So here are the records from one Wide World of News reader:
You know what else is true about this person?
She is a multimillionaire CEO of a major corporation.
And one more thing: SHE HAS NEVER SUPPORTED WIDE WORLD OF NEWS WITH A PAID SUBSCRIPTION OR CONTRIBUTION.
Not one penny.
DON’T BE *THAT* GAL!!
Voluntarily become a paying subscriber or contributor today.
Wide World of News has no sponsors, ads, or corporate backing.
All of the financial compensation I receive for this work is from you, the readers.
DON’T BE THAT GAL!!!
Become a paying subscriber at fixed rates (or become a Founding Member…) here:
Or you can contribute the amount of your choice through one of these methods:
* Buy me a cocktail (at Vegas prices….), tax and server tip included, by clicking here.
* Buy me a cup of coffee (or a week’s worth) by clicking here.
* Check. Send a simple email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask where you can send a check.
• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)
• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
Thank you for your support.
Mark
****
When it comes to the 2024 presidential race, here are the four questions I talk most often about with my sources:
1. Will Joe Biden really end up as the Democrats’ candidate?
2. If not, how will the party’s nomination process play out?
3. What will be the contours of Trump vs. DeSantis?
4. Who is the third-most-likely Republican nominee?
Here are the current answers:
1. Head yes, gut no (and/but almost no Republican thinks he will be the nominee, which is the same view held by some longtime Biden friends).
2. Really messy, giving the Republicans a potential general election advantage.
3. Savage and inexplicably boring.
4. No one and everyone (the case gets made for Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Sununu, Mike Pompeo, etc).
The base case now is that Biden is the nominee and we all pretty much know what that means will be on offer, in terms of the candidate, his running mate, his themes, the tenor and cadence of his campaigning.
The base case now is that, even if some other Republican candidate catches on, it is in reality a two-person race, and one that is both pretty uninteresting and predictable.
Trump, of course, even after years of being in our collective faces, maintains the capacity to surprise, but his predictably-unpredictable act has gotten a little stale for both the press and the public. And there has never been a more rote candidate than DeSantis, whose paint-by-numbers grievance routine gives him a political ingenuity rating that makes Dick Durbin look like Pat Buchanan at an Arizona gun show.
Trump at least tries on occasion to do something different, coming out foursquare on Friday for building new American cities that take advantage of jetpack technology (seriously). The Sunshine State topper, on the other hand, is temping me to start a daily count of how long he goes without doing or saying anything the least bit surprising.
I’ve read, listened to, and watched a lot of media this morning, and most of what is interesting pertains to my four big questions, so here you go:
****
I’m now more open than I have ever been to the possibility that the president could face a wounding nomination challenge if he decides to run. The combination of the manifestations of his apparent decline with built-in voter attitudes about his age, along with his remaining/emerging problems on the left (as with the sustained flap over the DC crime package) means you could see a candidate who plays this correctly get in the neighborhood of 25% of the vote in the early contests, which could lead to some real problems for the incumbent. And that’s before we game out formal debates….
Three exhibits today:
1.
2.
3. The New York Times profiles Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, whose capacity to attract talented strategists and his fat wallet make him a threat if the time arrives. This comes very close to an essential read.
****
As for Trump vs. DeSantis, check out this Bloomberg story, as we await Trump’s carefully crafted Saturday night live appearance at CPAC:
Trump, allies say, seems set on “Ron DeSanctimonious,” even though others around him don’t think it’s a bullseye. Some of the new ideas the former president’s entertained: “Ron DisHonest.” “Ron DeEstablishment.” Or even, “Tiny D.”
His team has spent weeks trying to dig up dirt on DeSantis’s record as governor; his wife, Casey, a former television journalist; his year teaching at a boarding school in Georgia and his record as a member of Congress, including support for raising the US retirement age and partly privatizing Medicare as part of then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s conservative budget plan….
Taking down DeSantis before he attains too much momentum and donor cash is a priority for Trump’s allies, who aim to sully the governor enough to dent his poll numbers and support within Republican circles. Two of Trump’s top campaign aides previously worked for DeSantis. One Trump adviser said that in his CPAC speech, the former president will seek to draw a strong contrast with his top rival.
Trump, naturally, is showing all of his (current) cards for assailing his rival.
We have seen DeSantis’ “who cares?” counterpunch.
But this rivalry will not be fully engaged until we see the nature of DeSantis’ punches.
****
On the Trump Trump Trump front:
1. Politico continues its split personality about the Maven of Mar-a-Lago, with another round of its daily diet of two kinds of stories: pieces about how Trump has lost his hold on the party/movement and pieces about how Team Trump is cleverly taking advantage of its advantages (of an early start, experience, infrastructure, and relationships).
Here's one from the latter category:
Former President Donald Trump is intensifying his courtship of influential GOP figures in key primary states – this time, over steaks and ice cream at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Trump spent Thursday night wooing over a dozen leaders of the Nevada Republican Party, his first outreach to a state that is expected to be among the first to hold its nominating contest. According to two people present, the former president spent nearly three hours peppering the party officials with questions about the Nevada political landscape, previewing his weekend speech at the CPAC conference and telling his guests that he plans to visit the state in the next few months.
