• Biden spoke last night for 67 minutes. Where’s that shrinkflation when you need it?
• Biden yelled his way through a State of the Union address aimed almost exclusively at shoring up his base. Swing voters are not going to be persuaded that the economy is just great—not with these prices and these interest rates—or that it’s the Democrats who are tough on the border, or that a party that just tried to take the leading presidential candidate off the ballot is making a brave stand for democracy. Biden’s fear about his left flank was most apparent when he chastised Israel at greater length than he condemned Hamas, the terrorist organization that began the current conflict and could, as he himself noted, end it at any time. Biden may prove more successful in persuading Americans of his deceptions about abortion and IVF, not least because the press is on his side and Republicans are easily scared. But his overall strategy is risky. It’s not progressives’ complaints that have pulled his job-approval rating to less than half his age, and catering to them will not change that.
• Nikki Haley was able to stay in the campaign through Super Tuesday. But her one-on-one contest against Donald Trump was a mismatch. She won Vermont and Washington, D.C., and showed respectably in a handful of other states. But Trump’s Super Tuesday dominance, another display of his status as a quasi-incumbent, ended any pretense that she had a path to the nomination. There was probably no beating Donald Trump this year, certainly not after the indictments. Haley deserves credit for talking about fiscal discipline and supporting aid for Ukraine, issues now unpopular among the Republican base, and for becoming more pointed in her criticisms of Trump as the race progressed. But sounding too much like a Republican circa 2004 limited her appeal beyond the 30 percent or so of Republicans who are anti-Trump. It remains to be seen whether she will endorse Trump—and, if so, how many of those voters will follow her suggestion. Trump should still want her endorsement and should be trying to woo her, and those voters, instead of engaging in his typically graceless behavior. As we now approach the general election nobody wanted, we still believe Republicans would have been better served, in November and beyond, to have chosen someone other than Trump as their standard-bearer.
• Speaking to a crowd in Virginia, Donald Trump said that MAGA “represents 96 percent and maybe 100 percent” of the Republican Party. He continued, “We’re getting rid of the Romneys of the world. We want to get Romneys and those out.” Trump has had a fair amount of success in this endeavor. But most Republican voters, in polls, continue to say that they do not identify with MAGA. His administration would have had few successes without Romney, or at least non-MAGA, Republicans, and would not have existed if not for the votes of such Republicans. Trump’s insistence on total loyalty to him—a one-way transaction—militates against both the creation of a broad coalition and its ability to govern successfully.
• In California, all candidates from any party appear on the primary ballot together, and the top two finishers go to the general election. Given the heavy Democratic tilt of the state, this has often yielded a general election between two Democrats. The 2022 election was the first time in a decade that a Republican Senate candidate even made the November ballot, and it helped buoy the party’s turnout in crucial House races. The 2024 race to succeed Dianne Feinstein looked like a heavyweight Democratic matchup of “Resistance” hero Adam Schiff, progressive darling Katie Porter, and anti-warrior Barbara Lee. But Republicans recruited former Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres star Steve Garvey, and a funny thing happened: Schiff spent millions elevating Garvey so he could avoid a one-on-one fight with Porter in November. It was straight from the Democratic playbook for meddling on the Republican side, and it worked: Schiff will face Garvey in the fall and likely defeat him easily. But Garvey’s presence on the ballot could help Republican turnout in other races. Porter is fuming that she lost because of “an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.” Democrats deserve these tastes of their own medicine.
• Democrats hold three governorships up for election in 2024—North Carolina, Delaware, and Washington—and no incumbent is running again. Republicans are understandably salivating at the prospect of contesting the North Carolina race in a presidential year without the term-limited Roy Cooper. On Super Tuesday, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson won 66 percent of the GOP-primary vote. Robinson is a socially conservative Trump loyalist who rose to prominence as a defender of gun rights. He also has a checkered financial record and a long rap sheet of garishly controversial statements. Some of these are merely impolitic, but impolitic is not the best thing for a politician. Some have been misquoted by his enemies. But others raise much more serious questions about his beliefs and temperament, especially on topics such as the Holocaust and Jewish influence in Hollywood. His Democratic opponent, state attorney general Josh Stein, will press Robinson on these issues. Republican primary voters could have made Stein’s job harder.
• Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) was indicted for a fourth time, adding more than a dozen charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice to those of corruption and bribery already on his burgeoning legal tab. Between his alleged dealings with Egypt, Qatar, and a former New Jersey insurance broker—he is, among other things, accused of having exchanged political favors for cash, cars, and gold bars, a caricature of a kickback—one can easily lose the plot. (The story seems to involve more than one Mercedes-Benz of obscure provenance.) If the accusations, multiplying since last September, are true, the senator must have exercised corruption with Olympian stamina.
• Hunter Biden testified that he connected his father with his business associates on dozens of occasions, including when Joe Biden was vice president. Yet Biden fils indignantly insisted before the House impeachment inquiry that this did not mean his father was involved in “my business”; just Hunter being friendly. As for that “business”: The president’s son touted his professional credentials but did little to refute testimony from his former partner Devon Archer, who had testified that they were selling what he euphemistically called the “Biden brand.” The younger Biden had convenient memory lapses, particularly about an extortionate WhatsApp message he had directed to a Chinese partner. The only thing he claimed to be sure of was that his dad was not sitting with him, as that message said. Hunter did confirm, though, that Joe Biden was “the big guy” to whom a partner proposed giving a 10 percent stake in one of their ventures with CEFC, a Xi regime–tied conglomerate. Meanwhile, Jim Biden confirmed that he’d paid brother Joe $40,000—i.e., 10 percent of a $400,000 slice of a CEFC payment shared by Hunter. The $40,000 check says “loan repayment,” but Jim admitted there is no loan documentation. There is, however, a surfeit of sleaze.
