Presidential Politics, Plus Incredible Sachs Interview And Ukraine Update

Yesterday I presented a summary of a very lengthy panel discussion of geopolitics, which featured Tom Luongo, Alexander Mercouris, and Alex Krainer. In addition to the purely geopolitical aspects, which I summarized in Is It Over Yet? the panel engaged in some interesting discussion of prospects for the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Here I’ll repeat some cautions that I’ve presented in the past, while incorporating some new views from Luongo’s remarks.

Briefly, Luongo maintained three things:

• Trump will not be allowed to run for president; the various midgets are the “fall back” plan—they’re in position to step up when Trump is removed.

• RFK Jr. actually has a realistic chance. He understands how the new media works and how Trump used it to win. Further, the removal of Zhou from the presidential campaigns could lead to a truly open primary season—the last thing that the Dem establishment wants.

• While Jamie Dimon will never run for president—that would involve giving up too much actual power—he could be a kingmaker based on whom he backs financially. Dimon is definitely a Dem, but also definitely upset with Zhou. The big question that Luongo presents is whether Dimon could support RFK—who, contrary to media narratives, is not an “outsider” in political terms.

I would add that weight should be given to two Dimon statements:

• First, that in Dimon’s view neither Trump nor Zhou are the “way forward”. Note that he uses two names, not policies. To my mind that suggests that Dimon has fairly specific views on persons who might represent the way forward.

• Second, the Dimon presentation that sounded so much like a stump speech, Jamie Dimon Honing His Stump Speech? may well have been a shout out to possible candidates on what type of campaigns they should be running.

Now, from my perspective, the GOP field is relatively uncomplicated. Trump will win easily against the midgets. The real question remains, can the Uniparty force Trump out as a candidate? Luongo presents that as a cert, but I don’t belief it’s that simple. I’m not saying it won’t happen—the Uniparty will move heaven and earth, if possible, to make it happen. On the other hand, Trump has showen himself to be a bit like a force of nature. His term in office showed that, for whatever flaws he may have, he is smart and dogged. I would never count him out this far in advance. Complicating matters, from the Uniparty standpoint, is that the only hope of removing Trump is through the legal system—and that is a bit of a wildcard. I’m not suggesting either that the judiciary can be trusted, but it’s ultimately not fully under political control. I’m saying it’s not a done deal.

I said “relatively uncomplicated”. That doesn’t necessarily mean I foresee a happy ending. Removing Trump and substituting a controllable midget sounds to me like a recipe for possible disaster for the GOP as a political party. It could lead to massive disaffection—we’ll just have to see how matters develop. But all this seems to me to be relatively straightforward.

Matters are different for the Dems, where little is uncomplicated and important matters are out of the Uniparty control in ways that are different from the situation for the GOP.

It seems logical to believe that, one way or another, Zhou will end up not running. It’s not just that he’s old, stupid, and demented. Oh, and corrupt—but that’s not a problem in DC. It’s that he has presided over disaster after disaster, with more in the offing over the next year. If the steady drip of leaks tells us anything, it’s that the Uniparty and the Deep State are united in believing that Zhou has to go. Coming to that decision is the simple part.

The first difficulty is that Zhou needs to be sidelined, one way or another, within about three months, before campaigning gets serious. What’s holding things up? So far none of the leaks of grotesque corruption and general bad behavior have set the MSM off to the races, although they have prepared the ground for a withdrawal. Is Zhou holding out for guarantees against prosecution for his crime family? We don’t know.

The next complication is Kama Sutra. She’s a disaster, if anything, worse than Zhou himself. It’s almost unthinkable that she should be installed as POTUS, a prospect which strongly militates against forcing Zhou to resign. She might get ideas. And yet … the danger is that Zhou’s precarious health could scramble all those plans for a smooth transition in which both Zhou and Kama Sutra leave at the end of their term.

I see a lot of talk by people who blithely assume that if Kama Sutra were promoted, one way or another, someone else could be “installed” or “appointed” as VP. That’s not how the Constitution works. A new VP would require a majority vote in both chambers. I could foresee ferocious infighting, not only on the part of the GOP seeking influence over who would be VP, but also within the ranks of the Dems themselves. This could lead to a protracted struggle, but there are serious risks to leaving the VP slot vacant. With no VP in place, the Speaker is next in line for the presidency. The prospect for this sort of power struggle is not something the Dems would look forward to in a campaign year.

On the other hand, the prospect of the Dynamic Duo presiding over more disasters while Establishment Dem candidates (Newsom?) seek to gain traction is also unpalatable. This is exactly the sort of situation in which RFK could surprise the conventional wisdom if he runs a savvy campaign.

