They Made Her Squeal

The importance of being Ernst is no more.

Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who was first elected to the Senate from Iowa in 2014 who likened cutting pork-barrel spending to castrating pigs on her family farm and who won a second term in 2020 despite knowing precious little about other forms of farming, reportedly will not seek a third term next year.  She is bowing out in part because of her reasoning for supporting Trump's Medicaid cuts (because sooner or later we're all going to die) but also because she was reluctant to support Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Defense Secretary because of his misogyny and her own experiences in the military.  Although Ernst did end up supporting after arm was twisted - literally, I assume - her initial reticence angered Trump and his cronies.  

It's appropriate that she grew up on a farm that raised pigs.  Because she's dead meat.

Numerous Iowa Democrats are already lining up for the U.S. Senate primary in the state next year, but while i have no idea who will be the Democratic nominee for Ernst's seat, I can tell you who won't be - Theresa Greenfield, who ran against Ernst in 2020.  Even though she was more knowledgeable than Ernst regarding agricultural issues, the simple fact is, she still lost to Ernst.  As I always like to note, Democrats don't let failed nominees try again for the same office - they shoot their wounded.  Though, in Iowa, they likely opt for castration.

Make 'em squeal.

Biden His Time

No doubt about it; the Democrats had an apocalyptic week.  Following Trump's State of the Union address, which went off without a hitch (always possible, given his penchant for riffing), Trump's approval rating went up to 49 percent - meaning he has more support than he did the day was elected to the White House - his approval rating on the economy surged to an inexplicable 63 percent, and Democrats suddenly looked very churlish by talking the economy down.  Meanwhile, the Senate acquitted Trump in his impeachment trial (with Mitt Romney being the only Republican to vote for his conviction), he's fired Alexander Vindman from the his national security staff for testifying against him in the impeachment inquiry hearings and he sacked EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland for the same thing.  The Democrats may soon feel his full fury; Nancy Pelosi is still reeling from criticism of her act of tearing up a copy of Trump's last speech, the Trump base has been shored up against them in advance of the election, and the party still - still - doesn't have a presidential front runner.

And then there's Joe Biden.

Between Senate investigations of him and his son proceeding and his fourth-place showing in Iowa, Biden looks like a dead man walking, a man who began the campaign season as the next President of the United States but now looks to end it - prematurely - as a relic of the past who was too cocky and too self-assured to realize that his sell-by date was up and that he ought to go gently into the good night before either Bernie bros or Trumpers push him headfirst into it.

Not so fast.  What we learned from Iowa and what we may yet learn from New Hampshire is that their first-in-the-nation status in the primary an caucus system is so antiquated that the "gut punch" Biden got in Iowa and may yet get in New Hampshire may not matter much.  Biden is on the edge of the cliff, but he's fighting his way back from it, as his aggressive stance in New Hampshire and in the ABC debate this past Friday would suggest, and he's counting on respectable finishes there and in Nevada before going on to South Carolina.  

Oh, I've seen and heard the snark against Biden from various pundits, but this all seems to be from the perspective of overpaid media personalities taking cheap shots against whoever happens to be down, and this time it's Biden.  Snark is just something every politician has has to deal with since Gary Hart made a fool of himself at a newspaper publisher's convention in the 1988 campaign and opened the floodgates for death by punditry. (The snark Beto O'Rourke ultimately got was a classic example of the media tearing down a figure they'd built up once they realized they should never have built him up in the first place.  If I may refer you to a critique of Beto from just before he quit the presidential campaign . . . ) 

Biden may be a lousy candidate, but he would make a better President than he is a candidate, and he knows that.  That's what keeps him going and makes him keep trying.  By his own admission, he isn't going to win in New Hampshire, but if he finishes a solid second or even third, he'll live to fight another day.  Two other days - Nevada on February 22 and South Carolina on Leap Day, February 29.    

Again, I'm not endorsing or supporting Biden and I will only vote for him if he is the Democratic presidential nominee.  And truth be told, it's looking less likely that that will happen.  Especially after Bernie Sanders and the now-ascendant Pete Buttigieg finished strongly in Iowa and look to capitalize on that momentum in New Hampshire.  But they'd better start worrying because pretty soon the campaign moves toward states where support for them is not is not as strong.  If Joe Biden can capitalize on that circumstance, he'll be in better shape.  If he can't, well, that's why Michael Bloomberg is waiting in the wings.

I'll look at Bloomberg later.

Loathing and Marriage

Dick Cheney has been appearing so much on television talk shows these days, people think he's considering a presidential run in 2012.

What would he run for, the excitement? With his heart? Why would he run, because of his excellent chances of winning? With a nineteen percent popularity rating?

And why would her suddenly endorse gay marriage, given the opposition to gay marriage among the Republican base? Since his daughter Mary is a lesbian, what stopped him from endorsing it in 2004? Oh, wait - Karl Rove.

Then again, the first caucus is in Iowa, and the first primary is in New Hampshire, both states as of today having legalized gay marriage. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed the bill making it legal in the Granite State today.

Nonetheless, we may have a pretty hard time accepting Cheney as an avuncular figure of trust, like Walter Cronkite.

Incidentally, this leaves Rhode Island - the place once described in the seventeenth century as a moral sewer by Massachusetts Puritans - as the only New England state not to allow gay marriage. Several attempts to change that have failed.

Meanwhile, putative presidential possibility Newt Gingrich says that maybe he was too strong in calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Oh - now he tells us!

Gay Marriage Progress

With hopes for gun control legislation stalled by the continuing fear of wrath of the National Rifle Association and the chance to do something about global warming in jeopardy of being torpedoed the ramblings of noted skinflint Newt Gingrich (who says it's too costly to do anything about) and noted scientific non-expert Michele Bachmann finding no problem with a little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's still refreshing to note that gay marriage is slowly gaining acceptance. Iowa's Supreme Court ruled that it's constitutional to ban gay marriages because it discriminates against gay couples. Meanwhile, Connecticut's Republican governor signed a bill allowing it in her state (even though it was already technically legal, while the Vermont legislature legalized it over the veto of its Republican governor.

This strange confluence of events is federalism in action. It's allowing the issue to play out in the states and it's slowly gaining acceptance in unlikely places like Iowa and being fought for tooth and nail in Vermont, but the momentum is clearly on the side of proponents of this important civil rights issue.

The sticking point remains, oddly enough, California, where the state's "laid-back" residents proved to be too uptight to allow it by vote despite the acceptance of gays in San Francisco and the movie industry and the support for gay marriage from Governor Schwarzenegger. At least California voters expressed their bigotry in a secret ballot; Miss California USA's objections were too blatantly public and downright foolish.