Michelle Cottle: Kevin McCarthy Faces His Puppet Master

Is it just me, or did Kevin McCarthy look a little rough around the edges on Tuesday when announcing his decision to open an impeachment investigation into President Biden?

I realize that Mr. McCarthy, the House speaker, needed to convey a dignified solemnity on such an occasion. “I do not make this decision lightly,” he assured the American people as he tried to make an argument about a “culture of corruption” and the president maybe lying about his son’s sketchy business dealings. But in his brief appearance, Mr. McCarthy came across not so much as serious and statesmanlike but as if the words were being dragged from his lips.

It may be that even he is nauseated by his latest stunt. That it has finally sunk in that he has become the not-so-glorified puppet of the House Republican conference’s radicals, folks like Dan Bishop, Chip Roy and, most prominently, Matt Gaetz.

Mr. McCarthy may wield the gavel. But the far-right rebels who opposed his election as speaker, of whom Mr. Gaetz was a ringleader, now wield the ax poised above Mr. McCarthy’s exposed neck — an ax that he handed them in exchange for them letting him pretend to be in charge. With the omnipresent threat of voting him out of his dream job, the conference’s fringe is leading the speaker around by the nose hairs. And whenever they feel he’s getting a bit sassy, they give those hairs a sharp yank. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-impeachment.html

Jonathan Chait: Biden or Bust

It seems clear enough that Joe Biden is up to the job of being president. The economy is booming, especially for the poor and working class; he has signed more bipartisan legislation (on infrastructure, guns, and domestic manufacturing) than anybody expected; and he has held together the western alliance while maintaining a dogged defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty after Russia expected to swallow up its smaller neighbor.

But whether Biden is up to the task of running for president is another matter. The national polls show a virtual tie with Biden leading Donald Trump, on average, by less than a point. Since the Electoral College has given Trump a substantial edge in each of the past two elections, it seems as though Biden needs much more than that. He won by 4.4 percentage points in 2020, and had he performed just over half a point worse, Trump probably wouldn’t have even needed to try to steal a second term.

The election is more than a year away, and Biden’s polling might improve. Another 14 months of surging wages and declining inflation could give his campaign the Morning in America feel it has thus far lacked. On the other hand, if the economy sputters, or if Biden suffers a health setback that reinforces the public’s already serious doubts about his fitness, it could get even worse. For an incumbent presiding over peace and prosperity to be effectively trailing an indicted felon feels terrifying. And it undercuts one of the central rationales of both Biden’s 2020 run and his reelection campaign: that he is best positioned in the Democratic field to stave off the threat of a second Trump term.

The strangest thing about this harrowing circumstance is that no mainstream Democrat is challenging Biden for the nomination. The hunger for such a challenge certainly exists: A CNN poll finds two-thirds of Democrats want their party to nominate somebody else. There isn’t much mystery as to why. The same poll asked Democrats what concerns they may have about Biden and found that two-thirds cited his age, his health, his mental sharpness, or his vice-president, all of which amount to the same thing. The demand for a different option is robust. What is mystifyingly absent is the supply.

Politicians tend to be highly ambitious people who, by and large, dream of ascending to the presidency. Why haven’t any of them seized this opportunity? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/why-isnt-a-mainstream-democrat-challenging-biden-2024.html

Nate Cohn: Trump’s Electoral College Edge Seems to Be Fading

The patterns in recent polling and election results are consistent with the trends in national surveys, which suggest that the demographic foundations of Mr. Trump’s Electoral College advantage might be fading. He’s faring unusually well among nonwhite voters, who represent a larger share of the electorate in noncompetitive than competitive states. As a consequence, Mr. Trump’s gains have probably done more to improve his standing in the national vote than in relatively white Northern states likeliest to decide the presidency, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Midterm results typically don’t tell us much about the next general election. Polls taken 15 to 27 months out don’t necessarily augur much, either. But the possibility that Republicans’ Electoral College advantage is diminished is nonetheless worth taking seriously. It appears driven by forces that might persist until the next election, like Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters and the growing importance of issues — abortion, crime, democracy and education — that play differently for blue and purple state voters. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/upshot/electoral-college-trump-2024.html

Michael Hiltzik: How the media’s obsession with Biden’s age could help reelect Trump

Every race since 1992 seems to have been reduced to a premasticated nugget. In 2000, it was Al Gore’s claim to have “invented the internet.” In truth, that’s not what he said, and in any case he had indeed played a key role in advancing the legislation and funding that made the internet happen. Too bad for Gore: The meme became shorthand for the notion that he couldn’t be trusted.

