I finally watched Silence of the Lambs, and am pondering the meaning of Donald Trump’s trumpeting the support of Hannibal Lector for him. Granted, the short answer is he was referring to the studiously apolitical Anthony Hopkins — why? I can’t say — any much more than I can figure why Silence of the Lambs was on his mind.

I suppose a big take away from the movie is that you can’t trust the FBI. They offered Hannibal Lector a sweet deal — annual resort visit to beautiful island and plenty of reading material under maximum surveillance of course — for the information to capture “Buffalo Bill”, but that was quickly shown to be false. From there Hannibal Lector had no other option for an escape than to do it himself, with a body count of a couple officers on the way to your scheme.

Otherwise the only conclusion is we have two doddering old men running for office, with the key difference that one of them and not the other has their ramblings going off into psychotic directions.

This re-assurance for Democrats is curious, with two fatal flaws. One is that even today if you present the map in 2016 you would be advised to bet on Hillary Clinton. It is just that her odds are 6 or 7 out of 10 and we landed in the 3 or 4 otherwise. The second is that none of the elections defeating Republicans afterward were slam dunk results. 2018 — Trump played his cards well, won Senate seats. 2020 — Republicans won a lot of House seats. Team that up with 2021 results of Virginia’s governorship and you do see issues that resonate. And they did, after all, flip the House in 2022. And on issues that garnered steam in 2023 — the single issue of Abortion did not actually mean any Republican office holder lost a seat in Ohio.

Heck. 2016, the election that set Democrats’ current sense of pessimism — Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. So we sit now. Elections will be confused more than anyone wants them to be.

Speculation is that the Dean Phillips primary challenge might harm the prospects for Chris Christie in New Hampshire. Yes. Sounds like a joke. Everybody knows the only two people who could win the nomination are Trump and Haley. And, as is the case, we wait to see if we stumble into that universe of 2 or 3 out of ten where that statement that comes across as absurd to most people paying half attention is the one we stumble into — for a suddenly altered calculus on Biden’s part.

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