Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 188
Nothing to See Here
Tom Steyer became the least successful self-funding candidate in modern U.S. political history this week, David Weigel observes.
Rob Pyers: “Between his run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States and his 2026 run for California governor, Tom Steyer will have spent $557,781,638 for 0 delegates and a 3rd-place primary finish, respectively.”
Kyle Kondik: “Over the course of the last three election cycles—including each of the most recent elections for all 100 Senate seats—just 29 of the 100 races were decided by less than 10 points.”
“That is still a higher percentage of at least somewhat competitive elections than we generally see each cycle in the House.”
“Despite being in the minority, Democrats have won more of the truly close races than Republicans have, and it’s something they likely will need to continue to do in both 2026 and into the future given the overall GOP skew of the Senate map.”
Wall Street Journal: “The statue wars that swept away monuments six years ago are back. This time, the battle is to restore them.”
“Traditionalists are suing and lobbying local governments to resurrect memorials to Confederate generals, Founding Fathers and European explorers. Many of the statues disappeared from town squares and other public places during the pandemic-era protests against police violence and racism following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.”
Matt Bai: “No president really wants to be compared to Jimmy Carter (rest his soul), but in Donald Trump’s case, the parallels now are hard to ignore. Carter’s presidency was overtaken by a hostage crisis in Iran, where in 1979 followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized 66 Americans and held them (or most of them, anyway) for more than a year. The impasse played out as a televised drama… and became entwined in the public mind with uncontrolled inflation, interest rates, and gas prices, while Carter pleaded with Americans to turn down their thermostats and put on sweaters instead. All of it signaled that the country was spiraling and the president overmatched.”
“Almost a half century later, Trump stumbled into his own implacable hostage crisis in Iran, this one entirely of his own making. For several weeks, Iran has held the Straight or Hormuz — and, by extension, the global economy — at gunpoint.”
“Chances for permanently ending the standoff seem to fluctuate by the day, as Trump desperately seeks a way out of the conundrum. As I write this, the most likely outcome seems to be a humiliating capitulation on Trump’s part, in which Iran will loosen its grip on the oil in exchange for a bunch of vague talking points about future accomplishments.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted that Bill Clinton’s impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky was “a mistake,” the New York Post reports.
Said Gingrich: “I think it was a mistake because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky.”
He added: “The real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment while he was governor. In fact, he was stripped of his law license in Arkansas after he left the presidency, and for five years couldn’t practice because he clearly committed a felony.”
John Avlon: “Giuliani has always been a mix of sunshine and shadow. He was a young man who had wanted to join the priesthood but chose to be a prosecutor instead, in part because he knew that he was too hot-blooded to keep his vows. In city hall, there was a constant struggle between the better angels of his nature and the darker impulses of his soul: the instinct to respond to a mosquito with a howitzer, the fact that he was more content to be feared than loved. Earlier this month, Rudy was suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia, sinking into a coma before recovering.”
“This urgent reminder of his mortality prompted me to reflect on the arc of his life. I had a front-row seat to this daily wrestling match as a 27-year-old chief speechwriter in his second term. I learned a lot from him—and the lessons of his life, both positive and negative, should not be lost.”
New York Times: “The Constitution’s framers were doubtless brilliant, and the document they drafted has endured. It is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But, as the nation commemorates its 250th anniversary, some constitutional scholars say the second Trump presidency is calling into question whether the nation’s founding charter and sacred text truly provides the balance the founders wanted.”
“President Trump has used the power of the federal government to bully universities, law firms and news outlets; undermined the independence of the Justice Department by instructing it to prosecute his political enemies; defied Congress by impounding money it had instructed him to spend; flouted countless court orders; and cut off funding to states led by Democrats.”
“Barney Frank, the longtime Democratic congressman and leading liberal who brought new visibility to gay rights and crafted the most significant reforms to the financial system in a generation, has died,” the Associated Press reports.
“He was 86.”
“The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday that organizers say will reflect the country’s Christian origins and, they hope, spark ‘a movement of renewal’ in America,” the Washington Post reports.
Paul Krugman: “America used to be a middle-class society. But income and wealth disparities began rising rapidly during the Reagan years, and by the late 80s many observers began drawing parallels between the new era of inequality and the Gilded Age.”
“At this point, however, it’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the ‘malefactors of great wealth’ called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison.”
