A State That Will Live in Infamy

A State That Will Live in Infamy February 10, 2016

 

New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee
It’s a pretty little state. That much, at least, can be said for the place.  And it has almost 800,000 registered voters.  (Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)

 

By handing Donald Trump a huge victory and otherwise muddling the Republican presidential waters, New Hampshire has put The Donald back into a dominant position for the party’s nomination.

 

Governor John Kasich has practically lived in New Hampshire for the past weeks and months.  He took a distant second in New Hampshire and he would probably be a decent president, but it’s doubtful that he has the organization, the funding, or the personal appeal to do especially well in the far-flung primaries that are coming soon.

 

Otherwise, Senator Cruz, Governor Bush, and Senator Rubio finished in a tight cluster, but in a way that will prolong Mr. Bush’s wan hopes and that has definitely blunted what was quaintly called, until the most recent Republican debate, “Marcomentum.”

 

Essentially, New Hampshire has prevented support from coalescing around a single Republican challenger to the Trumpist juggernaut.

 

Thus, although Chris Christie and one or two others may well drop out of the race — though maybe not former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, who racked up 0.0% of the vote in Iowa and likely won’t end up with as many as 150 votes from all of New Hampshire — Cruz and Bush and Rubio will continue on.  They all have the money and the organization to continue contending for the nomination, but they’ll also continue to divide the non-Trumpist vote, with no clear alternative to Mr. Trump’s candidacy emerging in the near term.  And, if such an alternative doesn’t materialize soon, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

 

And who will he run against?

 

Probably not Bernie Sanders.

 

Comrade Bernie won by a very large margin on Tuesday (“Live for Free or Die!”), but it’s not clear that his appeal will continue into the coming primary states.

 

Still, maybe it will.  At least relatively speaking.  Hillary Clinton is an extremely weak candidate.

 

But will Joe Biden now rethink his decision not to run?  He’s always wanted to be president, he has quite good name recognition, and there’s a virtually inexhaustible supply of British Labour party biographies on which he can draw for his life story.

 

Will Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, really enter the race as an independent?  I’ve heard no deafening national outcry demanding that he run.  However, he’s always wanted to be president, too; he’s far richer, even, than The Donald; and our nation is definitely facing a Slurpee and Big Gulp crisis.

 

Imagine a presidential race pitting the billionaire-hating New York socialist Bernie Sanders against the New York multi-billionaire nationalist progressive Donald Trump against the New York mega-multi-billionaire nanny-state progressive Michael Bloomberg.

 

Personally, I would rather imagine a presidential race that included a conservative.  But that’s apparently just me.  And life is tough, and then you die.  It doesn’t look, right now, as if 2016 is going to be my year in politics.

 

2016 plainly isn’t New Hampshire’s year, either.  Maybe the state will redeem itself in 2020.  Maybe.  In the meantime, though, New Hampshire has let the nation down.  Big time.

 

 


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