July 3, 2024


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Who’s ahead in the national polls?

The updated average for each candidate in 2024 presidential polls, accounting for each poll's recency, sample size, and methodology is at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/

LITIGATION TRACKER ... Trump Trials Clearinghouse

https://www.justsecurity.org/88175/trump-trials-clearinghouse

THE WEEK'S BEST QUOTES. . .

I’m not sure I’d ever watched Donald Trump lie so incessantly, extravagantly and unabashedly, and that’s saying something. On Thursday night he lied about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He lied about the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He lied about his relationship with the military, about his concern for the environment — about pretty much any and every subject that came up. He lied with a smile. He lied with a shrug. He lied with a sneer. -- Frank Bruni. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/presidential-debate-trump-biden-2024.html

 


“This most recent debate has taught the danger of spectatorship. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved. Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his. Yours.” — David Frum. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/debate-trump-platform-january-6/678818/

"Democrats should do themselves a favor and play the hand they were dealt. The country is in okay shape, the Supreme Court is pissing everybody off, and the Republican Congress is worthless as tits on a slab of bacon. And Trump is a liar who doesn’t care about anybody else but himself." — Doug Porter.  https://dougporter.substack.com/p/take-a-deep-breath-some-post-debate

“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and a half years of performance. It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point. I’m talking about the choice in November, about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.” — Vice President Kamala Harris responding the Anderson Cooper. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1806533304428142735

"If he insists on running and he loses to Trump, Biden and his family — and his staff and party members who enabled him — will not be able to show their faces. They deserve better. America needs better. The world needs better." --Thomas L. Friedman. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/joe-biden-tom-friedman.html

 

 


"Biden’s closest counselors — political adviser Mike Donilon, former chief of staff Ron Klain, the first lady — have an obligation to be honest with him now. If he has the strength and wisdom to step aside, the Democrats will have two months to choose another candidate. It will be a wide-open and noisy race, but that will be invigorating for the country. It’s never too late to do the right thing." -- David Ignatius https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/28/david-ignatius-biden-trump-debate-age/

"At some point Democrats have to decide if they want to try to win this election or it is simply too uncomfortable for them to do anything but be on this train as it derails. But right now, it feels to me like the train is derailing."  -- Ezra Klein. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/presidential-debate-biden-trump.html

"Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election." -- NY Times Editorial Board. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/biden-election-debate-trump.html

"As of last night, there are no plausible theories left of how Biden could win the election. Last night was the test of whether Biden was up for the job of campaigning, and he failed it. This wasn’t just a weak performance, like Ronald Reagan’s first debate in 1984 and Barack Obama’s in 2012. The man could hardly speak. To believe that things will somehow turn around come September, when the next debate is scheduled, would be delusional." -- Rogé Karma https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/biden-trump-debate-election/678835/

 


But the viability of Biden as the candidate who can overcome Trump’s lead looked much more doubtful within moments of the president taking the stage last night. Biden’s performance justified every fear of the cadre of longtime party strategists, such as Carville and Axelrod, who have openly voiced the concerns about renominating him that plenty of others have shared only privately. Carville, though, was feeling no “told you so” joy last night. His parting words to me: “I hate being right.” -- Ronald Brownstein. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/great-democratic-conundrum-biden/678830/

"The simple fact that Trump spoke loudly and clearly and with, by his standards, relative self-discipline, coupled with the lack of interrogation from the moderators, granted him a plausibility he should have been denied. He is a failed coup leader, nationalist-populist menace and racist who would suck up to the world’s autocrats and throw Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s wolves: he should be allowed nowhere near power. But because he was up against a man who could scarcely complete a sentence, he was presented as a legitimate option for the world’s highest office". -- Jonathan Freedland. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/28/joe-biden-democrats-donald-trump