• The Fani Willis follies continue in Fulton County, Ga. Trump and his co-defendants seek to disqualify Willis (who has indicted them on state RICO charges) and Nathan Wade, the special counsel whom she has appointed, paid lavishly, and accompanied on luxury vacations. The pair maintain they became romantic in 2022, only after she hired him. Judge Scott McAfee found that Terrence Bradley, Wade’s friend and divorce lawyer, had to testify what he knew about the affair. On the stand, however, Bradley tried to minimize prior texts in which he had said the relationship “absolutely” went back several years. Judge McAfee said he would decide the prosecutors’ fate within two weeks. Since then, two more witnesses have emerged: lawyers who say Bradley told them the affair started years ago, with one claiming to have overheard a phone call in which Willis discouraged Bradley from sharing what he knows. Meantime, McAfee soon faces the voters in the county that elected Willis. Will he bounce her from the Trump case if it costs him his coveted judgeship? Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of these trials.
• “Extrem dumm,” tweeted Elon Musk, in German, to ensure his meaning isn’t diluted in translation, after receiving word that sabotage had rendered the Tesla Gigafactory outside Berlin inoperative for about a week. The environmentalist outfit that claimed responsibility for arson at one of Europe’s largest electric-vehicle plants calls itself the “Vulcan Group”—after the Roman god of fire, presumably, rather than the highly rational, dispassionate aliens of Star Trek. Highly illogical.
• France voted to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution. Thousands of Parisians gathered in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower to celebrate the amendment, passed on March 4, that cements abortion’s status as a “guaranteed freedom” in the country. The crowd, featuring topless women in body paint, screamed and broke out into the girl-boss Beyoncé song “Run the World (Girls).” President Emmanuel Macron announced a “sealing ceremony”—a tradition reserved for the nation’s most significant laws—to be held on International Women’s Day. The amendment limits the ability of future French leaders to “drastically modify” the existing law, which permits abortion up to 14 weeks into pregnancy. France was supposedly inspired by the end of Roe in America. But the Roe regime was far more extreme than what France, like several U.S. states, is celebrating. Sad, still, to see the birthplace of the slogan “liberty, fraternity, equality” so cruelly exclude unborn children from all of those goods.
• The post-Covid political environment has seen a seismic shift in favor of school choice, but even some red states have lagged. The Texas house, though controlled by Republicans, voted down Governor Greg Abbott’s school-choice plan. He then took his case to the voters by endorsing a slate of pro-school-choice primary challengers to ten incumbents. Five other Republicans who sank school choice retired rather than face a challenge. Of the ten challengers, five won and three were forced to a runoff. Three of the retirees’ seats went to pro-school-choice nominees, with the other two races going to runoffs. Abbott’s campaign likely benefited from intersecting with a less noble backlash against some of the same Republicans for impeaching state attorney general Ken Paxton. It will be taken as vindication by Paxton and may elevate some people who do not prove responsible in office. But the net result is likely to strengthen Abbott’s hand in enacting conservative policy in Austin and give more freedom to Texas parents and their children.
• The largest union filing for recognition from the National Labor Relations Board so far this year would cover 3,100 employees. They want to join the United Auto Workers union. Is it the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee that the UAW has tried to unionize in the past? Is it the Mercedes plant in Alabama? No, it’s 3,100 non-tenure-track faculty at Harvard who want to join the UAW. They would join Harvard’s graduate students and undergraduate nonacademic workers, who have already done so. About 100,000 of the UAW’s 380,000 active members are in higher education, and there are about as many UAW members in the University of California system as there are at General Motors. We’d still rather be governed by the first 3,100 names in the Boston phone book than by the 3,100 non-tenure-track faculty at Harvard—especially if they’re UAW members.
• Already, hundreds of people had been arrested for laying flowers at makeshift memorials to Alexei Navalny. Nonetheless, thousands gathered for his funeral in Moscow. One man said, “I’m afraid, of course, but despite the fear, a man died in prison and we are here. It’s the least we can do.” A woman compared Navalny and Vladimir Putin, his jailer and effective murderer: “One sacrificed himself to save the country, the other one sacrificed the country to save himself.” Many foreign diplomats, including the ambassador of the United States, attended the funeral. When we speak of “democratic solidarity” with people under dictatorship, this is the kind of thing we mean. After the funeral, the state arrested an untold number more, using surveillance footage and facial-recognition technology. Putin has gone far to re-Sovietize Russia. As in Soviet days, some of the bravest people on earth are Russian.
• In the 1980s, when the U.S. had Ronald Reagan and the U.K. had Margaret Thatcher, Canada had Brian Mulroney. In a debate before the 1984 Canadian election, Liberal Party leader John Turner said he had no option but to allow Liberal patronage appointments in government. With righteous anger and trademark Canadian respect, Mulroney retorted, “You had an option, sir,” and his clarion call for confident leadership earned his party an outright majority in Parliament in a landslide victory. It might seem obvious that the U.S. and Canada get along, but that’s in large part because of Mulroney. A previous government, under Pierre Trudeau, had cozied up to Castro in Cuba and thumbed its nose at the U.S. Mulroney joined America’s stand against communism around the world and pursued a free-trade agreement with the U.S., which was later expanded to include Mexico and became NAFTA. He privatized numerous state-owned enterprises, oversaw the stabilization of inflation, and made Canadian politics competitive again, paving the way for the Conservative premiership of Stephen Harper—and soon, most likely, that of Pierre Poilievre. Dead at 84, R.I.P.