Some things are both inconsequential and incomprehensible

New Hampshire results are coming in. A couple of candidate campaigns which had been on life support have pulled the plug including, so far, Andrew Yang (2.8% of the vote, Patrick Deval (0.4%), and Michael Bennet (0.3%).

Patrick Deval only entered the campaign three months ago and has now exited. It seemed a quixotic endeavor, skipping all the planning and year-long preparation of the many other candidates, and entering at the last minute for unclear reasons.

My recollection is that he entered the campaign just a couple of weeks before Kamala Harris suspended hers. Since press release journalism seemed to indicate Patrick was entering because he thought that the Democratic field was insufficiently diverse or capable, it seemed that the justification was that field needed another black candidate.

But Patrick, while black, is just another one of those Ivy-league degreed, insider technocrats who cycle between government positions and Wall Street. He has never run a national campaign. He has not been involved in politics for six years. Being black seemed entirely incidental and I struggled to imagine how simply being a white-shoe firm, Yankee, Liberal insider who happened to be black would appeal to a poor and substantially socially conservative and Southern black base.

It was baffling to me.

Hubris? Political bubble? Some sort of establishment insurance policy? Laying the groundwork for a future campaign? A form of technocratic delusion?

I don't know. And now, three months, a couple of hundred thousand dollars in campaign ads, and a cancelled public campaign event in Atlanta where only two people showed up, after no votes in Iowa and 1,200 votes of 230,000 cast in New Hampshire, he is gone.

His star launched in murk upon the Democratic political firmament, came from nowhere with no discernible reason, flickered momentarily, and then winked out.

As an aside, I find it oddly reassuring that in these times of fraught political insider/establishment angst, that the fourth Google search autofill suggestion when I google for the results of the recent caucus with "Iowa final results . . ." is "Results from Iowa high school wrestling". A useful reminder of real people's priorities and that there is a wonderfully quotidian life in the great Republic that goes on despite the obsessions of the mainstream media and the establishment.