In 2016, it was the claim that Hillary Clinton had used a private email server as secretary of State, supposedly placing national security at risk. This was always a fatuous issue, but since Trump was pushing it relentlessly the press went along, even though there was much more evidence that Trump was the one whose behavior threatened national security.

This time around, the age meme is accompanied by the claim that Americans are hopelessly polarized. As I’ve written before, there’s no evidence for that, and plenty for the contrary. The truth is that Americans favor, often by a supermajority, abortion rights and stricter gun controls.

The consequence of the press’ fixation on the issue of Biden’s age despite his evident capability for governing is that public opinion will be skewed in Trump’s favor, even as some of Trump’s fellow Republicans have begun to question his fitness for office (not to mention those, er, “legal battles,” as Axios would have it).

The importance of the press in reporting fairly and incisively on the issues at large in the coming presidential election is inescapable. So far, its failure has become more evident with every passing day. Time is getting short for it to turn itself around. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-09-11/column-how-the-medias-obsession-with-bidens-age-80-could-help-re-elect-trump-77

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: Democracy’s Assassins Always Have Accomplices

Since the 2020 election, Republican leaders have enabled authoritarianism at four decisive moments. First, rather than adhere to the cardinal rule of accepting election results after Joe Biden won that November, many Republican leaders questioned the results or remained silent, refusing to publicly recognize Mr. Biden’s victory. Vice President Mike Pence did not congratulate his successor, Kamala Harris, until the middle of January 2021. The Republican Accountability Project, a Republican pro-democracy watchdog group, evaluated the public statements of 261 Republican members of the 117th Congress after the election. They found that 221 of them had publicly expressed doubt about its legitimacy or did not publicly recognize that Mr. Biden won.

That’s 85 percent. And in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against certification of the results. Had Republican leaders not encouraged election denialism, the “stop the steal” movement might have stalled, and thousands of Trump supporters might not have violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election.

After Mr. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Senate Republicans overwhelmingly voted to acquit him, even though many conceded that, in Senator Mitch McConnell’s words, the president was “practically and morally responsible” for the attack. The acquittal allowed Mr. Trump to continue his political career despite his having tried to block the peaceful transfer of power. Had he been convicted in the Senate, he would have been legally barred from running again for president. In other words, Republican senators had a clear opportunity to ensure that an openly antidemocratic figure would never again occupy the White House — and 43 of them, including Mr. McConnell, declined to take it.

With remarkably few exceptions, Republican leaders say they will still support Mr. Trump even if he is convicted of plotting to overturn an election. Alternatives exist. The Republican National Committee could declare that the party will not nominate an individual who poses a threat to democracy or has been indicted on serious criminal charges. Or Republican leaders could jointly declare that for the sake of democracy, they will endorse Mr. Biden if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee. Such a move would, of course, destroy the party’s chances in 2024. But by keeping Mr. Trump out of the White House, it would help protect our democracy.

If Republican leaders continue to endorse Mr. Trump, they will normalize him yet again, telling Americans that he is, at the end of the day, an acceptable choice. The 2024 race will become another ordinary red versus blue election, much like 2016. And as in 2016, Mr. Trump could win.

Republican leaders’ acquiescence to Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is neither inevitable nor unavoidable. It is a choice. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/opinion/trump-republicans-spain-brazil.html

Michael Bloomberg: How Biden and Congress Should Fix the Immigration Crisis in Our Cities

Think about it: We have a system that essentially allows an unlimited number of people to cross our borders, forbids them from working, offers them free housing, and grants them seven years of residency before ruling on whether they can legally stay. It would be hard to devise a more backward and self-defeating system.

We are a nation of immigrants because we are a land of opportunity. To deny immigrants the opportunity to work — and force them to rely on public handouts — is as anti-American as anything I can think of. It is harmful not only to the refugees, but to our country — especially at a time when so many businesses are facing labor shortages.

