Dear Weekend Jolter,
For a sense of how dispirited the country really is over this presidential election, consider that turnout in 2022 was the second-highest for a nonpresidential-vote year since 2000 — and turnout in Monday’s Iowa caucuses was the lowest since 2000.
In just one election cycle, if Iowa is any gauge, and it probably is, voters have tuned out.
Dan McLaughlin notes that the 110,000 votes cast in Iowa mark a drop-off of more than 76,000 since 2016.
Yes, it was cold (ridiculously cold) in Iowa going into caucus night, but, as Noah Rothman writes, the low turnout “cannot be attributed entirely to the abominable weather.”
There was little drop off in rural areas where you would expect weather to complicate voters’ calculations most. The drop-off was pronounced, however, in urban counties such as Polk and Johnson counties and suburban areas such as Story and Dallas counties, which is suggestive of the tradeoff the GOP made by refashioning itself into a vehicle for Donald Trump’s all-consuming persona. The Republican Party is a Trumpier party, yes, but it’s also a smaller party.
And that goes to the nub of it. This election — the Trump vs. Biden fiasco that is shaping up, the one that so many voters don’t actually want, even if Trump commands evidently intense and unshakable support within the party still — is an event being arranged at great remove from most. To an extent, this is how presidential primaries often work: A fraction of voters get to choose before all but the presumptive nominee drop out. But even fewer than usual may be participating this time.
“Palpable apathy” was the phrase the AP used to describe voter sentiment after one recent poll. Enthusiasm on the Democratic side is already in the dumps. A recent USA Today/Suffolk University Poll found fewer than 20 percent of Biden supporters describe themselves as a “10” on the enthusiasm meter. Almost half of Trump supporters do, a gap that poses an obvious problem for Biden’s party (or does it?). But zooming out, the AP poll found most American adults would be dissatisfied with either choice; Gallup finds Trump and Biden submerged when it comes to favorability ratings, with essentially nobody on the fence. Is it any surprise that independent affiliation is surging, and Republican/Democrat affiliation is tickling historic lows?
Charlie Cooke, with the despond:
I get the sense that both parties think that the public is bluffing. I don’t think it is. Joe Biden really is fatally unpopular. Donald Trump really is hated. Shout at me if you wish, but I relate all this calmly — as a matter of dull fact.
It’s not just us. Reporting from Iowa, Audrey Fahlberg finds a sense of political malaise even in the grocery-store aisles.
Sources tell me another election is coming up, in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley, whose third-place Iowa finish didn’t stop her from declaring a “two-person race” and refusing further debates with only Ron DeSantis, will make her stand there, where she still has a shot, if a remote one. It is probably the last chance any candidate has to change the dynamics in the race, as Haley’s home state of South Carolina seems to have spurned her for Trump already, and, as Jeff Blehar writes, DeSantis looks cooked despite his enormous investment in Iowa and potential going in.
A “raw contest of two aged men,” as Michael Brendan Dougherty puts it, is increasingly certain. But most voters probably won’t have much say in the matter. The GOP primary race could be over before a half million people vote. Per the Washington Post, the general-election campaigns are likely to target a historically tiny share of the electorate too. “It’s now getting to the point where you are probably talking about 400,000 people in three or four states,” Democratic strategist Joe Trippi told the paper, offering a more extreme prediction.
If he’s right, in a country of 336 million, this unwanted election could be something contested from start to finish within a micro-sample of under 1 million people. Who’s excited?
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On Iowa: Trump Takes Iowa
On the GOP’s gross negligence: Republicans’ Reckless Abandonment of Entitlement Reform
The Supreme Court can and should right the Chevron wrong: When ‘Law Runs Out,’ the Government Runs Out
The First Amendment really needs a win here: Michael Mann vs. Journalism
ARTICLES
Audrey Fahlberg: Inside DeSantis Election-Night Party, Supporters Dejected by Overwhelming Trump Victory: ‘Very Disappointed’
Noah Rothman: J. B. Pritzker Gives the Game Away
Andrew McCarthy: The Democrats’ 2024 Plan Is Still Working to Perfection
Dan McLaughlin: Ron DeSantis’s Problem Wasn’t Criticizing Trump Too Much or Too Little
Dan McLaughlin: Never Call a State Where People Are Still Voting
Dominic Pino: Call a State When the Winner Is Known
Philip Klein: Why Nobody Is Talking about Nevada
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Advantages of Old Age for Biden
Ryan Mills: Biden Health Officials Targeted Red States with Medicaid Program Audits
Rich Lowry: John Fetterman Cracks the Code
John Fund: Hollywood Discovers That Business Isn’t Always Bad
Jay Nordlinger: A Scholar and Scourge of the Jew-Haters
Abigail Anthony: Gender Activists Don’t Actually Mean ‘Trust the Science’
Brittany Bernstein: Brooklyn High School Shocked by Backlash after Canceling Class to Shelter Migrants
Brad Raffensperger: Trump Recycles Tired 2020 Election Allegations
CAPITAL MATTERS
Joel Kotkin challenges the urban-density faith: Let America Sprawl
Andrew Stuttaford on the trouble with EVs, cold weather, and mandates: Electric Vehicles: ‘Dead Robots’ in the Chicago Cold
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White takes on the latest in movie-musicals: Beware of Mean Girls on Screen or in Politics
Brian Allen returns to the Morgan Library and catches an exhibition with a unique theme. That, and a cool factoid about J. P. Morgan’s educational background, can be found here: Medieval Money Matters, from Macabre to Moral
TRUST #THE EXCERPTS
Ryan Mills has an eyebrow-raising report on how the feds arranged Medicaid-related audits of red states:
Biden-administration health officials targeted Republican-led states for audits last year over how they police their Medicaid programs, even though medical providers in several blue states, including California, seemingly operate their programs similarly, emails and records show.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, targeted three red states — Florida, Texas, and Missouri — for audits and enforcement last year as part of an effort to crack down on what they now contend is an improper use of Medicaid dollars, according to emails obtained by Government Accountability & Oversight, a Wyoming nonprofit and government watchdog.