Here’s another wildcard, which I also mentioned very recently. Call it a Joker, if you will, but the threat from a third party is serious enough to have Dems worried. And it’s the kind of situation that could gain momentun in a pretty open primary season. Enjoy this—the irony is deep and rich. Carville is trying to resurrect the Russia Hoax, this time to be deployed against Dems!

Carville: Cornel West a ‘Threat to the Continued Constitutional Order’ — He Will Get Trump Elected

…

Carville said, “He’s obviously an accomplished scholar, academic. He seemed to be a very charming man and he’s also a menace, a threat to the continued constitutional order in the United States. and I say that because look what Ralph Nader, who’s directly responsible for the election of George W. Bush which brought about the horrific Iraq war and the horrific economic downturn we had among other things.”

He continued, “Jill Stein, who’s his campaign manager is almost certainly an agent of the Russian government. If you don’t believe me, somebody at home, Google photo General Flynn, Vladimir Putin, Jill Stein. She was hosted by the Russians prior to her running in 2016.”

Carville added, “So, you know, people are going to have to decide, do we want to continue under our Constitution? Because Donald Trump is telling us that, very clearly, is bragging about the fact that he doesn’t want to live under the Constitution anymore. And it’s very clear that the only thing that Dr. West’s candidacy can do is help elect Donald Trump. I don’t think any of that is arguable, nor is it arguable that Jill Stein had deep relationships with the Russian government.”

It should be an interesting next year or so. Meanwhile, who’s in charge?

Onward to Ukraine. I have two recommendations. The first is Simplicius’ long article today: Kerch Bridge Déjà Vu - Breakdown. The article is far more wideranging than the title suggests, amounting to a sort of rambling, overall update with a look to the future. Among other topics, Simplicius maintains that the final showdown will come in 2024 when Ukraine will have lost most of its military capacity—certainly for offensive action. He argues that Russia has been working to expand and reorganize its military and to root out institutional corruption. In that connection he has some interesting observations re the Prigozhin farce.

Will Schryver also has an overview of where things stand now, but it’s quite different. His new substack is much more in line with our own Is It Over Yet? However, Schryver also presents a capsule history of the conflict in Ukraine which readers may find useful for purposes of gaining perspective. Here’s how he starts out:

The Jig Is Up

This is how empire ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.

The member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — consisting of the teetering Masters of Empire and their tawdry entourage of class-stratified vassals — have just concluded a historic confab in Vilnius, Lithuania, capital of the alpha Baltic chihuahua.

In a shockingly transparent but otherwise rather banal series of events it became unmistakably clear that their grand plans to subject Russia to the “rules-based order” have come to naught.

Among others, the following consequences will ripple in the wake of this reality:

• Russia will achieve a decisive conclusion to the war on terms they dictate.

• NATO is shattered as a military alliance, and coming apart at the seams as a political alliance.

• Germany is on a trajectory of becoming a failed state, and as it goes, so will go the incoherent iron and clay mixture of the so-called European Union.

• The great myth of overwhelming US armaments supremacy has been exposed as little more than a modestly scaled boutique enterprise utterly ill-suited and ill-prepared to prosecute industrial warfare against a peer adversary.

Of course, many will immediately object:

From that point Schryver proceeds to address the objections he foresees and to provide his history of the progress of the conflict, in stages. It’s all good. And here’s his conclusion:

This war is a lost cause for the empire and its hapless allies in Europe and around the world. And that, of course, is the unavoidable conclusion that has finally managed to seep into the otherwise dense skulls of the various participants at the recent NATO summit in Lithuania.

The Masters of Empire now face a no-win scenario. They must abandon their failed Ukraine gambit — and inexorably, over the next few years, yield to maximalist Russian demands regarding the roll-back of NATO to its pre-1997 borders — or else yield to the mad impulse of a futile attempt to subjugate Russia by force of arms in the form of direct US/NATO intervention into this war.

Either way, the decline of the empire will be radically accelerated; NATO will almost immediately cease to function as a credible military/political alliance; the EU will dissolve as a monetary/political "union"; the demise of the global dollar system will rapidly gain momentum.

Finally, an unbelievably terrific interview with Jeffrey Sachs, who lays out the entire Neocon project from its inception. It is, he says, “a complete sh*tshow.” And it dates back to the fairly early 90s. He goes over the history of it all, mentioning some names. These people, he says, just aren’t very smart. They believe what they read in the newspapers—the articles that they themselves leaked, their own fantasies. They were convinced that Putin was only bluffing. Then they were convinced that sanctions shock and awe would do the trick—call Putin’s bluff. Then they were convinced that Putin would retreat. Then they were convinced that Putin couldn’t continue the war with an incompetent military. And now they’re in a box—the box they’ve placed the collective West in. But they don’t care about the cost in human life and destruction.