by Mark Harvey

When eating an elephant take one bite at a time. ––Creighton Abrams

In the game of chess, some of the greats will concede their most valuable pieces for a superior position on the board. In a 1994 game against the grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, Gary Kasparov sacrificed his queen early in the game with a move that made no sense to a middling chess player like me. But a few moves later Kasparov won control of the center board and marched his pieces into an unstoppable array. Despite some desperate work to evade Kasparov’s scheme, Kramnik’s king was isolated and then trapped into checkmate by a rook and a knight.

I like to think that President Biden played a bit of Kasparovian chess in delaying his withdrawal from the November election until after the Republican convention in Milwaukee. I don’t know if there’s any truth to my fantasy, but in many ways the timing was perfect. The entire Trump campaign was centered around defeating an aging president who was showing alarming signs of mental decline. Despite some real accomplishments like the passage of the infrastructure bill and multiple wins for conservation of the natural world, Biden appeared to be headed for defeat. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump galvanized an already cultish following and the Democratic Party was in the doldrums—vanquished and confused.

Oh what a difference a week makes!

At this writing, no one yet knows who the Democratic nominee will be now that Biden has withdrawn from the race, and frankly a lot of us aren’t that choosy as long as he or she has a pulse and beats Donald Trump in November. It appears that Kamala Harris will be chosen and money—the singular expression of enthusiasm in American politics—is rushing in like a storm. Harris raised more than $80 million in just 24 hours. Read more »