"There will be much shouting (and not about golf) over the next few days and weeks, as Democrats attempt to sort through the wreckage from this ill-advised debate. History suggests that the winner of a Presidential debate can expect a bounce—a slight one, averaging seven-tenths of a point—in the two weeks afterward. Perhaps that’s why both Biden and Trump readily agreed to have one so early in the election cycle, before either man has even been formally nominated by his party: plenty of time to clean up the mess." -- Brian Klaas. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/biden-withdrawal-democratic-health/678839/

"But if that assumption was what drove the decision to debate, it looks potentially catastrophic for Biden. The question now is not so much about what kind of bounce Trump might get from Thursday’s debate but an even bigger one that we can’t quite answer yet: Was this the beginning of the end of the Biden Presidency?" -- Susan B. Glasser. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/was-the-debate-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-joe-bidens-presidency

“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” — Richard Nixon, in a 1977 interview with David Frost. https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110331/documents/HMKP-116-JU00-20191211-SD408.pdf

IN THIS ISSUE

IN THE NEWS

OPINION

IN THE NEWS...

 

The Borowitz Report: Biden Uses Sweeping Immunity to Replace Supreme Court Republicans with Jill, Hunter, and the Obamas

In his first official act since the Supreme Court granted him sweeping presidential immunity, on Tuesday President Biden replaced all six Republican justices on the Court with his wife, son, and the Obama family.

In a farewell message to the ex-justices, Biden thanked them for giving him virtually unlimited power and “for making people finally stop talking about the debate.”

The impact on the former justices was sudden and shocking, as both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were immediately disinvited from a lavish Mediterranean cruise aboard Harlan Crow’s superyacht.

Additionally, John Roberts confirmed he is relocating to North Korea to be the figurehead of a purely ceremonial tribunal that rubber-stamps the whims of Kim Jong Un.

Meanwhile, an irate Brett Kavanaugh was spotted moving his possessions out of the Court, rolling an unwieldy beer keg down the building’s front steps. https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/biden-uses-sweeping-immunity-to-replace
 

Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials, Invokes Military Tribunals

Donald Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking ‘televised military tribunals’ and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.

Mr. Trump, using his account on Truth Social on Sunday, promoted two posts from other users of the site that called for the jailing of his perceived political enemies. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/politics/trump-liz-cheney-treason-jail.html
 


 

More Democratic Voters Than Not Want Biden Replaced After Debate Performance

The Morning Consult: post-debate survey shows President Joe Biden has lost no immediate ground to Trump although most voters, including a 47% plurality of Democrats, say Biden should be replaced as the Democratic candidate for president. It also found 45% of voters support Biden and 44% support Trump. https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/biden-trump-debate-poll-june-2024
 

'Richard Nixon Would Have Had A Pass': John Dean Stunned By Trump Immunity Ruling

Richard Nixon’s counsel John Dean said Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision that Donald Trump has full immunity for “official” actions he took as president — even his attempted coup — likely would have meant that Nixon was immune from his criminal conduct during the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation.

Said Dean: “As I looked at it, I realized Richard Nixon would have had a pass.”
He added: “Virtually all of his Watergate-related conduct… virtually all that evidence falls in what could easily be described as ‘official conduct.’” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-supreme-court-trump-immunity-ruling_n_6682f7d5e4b038babc7c7c39?08d

 


 

Hunter Biden Sues Fox News Under ‘Revenge Porn’ Statute

Hunter Biden sued Fox News for streaming a miniseries that he claims included “intimate images” of him without his consent, violating a New York “revenge porn” law. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-01/hunter-biden-sues-fox-news-under-revenge-porn-statute?srnd=homepage-americas
 

Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate.

Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions:

 

Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Requires Public Schools to Teach the Bible

Oklahoma’s state superintendent on Thursday directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, in the latest conservative push testing the boundaries between religious instruction and public education. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/oklahoma-public-schools-bible.html

 


 

THE DAILY GRILL … 

Biden had a bad night. Toughen up. Fight's on.

