It was a long evening if you chose to watch last night. I chose not to after the first reports established that Trump was going to win easily, something about 90% of the serious viewers were expecting. I might have watched a little more if the combination of a long, cold, hard day and a couple of glasses of dry sherry hadn’t given me an unexpected hour and a half or so of sleep. But it made no difference in that I missed little if anything of import.

All of us who watched knew Trump was going to win big–the only question was how big? The answer turned out to be a lot, though not quite an avalanche or even a landslide. The real importance is that it was enough–more than enough–to established that Trump is the only dominant leader in this new(??)GOP that has emerged in the last decade or so. Since he more than doubled the combined vote totals of DiSantis and Haley, and since there are no big name Republicans sitting on the sidelines who might aspire to party leadership of one kind or another, he is firmly in charge.

At the same time the win is not quite overwhelming as an indication he owns the party–not yet, anyway. That will take at least one more try, obviously in NH, to determine. His total last night came to 51% which is impressive, but still means that nearly half the participants voted for somebody else. The question is, how many of these people would be OK with voting for Trump if he gets the nomination, how many would be outraged and possibly refuse to vote for him, and how many would fall in between those two extremes. This may be difficult to decide and take some time

But it may not matter much in the long run. Likely Trump is going to get the nomination, though he leaves IA with only an 11 delgate lead so far. But DiSantis’s campaign looks to be about done. He is not likely to do well in NH, a state which follows his ideas to a rather small extent, in politics, economics, cultural issues or whatever. And if he doesn’t do well, say runs a poor third there, it might be folding up the tent time, or at least time to quit talking as if his nomination is likely or even within hailing distance of being likely. In other words he must do well in NH or it’s almost certainly the end of his chances for the nomination.

Nicky Haley finished third, not far behind DiSantis. That is respectable considering the polls of several months ago which showed her far behind. But I’m pretty sure she hoped for better than her 19.1% of the votes, 2.1% behind the beleaguered FL governor. She and her people are attempting to put a positive spin on this and they may succeed to some degree. But she is short of where she and her supporters had hoped to be and NH is likely her last serious chance to establish herself. 

Of course, she might succeed. NH people are independent and largely moderate to liberal in many of their opinions. And, very importantly, NH has an easy open primary where a registered voter gets to chose their party ballot without fuss or hassle. This means a lot of Democrats and Independents could flock into the GOP primary where few of them would vote for Trump or DiSantis. So this means Haley might get a boost from moderate reminded Republicans and a few outsiders. As we have previously noted, the most recent poll showed her within single digits of Trump and a victory could liven her campaign considerably. Even a small loss of one or two points might help. I have mentioned these possibilities before, but they bear repeating because NH is likely the last chance for stopping the Trump juggernaut. Slow him down there or it’s likely all over.

Well, except that there are still those court cases out there. The civil case regarding a defamation issue with writer E Jean Carroll opened today and Trump(unnecessarily, legally speaking)attended. This one, given the public’s tolerance for Trumpian misbehavior is likely to give the country more light than heat and little enough of that. As I mentioned the other day, I think Jack Smith is the one who has the goods on Trump. But as time goes on it appears more and more likely that Trump’s people will keep this potentially damaging case out of the public’s mind until after the election. Then it will be too late to change much.

So, I think the US is heading for another Trump-Biden race. There are, as noted above, a couple of places where the former President could stumble, but it looks less and less likely. Biden faces no such challenges, only the ones imposed upon him by age and appearance, and, just as importantly, by the public’s apparent ignorance of his accomplishments and unwillingness to acknowledge that there are ways in which things are getting better, economically. This means a long but not very exciting time for politics junkies and news people, but it appears now that this election season may be fairly dull–until the election is on the horizon. Then–well, it’s anyone’s guess. In the meantime remember the often quoted Chinese curse of centuries ago–“may you live in interesting times.”