OF EVS AND EDSELS: Instapunditeers of a certain age will recall former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s second biggest failure, the Edsel, which came during his pre-DOD days at Ford. The Edsel, according to the market data of the day, had everything consumers wanted and was sure to be a huge success. Instead, it was a total flop.

Now comes the Electric Vehicle (EV) of President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal. For the first time in the many years of my life, I look at EVs and see a marketing disaster in the making that will far exceed McNamara’s Edsel bust. Issues & Insights explains why.

Yes, there is Tesla, but as I&I notes: “For a while, EV sales were brisk. But the bottom has fallen out now that most of the wealthy, early-adaptor, virtue-signaling homeowners have bought theirs. The rest of the car-buying public is more concerned with mundane things such as affordability, range, and not having to worry about the car spontaneously blowing up.”

Speaking of blowing up, McNamara’s biggest bust was the concept of “Flexible Response” — aka “Graduated Escalation” — the sure-fire, guaranteed-to-work strategy he sold to JFK and LBJ as the way to win the Vietnam War.