Iconoclast: Marianne for the Angels

Once upon a time, The Week’s Matthew Walther “knew” how the 2020 election would end: “Dark Lord” Donald Trump would face off against Marianne Williamson, who would “vanquish him with the power of love before flying away on a cloud.” So much for the fantasy: With the layoff of Williamson’s campaign staff, her presidential bid is “effectively over.” While mainstream journalists “ignored or mocked” her belief in “the fundamentally spiritual nature of our political crisis,” though, their “grotesque jeering” was “the ­ultimate vindication of her position.” Williamson didn’t attack specific policies; her opponents were “cruelty, avarice, crassness, irreligion and indifferentism” — the reasons “our society will remain sick.” That’s why she “always makes such a fuss about angels”: It’s the heavenly host “on whose side she is ultimately fighting.”

Foreign desk: Iran’s the One in the Corner

“For all the current furor over the death of Qassem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the US and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma,” argues National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson. While Tehran wants to “lure us into situations” in which we seem the aggressor, the regime “deeply erred” in underestimating President Trump. Unlike President Barack ­Obama, whose foreign-policy “naïveté” was “so lucrative and advantageous to Iran prior to 2017,” Trump realizes he can “respond to Iranian tit-for-tat” without going to war or losing credibility — all without alienating his base, which is “nationalist-populist and Jacksonian, not merely doctrinaire isolationist.” And, as “complex and dangerous” as this crisis is, “so far the Iranians, not the US, are making all the blunders.”

From the left: Democrats’ Strategic Conundrum

It’s “strategy,” not “ideology,” that’s dividing Democrats, argues Bill Schneider at The Hill — specifically: “Should the party be a coalition or a movement?” While a coalition “brings together voters with diverse interests who agree on one thing,” movement supporters are “expected to agree on everything.” All Democrats need to do now is “hold the anti-Trump coalition together” to win over “voters of all persuasions who object to Trump’s governing,” yet the Democratic campaign so far, with its “focus on issues like a wealth tax and a Green New Deal,” sounds “esoteric and irrelevant” to many voters. The party’s best hope remains Joe Biden, who wants to “find common ground” with Republicans and independents. That’s “how a coalition is built” — and how Democrats could win in November.

2020 watch: The Bizarro Primary

Democrats are “now beginning to confront” an unsettling but “very real” scenario, reports Politico’s David Siders: It may not be “states where campaigns have been plowing ground for more than a year” that decide the nomination — but, instead, “places and calendar dates so deep into primary season that until recently they’ve received almost no attention at all.” One Dem strategist cites the growing likelihood that “we get past Super Tuesday and there’s still five people in the field,” giving post-Super Tuesday states new prominence. Another complication: Michael Bloomberg’s “apparent willingness to spend limitless sums,” says Siders, allows him to “overwhelm” opponents’ “early operations across the Super Tuesday map” — while “the imperative to spend heavily in early states” is spreading other candidates thin. Plus, “early voting practices are creating a dynamic that, in some states, is supplanting election day with an election month.” It’s all left “the campaigns — and party officials — scrambling to make sense of the reconfigured landscape.”

From the right: Winning Bigly at the Border

Last week, 18 illegal immigrants hoped to “exploit a loophole in US asylum policy to stay in the country” — but border agents sent them back, notes ­Issues and Insights’ John Merline. Thank President Trump’s “Migrant Protection Protocols” policy: Where illegal immigrants who claimed asylum used to “effectively get a free pass,” now they must “wait in Mexico while immigration judges review their cases.” The policy and others like it have created a “virtual border wall.” A real wall is still imperative, though: A future president could reverse Trump’s immigration policies, but “wouldn’t dare tear down a wall that’s already been built.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann