The field, at the moment

Where I see 'em, right now.

Biden: He’s still the front-runner, but is generating no enthusiasm. He’s supposedly electable, but he’s never won an election outside of the state of Delaware -- being Obama's Veep doesn't count. Not seeing it.

Warren: Somehow, she’s not dead, but it’s likely she's gaining on the rest of the Dem field because no one is currently reminding anyone of her flaws, which are manifest. I don’t suppose Trump will be too reticent about mentioning those flaws.

Sanders: A hateful crank, but crankery is always a growth industry on the Left. Running on little more than bile, however, and it’s difficult to see how he’ll hold off Warren.

Harris: I thought she’d be a stronger candidate, but she’s got the Ted Kennedy problem of the Roger Mudd variant. She’s running but she doesn’t seem to know why. And she can't hide her nasty streak.

Buttigieg: The more he says, the more repellent he becomes. As sanctimonious as John Marty, but without the bow-tied fashion sense. Of course, he’s actually running for vice president.

Booker: A classic senatorial windbag. His greatest asset is his self-regard. Coincidentally, it’s his greatest liability. Also running for vice president.

O’Rourke: A complete moron. Married well, though. Every generation throws a Kerry up the pop charts.

Klobuchar: Her magic surname means nothing outside of Minnesota, but her mediocrity shines through. Perhaps she could move to Illinois, change her name to Kupcinet, and try again in 2024.

Castro: One-time HUD secretaries often run for president – Jack Kemp and Ben Carson did, too. He won’t get any farther than they did, though. And he's not nearly as serious as either of them were.

Williamson: I really think she means well. She’s a gust of helium, but a successful one because we live in an unserious world and she has had the wit to monetize her foolishness. Too nice to be president.

Yang: Giving away other people’s money is always a popular position, at least if its not your money being given away. But he’s going nowhere.

Gabbard: She’s the most serious candidate in the Dem field and her antiwar bona fides are undeniable. But her gloomy worldview is a mismatch for this moment and her surfer packaging doesn't square with her overall message.

I understand there are other candidates, too. Maybe you think they're worth discussing, but I can't see why.

Clown Show, Part 1

I watched the first Dem debate last night. Quick impressions:

• Elizabeth Warren was omnipresent at first, speaking 6-7 times in the first half hour, but then largely disappeared the rest of the way. I am guessing someone got to the NBC moderators to let them know people were keeping track. She has "plans," but other than demanding more research about various issues, she didn't seem to have a plan for actual governance. NBC did her a favor by limiting her exposure in the second half of the debate.
• Oh, everyone here in Minnesota is rooting for Our Amy, but she doesn't have the chops. Her magic surname means nothing across the St. Croix River. She got off one semi-amusing line about conducting foreign policy in pajamas, which was probably a shot about Trump's Tweeting habits, but other than that she didn't register.
• Beto O'Rourke was a disaster. He's the emptiest of suits and his near miss against Ted Cruz in the last cycle tells you more about Cruz than it does about O'Rourke. He has nothing to say and doesn't say it especially well, either. He demonstrated the ability to speak high school level Spanish, though. Muy bien, dude.
• Cory Booker is a demagogue of the first rank, but he comes off as a bit, well, loony. He's long had a history of telling dubious anecdotes (his mythical pal T-Bone comes to mind), and his assertion about hearing gunshots in his neighborhood is an admission against interest -- sir, if you were mayor of Newark, shouldn't you have solved that issue by now? Many words, little substance.
• Julian Castro wants to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. And he'd also like complete open borders, apparently. He also wants "reproductive justice," but not for the unborn. And he'd like transgender women, who don't have a uterus, to have the ability to have an abortion, too. He's in touch with his world, I guess.
• Tulsi Gabbard has no shot, but she's interesting. She's a non-interventionist and that's an increasingly popular stance. She is also an attractive woman, but it didn't seem to help her much yesterday. 
• Bill De Blasio is not going to win. He's a left-wing Chris Christie with even less charm. He's likely to get run out of office in New York in the next election cycle. Other than that, he's just fine.
• John Delaney sounded sensible. But he looks like Mr. Peterson on The Bob Newhart Show. And we haven't elected a bald dude president since Eisenhower. And John Delaney is a former backbencher congressman from Maryland, not the Supreme Allied Commander.

  

  Frightened by Jay Inslee

• Jay Inslee was actually kinda frightening. And he looks like former Gophers coach Tim "Get That Chili Hot" Brewster. He's a one-note samba about climate change and came across as the sort of guy who would strap non-believers onto a windmill. 

  

  Losing again

  I am glad a sizable mountain range separates Inslee from the rest of the country.
• Tim Ryan is, from what we're told, a congressman from Ohio who has represented the Youngstown area for a long time. As Ohio congressmen go, he's far less entertaining than his predecessor James Traficant was, but he's got the baleful stare down pat. Here he looks like he wants to strangle Tulsi Gabbard with his bare hands:

The look of love is in your eyes

So who won the debate? Donald Trump. We'll see what the second clown show looks like tonight.

Dirty Cop Barr

I saw a little of the circus up on Capitol Hill yesterday, in which various half-witted Democratic senators (redundant, I suppose) tried to turn Attorney General William Barr into an international supervillain. I thought to myself --

• they don't really believe any of their claims, but 
• they need to get the narrative rolling right away, because 
• when Barr starts indicting people, they will then be able to claim he's a Trump stooge, and 
• that Hillary Clinton in particular needed to have that narrative in the air

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson got there first, with a list of useful reminders:

Russians likely fed salacious but untrue allegations about Trump to ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who was being paid in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to find dirt on Trump.

The Russians rightly assumed that Steele would lap up their fantasies, seed them among Trump-hating officials in the Barack Obama administration and thereby cause hysteria during the election, the transition and, eventually, the Trump presidency.

Russia succeeded in sowing such chaos, thanks ultimately to Clinton, who likely had broken federal laws by using a British national and, by extension, Russian sources to warp an election. Without the fallacious Steele dossier, the entire Russian collusion hoax never would have taken off.

100% true statement. Back to Hanson:

Without Steele's skullduggery, there likely would have been no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court-approved surveillance of Trump aide Carter Page. There might have been no FBI plants inserted into the Trump campaign. There might have been no subsequent leaking to the press of classified documents to prompt a Trump collusion investigation.

Given the Steele travesty and other past scandals, it is inexplicable that Clinton has not been indicted.

It is. But her luck could be running out soon, despite the 20-screen multiplex of project emanating from Cory Booker, Mazie Hirono, Kamala Harris, et al. Why? Back to Hanson:

For much of her professional life, Hillary Clinton had acted above and beyond the law on the assumption that as the wife of a governor, as first lady of the United States, as a senator from New York, as secretary of state and as a two-time candidate for the presidency, she could ignore the law without worry over the consequences.

For Clinton now to project that the president should be indicted suggests she is worried about her own potential indictment. And she is rightly concerned that for the first time in 40 years, neither she nor her husband is serving in government or running for some office, and therefore could be held accountable.

Thus, she and her patrons must turn William Barr into a dirty cop. The alternative?