13 March—The non-news today is that thanks to yesterday’s purely perfunctory presidential primaries, this November will treat us to 2020’s presidential déjà vu all over again. Barring the unforeseen or unimaginable albeit devoutly to be wished, of course. Not that this year’s presidential primaries haven’t been or, as in Connecticut, won’t be purely perfunctory—and completely useless and wasteful—given incumbent Joe Biden’s and former incumbent Donald Trump’s firm (especially given their advanced years) grips on their parties’ vacuous scrotums.

Incumbent Biden is obliged to stick with incumbent running mate Kamala Harris despite her unpopularity, which rivals his. But Trump, who blames his defeat in 2020 on Mike Pence—and everything and everybody but himself—will run with a toady he’s absolutely positive he can trust to break the law whenever it suits him—Trump.

We’ll learn on 5 November how many votes the third-party and fringe candidates will have creamed from the big guys. Anybody can run for President of the United States, especially in primaries. And that’s entirely as it should be. Depending on the state and its election czar, moreover, anybody can run in a primary even if he, she, it, or they aren’t constitutionally eligible for the job.

In Connecticut, for instance, in this year’s presidential primary Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas correctly opted to allow Donald Trump’s name to appear on the 2 April Republican ballot, along with Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Ryan Binkley (a Texas entrepreneurial bible thumper).

On Connecticut’s Democrat ballot, in addition to Joe Biden, Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson, you’ll find Atty. Cenk Uygur. Cenk—Wharton and Columbia Law—obviously is no slouch, mind you, and might well be a credit to the Oval Office. His only problem is that he was born in Turkey—or Türkiye, as it is these days—and therefore doesn’t meet the natural-born citizen criterion of Article II of the Constitution.

Just for the record, there are something over 600 third-party and fringe candidates from all over the country currently in the running for President. Even the well-known flakes like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are unlikely to have any effect on any state’s electoral votes. Kennedy has just announced that he’ll announce his running mate in two weeks. Whoopee!

None of that matters, of course, because unless Donald Trump gets his 270 electoral votes (at least) we know full well that voter fraud will have been to blame. If, however, the election should go to Congress—a so-called contingent election—the new House of Representatives would get to choose the President and the new Senate would get to choose the Vice President. So it’s possible to have a POTUS and VEEP from different parties, depending on the makeup of the houses. And to add to the fun, each state gets only one vote . . .