Critics who have latched onto Mayor Adams’s recent comments that the crisis will ‘destroy’ the city seem more concerned with his words — spoken in understandable frustration with Washington — than with the problem itself. Solving the crisis will not be easy, especially with a divided Congress. But ignoring it will only make it worse, while also elevating the political fortunes of xenophobes and eroding public support for immigration reform. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/opinion/michael-bloomberg-nyc-immigration-crisis.html

Frank Bruni: Trump Is Really Old, Too

I’m not claiming that Biden, 80, and Trump project the same degree of vigor. I have eyes and ears. Trump talks louder and faster than Biden does and moves with a thudding force. He’s like a freight train to Biden’s cable car, or a big, bulbous tuba to Biden’s tremulous piccolo. Listening to Biden, I want a volume knob I can turn up. Listening to Trump, I crave nonsense-canceling headphones.

I’m also aware and suspicious of the paucity of Biden’s interactions with journalists, his avoidance of unscripted public appearances and a schedule that can seem strangely light. I’ve heard from influential Democrats who have crossed paths with him and were alarmed by how slowly he was moving and how disoriented he seemed.

But the situation is more complicated than that, and the conversation about it omits dynamics that it shouldn’t. Trump is a mere three years younger than Biden, and he’s overweight. His diet is garbage. His cardio is golf putts. Biden, on the other hand, is a trim tribute to regular exercise.

And Trump diverts attention from his age by going to significant lengths to conceal it.

A thought exercise: Imagine Biden with more hair — or at least some swooping, swirling, painstakingly contrived facsimile of more hair. Color it a shade of orange-gold that’s less a sneaky evasion of gray than a desperate pummeling of it. Now get to work on his face. Cloak his age spots under a fake tan. Spackle his wrinkles with makeup. Then dress him in suits so dark and baggy that they veil time’s toll on the body they’re tenting.

I happen to think that Democrats would be safer with a nominee who’s younger than Biden is and radiates more energy than he does. But I believe at least as strongly that if the unideal choice before Americans winds up being Biden, with his imperfections, or Trump, with his, rejecting Biden because of how old he has grown isn’t a grown-up decision. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/biden-trump-age.html
 

Isaac Arnsdorf: Trump escalates false attacks on Biden

Manchurian candidate. Stone-cold thief. Dumb son of a b----.

Trump's attacks offer a glimpse of potential 2024 battle lines and follow a well-established pattern for Trump of trying to delegitimize his political opponents. During the 2012 election, Trump became the leading promoter of the racist and unfounded conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States. In 2016, Trump pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton and encouraged his supporters’ chants of Lock her up!

Now, Trump is explicitly trying the same tack against Biden, announcing in April that he would retire the Crooked nickname for Clinton and start using it for Biden. There’s never been anyone in the history of American politics so crooked or dishonest as Joe Biden, he said at the time, during a campaign stop in Manchester, N.H.

The current onslaught from Trump coincides with a broader effort, as House Republicans have supplied a steady drumbeat of disclosures about Hunter Biden, with hard-liners pushing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) toward opening an impeachment inquiry against the president, though they have not specified what it would focus on. Some House Republicans acknowledge the current evidence doesn’t implicate the elder Biden.

Still, polling shows a stark partisan divide in how Americans view the allegations, with the vast majority of Republicans saying they believe the scandal implicates President Biden, while Democrats see things differently.

The frequently false claims the former president is making intersect with another argument that is central to his candidacy: He has suggested that the crimes he accuses Biden of committing are the reason he is being prosecuted. Trump is fighting four separate criminal indictments: in New York for a 2016 hush money scheme; in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House; in Washington for attempting to overturn the 2020 election; and in Georgia for allegedly interfering in that state’s results. The New York and Georgia cases are run by local prosecutors. The federal cases are brought by special counsel Jack Smith, acting independently of the White House. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/09/07/trump-biden-false-attacks-2024-presidential-race/

Frank Bruni: Old Is Workable. Depravity Is a Dead End.

Biden’s age. Trump’s trials. One man’s attempt to manage the rigors of a presidential campaign without being or seeming depleted by them. Another man’s challenge to manage any kind of presidential campaign at all with the sword of imprisonment dangling over his head. I can’t shake the feeling that the 2024 presidential election hinges on those anomalies, with all the usual dynamics minimized or rendered irrelevant by the uncharted terrain that both Biden and Trump are traversing.