VERSUS

Also, Trump is an existential threat to democracy, the Republic, the Constitution, and our most fundamental liberties, in addition to being a fraud, a liar, a felon, a degenerate, a global embarrassment, and an ally of evil. — Rick Wilson. https://x.com/TheRickWilson/status/1806537585054925284

OPINION

 

The Inquirer Editorial Board: To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

After scheming to overturn the 2020 election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

Now, Trump is a convicted felon who is staring at three more criminal indictments. He is running for president to stay out of prison.

There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be. https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html

 


 

Steve Schmidt: Gaslighting is a sin, not a strategy

29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.

It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party's greatest leaders. This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuses of Humanity in our history. It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated. Our country is in trouble. Our politics are badly broken. 

The first step to a season of renewal in our land is the absolute and utter repudiation of Trump and his vile enablers in the 2018 election by electing Democratic majorities. I do not say this as an advocate of a progressive agenda. I say it as someone who retains belief in DEMOCRACY and decency.

On Ronald Reagan's grave are these words. "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life." He would be ashamed of McConnell and Ryan and all the rest while this corrupt government establishes internment camps for babies. Everyone of these complicit leaders will carry this shame through history. There legacies will be ones of well earned ignominy. They have disgraced their country and brought dishonor to the Party of Lincoln.  https://open.substack.com/pub/steveschmidt/p/gaslighting-is-a-sin-not-a-strategy

 

 

A Dramatic Expansion of Presidential Power

As Justice Sotomayor’s appalled dissent makes clear, this ruling is a dramatic expansion of presidential power — not just for Trump but for all presidents.

Citing the notorious World War II ruling that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans: 

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding. This new official-acts immunity now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the nation.

I'm counting on his propensity for overconfidence  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/01/us/trump-immunity-supreme-court

 


 

Heather Cox Richardson: A Flood of Lies

This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. https://substack.com/home/post/p-146071921
 

Bess Levin: A Mind-Boggling Number of Voters Who Could Decide the Election Think Donald Trump—Yes, That Donald Trump—Is Better for Democracy Than Biden

Even as ballots in the 2020 election were still being counted, Donald Trump claimed to his supporters that he had won, but that “a fraud” was being perpetrated “on the American public” to deprive him of a second term. After it was clear that he had officially lost, Trump:

  • Continued to spread baseless lies that the election had been stolen from him
  • Blocked federal officials from working with Joe Biden’s transition team
  • Demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” him the exact number of votes he needed to turn his loss their into a win
  • Pressured the DOJ to investigate the absurd claim that Italian satellites had changed Trump votes to Biden ones
  • Urged state legislators to “decertify” their election results
  • Incited a violent riot that left numerous people dead
  • Let said violent riot go on for hours before he half-heartedly told people to go home (and also told the mob, “You’re very special” and “we love you” and “Remember this day forever!”)
  • Said Mike Pence deserved the chants calling for his hanging
  • Continues, nearly four years later, to claim the election was stolen from him
  • Won’t commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election
  • Says there will be further violence if he loses again
  • Regularly threatens to  use the government to go after his enemies if he wins
  • Said he will be a dictator on “day one” in office

Because of all of the above, and because Joe Biden has notably done none of the above, you might think it would be pretty clear to people that of the two candidates, one of them is good for democracy and one of them is bad, and that the latter is very obviously Trump. But according to the results of a terrifying new poll, that is, somehow, very much not the case. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-vs-biden-democracy-poll
 


 

Adrienne LaFrance: What Kind of ‘Psycho’ Calls Dead Americans ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’?

Perhaps you’ve noticed lately that Donald Trump, a man not known for subtlety, has been testing the limits of the Streisand effect. At one event after another—at a rally, then a fundraiser, in remarks on his social platform, and in at least one video that his campaign distributed online—Trump keeps reminding his supporters about his well-documented habit of disparaging America’s military service members as “dumb,” “losers,” and “suckers.”

