Greetings and welcome to this momentous 78th performance of the Carnival of Fools! Yes, this week’s installment was planned as a preview of tonight’s Texas primary election, but as per usual with life in the Second Trump Era, it’s been demoted due to . . . “events, dear boy, events.” (As the old saying goes: If you want to make God laugh, tell Him of your plans to focus exclusively on domestic politics.)
America, in conjunction with Israel, is now at war with Iran. Please do not bother objecting to me that we have not formally declared war yet, as Senator Markwayne Mullin did this weekend during multiple media appearances. I get that the administration is being very careful not to characterize what is currently going on in Iran as “war,” but this of course is insulting semantic legerdemain. Americans are currently dying in combat. We have been given no finite timeline of operations. Congress hasn’t been consulted yet, only lectured. The American people are querulous in reaction to fast-paced events.
What does it all mean? What does it portend? Many other commentators across this political universe of ours will claim to know how this all ends. They are fools to exhibit anything like certainty. I myself am lost in a haze of confusion, hoping for the best, fearing the worst, knowing only my priors, and just here to talk some of it through with you.
Oh, and also to clown on the mess that the Texas primary has become. As I said: There will still be real excitement tonight, contained entirely within our own borders! It merely got demoted, not bumped entirely.
We Are Now Pot-Committed in Iran, but to What End?
The magnitude of it has only now begun to sink in: Khamenei is gone. Ahmadinejad may be gone. Celebrate if you wish — Lord knows I am — but also realize the true cost: An entire generation of legendary Twitter slop-posters has been eliminated in one deadly blow. That kind of talent isn’t easily replaced. (Somebody needs to get Kim Jong-un a verified account now.) Beyond that, the United States is now full-scale embroiled in the one thing many of Donald Trump’s fiercest advocates promised he would never wade us into again: a war for regime change in the Middle East. Oops!
The geopolitical mobilization alone is remarkable. I lived through the Obama era of Iranian appeasement, and if you told me in 2014 that twelve years later Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar (of all countries!) would be on the same page as the United States in seeking to topple the Iranian regime — while the U.K. sat meekly on its hands, paralyzed by fears of a domestic fifth column — I’d have told you this required mass conversions in Tel Aviv to Sunni Islam. For anyone born in the ’80s, the array of Arab nations lined up against Iran is really quite shocking.
And the domestic shrapnel feels like a grimly apposite analogy to the real thing in Tehran. Given that this is the Carnival of Fools, we would be remiss if we failed to take note of the various self-immolations and crash-outs from the left and right alike. Candace Owens has rallied from her forward post in the Ummah of Great Britain to tell Americans never to enlist: “No one ever should sign up for United States military outside of those who wish to join the IDF.” Noted left-wing influencer/dog abuser Hasan Piker warned us on February 28 that “if there’s any ‘terrorism’ that happens on us [sic] soil now, you will never be able to convince me nor millions of other americans that it wasn’t israel and america conducting it together to rally the masses to support an insanely unpopular war.” (I guess we know whom to blame for Austin, now. Amazing foresight, Hasan!)
In the world of actual politicians, the Democratic reaction has been almost overwhelmingly negative. A few hardy souls like Senator John Fetterman are applauding the deaths of a tyrant and his clique. But we don’t even have to look toward the predictable third-worldist boilerplate of a confirmed democratic socialist like Zohran Mamdani to see the vast majority of Democrats settling on a political line, one perhaps best expressed by the otherwise superfluous Chris Murphy, of the similarly superfluous state of Connecticut:
It won’t be the billionaire children of Donald Trump and his buddies that die. It’s going to be the children of middle class and poor families all across this country that are gonna die for a war of choice, a war of vanity, an illegal war.
“It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one” is a tune that would surely sound better sung from the mouth of someone who isn’t himself a millionaire’s son. (Perhaps his fellow Democratic senator, noted Vietnam combat veteran Dick Blumenthal, should give it a try.) But hesitancy abounds: Even those on the left who can find time to say that they’re glad Khamenei is dead and gone (for example, Senator Chris Coons) always offer a “but . . .” A hedge.
I’m sure many on the right will call it a lack of patriotism, or an example of elected Democrats becoming enslaved by the animal whims of their activist base. I call it “placing a strategic wager.” This sort of positioning is best understood as a political bet based on perceptions of the likely eventual outcome. You will notice I did not characterize it as a necessarily bad bet.
For this war is not over. In fact, nobody’s quite sure when it will be over, or how it will be over. Neither Trump nor any of his national security principals were anywhere to answer questions over the weekend, but Trump was happy to give quotes to news outlets over the phone: “It’s always been a four week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so. It’s always been about a four week process so — as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks — or less.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth emerged on Monday morning to deliver a TV-ready pep talk “briefing” that, with its expansive rhetoric (“we’ll go as far as we need to go,” including boots on the ground), promised an even broader open-ended commitment. But where are we going? Regime change? “Military debilitation?” Whatever off-ramp happens to be available when politically necessary?