2. Here’s another Politico story, in which they got an exclusive on Trump’s latest issue gambit about “Freedom Cities.” Get used to the general dynamic, in which the Dominant Media largely ignores or laughs at/off Trump’s policy ideas, preferring to gaze at his challenges and challengers. Voters might see things differently.
3. Oh, and the Washington Post has an essential reading look at the legal cases against Trump, with a focus on Jack Smith’s targeting of the Trump lawyers. One vital subtheme of this article is the question of how Smith views the political calendar:
Smith’s pace appears to be quickening as the 2024 presidential election starts to take shape, with Trump once again a candidate and President Biden — Garland’s boss — poised to seek a second term. Trump so far has two declared Republican opponents. Legal experts say that if Smith brings criminal charges against Trump, those charges would likely be pending when the GOP primary debates begin in August….
“Given the approaching primary season, the special counsel is already racing against the political clock,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “The reality is that the closer we get to the 2024 election, the more perilous any indictment becomes for the special prosecutor….”
Each legal battle over testimony could prove time-consuming. If charges are brought, prosecutors are required by law to be prepared to go to trial within 70 days. But it is very common in federal court for both sides to agree to extensions, and sometimes a year or more can pass between a charge being filed and a defendant going on trial.
“Smith knows how a calendar works,” said one lawyer involved with the Jan. 6 probe, who declined to be named to discuss sensitive matters. “This thing is going to be messy if he brings indictments, any way you cut it. But it’ll be particularly messy if you have trials going on in the middle of primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Former federal prosecutor Dan Shallman said he doubts Smith has stepped on the gas because of concerns about the campaign season, citing what he called the special counsel’s “well-earned” reputation for being fast and aggressive.
“They couldn’t care less that Trump is a candidate now — it may matter to political pundits, but not to Jack Smith,” said Shallman, who does not know Smith personally but has worked in similar legal circles. “Ultimately, the special counsel and his team will make charging decisions based on the facts and the law.”
Count me in the group that believes that nothing in these proceedings will move fast enough to avoid having indictments and legal wrangling happen right inside the election process, working largely to Trump’s benefit, unless an indictment is based on substantially clearer facts and law than we can now see through the glass darkly.
And if Smith & Co. are really indifferent to the political calendar, heaven help us all.
****
As for DeSantis, his upcoming non-candidate national tour keeps expanding, including to early-voting states:
And NBC News reports the important/obvious, that bundlers who want to book face time need to guarantee they can bring in at least $1 million to get him to town.
Presidential campaigns are much more about earned press coverage than paid media; ironically, the only two candidates who have no trouble getting covered are the two who can raise substantially more than their rivals.
****
As for those rivals, the speechwriting teams for Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo crafted really well done texts for their principals to deliver at CPAC, with carefully-framed shots at Trump that avoided head-on attacks, all true to their biographies, visions, and demeanors.
Unfortunately for those two hopefuls:
1. The Rules of the Dominant Media Game demand direct attacks, or they are implicitly framed as wimpy.
2. CPAC is Trump Country.
3. Catching a spark in a field that includes King Kong and Godzilla is really going to be hard.
Two leading Republicans took veiled jabs at former President Donald Trump at an annual gathering of conservatives Friday, knocking “celebrity leaders” not in tune with reality while noting winnable elections that had been lost as they urged a party course correction ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.
But their refusal to call him out by name underscored the risks faced by potential and declared challengers worried about alienating Trump’s loyal base.
In their remarks, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley — both of whom served in the Trump administration — offered a snapshot of how the former president’s declared and potential 2024 opponents are trying to delicately navigate his dominant role in the party while looking for ways to differentiate themselves in what could be a nasty and crowded primary contest.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley stepped into the hallway after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday to supporters asking for selfies and autographs — and, from others, a less friendly greeting.
“We love Trump, we love Trump!” a crowd around her started chanting. Some Haley supporters shouted her name back as the former U.N. ambassador escaped with staff to an elevator.
I still predict that some third (or third and fourth) candidacy will have its moment in the sun, especially if someone leverages hard work and attention in Iowa or New Hampshire.
But it is tough now to see who that will be, or how that will happen.
Until DeSantis and Trump fully engage, the Dominant and conservative Medias are holding their collective breath.
And once they fully engage, when it comes for opportunities for media and mass voter attention, there will be as much oxygen as on Mars (which is not a lot of oxygen, per Google: “If humans are ever going to travel to Mars, they'll need to get oxygen from somewhere. Compared to the Earth's atmosphere, which is 21 percent oxygen, the Red Planet's atmosphere is a miniscule 0.16 percent oxygen.”)
How to get sustained, positive, on-message attention is the challenge for all of the other Republican candidates (and for any Democrat who wants to take on Joe Biden).
****
IN OTHER NEWS
* Is this video of Steph Curry from December real???
* Rolling Stone has one of the most delightful and complicated song ranking lists of all times: “Fake Bands, Real Songs: The 50 Best Tunes by Made-Up Musicians”
From Number 50….
To Number 37….
To Number 1…
…you won’t want to miss this one!