“Think of it, from a practical standpoint,” Trump said before a crowd in Las Vegas earlier this month. “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery, and I look at them and say, ‘These people are suckers and losers.’ Now, think of it; unless you’re a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person, who would say that, anyway?”

As it happens, the American people have, by now, a very clear picture of the kind of person who would say such a thing.

Recall Trump’s infamous 2015 remarks about Senator John McCain, who was tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam: “He’s not a war hero,” Trump insisted. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Then there was the time in 2016 when Trump publicly mocked and belittled Khzir and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a fallen U.S. Army officer, Humayun Khan, who had been killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. (Trump is “devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son,” Khzir said at the time.)

Then, in 2020, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported several instances in which Trump openly expressed disgust for America’s dead service members. There was the time in Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day in 2017, when Trump was standing at the grave of Robert Kelly, a young Marine officer who had been killed in Afghanistan. Trump was visiting the cemetery with his then–Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and father to Robert. As Goldberg first reported, “Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, ‘I don’t get it. What was in it for them?’”

During a trip to France the following year, faced with the prospect of visiting another cemetery, this time to pay respects to service members killed in World War I, Trump complained: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” (Trump’s loyalists have attempted to redirect attention to the weather that day, arguing that it really was too rainy for a visit.) And, as Goldberg first reported, “in a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”Trump has never served in the U.S. military. “Bone spurs” won him an exemption from Vietnam.  He has never had to triple-check to make sure his uniform was in regulation, or taken a combat-fitness test. He has never watched his spouse walk out the door for the last time before deployment. He has never cared for a family member who returned from war with permanent injuries. And he has never received the unfathomable news that one of his children was killed in action. Millions of Americans have. But Trump is nothing like them. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/what-kind-of-psycho-calls-dead-americans-losers-and-suckers/678807/
 

Toluse Olorunnipa and Matt Viser: How an aging Biden and his advisers locked in a decision to run again

President Biden’s decision to pursue a second term crystallized during the 2022 Thanksgiving holiday, as he gathered on Nantucket island with his large family to discuss his political future.

At the time, the choice in some ways seemed straightforward: better-than-expected results in the midterm elections had buoyed the incumbent and silenced many of his doubters, he had successfully enacted an ambitious legislative agenda and he felt strong and healthy days after celebrating his 80th birthday.

Now, after a debate performance where his stumbles and meandering responses sent shock waves through the Democratic Party, Biden’s enormously consequential decision to run as an 81-year-old after initially saying he would be a transitional figure has come under harsher scrutiny, raising fresh questions about his small circle of advisers and the Democratic leaders who facilitated his unprecedented push to remain in office until age 86.

“I think there’s real consternation, not only among his inner circle, but in the family,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.” “Everybody’s wondering, ‘What happened, and can this be fixed?’”

Just two years ago, Biden had envisioned himself as a temporary steward of a Democratic Party that was nurturing a new and more diverse generation of leaders. “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” a 77-year-old Biden said in March 2020.

But shortly after he turned 80 on Nov. 20, 2022, making him the first octogenarian in the White House, Biden decided the bridge would be much longer than many anticipated. He would run for reelection, casting his presidency not as a transition, but as a transformational era in and of itself.

There were always warning signs. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in September 2022 showed that 56 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents said the party should pick someone else as their nominee.

Republicans were already circulating videos of Biden looking confused or seeming to stumble over his words or his feet, often taken out of context. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician, observed that the president’s gait seemed stiffer, while also saying he was more than capable of serving as president. And a second presidential run would clearly be more physically taxing than in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic confined Biden to his home for long stretches.

Biden, they argue, has survived hard moments and has a track record of defying doubters. While they acknowledge that Biden’s performance was disappointing, they frame it as just one moment in what will be a long, tempestuous campaign.

Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, agreed that the debate’s significance will fade in weeks to come, saying, “A combination of time and the electorate’s short attention span mitigates damn near anything in presidential electoral politics.”. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/29/biden-decision-reelection

 


 

Jonathan Blitzer: Finally, a Leap Forward on Immigration Policy

President Biden has offered help to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, in the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade.

he American immigration system has been called many unsavory things, most of them deserved. It was last reformed thirty-four years ago. What has emerged in the decades since is a welter of backlogs, visa shortages, piecemeal enforcement measures, and every manner of bureaucratic complexity. Ordinary people, trying to work and take care of their families, are often forced into surreal scenarios. Take the 1.1 ­million people in this country who are married to U.S. citizens but are undocumented themselves. You might assume that it would be relatively straightforward for them to get on firm legal footing. In fact, the process is quite complicated. Anyone who first entered the United States illegally must travel to another country for a visa interview at a U.S. Embassy or consulate. But if she has lived in the United States for more than a year without papers, as some eleven million people have, a law in place since the nineteen-­nineties bars her from reëntering the country for up to a decade. That could mean, in effect, getting stranded outside the U.S., despite having a partner, possibly children, and a livelihood here. She can get a waiver permitting her to remain in the U.S. if she can prove that her prolonged absence would cause “extreme hardship” for certain members of her family. But, because of processing delays, getting the waiver can now take three and a half years.

A couple of weeks ago, at the White House, President Joe Biden announced the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. He gave roughly half a million undocumented spouses of citizens a path to permanent legal status, on the condition that they have lived here since at least 2014 and pass a criminal-­background check. “I refuse to believe that to secure our border we have to walk away from being American,” Biden said. “The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history.”

The new policy is a rare bit of unqualified good news. But it is also a reminder of the paradox of U.S. immigration policy: each act of relief underlines everything that hasn’t been done, both to make the system as a whole more equitable and to allow millions of people living in legal limbo a chance to settle their status once and for all. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/08/finally-a-leap-forward-on-immigration-policy
 

Jay Caspian Kang: The Case for Joe Biden Staying in the Race

At this moment, Biden’s odds of winning the upcoming election don’t seem great, but I also think that Trump comes with his own chaos and that it might just be better to present the most stable and well-known option, which, unfortunately enough, is still Biden. Democratic voters should be furious about what certainly seems like a manipulation of the public’s trust and the arrogance of an Administration that tried to push a diminished Biden into a campaign season in the vain hope that maybe they would just get lucky and all the highest-profile moments would magically line up with his good days. And, if people want Biden to step down because he has betrayed the voters who put him in office, I think that’s a justifiable argument. But, if the point is for the Democrats to figure out their best shot at defeating Trump, we should realize that the duplicitousness, incompetence, and arrogance of the Biden Administration and Democratic Party leadership is actually a case against a seismic shift. These are still going to be the same people who decide on the process for a successor. Do we actually trust them to get it right? And are the chances they can field and support a new candidate higher than the chances that Biden has a series of better days and can regain some of the trust he has lost?

I don’t think it’s possible to clearly say one option is much better than the other, but I would argue, almost by default, that acting in a rash manner without a real contingency plan tends to lead to bad results, especially when you’re dealing with inept actors. I would feel differently if there were one obvious replacement for Biden or even two but the task of whittling down a field of contenders in four months feels like a principled protest rather than a measured and pragmatic strategy. By the slimmest of margins, I find myself opting for the known bad candidate over the chaos of the unknown. The Democrats have to hope that Biden can keep giving speeches like he did in North Carolina and that the debate will become an unpleasant but fading memory. They have to believe the polls are wrong. They need Trump to remind the country why they rejected him in 2020. The situation is certainly dire, but the irony here is that the Party’s foolishness and Biden’s arrogance, stubbornness, or blindness, means that we are stuck with him. There is no realistic Plan B. https://www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/the-case-for-joe-biden-staying-in-the-race

 


 

David Remnick: The Reckoning of Joe Biden

For the President to insist on remaining the Democratic candidate would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment.