And even if it does turn out to be the choice before us, we’ll hear plenty about matters other than Biden’s health and Trump’s indictments — about inflation, Hunter Biden, migrants, Hunter Biden, NATO, Hunter Biden, abortion, Hunter Biden. In terms of values and policy as well as demeanor, Biden and Trump have governed and will govern as differently as two leaders can.

But questions about Biden’s physical and cognitive fitness aren’t going away. In private and in whispers, many Democrats express doubts about his robustness and crispness. They entertain the possibility of — and in some cases, wish for — a turn of events by which someone else becomes the party’s nominee. They contemplate how much is at risk.

As well they should. If Trump beats Biden next year, there won’t be another free and fair election, A.B. Stoddard wrote in The Bulwark recently, an assessment that I find as correct as it is blunt.

Trump’s chances of prevailing are bound up in what happens with his indictments and how they mature in the public mind. Until now, they seem to have helped him with the Republican primary electorate by feeding his martyr act, by supporting his portrayal of himself as a proxy for Americans who don’t meekly obey elite liberals’ orders.

But that could change. I suspect it will. Even a part played as well as Trump’s poor, persecuted me suffers from overexposure, and even an electorate as polarized as ours includes some voters who make their decisions along practical lines. The uncertainty of Trump’s legal fate and the mess and melodrama of every second of his existence will matter to them.

If they’re wise, it will matter more — much, much more — than Biden’s diminished brio. Picking between Biden and Trump wouldn’t be about surrendering to the lesser of two evils. It would be about distinguishing imperfection from evil, about recognizing that one route preserves democracy while the other opens the door to autocracy, about realizing that there would be remedies for Biden’s limitations but no reprieve from Trump’s excesses.

Old is workable. Depravity is a dead end. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/trump-biden-2024-election.html
 

Joe Klein: Hidin' Biden

We need to transition to something, a new Democratic vision of America — or to someone who can plausibly promise a creative way out of this molasses stasis. But Democrats are paralyzed. They’re terrified that a real conversation, a real political contest, will result in chaos — that Biden will collapse under pressure and there won’t be anyone credible to replace him…

But it’s the wrong concern. Democrats really should be terrified by the opposite: that nothing will change between now and [the] election, except Joe Biden will get older

And there are all the things the President won’t talk about: Immigration, education (especially charter schools, supported by the vast majority of Democrats), fentanyl, Trump, Hunter. He is running as a void: he isn’t Trump. That may be enough to win, but I’m sensing—or maybe it’s just me feeling this—a growing frustration among Democrats. A growing desire for…energy. Biden is a ghost of what the country needs right now.

It’s said the Biden people are worried by Gavin Newsom’s clever appropriation of the political space, his gleeful taunting of Ron DeSantis, whom he’ll debate in November. They should be. The contrast between Biden’s dirge and Newsom’s verve is damning (though I’m closer to Biden’s politics than Newsom’s). And there is a fascinating generation of Democratic governors on the horizon—Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro…and around the next corner, Maryland’s charismatic Wes Moore.

Those who say only Biden can beat Trump don’t know politics. Any of the governors listed above can beat Trump. And Nikki Haley, the freshest voice in presidential politics right now, can beat Trump, too—watch the numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. Trump’s polls right now are a protest vote. They are Republicans telling Democrats, leash your lawyers. Enough already. The threshold question hasn’t yet been considered by Republicans in the early states: Do we really want more of this guy? The answer may be yes. We’ll start to know more in December. The numbers may not change, but I won’t be surprised if they do. And if Trump collapses, Haley or Pence or even DeSantis can beat Biden. https://josephklein.substack.com/p/hidin-bide

David Lauter: Biden vs. Trump — the sequel. You may not like it, but it grows more likely by the day

It’s hard to ignore just how many Americans would prefer not to face another election between President Biden and former President Trump.

But ignoring the unhappiness is exactly what the nation’s two major parties seem determined to do: A rematch appears increasingly inevitable.

If you watch cable news or read politics-oriented sites, you might not think the concrete is close to set. We’re in the silly season of the campaign, when voting remains a long way off and political journalists and pundits have time to spin out improbable scenarios and pretend to take them seriously.