And this last one matters, because the Iran war is also not very popular at the present moment. A flash poll from Reuters/Ipsos puts American approval of “Trump’s attack on Iran” (phrasing is key in polling) at a dismal 27 percent, compared to 43 percent disapproval and 30 percent “don’t know.” YouGov returns better results for Trump, showing approval of “killing Khamenei” at 40/31/28, a +9 margin in favor. What both polls share: a whole lot of “not sure” responses. The negativity of the Democratic response reflects that intense ambivalence. Their positioning reflects an unstated assumption that the Iran war will devolve into disaster in the future, and they want to be properly oriented to capitalize on it.
The truth is, as Ari Fleischer pointed out — and he of all people would know — “if, over time, everything goes well, most politicians will be for it. If it goes poorly, most will oppose it.” Politicians are worms like that. (I find this reassuring in its own way; the law of nature, reasserting itself.) It is the opinion of American voters which matters — and voters are justifiably wary. Why shouldn’t they be? Everyone has seen this movie before: triumphalism in the Middle East, followed by chaos and quagmire.
I don’t think it has to end that way. And even if it does, perhaps there’s a case to be made that the end of the current Iranian regime is worth the cost of future regional instability, from an overall security perspective. I can well spot the defeatist messaging currently flowing throughout social media, pumped forth by the dying Iranian regime’s desperate (and likely paid) advocates. I am not fooled by it. I give absolutely zero rips about what the Europeans think about us. I am not going to react to every military death or setback with my hair on fire, only with a prayer of thanks to our men and women who currently serve in harm’s way.
On the other hand, nor am I going to forget the lessons of (very recent) history. And when this administration continues to bluster without explaining itself to the American people, in their own words, even the slightest sense of what comes next, it makes me wonder whether they have much of a plan beyond “overturning the chessboard” and hoping for some kind of better order to spontaneously arise from the chaos.
I do not know what the future holds. I know only that right now, I have received more happy texts and emails from my Persian friends over the last three days than I can properly count. So many of my childhood friends — refugees from the revolution and its terror, Baha’i, Jew, and Shiite alike — are finally perceiving the dawn of a real hope for their old country after nearly 46 years of darkness. I cannot help but feel happy for them. The ayatollah is dead. May his evil regime crumble among flaming cinders of its ruin, and a free people of Iran spring forth like green shoots amid the fertilized ash.
But I have to think that will take a good deal more than aerial bombardment.
It Will Go Into Overtime in Every Big Race in Texas — Except Perhaps the Biggest One
It’s a little embarrassing to admit now that, long before a Middle Eastern war broke out over the weekend, I had already planned to announce this Tuesday as “D-Day.” For Texas holds primary elections today, and there is guaranteed to be all manner of internecine carnage. The once-quiet primary races of yesteryear have now fully devolved into furious orthodoxy tests and base-appeasement gauntlets to be run by the candidates of both parties. (As one long accustomed to this ritual on the right, I cannot tell you how positively thrilled I am to see this madness infect and conquer the left. Now you understand.)
Since the Texas primaries got demoted to the Carnival’s undercard by an unscheduled war, I lack the space to break them down in as much detail as I otherwise might have. So we can summarize every seriously contested race on the Republican side of the aisle by saying “TO BE CONTINUED . . .”
In the Senate matchup, state Attorney General Ken Paxton will almost certainly win more votes than incumbent Senator John Cornyn, but with Wesley Hunt splitting the vote three ways, the race is guaranteed to head to a runoff in April. (The bad news is that Hunt’s votes are likely to go to Paxton in the second round.) Egregious Republican incumbent Representative Tony Gonzales may finish ahead of challenger Brandon Herrera in Texas’s 23rd congressional district, but he will not break the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff. (The good news is that Herrera is likely to collect those votes in the second round.)
Only one race seems likely to be decided tonight, in fact, and that is on the Democratic side. I have written about the matchup between celebrity vulgarian Jasmine Crockett and dweebish policy wonk James Talarico several times now, and I stand by my assessment of the race from half a month ago: Crockett may ultimately blow what was once thought, in December, to be an unlosable primary race for her. After a series of seesawing primary polls, Emerson’s final poll of the Democratic Senate primary shows Talarico up 52 percent to Crockett’s 47 percent — no blowout win, but in keeping with other assessments of the race.
More importantly, it is in keeping with the trend of polling showing Talarico overtaking Crockett, as establishment money and media influencers band together to push him past her. (The well-coordinated stunt Talarico’s campaign pulled with Stephen Colbert is, tellingly, the point at which his polling numbers began to surge past Crockett’s. Texas is expensive to campaign in — unless you have Stephen Colbert to toss you a national favor!)
I never make accurate electoral predictions — it’s almost something of a curse with me — so I won’t tell you who I think is going to win tonight between Talarico and Crockett. But if Talarico pulls out the upset, it will be a Code Red moment for the Texas GOP: A Paxton vs. Talarico race in November has a very good chance of returning Texas’s first Democratic senator to Washington since Lloyd Bentsen.
Until next week.