Biden has rightly asserted that the voters regard this election not only as a debate about global affairs, the environment, civil rights, women’s rights, and other matters of policy but as a referendum on democracy itself. For him to remain the Democratic candidate, the central actor in that referendum, would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment. It is entirely possible that the debate will not much change the polls; it is entirely possible that Biden could have a much stronger debate in September; it is not impossible to imagine that Trump will find a way to lose. But, at this point, should Biden engage the country in that level of jeopardy? To step aside and unleash the admittedly complicated process of locating and nominating a more robust and promising ticket seems the more rational course and would be an act of patriotism. To refuse to do so, to go on contending that his good days are more plentiful than the bad, to ignore the inevitability of time and aging, doesn’t merely risk his legacy—it risks the election and, most important, puts in peril the very issues and principles that Biden has framed as central to his Presidency and essential to the future. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-reckoning-of-joe-biden?
 

Gilad Edelman: Donald Trump’s Theory of Everything

No matter the question, his answer is “illegal immigrants.”

At Thursday’s debate, while Joe Biden struggled to put a sentence together, Donald Trump struggled to utter any sentence that wasn’t about illegal immigrants destroying the country.

Harsh rhetoric—and policy—on migrants and the border has long been a pillar of Trump’s political identity, but it used to slot into a much wider range of grievances. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump railed against free trade, vowed to get revenge on China for ripping America off, and accused corporate executives and Wall Street of enriching themselves unfairly. This time around, however, Trump has all but dropped his other preoccupations in favor of a monocausal theory of every problem America faces, and even some problems it doesn’t: an apocalyptic onslaught of immigrants, welcomed to the country by Biden, who are “killing our people in New York, in California, in every state in the Union, because we don’t have borders anymore.”

Asked about his role in stoking a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, Trump declared, “And let me tell you about January 6: On January 6, we had a great border, nobody coming through, very few.” How about solving climate change? “What [Biden] is doing is destroying all of our medical programs because the migrants coming in.” Any plans for making childcare more affordable? Biden “wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed or he wants to pick up those people as voters.” What about preserving the solvency of Social Security? “But Social Security, he’s destroying it. Because millions of people are pouring into our country, and they’re putting them onto Social Security; they’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid.” Racial inequality? “As sure as you’re sitting there, the fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border.”

During a Democratic-primary debate in 2007, a younger, more verbally adroit Biden memorably lampooned Rudy Giuliani, at the time the Republican front-runner, for trying to build an entire political persona around his leadership after the September 11 attack. “Rudy Giuliani—there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11,” Biden quipped. “I mean, there’s nothing else!”

If Biden were as sharp as he once was, he might have made Trump’s immigrant obsession look foolish and cruel. He might have noted that for all Trump’s talk of violence, violent crime—which surged in 2020 and 2021—has plunged over the past two years and is falling even faster this year, including in cities that have recently taken in large numbers of migrants. (As of last week, the city of Boston had experienced only four murders in all of 2024, compared to 18 by this point last year.) He might have observed that border crossings are down by half since December. And he might have mocked the absurdity of Trump’s claim that migrant workers are draining Social Security, when in fact, by paying Social Security taxes without receiving benefits, they do the exact opposite.

Trump’s dark and bizarre portrait of a nation on the verge of civilizational collapse at the hand of migrant hordes went mostly unchallenged. It remains up to the voters to decide what the greatest threat to their way of life really is. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/donald-trumps-migrant-obsession/678856/
 

Greg Sargent: What Joe Biden Really Owes the Country Right Now

What has to be asked is: Which route forward is more risky? Banking on Biden executing all the way, or rolling the dice on one of those other scenarios? There’s no safe or easy answer to that question.

But here’s what we do know: The Bidens are in a position to seriously try to answer it, by first gauging whether the president is unable to guarantee the performance that makes his remaining route forward plausible. Will this conversation happen? After the debate Biden curtly rebuffed concerns, declaring: “It’s hard to debate a liar.” And it’s unclear whether top Democrats will prevail on them to have that conversation at all.

