Trump fought Iran, and Iran won

 Is it time to say “I told you so?” 

A few weeks ago, I said that the Iran war was ending with a whimper, rather than with a bang. Even before that, when the war first started, I said that war with Iran was easier to start than finish, noting, “The US excels at tactical warfare. It’s the long-term, strategic thinking that we tend to have problems with.”

Three months later, my observation from early March that the “most likely scenario is that Trump finds something to call a victory and walks away” seems to have hit the nail on the head.

I’ve lost count of the ultimatums that have been demanded and ignored over the last couple of months. Iran hasn’t given an inch to Trump’s demands, and now the president says he “couldn’t care less” if negotiations are over. With no negotiations and no fighting (at least not serious fighting), the war with Iran seems to be in a Korea-like limbo, with the exception that Iran is now strategically better off than it was before the war started.

Yes, Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz with only a trickle of shipping running the gauntlet. Both the US and Iran are letting a few ships transit in their respective lanes of protection, but the numbers remain about 90 percent below pre-war levels. 

The low number of tankers leaving the Persian Gulf has resulted in steadily declining stockpiles of oil. The price of oil has remained relatively steady since hostilities simmered, based on the assumption that Trump is ending the war and reports that a deal is near. 

“When the President forces this conflict to a successful end, gas prices will drop back to multi-year lows and global energy markets will be much more stable in the long term,” White House officials told the Washington Post.

But ending the war is proving to be difficult. Iran has reportedly broken off negotiations, demanding that Israel halt its attacks in Lebanon. Iran’s action has caused a rift between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, with Trump confirming that he called the Israeli leader “crazy” in an expletive-filled phone call in which the two discussed their “tactical disagreements.”

If you want to understand who is winning and who is losing, just look at which side is ignoring the other’s demands and which is scrambling to make a deal.

As I’ve pointed out previously, Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place. He can’t afford to openly admit defeat, but he also can’t afford to let the energy crisis drag on. Both are poison for the midterms.

And now the corner that Trump has painted himself into is getting smaller. In a bipartisan vote, the House passed a war powers resolution on Wednesday that would limit the president’s ability to launch new attacks. The measure must pass the Senate to become binding, but does not have to be signed by the president. Even without passing the Senate, the measure’s passage in the House is an indication of the war’s unpopularity and Republican division on the issue.

Many of Trump’s Iran problems are self-made. The Administration’s plan seems to have been to follow the Venezuela model of a decapitation strike, followed by replacing Iran’s leadership with an ally, in this case, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whether this was a good idea to begin with or not is moot, because the plan fell apart when Ahmadinejad was injured in airstrikes in the early days of the war. The former president is no progressive, even though he was under house arrest by the current regime, and was a bogeyman of the right for years while in office.

Likewise, Trump created difficulties with Congress and the public by choosing a go-it-alone approach. Trump failed to even attempt to make a case for war before launching the attacks, probably gambling that the Ahmadinejad gambit would win the war before opposition could build. When the secret plan failed, there was no Plan B. 

Trump also did not attempt to talk Congress into supporting the war. The end of major hostilities coincided closely with the 60-day limit specified by the War Powers Act, and the Administration made no serious attempt to get congressional approval for extended hostilities. 

Large-scale strikes may have ended, but a low-intensity conflict continues. The US maintains a blockade on Iranian oil, an act of war in itself, and Iran continues to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides are also still shooting. The US recently attacked Iranian air defense sites, and possibly in retaliation, Iran has attacked Kuwait and Bahrain.

The status quo might last indefinitely if not for the elephants in the room: The energy crisis and the dwindling oil supplies. At some point, Trump is going to have to make a decision to either go all-in and restart the war in a major way to force open the Strait or to make a deal to get oil supplies flowing again. 

There really isn’t much question as to which course he will choose. Even without increasing constraints from Congress, the president would likely order the TACO from the menu. If Trump had any intention of escalating the conflict, he would have done so two months ago. The chances of escalation are inversely proportional to the length of time until the midterms.

In the meantime, the Trump Administration has adopted the Alfred E. Neumanattitude of “What? Me worry? with a social media post saying, “It will all work out well in the end - it always does.” Or maybe it’s a dog whistle to the QAnon slogan, “Trust the plan.” There is really no evidence that Trump has a plan, however, and, as Republicans used to tell Democrats, hope is not a plan. 

The irony is that Trump was elected in large part because Republicans saw him as a fighter. What will happen to the movement when MAGA realizes that he not only lost the only real fight that he’s ever had but that he backed down in the face of Iranian resistance?

From The Racket News

Dems should dump Platner

 Democrats have a problem with Graham Platner.

At first, the Maine native seemed like a dream candidate for Democrats, but he quickly became a nightmare. The blue-collar oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan may have had broad appeal on the surface, but things quickly went awry when it was learned that the surface of his body was decorated with a Totenkopf (death’s head) tattoo associated with the Nazi SS.

