. And our foreign adversaries like China and Russia know it. Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon.

As I say, I doubt removing Joe Biden will be so easy. It will be interesting to see what the deep-state committee comes up with. They put him in power, instructing Bernie Sanders and the other Democrats to drop out in 2020, and they will figure out a way to remove him from the 2024 presidential equation. It’s also time to look at the “cabal” of business, labor and political leaders who foisted the Biden administration on us. That won’t be hard, as they were openly bragging about their efforts less than a year ago.

. . . As Time magazine reported shortly after the 2020 election, a “cabal” — Time’s word — of “left-wing activists and business titans” worked to get rid of Trump. It pushed mail-in voting. It moved to block election fraud suits brought by Trump and supporters. It employed social media censorship to mute pro-Trump arguments and amplify anti-Trump arguments. It sponsored protests.

Over the weekend, Roger Kimball, a truly awful writer who is apparently respected for being well-respected, said (after the usual pompous and gratuitous references to Aristotle and Dr Johnson),

I continue to cling to the conviction [Biden] will not remain the occupant of the White House through to the morning of January 20, 2025. . . . If I am even remotely correct about this, Biden’s situation presents the unnamed committee who actually runs the presidency with a huge and delicate problem. Biden’s behavior long ago passed from embarrassing to dangerous. We can see that all around us.

After detouring through Mt Vesuvius and 79 AD, he continues,

Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon.

As I say, I doubt removing Joe Biden will be so easy. It will be interesting to see what the deep-state committee comes up with. They put him in power, instructing Bernie Sanders and the other Democrats to drop out in 2020, and they will figure out a way to remove him from the 2024 presidential equation.

I first mentioned Agnew fully six months ago, also in the context of the lizard people. It's taken two crack Ivy League public intellectuals this long to reach the same conclusion.

I think it's also taken several days for the full impact of Biden's January 19 press conference to sink in. Indeed, I would guess that many on Kimball's committee are still in denial. But Rand Paul has said out loud what many more people are clearly thinking behind the scenes: this guy is dangerous. He should not be making decisions in matters where he's already been a disaster:

Fox News' Pentagon correspondent is reporting early Saturday that all family members of US embassy personnel in Kiev, Ukraine have been ordered to evacuate. "State Department orders families of U.S. embassy personnel in Ukraine to begin evacuating the country as soon as Monday: U.S. officials," Fox's Lucas Tomlinson reports.

It first emerged Friday that the Biden administration was mulling a plan to evacuate diplomats' family members from Ukraine as a "precautionary measure" amid the continued crisis wherein Washington has predicted some level of a Russian offensive on the Ukraine border.

The problem is that the lizard people haven't updated their plan since mid 2020, when the decision was taken to nominate Biden but appease Sanders by pushing his agenda. On Friday, Press Secretary Psaki consoled the Bernie bros (and sisters) by telling them to have a margarita but keep on fighting come Monday morning. And Bernie dominates today's talks:

The star guest: Progressive-in-chief Bernie Sanders, who’ll chat with “Meet the Press” and “State of the Union” about his effort to ringlead primary challenges to Manchin and Sinema but mostly Sinema. He’ll also discuss the prospects for a revived, if pared down, version of Build Back Better.

Plan A is toast. There's no Plan B.

Quick Hillary Update

On January 17, I noted here that the Clintons and their old retainer Dick Morris have been trying to create a Hillary wave. At the time, I noted that Morris said,

“Hillary has set up a brilliant strategy that nobody else is able to do,” Morris added. “Knowing the people around her, I believe there is only one person capable of that level of thinking — and that’s her husband, Bill.

How's that working out? According to Paul Bedard,

In the first polling deep dive into her chances to win the 2024 Democratic presidential primary and eventual race against Trump, Clinton turned out to be no more popular than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and far less popular than Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Michelle Obama in a potential primary.

. . . “The new hope of a revived Hillary Clinton gets beaten by Trump, 51% to 41%, with Trump beating her among independents, 52% to 37%; among suburban voters, 52% to 39%; and taking 19% among liberals, 13% among Democrats, and 10% of Biden 2020 voters,” he told us.

While it throws cold water on a Clinton run, the survey is the latest to show Trump is not only in charge of the GOP but he's also the pick of Republican voters to run in 2024.

The Democrat party has moved to the left and feminized itself in the years since Hillary has been out of public office -- note that the top Democrat primary contenders other than Biden listed above are Hillary, AOC, Kamala Harris, and Michelle Obama, notwithstanding Hillary has more substance than any of the others in a very weak field.

On the other hand, if Trump for whatever reason is unable to run, there are other strong Republicans who seem to be positioning themselves for 2024, including DeSantis and Mike Pompeo.

Politico Looks For Causes

A headkine on Politico yesterday: Why Schumer picked a filibuster fight he couldn't win.

Chuck Schumer doesn’t typically lead his caucus into losing votes that divide Democrats. He made an exception for election reform.

The Senate majority leader has run a 50-50 Senate for a year now, longer than anyone else. The whole time, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have consistently communicated to Schumer that he wouldn’t get their votes to weaken the filibuster, no matter the underlying issue. But his decision to force the vote on the caucus anyway — and get 48 Democrats on the record for a unilateral rules change dubbed "the nuclear option" — will go down as one of Schumer’s riskiest moves as leader.

Politico does all it can to spin it as a some sort of secretlly brilliant move for Schumer, but it keeps trying to answer that pesky question -- why.

Schumer usually touts his caucus' unity, declining to engage in extended debates over issues that divide his 50 members. This time, Democrats were fine with isolating the holdouts.

. . . Republicans view the real leftward pressure on Schumer as coming from outside the chamber.

“He’s feeling incredible pressure from his progressive base. And also, his own political future may depend on his performance, too, to avoid a difficult primary,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a frequent sparring partner of Schumer’s.

