New York Post / Mike Guillen
On March 5, on the single voting day for internal elections (caucuses and primaries), aka «Super Tuesday», when 15 states determined who would get delegates to the party conventions of Democrats and Republicans, there were no surprises. Apart from the fact that neither Biden nor Trump could achieve an unqualified triumph.
No one is breathing down Joe Biden’s neck, he has no rivals among his fellow party members, but the Democrats suffered something unprecedented. The electorate nominates electors to the party convention who have not decided on their preferences, the so-called «noncommitted».
In Minnesota and Colorado, as the Phoenix news site reported on the eve of Super Tuesday, «a coalition of left-wing and pro Palestinian groups is urging Democratic and unaffiliated Colorado voters to cast their votes for a ‘noncommitted delegate’ in protest of President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza». That’s what happened.
Biden’s loss also came as a big surprise to Polynesians and white settlers living on seven islands in the Pacific Ocean in an unincorporated U.S. territory called American Samoa. This is where «a political unknown named Jason Palmer» got the upper hand. For Samoans, the big white leader in Washington must be a kind of overseas exoticism.
Even Donald Trump did not achieve his goal of completely defeating rival Nikki Haley. The protégé of the right-wing Republicans beat her former employer (Trump, I remind you, during his presidency appointed her U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) by four percent in another oasis of liberal orthodoxy — the state of Vermont.
Otherwise, there were no surprises: both Biden and Trump maintained their status as favorites based on the results of the very first primaries. Trump outperformed Haley in the state of North Dakota by a convincing score: 84% to 14%. In Missouri, the caucus gave Trump all its sympathy, just as it did in Idaho and in the Michigan primaries. Even earlier, without much difficulty, the eccentric bon vivant, who planned to run a pipeline filled with Coca-Cola into the White House, took the upper hand in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
«Super Tuesday» was preceded by Super Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected and overturned the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from running in the primaries, essentially disqualifying him from running for president. A similar attempt to remove from the race the disturber of the ruling elite’s tranquility was made in the states of Maine and Illinois. There, they resorted to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dating back to the times of the Civil War between the North and the South, which prohibits «rebels» from holding elected positions in government.
As a justification that Trump can be equated with rebels, the local servants of Themis, gravitating to the camp of Democrats, cited the unproven fact of his personal involvement in the seizure of the Capitol building by angry citizens on January 6, 2021.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for office, with six of the senior judges, known for their conservative views, and three judges with a reputation for liberal views voting in favor. Such rare unanimity is explained by the supreme court justices’ realization of the existential threat to the United States.
Interference of their colleagues at the state level in the competence of the federal authorities is fraught with legal voluntarism resulting from the division into «red» (Republicans) and «blue» (Democrats), as well as, as a side effect, the growth of centrifugal tendencies and encouragement of separatist sentiments.
It is possible that if a presidential candidate unacceptable for the Democrats (and vice versa for the Republicans) wins, local courts will deny legitimacy to the newly elected candidate. And then a kind of dual power may be formed: the «reds» will be sure that Trump won, and the «blues» will believe that Biden defended his right to the next four years.
As a consequence — two presidents, two Americas, and mutual exasperation leading to a stalemate.
Meanwhile, emboldened by the acquittal verdict, Republicans hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will respond positively to Trump’s lawsuit demanding to recognize his presidential immunity. Then all four criminal cases against the 45th president of the United States will be frozen.
On the eve of «Super Tuesday» Nikki Haley stopped her string of epic defeats, including failure in the state of South Carolina, where she once served as governor, and «triumphantly» won in the Federal District of Columbia — that is, in the capital. Alas, the victory looks miserable, as only two thousand people voted in total, which, however, gave Haley the votes of all 19 electors.
Trump couldn’t avoid the temptation to make Haley look like the nominee of the capital’s bureaucracy, or, using one of Trump’s favorite expressions, the Washington swamp. After his election in 2016, Trump threatened to «drain the swamp», but it turned out that even with his semi-royal powers, the president could not do that.
Commenting on the former lady diplomat’s single victory at the time, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s presidential campaign, said that «while Nikki Haley was firmly rejected in the rest of America, she has just been named Queen of the Swamp by D.C. lobbyists and insiders».
For the far-right wing of the Republican Party, Nikki Haley’s elimination represents the last hope of kicking the hated Trump into the gutter of political oblivion. That hope is not finally dead, although Super Monday coupled with Super Tuesday clipped its wings.
What’s next? Political scientist Malek Dudakov assesses the situation in his blog:
«The Democratic Party has a desperate situation — it is not possible to defeat Trump honestly. And their attempts to play dirty have so far ended in a fiasco».
However, nothing will prevent the frightened «Washington swamp» from raising the stakes to a prohibitive height, given the rich annals of their country, where four presidents have been killed and two others wounded in attempts on their lives.
Political scientist Peter Akopov, in the online edition of the business newspaper Vzglyad, asks a not far-fetched question:
«Why wouldn’t some Muslim outraged by what is going on in Gaza want to deal with him (Trump)? For example, on October 7 — the first anniversary of the Hamas raid against Israel (and at the same time the birthday of Vladimir Putin, whom the Washington swamp has long portrayed as Trump’s puppeteer) and a month before the presidential election».
The precedents are well known. On September 6, 2017, 42-year-old Gregory Lee Leingang attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in Mandan, North Dakota. In November of the same year, someone (name withheld) whose links to the terrorist organization ISIS (“Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”, banned in Russia) have been proven, was arrested in Manila (Philippines) for preparing to assassinate Trump during the ASEAN Leaders Summit.
The alarm bell sounded just after the Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor. The website of the magazine «Newsweek» reported that the FBI office in Miami (Florida) warned of a manhunt, an Iranian-born assassin suspected of preparing an assassination attempt on former and current government officials from the administration of former President Trump.
The motive is ironclad: revenge over the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Al-Quds special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And the perpetrator, like Lee Harvey Oswald, who once assassinated President John F. Kennedy, may not survive until the investigation and trial.
Given that the FBI is largely controlled by the «deep state», this throw-in may be seen as the beginning of the psychological preparation of public opinion for the «highly likely» physical elimination of Donald Trump, which can be convincingly blamed on an arch-villain from a rogue nation.
No favorite — no problem. And then, in dazzling white robes, the world will see the «number two» in the Republican deck, Nikki Haley, who, due to her proximity to the neocons, and therefore to neoliberals, will be an acceptable White House tenant for the Washington (not to be confused with American) establishment, in other words, for the irremovable and reproducible part of the ruling class living in the vicinity of the White House.
So far, however, Nikki Haley has announced that she is «suspending» her participation in the race for the nomination.
«Super Tuesday» has passed. But it is only a mittelspiel, not the finale of a marathon and multi-move chess game.