A few observations on politics

John Bel Edwards, who beat David Vitter in the race for Louisiana Governor last week, is not anyone's idea of a flaming liberal.  He's anti-abortion, pro-gun, and a "man of religion" according to his campaign website.  Some might even call him a DINO.  Is such a victory worth celebrating at all?

Booman Tribune makes it clear that the answer is yes.  Edwards is likely to increase education funding, expand Medicaid, and address the state's budget problems by rolling back business tax breaks rather than cutting services.  What if a more solid liberal had run as a third candidate and split the Democratic vote, or if too many Democrats had refused to vote for Edwards because he wasn't "pure" enough?  The Governor-elect would then be an anti-abortion, pro-gun man of religion who wouldn't do any of those positive things.  Results are what count.

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The Republican establishment has announced plans for an ad campaign to take down Donald Trump, spearheaded by a John Kasich super-PAC which has committed $2.5 million to the effort.  It seems to me that this initiative will only worsen the infighting within an already disastrously-divided party.  The first ad looks ineffectual and utterly clueless about why Trump is doing so well with the troglodyte base in the first place.  And the BONCs (boring old normal conservatives) are struggling against a daunting enthusiasm gap -- The Donald is the only Republican drawing the big crowds, and this has been true throughout the campaign.  Nobody's excited about Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, the hapless Jeb!, or any of the other "serious" candidates being so earnestly pushed by sober conservative pundits.  After years of being fed fear and rage in an alternate-reality fake-news bubble, the rabid base now demands nothing short of utter lunacy from its candidates, and they're flocking to the man who's serving them great steaming red-meat heaps of it.  They're not going to be chivvied back into line behind some ordinary politician.

The Republican party has lost control of the monster it created.  But that monster isn't Trump, it's the barbarian horde supporting him.  That's the point.

Still, it's never wise to underestimate one's opponent.

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A new poll, startling to some, shows that on the issue of dealing with terrorism Americans trust Hillary Clinton more than they trust any of her likely Republican opponents.  Readers may recall that, at the end of my original post explaining my support, I raised this point as crucial to why Hillary must be the Democratic candidate.  Bizarre and unfair as it is, the country favors Republicans over Democrats on national security by a huge margin -- but she personally is an exception, being rated better than the Republicans are.

Some might argue that this is less of an issue than it seems right now, because by November 2016 the Paris attack will be a year in the past and mostly forgotten.  But that attack actually shows how, at any moment, foreign affairs can suddenly erupt and dominate a campaign.  What if next October sees Dâ'ish carry out a similar attack in Manhattan?  (They might even attack with the conscious aim of encouraging the election of a Republican President, knowing that the resulting incompetent military escalation in the Middle East would radicalize millions of Muslims.)  What if it's something else -- a revolt in Saudi Arabia, some North Korean aggression against South Korea or Japan, a Russian move into the Baltic states similar to the current one in Ukraine?  Such an event could abruptly change the focus of the election at any time, without warning.  We can't risk running a candidate who inspires anything less than full public confidence on security.