Sorry I Haven't A Clue

After another caucus result to freak out over--this time in Nevada, a state with some actual gradations on the demographic color wheel, but still with a total population less than the attendance of the last World Cup--I think it's safe to say that we still don't have any solid information to work with, unless you count the fundamental conclusion that Chris Matthews is kind of a dickface.

You can feel the fatigue of national political journalists so desperate to stop running stories based on baseless speculation and arbitrary projection, looking for any breakout performance or definitional moment to act as a magnetic north to bring some focus, some direction, a way out of this yearslong Bermuda Triangle circuit of self-negating drift, bobbing between the Scylla of cynicism and the Charybdis of who-gives-a-fuck-anymore-really. The front page of fivethirtyeight.com literally has two stories virtually side by side headlined BIDEN SURGES IN SOUTH CAROLINA and (this is true!) COULD JOE BIDEN BE IN TROUBLE IN SOUTH CAROLINA?

Of course Betteridge's Law of Headlines tells us that the superficial distinction between the two is false as any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered "no," but still I think it's indicative of what we're left with in advance of Super Tuesday and some actual results: literally nothing. Unless you live in New Hampshire, Iowa or Nevada, in which case you live in the unique reality where you don't have to think about this shit again for another eight-plus months. You've done literally everything you can to help decide anything at this point. Congratulations, you have achieved the right to stop using twitter to follow political news and go back to what it was designed for, making anonymous death threats until someone apologizes for being vaguely non-complimentary to a celebrity you'll never meet.

The state of political journalism has gotten so bad that even I, a non-journalist, am stuck basically revisiting the exact same premise I wrote about last week.

This week though I'm headed toward something a bit more positive, a bit more hopeful, a bit more animating and that's the fact that we as a society have come together to agree that Mike Bloomberg fucking suuuuucks. I wasn't sure what it was that would unite us, but apparently it's the final conclusion--after what will in the future be a very embarrassing bit of curiosity measurable for a VERY SHORT* PERIOD OF TIME in voter poll numbers--that if you're a big vocal Republican your whole fucking adult life, you don't get to swan in and announce yourself as the Democratic nominee for president just because you've decided it's time.

The spectacle would be less gross if it weren't so transparent. Bloomberg is running a) to feed an ambition that can probably never be fully satiated anyway, so why try? and b) because he's scared to fucking death of Elizabeth Warren. But to be fair, he's not afraid of her on his own behalf, no. That would be small and cowardly. He's afraid of her on behalf of all the other insanely untouchably wealthy multibillionaires out there. And that, as far as I'm convinced he can legitimately tell, is as good a reason as anything to build a career in public service on.

And that's why it was so delicious and poetic that when his moment to skydive in to the show-your-face-in-person portion of presidential candidacy, it was Warren who played the role of the woodchipper that snagged the corner his parachute and slowly, inexorably pulled him closer and closer until there was finally nothing left but a dissipating red mist.

What really bolsters me in all this is it really starkly shows that in this country you can't** just buy the presidency by cutting a check for half a billion dollars. In this country, the more honorable, boot-strappiest thing to do is to have someone else cut that check on your behalf.

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*Nope, wasn't meant as a shot. He can be short and still be president. Just like Trump has shown you can be leathern and still be president.

**So far at least! Check back in 2024