Here are some things to consider as you try to handicap this deadly contest:

RUSSIA:

It is a certainty that a war of principals or proxies with Russia remains a chief objective of the neocons and the Deep State.  If Victoria Nuland in Kiev didn't convince you of this, recall Murray Rothbard's trenchant observation that "sanctions are simply the coward's and the babbler's halfway house to war," and it is clear we have been on the way to war with Russia for some time.

All that could ever have been hoped from Donald Trump was that if elected president he would deflect Washington's headlong rush to a Russian war, beginning with the lifting of sanctions.  Judging today by the way he has populated his administration, I no longer have any hope that Trump will change that trajectory.

Look at it this way.  For Donald Trump to have survived and flourished in New York and New Jersey real estate development, he had to have a keen sense of the hidden power interests that he needed to appease:  Which union or brotherhood had to be guaranteed building contracts, which suppliers must be used, and which politicians need to be greased to win zoning and other approvals.  Beginning with the Flynn episode and other surveillance and leaks, the President is being schooled by the permanent government.  Whatever else you may say about him, he is a quick learner.  Unquestionably, in its few short weeks in Washington, the Trump team's rhetoric about Russia has toughened and official U.S. behavior is again growing bellicose.