A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh break down the New Hampshire primary results and crown a toady of the night.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Conventional wisdom can evolve in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Conventional wisdom isn’t necessarily valid, of course. The “conventional” label hints that it’s probably not, or at least that it’s incomplete. But conventional wisdom, regardless of its merits, can shape how real world events are perceived and thus the reality of how they unfold. I say all this as preface to note that the day-after reactions to the New Hampshire primary results seemed a bit different from what we heard and saw that night.

Kate Riga mentioned this in the podcast episode we recorded yesterday. We heard all these wild things on Tuesday night about Trump’s resounding victory, how the nomination race is essentially over. And of course it is over if we’re talking about whether or not Trump is going to be the nominee. But I’m seeing more and more comment from the insider commentators and newsletters finally getting around to the idea that while these results almost certainly lock down the nomination, they show general election weakness rather than strength.

Let’s come back to last night’s result. We’ve now had two contests on the Republican side. Donald Trump won 51% of the vote in Iowa (on the GOP side it’s not actually a caucus, just a straight vote) and 54% in New Hampshire. These are at best a thin showing for a former president who remains head of his party. David Kurtz is right that it’s hard to know just what the standard should be when the whole situation is so unprecedented and absurd. The rule in modern American politics is that when you lose a presidential election your career in politics is over. Add to that trying to overthrow the government and facing about a hundred felony indictments and you’d think that would be enough. But that’s obviously not the case. This is the world we’re living in.

While the Republican primary got the most attention last night, there was a Democratic contest too.

So let’s look at those results.

President Biden didn’t campaign in the state because New Hampshire refused to abide by the DNC’s new primary calendar which put South Carolina and Nevada at the front of the nomination line. His name didn’t appear on the ballot either. He appears on track to get a bit over 65% of the vote as a write-in. He’s likely one of the few and possibly only presidential candidate ever to win a primary as a write-in.