Presidential Primary Season Ends (And Other Biden Stuff)

There is an allusion in Around The World In Eighty Days regarding how many elections take place in the U.S. The primary season continues, even after yesterday ended the presidential primary season. The New York local primaries are at the end of the month.

We do not have the final results (especially in South Dakota), but we can have a sense for Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, and New Jersey. Trump is alone in South Dakota. Biden has about 74% of the vote with the rest divided with some guy named Mando Perez-Serrato (4%) mixed in. 

Christie isn't around anymore in New Jersey. It's Trump (98) and write-in. Biden has 88, 9% uncommitted, and some anti-abortion person named Terrisa Bukovinac with 3%. The only place with actual Republican opposition was New Mexico with Haley getting 9%, Christie (and Uncommitted) 3%, and mini-Trump with 1%.

It's Trump 91% and Uncommitted (with a handful of write-ins) in Montana. Biden got about the same. Meanwhile, so far, Uncommitted (I wonder how that is allotted) has thirty-five delegates, Jason Palmer has three, and Dean Philips (who wants Gov. Hochul to pardon Trump, which should lead to his delegates being taken away) has four. 

Haley has 93, DeSantis 9, and Mini-Trump has three. Haley has had some support since she dropped out but it didn't translate to any delegates given how things were allotted.

The primaries have been somewhat of a joke this year. There was a chance for around 20% (a few times more, depending on the county) to not vote for Trump. I put aside Iowa and New Hampshire here as special cases. Biden's main opposition was uncommitted (an Israel/Gaza referendum basically) though in places like West Virginia, a significant minority didn't vote for him. So, there was that reason to vote. 

Anyway, someone praised the Secretary of Interior, basically because that is one of his interests (along with labor). He tacks on a dig on Garland, who he cites as the worst member of the Cabinet. Do people ever fully judge his work? The main disgust comes from Trump/January 6th. Some people call out the criticism. As Mueller, She Wrote noted recently:

If not for Garland's early privilege battles with Trump and co., Jack Smith wouldn't have been able to indict Trump. Garland also gave the green light to search Mar-a-Lago over objections from Trump holdovers at the FBI. Garland began investigating Trump for 1/6 the week he arrived at DoJ, creating a group called "The Investigations Unit" to carry out the work. He also authorized use of Inspector General Agents and Postal Cops to seize phones from folks like Eastman and Clark when Trump holdovers at the FBI refused to do it. He's far from useless, and I'm not going to stop correcting the record on this.

People used to compare Fani Willis positively but now her love life caused problems (the court of appeals will hear arguments in October; no rush). Garland's integrity, including no leaks, alone is notable. What about how the department handled other civil and criminal matters? I am not even saying it does things well. When does that even come up?

The other thing flagged is how he handles special prosecutors. How was he supposed to handle investigating President Biden and Hunter Biden? Fire Hunter Biden's special prosecutor (who clearly is a hack)? That would go down well. I am not giving the guy a pass. I just think it would have been hard regardless of your fantasy replacement to thread the needle.

An issue that sometimes comes up is Biden's handling of the border. People remind the critics sometimes that the public is conservative on this issue. Republicans blocked a conservative-leaning reform bill to allow Trump to campaign on how bad things are. 

Since only Democrats have agency, this is bad, and President Biden felt a need to announce a new policy. There are various framing like this NYT article that Biden and Trump now have the same policy. It then buries a comment like "president correctly notes that he has ruled out some of his predecessor’s extreme policies." Right. Not the same.

A libertarian spells it out:

Biden’s overall immigration policy is still vastly better than Trump’s, and he deserves credit for a variety of improvements. But he also deserves blame when he adopts cruel Trump-like asylum policies in the hope of scoring political points.

The accurate way to frame that is "Trump-lite" with the knowledge that litigation will temper the problem. The reality of the situation is that President Biden is acting within a political system in an election year. He has to "score political points." He does not have the freedom to just act above the fray. Criticism him. Still, realize the whole situation.

A popular line in 2016 is that the voters had to pick from two unpopular evils. A horrible framing. President Biden is not an "evil." And, the country these days is strongly divided along partisan lines. Biden is likely to always have around forty percent of the people not liking him, a combination of the passionate conservative core and people just upset about things.

My final thought is to wonder just how popular various other people were over the years. Was Bob Dole very popular in 1996? People wanted change in 2008 and 2020 but overall how excited were people over the years?