Ron Brownstein: “If Democrats flip either chamber, it will continue the extraordinary run of volatility that has seen control of the House, the Senate or the White House change hands between the parties in 11 of the 13 elections since 2000. By contrast, control of either congressional chamber or the White House flipped in just five of the final 13 elections of the 20th century and only seven of the last 20 stretching back to 1960.”
“Each time voters recoil against the party in power, political analysts usually focus on the immediate choices made by the president and his party in Congress. But the pattern of rapid reversals has become so entrenched that it appears driven less by tactical decisions than by deeper forces in the economy, society and the electorate that show no sign of abating.”
The Economist: “America’s founding fathers brooded about the decline of the Roman republic into a corrupt and brutal empire. They feared such tyrannical emperors as Caligula, who renamed temples in his honour, had golden statues of himself erected, and revelled in humiliating Rome’s former elites, including the cowardly senators who handed him supreme powers.”
“Many ordinary Romans loved Caligula as a showman who built marble monuments, organised military parades and relished attending gladiatorial contests, the gorier the better. To show his contempt for the ruling classes, Caligula threatened to make his horse a consul.”
“Mr Trump, a fan of golden statues, marble monuments and cage-fighting, has yet to appoint a horse to his cabinet. He has, however, appointed unqualified sycophants to positions of high rank, where they vie to show their loyalty while squabbling over trivial perks of office. Americans can only hope that their follies are personal to the Trump era, and can be reversed by an election or two.”
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in a Florida hospital in critical condition, the New York Times reports.
President Trump on Truth Social: “Our fabulous Rudy Giuliani, a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR, has been hospitalized, and is in critical condition. What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!”
Charlie Cook: “It is interesting to look at the results of the 25 presidential elections over the last 100 years, starting with Herbert Hoover’s 1928 victory over Al Smith. Ten of the 25 elections (40 percent) produced landslide victories—margins of 10 points or more. The most recent of these, however, was Ronald Reagan’s 49-state, 18-point victory over Walter Mondale in 1984. To put it differently, landslides occurred in 10 of the first 15 elections in this 100-year span; we now have had 10 consecutive elections without one.”
“A landslide presidential election is a clear, unambiguous, indisputable statement by the American people about what and whom they want, and about what and whom they have rejected. This clarity is useful, albeit quite painful for the losing candidate and party. A lack of landslides means that voters are not giving clear guidance on the direction that the country should go or what kind of leaders they want.”
“For someone who regularly disparages France in matters of war and commerce, President Trump is not above appropriating its culture. Last year, Mr. Trump ordered up a military parade inspired by the Bastille Day celebration he was invited to watch in Paris in 2017 by President Emmanuel Macron,” the New York Times reports.
“Now, Mr. Trump is pressing ahead with a plan to construct a triumphal arch in Washington that he envisions, among other things, as one-upping the Arc de Triomphe in the French capital. That has prompted jaded reactions in France, a land that is no stranger to political leaders afflicted with edifice complexes.”
“It has also cast a fresh light on the Arc de Triomphe and its tangled history, which could serve as a reminder to Mr. Trump of both the ephemeral nature of power and the contested legacy of monuments.”
“Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s death in 2013 ended a storied Capitol Hill political career that spanned more than three decades,” NOTUS reports.
“Or so it seemed.”
“The New Jersey Democrat’s federal reelection committee, Lautenberg for Senate, technically remains a going concern, having never been officially terminated. The committee has only taken concrete steps to change that in the past few weeks, nearly 13 years after its namesake candidate died at age 89 after serving five terms in the Senate.”
David Brooks: “Maybe you’ve seen photos of Tehran in the 1970s, just before the Islamic Revolution: images of young women going to work in miniskirts, of couples making out in parks while wearing bell-bottoms, of people at pools in bikinis. It looks like Paris or Milan or Los Angeles. But in 1979 the revolution happened, and now Tehran looks like something from an earlier century.”
“Sometimes I think that our whole world has become kind of like that—going backwards in time. The religious movements thriving in today’s secularized age are the traditionalist ones that dissent from large parts of contemporary culture—not only the Shiite Islam of post-revolution Iran, but Orthodox Judaism and conservative Catholicism. Young Americans are flooding into Eastern Orthodox churches.”
“Many of us thought that the world would get more democratic as it modernized, but for the past quarter century, we have seen a reversion to authoritarian strongmen.”
Tucker Carlson told the BBC that President Trump’s Iran war “the single biggest mistake” by an American president in his lifetime.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.