The rematch: New Hampshire primary open thread
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If you want to know what’s wrong with political journalism in this country, check out the lede to this NYT story:
President Biden is cruising to the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald J. Trump could begin to wrap up his party’s nod within days.
America’s response: This can’t be real.
Even as both men stroll toward likely summer coronations and a fall rematch, an undercurrent of disbelief is coursing through the country. Many Republicans view Mr. Biden as so politically and physically weak that they think his party will replace him. Many Democrats can’t fathom that Mr. Trump could win another nomination while he is facing 91 felony counts and four criminal trials.
This incredulity — ranging from casual doubtfulness to conspiratorial denial — has lurked beneath a year of polling showing a deeply gloomy public mood, and has emerged in dozens of interviews over the past two weeks as well as recent declarations from candidates and political commentators.
“They’ll pull a switcheroo at the last minute,” David Lage, a Republican missionary from Spring Hill, Iowa, said of Democrats. “They’ve tried about every other dirty trick.”
Paige Leary of Exeter, N.H., an independent who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and for Democrats in previous presidential elections, also questioned whether Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee.
“The jury’s out,” she said. “We don’t know what will happen legally with Trump.”
This is pure uncut both siderism, that requires treating a perfectly reasonable question — how will Trump’s numerous criminal and civil trials affect his presidential campaign? — as equivalent to insane conspiracy-mongering about how “the Democrats” are going to magically remove Biden as the party’s nominee at the last minute.
Beyond that, all the horse race coverage requires by its nature treating the precise identity of the Democratic nominee as an important question — it is, under the circumstances, a trivial question, both because there’s no doubt about the answer, and because even if there were it would make no difference, since the choice is between liberal democracy and fascism.
In any event, tonight’s likely the night where everybody can stop pretending that there’s an actual race for either party’s nomination, although it’s conceivable that day of reckoning could be put off for another few weeks. That the race isn’t between two men, but two radically different and totally incompatible political ideologies is another one of those facts that still isn’t considered suitable for public consumption.