The nonprofit’s leaders argue that the nearly 3,000 pages of emails and records they’ve obtained reveal a strong case that Biden’s CMS politically targeted red states with audits, with a primary focus on Florida. The emails show that CMS officials ramped up their efforts to target that state at the same time that its governor, Ron DeSantis, looked as if he could be a serious challenger to President Joe Biden in 2024.
In the emails from early 2023, which the nonprofit has posted online, CMS leaders said that they were operating on a “tight timeline” and that Florida is “the only [state] we have concern on,” even though the agency was “aware that other states have similar hospital arrangements.”
But while CMS’s enforcement actions against Florida coincided with DeSantis’s rising profile as a presidential contender, the emails don’t contain any explicit political intentions.
Here’s an uplifting thought. Hardly anybody running for president — and that includes Republicans — is serious about addressing exploding entitlement costs. From NR’s editorial:
In his first run for president, Donald Trump campaigned on not making any meaningful changes to Social Security and Medicare. . . . In the current campaign, Trump has not only reiterated that he doesn’t want to make changes to Social Security and Medicare, but he has attacked his leading rivals, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, for wanting to cut the programs.
While DeSantis did embrace the Ryan plan and other reforms as a candidate for and member of the House, in his presidential campaign he has declared he wouldn’t touch the programs.
In a debate with Haley last week, DeSantis even adopted left-wing talking points in defending his current position of not wanting to “mess with Social Security.” He attacked Haley for calling the program an “entitlement” and said, “You’re paying into it. It’s not a welfare program, you’re being taxed for this your whole life.” . . .
To her credit, Haley is the one remaining candidate who has been consistent in arguing that the Social Security and Medicare programs are facing a crisis that needs to be addressed, warning that “we can’t put our head in the sand” by ignoring the problem. . . .
The crisis facing these programs is not as distant as many people think. This year, the big three programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) alone are slated to cost $3 trillion, absorbing 62 percent of expected tax revenue, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By the end of its ten-year projection period, that is supposed to balloon to $5.3 trillion, or three-quarters of tax revenue. Add in interest, and by 2033, about 95 percent of tax revenue will be eaten up before a penny is spent on defense, border security, or any other domestic priority. And this is with the CBO assuming that the Trump tax cuts are allowed to expire, which no Republican candidate wants to see happen. In other words, nearly all other spending will need to be financed by adding more debt, which will by that time be approaching 120 percent of annual economic output.
As dire as the situation is, help is not on the way. All indications are that Americans are going to be faced this November with a choice between Republicans who won’t do anything to reform existing entitlements and Democrats who want to create new ones.
Rich Lowry has some advice for Democrats: Find yourselves another Fetterman (not literally him, but . . . well, just read it):
Democrats would be nearly assured victory in November if they switched to someone like John Fetterman.
The problems obviously are: 1) Democrats aren’t going to dump Joe Biden; 2) there is no one else in the party like John Fetterman; and 3) the Pennsylvania senator himself at the moment would be even less capable of carrying out the duties of president than Joe Biden.
The point, though, is that the new version of John Fetterman has made progress toward cracking the code. He is demonstrating how — through theatrical dissent from a few fashionable left-wing causes and strategic rebranding — it’s possible to create a Democratic politics shorn of some of its dumbest and most unnecessary cultural vulnerabilities. . . .
Over the past several months, Fetterman has distanced himself from the excesses of the Left on a couple of key things and done it with a devil-may-care verve that has drawn added attention and underlined his independence. . . . In sum, Fetterman is pointing to a different path for the Democrats where the party doesn’t have to cater to its left and, in fact, can pivot off of it to appear more reasonable.
(And if Democrats can’t find a Fetterman, at least that’s fodder for a Pearl Jam parody.)
Honorable Mention
One of our regular writers, Itxu Díaz, is out with a new book, the defiantly titled I Will Not Eat Crickets. Our man in Spain says, “Globalism wants to force us to eat crickets to save the planet. I won’t. Ever.” It’s a satirist’s take on the peculiar obsessions of international bodies and how those ambitious projects have lost their way. Salud.
Shout-Outs
Alvin Rosenfeld, at Tablet: The Return of the Swastika
Judge Glock, at the Wall Street Journal: The Welfare State Robs Peter to Pay Peter
Andrew Fleischman, at the Daily Beast: Why We Can’t Just Shrug Off the Fani Willis Scandal
CODA
Setting aside the fierce debate at this publication and others over Barbie, the movie has a genuinely funny moment, when Ken earnestly explains that his job is not lifeguard, a common misconception: “Actually my job . . . it’s just beach.” I think of this scene when I think of guitarists like Tosin Abasi (or Satriani, or Malmsteen, or Angel Vivaldi, etc.). Their genre isn’t prog or metal or rock or instrumental or any such category. Actually . . . it’s just virtuoso. I hope you had your coffee this morning, because I’m plugging this relentless song by Abasi’s band Animals as Leaders, mainly for its title: “Micro-Aggressions.”
What’s going on in this one, exactly? To quote Ken once more, “I’m actually not sure.”