1. I was listening to the satellite feed of MSNBC yesterday around noon. MSNBC wasn’t covering for Clinton on the emails the way they would have for Obama or Planned Parenthood. That would change if she became the Democratic nominee but, until then, she is still on probation, and liberal elites are keeping their options open. If she had an opponent that looked like a plausible nominee (unlike Sanders), she would be in huge trouble.

2. Our Forfare Davis asked me what I thought about the comparison of Donald Trump to Ross Perot. Perot (or the Perot of 1992) and Trump play very different characters on television.

Perot sold himself as a kind of Patriot King who was above the squabbles of Washington interest groups. Trump is clear that he has been down in the muck. He buys and sells politicians of all parties and ideologies. He buys them so completely that they feel obligated to attend Trump’s weddings. Trump is more like the Eddie Murphy character in the film The Distinguished Gentleman, than he is like Perot. Sure he participates in a crooked system, but he is honest about it, and the people in Washington are the real crooks.

Perot and Trump are also different in their approaches to problem solving. Perot was vague, but his default was to talk about how he would get all of the world’s best experts in a meeting, and have them come up with a plan that he would present to the people. This was a technocratic fantasy, but it was seductive. Trump’s approach is that of the inebriated megalomaniac. I heard Trump on the radio, and he was asked (in an exceedingly deferential interview) what he would do about Putin. Trump said he gets along very well with people. How would he replace Obamacare? He would offer “everything in Obamacare, but much more.”

The Trump phenomenon makes more sense when you recognize that the people involved are not stupid (for the most part.) Trump isn’t stupid. The conservative talk show hosts who are giving Trump tongue baths aren’t stupid. They know Trump’s answers are garbage, and are pretending not to notice. The people who are responding to polls saying they support Trump aren’t stupid. Trump is a trickster, not a reformer, and the people who say they are supporting him are in on the trick. Those poll respondents are using Trump to make an obscene gesture at our country’s political elites. But this trickster campaign isn’t going to last into November of 2016. I strongly doubt it will motivate many Iowa Republicans to go out into a cold winter night to caucus for Trump, and, I doubt if Trump wants to stay in when he is losing to the politicians that be brags about buying and selling.

I think Ramesh Ponnuru had the dynamic right.