But don’t be fooled.

Barring some sudden, dramatic event, the die is pretty much cast.

But ignoring the unhappiness is exactly what the nation’s two major parties seem determined to do: A rematch appears increasingly inevitable. https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2023-09-08/biden-v-trump-the-sequel-you-may-not-like-it-but-its-growing-more-likely-by-the-day-essential-politics

Aaron Blake: Biden’s age may be a growing problem for his reelection

For the second time in a week, a poll shows that three-quarters of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, consider President Biden too old for the office.

In the new Wall Street Journal poll, 73 percent of Americans said the phrase too old to run for president captures Biden at least somewhat well, with even Democrats agreeing overwhelmingly. The results echo an Associated Press-NORC poll from last week, which found that 77 percent of Americans overall and 69 percent of Democrats said Biden was too old to effectively serve another four-year term.

It’s evident that this is a growing problem for Biden. But how much might it actually matter in a deeply polarized country in which the likely alternative has been criminally indicted four times?

The New York Times in April published an analysis downplaying the significance and pointing to the impact of polarization — as well as to Trump’s many problems not related to age or mental sharpness. Polling expert Nate Silver, by contrast, argued over the weekend that Democrats ought to be more concerned than they currently are.

Silver’s analysis strikes me as reasonable. It’s not that the three-quarters of people who say Biden is too old won’t actually vote for him; many will. Democrats as a whole have increasingly rallied around Biden, and the alternative of Trump looms large.

What’s more, there is evidence that too old isn’t close to a dealbreaker for many of the would-be Biden supporters who have that reservation about him. In a July Suffolk University poll, 37 percent of Democratic-leaning voters said Biden’s age made them less likely to support him, as compared to the two-thirds who now say he’s too old.

That 37 percent saying they were less likely to back Biden over his age was similar to the 34 percent of Republican-leaning voters who said the same of Trump’s initial indictment in New York. And much of the conventional wisdom pretends as if Trump’s indictments are something of a political non-factor.

But Silver’s analysis closes with an important point. It’s not so much that this is currently a major liability; it’s that it’s going to loom on the campaign trail. This election is probably going to be close, and Trump might be only one Biden-has-a-McConnell-moment away from winning, Silver wrote, referring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) two on-camera freeze-ups.

The problem is that the margins are just so fine, and this issue presents the vast majority of voters with a historically unusual liability, however compelling they might ultimately find it, to balance against Trump’s liabilities.

There is a large universe of people who not only think Biden is too old but, relatedly, that his mental acuity is actually an impediment to his service as president. When those saying these things include 7 in 10 independents and two-thirds of your own base — the people most likely to view you in the most positive light and give you the benefit of the doubt — it’s something that must be reckoned with.

There is logically a point at which that impediment could rise as a priority, depending in part on how Biden deals with it and in part on the perceived magnitude of Trump’s own problems. For now, the issue is trending in the wrong direction for Biden. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/05/biden-age/

Jonathan Chait: Attacking Trump As ‘Unelectable’ Is Just So Pathetic

The appeal of the electability argument, despite the absence of any solid evidence for it, is that it allows Trump skeptics to avoid making any moral case against Trump. It is probably a correct calculation that a party dominated by Trump admirers will not support a candidate who believes Trump has done anything worse than occasionally write a ‘mean tweet.'

But the single-minded focus on electability is not merely a communications strategy. It is also a way of establishing moral boundaries within the party. And the message sent by focusing on Trump’s electability is that the only problem with his behavior is that it reduces the party’s chances of obtaining power. If Trump does win the nomination, which now appears extremely likely, the electability argument leaves no room for abandoning him; to the contrary, it creates a permission structure for Trump skeptics to once again support him as the lesser evil.

‘Electability,’ even if it was factually persuasive, is a morally empty, de minimis critique of a nakedly authoritarian figure. The Republican calculation through every step of the Trump era has been to avoid the short-term cost of a party split and shrink its differences with his base to the smallest possible level. They couldn’t bear to break irrevocably with him after he won the 2016 nomination, or at any time during his crime spree of a presidency, or even after the insurrection. And now he has obtained total mastery of the party. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/trump-polls-desantis-who-can-beat-biden-republican-primary.html