If they do, theoretically the Bidens and their trusted advisers could conclude, in good faith, that the best way forward is to remain in the race. And for all we know, that could actually be the right call. But if the Bidens owe the country anything right now, it’s that they engage this conversation seriously and honestly, with no hint of hubristic worry about whether bowing out now would be perceived as a humiliating end to his long career.

What propelled Joe Biden to assume the presidency so late in life in the first place was the threat to the country posed by Trump. Biden did the country a tremendous service by temporarily neutralizing that threat, moving the country past the pandemic, and putting our economy and preservation of the planet on a path to a sustainable, more equitable future. Nothing would be a more dispiriting end to this career than sticking with the race for the wrong reasons and enabling the Trump threat, zombie-like, to inflict itself upon us all over again. https://newrepublic.com/article/183273/biden-debate-questions-jill
 

Jonathan Chait: Biden and Harris’s Absurd Case for Complacency


I won’t pretend I can offer any single solution with any confidence that it’s the best way to go. I do believe that almost any change, including a Harris nomination, makes more sense than keeping a nominee who has so deeply forfeited public confidence.

My overarching point is that Democrats need to summon the collective willpower to make political choices in the clear-headed interest of their party and their country. It’s not too late, but very soon it will be. The Biden campaign has brought the party to a crisis point by a series of choices dictated by personal comfort, short-term thinking, and narrow self-interest. These decisions may be rational for the individuals involved, but they add up to a collective disaster.

If that persists, they will continue to drift toward a potentially irreversible setback for American democracy. If Biden and Harris haven’t opened their eyes to what we are now facing, everybody else in their party with influence has a duty to grab them by the shoulder and force them to. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/biden-and-harris-absurd-case-for-post-debate-complacency.html
 

Michelle Goldberg: There’s No Reason to Resign Ourselves to Biden

It should go without saying that Biden in any condition is preferable to Trump, especially after the sinister Supreme Court ruling on Monday granting presidents immunity for their official acts, an act of civic desecration all but ensuring that a second-term Trump would rule as a vengeful dictator. The stakes of this election are existential; it’s a referendum on whether America will continue to be a liberal democracy. Everyone in the anti-Trump coalition is scared, which is why the argument over what to do about Biden is so heated.

Finding a Biden alternative would be risky and messy, and there’s no guarantee that it would work better than trying to put on a brave face and drag the current president across the finish line. But the Democratic Party’s leaders — the people, let’s remember, who got us into this mess — have no right to condescend to those trying to find a way out.

James Clyburn, the influential Democratic representative from South Carolina, said on Friday that Biden should “stay the course.” Given the course we’re on, that is ridiculous advice. If you’re in a car careening toward a cliff and can open a door, you should jump out. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/opinion/biden-replacement-white-house.html
 

Chris Cillizza: Are Democrats *actually* serious about Trump’s threat to democracy?

It’s impossible for me to believe that the BEST candidate to keep Trump from the presidency is ALSO a candidate who three-quarters of the electorate think lacks the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president.”

Do I think that Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer (or any other Democrat) would run away with the race against Trump? I do not. We are a deeply polarized country, and it’s hard for me see ANY candidate — 

Republican or Democrat — getting more than 52%-53% of the popular vote.

And, of course, Harris and Newsom and Whitmer all have warts of their own that would be probed by Trump’s campaign and by voters.

But, NONE of them are as weakened as Biden is after that debate performance. I am not ready to say Biden could not win. He might be able to (see above about our deeply polarized country).

What is beyond debate, however, is that Joe Biden is no longer the best bet — or even close to the best bet — for Democrats to beat Trump.

And if beating Trump is SO important to the country, that means that it’s time to move on from Biden. Period. https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/are-democrats-actually-serious-about