Maybe it’s the oppressive summer heat. Maybe most of us checked out (at least mentally) in August. Maybe it’s the old-fashioned dog days.
And maybe some of us are paying tribute to Jimmy Buffett by sipping poolside margaritas in the sun.
Writing from Washington, where the high is expected to hit 96 today, it seems like politics is paralyzed, that nothing much has happened to move the proverbial needle.
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The media, of course, have to fill endless airtime and column inches, but it’s a circular journey that takes them back to where they started.
Oh sure, there were those four indictments against a former president of the United States. But if you look at the raw numbers, Donald Trump had a very strong lead in the GOP primaries and now an even more overwhelming lead, 59 percent in a multi-candidate field, says the new Wall Street Journal poll.
In this downright weird campaign, Trump’s support among Republicans jumped after each indictment, along with his fundraising, as the MAGA base views the charges as nothing more than partisan Democrats out to get their champion.
Joe Biden is also mired in political quicksand. A majority of voters have been telling pollsters for months that the 80-year-old president is too old to run for a second term, and now, in the Journal survey, that’s hit two-thirds of Democrats.
Biden has been joking about his age lately, but when an incumbent with lots of accomplishments under his belt gets such a vote of no-confidence from his own party, it’s a huge problem.
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He’s in a box. He can shift his policies, playing to the middle, but he can’t stop the march of time. And no big-name Democrat appears willing to challenge him.
Kevin McCarthy is stirring things up, appeasing his hard-right flank by authorizing an impeachment inquiry of Biden. This raises the question of whether one president after another will face impeachment as payback over the last one. But the full House would have to authorize an actual impeachment, and there may well be more than the needed five defectors who deem this a waste of time that could hurt them.
At the same time, the Hunter Biden scandal may be fizzling a bit. Politico says "there is a growing recognition within some corners of the GOP…that the issue may not resonate as much as they once hoped, and that fixating on it could only help Trump," with his narrative of a dual standard of justice.
Coverage of the president’s son, even in right-leaning media, peaked in July, around the time the sweetheart plea deal fell apart and the top prosecutor was promoted to special counsel. Hunter’s name was mentioned only fleetingly in the Fox debate.
This, says Politico, reflects "a broader calculation in the campaign that the average American would rather hear them talk about something else and that the red-meat Hunter Biden drama may not be as salient a political issue for the party as some leaders have projected."
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Back to the Republican horse race: The also-rans from months ago are still also-rans, many in the low single digits. Ron DeSantis is still in second place–14- percent in the Real Clear Politics average–but dismisses national polls in favor of an early-state strategy.
Nikki Haley drew plenty of positive press from the debate, but Real Clear has her at 6 percent. Mike Pence is just below 5 percent.
The biggest change in the lineup has been the emergence of Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s been on a media blitz and getting tons of coverage, much of it unfavorable. His standing in the polling average: 7 percent, a definite improvement from zero but light-years behind the man he calls the best president of the 21st century.
The usual caveats: It’s months before the actual voting, there could be an upset in Iowa or New Hampshire, Trump’s legal woes are a wild card. A thousand things can happen between now and the 2024 election.
And I would analyze that, but who wants to break a sweat in this heat? At least I didn’t get stuck in the mud at Burning Man.
