They’re used to leaders with closets jam-packed with skeletons

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote five things Democrats should like from the results of the New Hampshire primary. 1. After coming in much better than expected (though still definitely second in a two person race) Nikki Haley is now swinging hard against the nasty guy. She calls him geriatric and a loser (about time someone made an issue of his age and mental state instead of Biden’s age). 2. The nasty guy seethed about Haley for not dropping out.

But this is who Trump is—a seething loser. And the more it's on full display and the more voters get reacquainted with it, the better.

3. Haley overwhelmingly won independents. 4. Since Biden wanted South Carolina to be the first primary he wasn’t on the ballot in New Hampshire. He still won as a write-in candidate with 55%. Say goodbye to challenger Dean Philllips. 5:

Haley planning to stay in the race is the icing on the cake for Democrats, especially as she appears to finally be hitting her messaging stride. Haley could drop out, but frankly, what else does she have to do?

Mark Sumner of Kos also reports consequences of the NH primary. The nasty guy’s win, for a guy who is portraying himself as an incumbent, was unimpressive. Because Haley didn’t drop out he went to his social media to declare that anyone who supported her will be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.” Then he released a video statement saying he would also purge rogue bureaucrats, security officials, justice officials, and anyone else that isn’t MAGA.

Give it time, and a good MAGA rating might soon also be required to get a government contract. Or to travel freely around the country. Or to stay out of the massive internment camps Trump is planning. Trump has dropped all pretenses. Anyone who wants a future in Trump’s America had better get in line, and they better get in line now. And that’s exactly what Senate Republicans are doing.

That shows up in the combined Ukraine aid / Southern border deal Republicans said was required. Senate Republicans appear to be close to a deal.

Then, on Wednesday, Trump told Republicans to kill the deal so that he could continue to talk about the border for his campaign. And just like that, what Republicans were calling a crisis and an invasion became something that could be put off. Because nothing, nothing, nothing matters more to them than pleasing Trump. “I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that [Trump] would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

Joan McCarter of Kos reported the border deal seemed to be veering towards a crash on Tuesday. She included tweets by Sen. Mike Lee complaining that senators aren’t allowed to have enough time to review it – they should have at least three weeks. That ignores Congress has been talking about immigration for two decades. And he needs another three weeks. To come up with poison pill amendments?

That’s the perennial story of immigration reform in Congress. There’s two decades’ worth of supposed bipartisan history on immigration that’s been killed by the Republicans. This is too salient a political issue for them. They don’t want to secure the border with new funding and new policy directives. They want to keep the so-called border crisis in the headlines, just like they’ve done since 2001.

I heard a prediction a few weeks back that Republicans tied Ukraine aid to the border situation because the nasty guy didn’t want it to pass and the link was a way to do that. The prediction went on to say border security was chosen for the link because that wasn’t going to pass either. Lexie Schapitl, Eric McDaniel, and Susan Davis of NPR covered much of the same story, though added the reasons why the nasty guy shut down the border deal – it wasn’t “perfect.” As in: How could it be perfect if a Democrat agreed to it? Back to New Hampshire. Matt Wuerker posted a cartoon of of a news woman pointing to two people holding “IA” and “NH” signs and saying “The people have spoken!” as 48 other people holding other state signs stand behind her. That was posted the day before this news from Sumner that the cartoon might be true: The Republican National Committed has drafted a resolution to scrap its own rules and declare the nasty guy to be the “presumptive nominee” without bothering with primaries in the other 48 states. One reason for doing this is their rules say they can’t support a candidate unless he is the nominee. But it seems (to me) easier to scrap that rule than all the others. Another reason is the nasty guy is ahead in the polls. So why did they bother with Iowa and New Hampshire? I wonder if this is a way to keep Haley from being in the news attacking the nasty guy. Yes, all of this is very much not democracy.

But hey, at least Republicans are being consistent. They hate democracy in the general election, so why pretend it matters in the primary? No word yet on when the coronation will be held.

Eleveld reported the nasty guy and his MAGA backers are getting annoyed at Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee. Comer has been digging for impeachable dirt on Biden for a year now and has nothing. The annoyance is because:

When pundits call him the twice-impeached, four-time indictee, Trump has to be able to point at Biden and say he's the one who's really corrupt. Just look at what Congress found on him.

The annoyance has been expressed through leaks. That means:

In many ways, the leaks seem specifically designed to put Comer on notice that he not only needs to produce, but he'll be singularly on the hook if he doesn't.

Sumner wrote that Democrats have gotten organized and are now making hearings of Comer’s committee more fun.

Democrats aren’t just tearing Republican arguments apart: They’re derailing hearings and getting their opponents genuinely flustered. ... If all that seemed like it took a lot of behind-the-scenes planning, it did. But it won’t be the last time. Because as The Daily Beast reports, Democrats have a plan to make these hearings just as silly as the claims Republicans are making about Biden.

The goal of the hearings are, of course, to dig up dirt on Biden to reduce his chances of reelection and to tell the nasty guy they’re working on revenge for his two impeachments. For this purpose Democrats now have a Truth Squad of Reps. Jamie Raskin, Greg Casar, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Daniel Goldman, and Jared Moskowitz. I’ve reported on some of what they’ve done already, such as completely flustering Republicans when Hunter Biden showed up to testify. Sumner then mentioned the leaks on Comer’s competency I mentioned above:

These anonymous Republicans don’t seem to be seriously considering that maybe Comer is failing not because he’s incompetent (or at least, not only because he’s incompetent) but because Joe Biden did nothing wrong. But then, they are Republicans. They’re used to having leaders whose closets are jam-packed with skeletons.

Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos it shows almost a dozen prominent Republicans with Mike Johnson saying, “We sold our souls to Trump and are awaiting payment...” I haven’t written about Ukraine in at least three weeks. So I’ll start with an article Sumner wrote on January 5. The front hasn’t changed. Ukraine keeps pushing back Russian assaults.

What has changed is that there are increasing reports that Ukrainian forces are just bloody tired. That operations are running on superhuman efforts that can’t be sustained. That Ukrainian artillery units are being forced to retreat, or are incapable of halting a Russian advance because they are too low on shells. And that some Ukrainian units are unable to fill their ranks because Ukrainians are all too aware of conditions at the front.

Ukraine is considering raising the age limit of soldiers who want to stay. It is also considering lowering conscription from 27 to 25 – which seems quite high to Americans dragged off to war at 18. But Ukraine doesn’t want to win a war by losing a huge percentage of young men. Yeah, it is Russia who is taking kids out of school and drafting pensioners and not giving them sufficient training. Their soldiers are getting tired of the “meat assaults.” There are reports of shortage of artillery shells. Ukraine isn’t using shells at the same rate as Russia – which is now using shells decades old. But the West relies on combined arms operations which doesn’t depend as much on artillery, so the West doesn’t stockpile as much. North Korea is restocking Russia’s shells, maybe as many as a million – which should last a few weeks. Drones have changed the war and neither side has a formula to give themselves an advantage. The situation is still a stalemate. Also in early January in a pundit roundup on Kos exlrrp commented with a meme. It shows Putin saying:

Buy American. I bought one Trump and got the whole Republican Party for free.

On January 10 Kos of Kos wrote a Ukraine update that was more about the current axis of evil. That’s a phrase Bush Junior used to justify invading Iraq. The current axis is Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. Kos wrote that if the US doesn’t lead the opposition, no one will.

These nations have realized that their global aspirations cannot be accomplished as long as a militarily and economically dominant West acts as a roadblock to their regional ambitions. Still, that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying. Take a look at the world’s war-ridden hotspots and you’ll see that virtually every one of them has at least one of these nation’s fingerprints on it.

The invasion in Ukraine is by Russia supported by North Korea. Next to Israel Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are supported by Iran. Russia backed a coup in Niger. The spat between Venezuela and Guyana is supported by both Russia and China. North Korea changed its policy of reuniting with South Korea to one of conquest. And China is being belligerent to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, prompting Australia to update its navy. This axis is watching Ukraine – and Republicans in the US Congress – very carefully.

If Putin succeeds in even annexing part of Ukraine, it will be a rousing victory and a call to arms for this new axis. But if the West rallies, builds up its military arsenal, maintains and even strengthens its sanctions, the axis will likely determine that any military adventurism is too fraught with risk, and the status quo, however tense, will remain. The alternative—a hot war in the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan strait, or Europe—would be catastrophic both in terms of lives lost and to the global economy. The bigger the cost to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the less likely a war between major powers becomes. The bigger Russia’s defeat, the greater the damage to Iran, North Korea, and maybe even China. (At the same time, China appears to be in a win-win scenario at Russia’s expense. If Russia wins, China has an emboldened ally that would almost assuredly aid in an invasion of Taiwan. And if Russia loses, China gains a new vassal state with the natural resources to feed its own machine.) Ultimately, the West needs to do everything in its power to help Ukraine win—and do so as quickly as possible. We need the Republican Party to stop being Iran and China’s biggest international ally. (Their support of Putin is well past absurdity.) Global peace depends on it.

On January 19 Kos wrote about German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who said Putin could attack NATO in 5 to 8 years. So is that really a threat? That ignores Putin is already attacking NATO through election meddling and cyberattacks. He has also pushed migrants towards NATO borders to destabilize European governments. But a conventional war against the West? Extremely unlikely. But that’s still a reason to help Ukraine. The ground war in Ukraine is at a stalemate. They can’t advance without horrific casualties. The war probably can’t be won on the battlefield. It is now time to press the economic war and push Russia to its economic and sociological brink.

The German defense minister is right that Russia is a threat, and Ukraine has gone a long way to neutering it. The best way to avoid the nightmare “World War III” scenario is to not just keep supporting Ukraine but also to give the country what it needs to eliminate Russia’s war-making potential. That won’t pay dividends just in Europe. It will be a signal to China, too, that any military designs on Taiwan would be similarly doomed to failure.

Sumner wrote that this past Wednesday marked 700 days since Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia expected Ukraine to fall in days. Remember that 40-kilometer convoy where officers brought along dress uniforms?

The truth is, almost everyone expected Ukraine to lose—and lose quickly. Except the Ukrainians. The next time anyone saw those Russian dress uniforms, they were being pulled out of tanks destroyed along the highway after Ukraine drove away Russian forces. Putin couldn’t take Kyiv in three days. Or three weeks. Or three months. And he’s not going to take it in three years. Because he’s simply not going to win this war.