The Nazi tattoo has apparently been covered with a Celtic knot, but Platner got worse from there. The candidate, who has become known online as “NTG” for “Nazi Tattoo Guy,” seems to have a talent for finding controversy. This past January, he was interviewed by an anti-semitic podcaster and said he was “a longtime fan” of the show. More recently, he has become embroiled in a sexting scandal that stemmed from his wife allegedly telling a campaign aide that he had sent sexually explicit messages to multiple women early in their marriage. They married in 2023.

All that is only the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more bad decisions in Platner’s past that we know about and probably a lot that we don’t… yet.

Having said all that, if I were in Maine, I’m not sure how I’d vote. Normally, a candidate of Platner’s obviously poor quality would not get my vote. Normally, I wouldn’t vote for someone with Platner’s progressive policy positions or who had described himself as a “communist,” which is just as troubling as his dalliance with the Nazis. (Platner and Nick Fuentes may be the only people to pick both sides in the Nazi-Soviet debate. The proper answer is “neither.”)

These aren’t normal times.

I’ve written before that I believe that most Republicans need to lose in the next few elections. I am far from certain that Donald Trump intends to peacefully exit the White House in 2029, and I think we need a Congress that is prepared to resist his lawlessness both until and after the next presidential election. I’m not sure that Susan Collins can be trusted to do that.

To be fair, Collins is one of the least trumpy Republicans left in the Senate. She has opposed him at times, such as voting to convict in his second impeachment, and sided with him at other times, such as voting to acquit him in his first impeachment. Collins has opposed Trump’s actions in Iran and his ballroom funding, as well as being “disappointed” in the president’s endorsement of Ken Paxton, but how she’ll vote if and when these issues come up in the Senate, especially after the election, is anyone’s guess.

Susan Collins is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get. She might stand strong on principles that other Republicans have long since abandoned, or she might fret, express her disappointment and frustration, and vote the party line anyway.

As a Never Trump guy, I’m concerned about decency in politics. But as a Never Trump guy, I’m also concerned about authoritarianism and lawlessness in our government. For people like me, the Maine Senate race is another Fezzik’s choice: We obviously can’t vote for the candidate who is deeply morally flawed, but we also obviously cannot support the candidate who has enabled the president in his lawlessness all too often.

Some would choose not to vote or vote third party. I also reject those choices. I’ve voted third party in the past, but the reality is that one of the major party candidates is almost always going to win. It’s better to choose from the duopoly candidates and try to get the lesser evil, which after all is also the greater good if you’re a glass-half-full person.

The best solution seems to be a Kobayashi Maru scenario. Maine Democrats should change the facts of the situation.

Janet Mills, the governor of Maine and Platner’s former primary opponent, recently hinted that she never formally dropped out of the race. She only suspended her campaign.

“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’ but I simply suspended active campaigning,”Mills said in a recent interview. “I am still on the ballot.”

At this point, a lot of Maine voters would like to see Mills unsuspend her campaign.

A restarted Mills campaign should be paired with a Democratic push to encourage Platner to drop out. So far most Democrats seem to be standing by Platner, but that could change. They stood by Biden up to a point, and then the dam broke.

Unlike with Biden in the presidential primary, Maine has not held it’s primary yet. Election Day is next Tuesday on June 9, but early voting has been going on for several weeks. (Scenarios like this are the best argument against long periods of early voting.)

To add to the tension, Maine has a ranked-choice primary. Voters could rank Mills above both Platner and David Costello, the third Democratic candidate. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated and the totals are refigured until someone gets a majority.

There is still a chance for Democrats to avoid a disaster in Maine, but time is running out. Given the gravity of the situation, hopefully they can manage to dump Platner for the good of their party and their country.

I’ll add that Platner, along with Trump, Paxton, and many others, is a good argument for scrapping the failed primary election experiment that has yielded candidates of inferior quality time and again. The parties should start looking at alternatives to the current system (although giving Trump more control over the Republican Party would not be good in the short term).

Primaries in the internet age give us candidates that deeply politicized internet junkies want rather than candidates who are good for the country or even competent at basic governance. That’s an indictment of both sides, and the Maine race is the choice between a bad candidate or a better candidate who will back a bad and possibly fascist president.

Maine voters have a tough choice. I’m glad I don’t have to make it. I hope their choice in November will be better than it looks like it will be at the moment.

Never trust a guy with a Nazi tattoo. That’s especially true if he’s a politician.

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SHAMELESS PLUG The Racket News has a new online friend. Stan Mitchell, a military and Christian podcaster, recently made our acquaintance and mentioned one of my online observations on an episode of his podcast (that segment begins at about 25:30). Check out Stan on the platform formerly known as Twitter or Blue Sky.

PERSONAL NOTE I haven’t been around much for the past few weeks. My daughter graduated high school, and we had a lot of family and friends come to help us celebrate. That included my son, who came home on leave from the Air Force. I stepped away for a while to take some much-needed family time.

Steve and I haven’t met face-to-face many times, but our families did recently get together for barbecue before the Thornton bunch attended a Weird Al Yankovic concert. It was great to visit with the Bermans, and Mrs. Yankovic’s boy still puts on a great show.

From the Racket News