But having asked the question, however indirectly, Politico never quite comes up with a satisfactory answer.

Some Democrats suggested that Schumer's move on Wednesday was only the start of a long campaign to peel off Manchin and Sinema. Another unilateral rules change vote this year isn't off the table for the party.

But as the midterms approach, now only ten months away, time for that "long campaign" is growing short, while at least for now, the prospects for success after November seem unpropitious. And in that case, is there a Plan B? This is the problem I keep seeing. Faced with the collapse of Plan A, President Biden and Leader Schumer keep insisting they can get Plan A done anyhow. John Fund in the UK Daily Mail circles a little closer to the real issue:

For Washington insiders, the decision to keep his current team into his second year as president is inexplicable.

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican not known for his partisanship, called on Biden to fire his chief of staff, Ron Klain, for pushing a 'guaranteed-to-fail vote' on killing the Senate filibuster that he argued was a political ploy.

'It's CYA (cover your ass) week in Washington,' Sasse told Fox News. He said the vote was held in part 'so that Ron Klain can throw some chum at the Democratic Party's progressive base.'

. . . Sasse focused on Klain, because it's common knowledge that the 60-year-old backroom operator has unusual power in the Biden White House.

Klain first worked with Biden in 1987, when he was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee while Biden was chair and assisted Biden during his ill-fated 1988 presidential campaign. That campaign ended after Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, head of Britain's Labour Party.

Klain later served as Biden's chief of staff when he was Barack Obama's vice president.

As President Biden's chief of staff he has been dubbed 'the most influential chief of staff of recent vintage' in an admiring New York Times profile and The Master of Disaster by his critics.

But neither account -- Politico's theory that the failed filibuster vote was actually evidence of Schumer's unacknowledged brilliance, nor Fund's theory that it all goes back to Ron Klain and Biden's unwavering faith in him -- explains the why in any satisfactory way. Schumer can be brilliant only if he pulls the rabbit out of the hat before November, which is not a realistic prospect. Klain is nothing but a chief of staff, whom presidents routinely fire no matter how much they like them.

It's hard to avoid the choice Politico wants to avoid, that the pressure for the failed filibuster vote came from outside the senate with the cooperation of Klain. My sense of things continues to be, though, that it's related to the putative deal that was made for Sanders to drop out of the 2020 Democrat nomination race in favor of Biden, in exchange for Biden's support for the Plan A agenda. The problem continues to be that there's no Plan B.

What You See Is What You Get

I dipped in and out of Biden's press conference yesterday. As of this morning, there are many takes on it, but what struck me in particular was this sequence, in response to a question from (I think) Peter Doocy:

Why are you trying so hard in your first year to pull the country so far to the left?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m not. I don’t know what you consider to be too far to the left if, in fact, we’re talking about making sure that we had the money for COVID, making sure we had the money to put together the Bipartisan Infrastructure, and making sure we were able to provide for those things that, in fact, would significantly reduce the burden on the working-class people but make them — they have to continue to work hard. I don’t know how that is pointed to the left.

If you may recall, I — you guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders. I’m not. I like him, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat, and I have been. And mainstream Democrats have overwhelmingly — if you notice, the 48 of the 50 Republi- — Democrats supported me in the Senate on virtually everything I’ve asked.

This is remarkably disingenuous. He cites primarily the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. but he omits Build Back Better, which was his 2020 campaign theme, and on which he was at length defeated in the senate. Build Back Better was so important to the House Progressive Caucus that they held the bipartisan bill hostage to it, insisting they be passed together. Speaker Pelosi did all she could to enable this, and Biden certainly appears to have been on board as well. Eventually, neither the Squad nor Speaker Pelosi nor Biden could prevent the two bills being separated and BBB's eventual defeat.

He then says he isn't Bernie Sanders, but in saying that, I think he unintentionally reveals the basic deal that got him the 2020 nomination: although early in the primary contest, it seemed like Sanders would get the nomination, the lizard people decided he couldn't beat Trump, but Biden could. However, at the core of the deal I'm pretty sure was an agreement that in return for the nomination and the support of the party left, Biden would support an essentially Sanders style platform, and that's what he's done over the past year. His real agenda was set by Speaker Pelosi, Sen Sanders, and the Squad.

The analysis I've seen this morning basically mentions nothing new -- the press conference was full of the usual stumbles, misspeaks, gaffes, insults, and outbursts. The conclusion was essentially unanimous, pro or con, Biden will make no course corrections. This isn't reassuring. Bill Clinton, faced with losses in the 1994 midterms, recalibrated and changed course in 1995 and pivoted off the Oklahoma City bombing to become a triangulator. He was able to use charm and flexibility to stay in office, first against Dole in 1996, and then against impeachment in 1998.

Biden clearly has neither charm nor flexibility. I still think he's not impaired or mentally unfit, at least insofar as he is thought to have a medical problem related to dementia. His ability, systematically if unconvincingly, to deny and deflect even the mildest criticisms of his performance yesterday reflects this. He is, though, shallow and obtuse.

Insofar as he has a plan, it sounds like he'll attack the anticipated results of the November midterms by calling them illegitimate. I'm not sure if it was wise for him to telegraph this now, as it gives the Republicans time to plan a counter strategy and work on other issues like Hunter's business deals and whether Joe profited from them, as he certainly must have done.

Biden's basic problem is that the Götterdämmerung strategy, the overall Democrat plan to implement a great reset by 2022 and not worry about the post-midterm consequences, has failed. The main takeaway from yesterday's press conference is that there's no Plan B, while Speaker Pelosi, the main architect of Plan A, is heading toward political limbo. Biden himself, while not senile, doesn't have the capacity to come up with a viable new plan himself.