John B. Judis

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais probably closes the book on the use of the Voting Rights Act to ensure Black voting rights in the South. The decision is being taken as a blow to Black voting rights — and even as indicative of the court’s racist leanings — but I wouldn’t jump to those conclusions. The redistricting effort that Callais ends may not have been of unequivocal benefit to the Southern Blacks it was designed to aid. And while it could damage Democratic prospects in 2026, it might help them in the longer run.

There were two revealing moments during Donald Trump’s speech to the nation last night on the war in Iran, and another in a luncheon speech he gave earlier that day. The first was his threat to bomb Iranians “back to the Stone Age where they belong.” Trump was echoing, whether consciously or not, a comment that Air Force General Curtis LeMay had made in a 1965 book. LeMay advised that if North Vietnam didn’t bow to American aims in South Vietnam, the United States “should bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

Let me take an initial crack at assessing what the United States has done in Venezuela with the proviso that time can easily prove such analyses mistaken. Donald Trump’s claimed takeover of Venezuela has been compared to what the American invasion aimed to do in Iraq in 2003, but I’d go back instead to the American intervention in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and its conquest and takeover of Cuba and the Philippines, about which I wrote in Folly of Empire. 

I believe the Republicans came out ahead in the Iowa Caucuses. If Donald Trump had won the caucus, he may have been able to close out the nomination battle by winning Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But the Republicans now have a three-man race, and one of the candidates, Marco Rubio, would be difficult for the Democrats to defeat in November.

The Democratic results – a virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders – suggests that the Democratic contest will go well into March. I love Bernie Sanders, and I think his campaign is making an enormous contribution to America’s future, but I don’t think he can win in November. He’ll run up against deep-seated skepticism about big government and tax increases. For the time being, he is too far to the left to win a national election unless he faced someone who was equally on the far right. And his age could also be a handicap.

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