US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

On his latest podcast episode, Ezra Klein interviewed Elaina Plott Calabro, who profiled Kamala Harris for The Atlantic last year. The interview doesn't dwell extensively on the current moment, but it's a clear-eyed and insightful examination of her strengths and weaknesses as both a politician and a political candidate. Honestly, after feeling enthusiastic about her potential candidacy this week, I found it somewhat sobering. It convinced me that she'd be a very effective person to, well, prosecute the case against Trump ... but is that enough? Can she deliver a broader message that resonates with voters and not get tripped up along the way?

I don't expect miracles, based on her 2020 campaign. But it doesn't take miracles, just doing a bit better a few places.

Honestly, after feeling enthusiastic about her potential candidacy this week, I found it somewhat sobering. It convinced me that she'd be a very effective person to, well, prosecute the case against Trump ... but is that enough? Can she deliver a broader message that resonates with voters and not get tripped up along the way?

― jaymc, Saturday, July 6, 2024 12:29 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was essentially her pitch 5 years ago, and it…didn’t quite work

we’re in a tough spot with no good answers!

I do see it as sort of a monty hall problem though where neither option guarantees success but staying pat seems like the worst choice

as they say, when you’ve lost axelrod…

The president is rightfully proud of his record.
But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacitiies moving forward and his standing in this race.
Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump.
Today, he is six points behind.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 6, 2024

Tbf, Axelrod was sounding the alarm months ago.

Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it's in HIS best interest or the country's?

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 5, 2023

He was pretty adamant immediately after the debate.

Aaron’s quote leaves out the part where he says “I’ll beat him again in 2020.”

Biden: "They are trying to push me out of the race. Well let me say this as clearly as I can. I'm staying in the race. I'll beat Donald Trump again... I learned long ago. When you get knocked down, you get back up. I'm not letting one 90 minute debate wipe out 3.5 years of work" pic.twitter.com/LJex9wZ2rx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 5, 2024

how would dropping out “wipe out” 3.5 years of work? unless the real issue in biden’s mind is some kind of ironman legacy?

Imagine voting for someone in a coma.

MSNBC host Joy Reid says she’d vote for President Biden if he was "in a coma" https://t.co/Hxama7E1Zd

— The Hill (@thehill) July 5, 2024

I know, it’s serious

FWWMV

joy reid otm

lol Tipsy

I don't agree w/every tweet here, but the points about the Beltway press sound true:

All right. Here is my long, nuanced take on the last week of Biden panic and media chaos.

I'm probably going to make a lot of people on every side mad with at least part of what I have to say here.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) July 4, 2024

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1808861704970752116.html

The problem is, Biden already sat down for the friendliest of audiences yesterday and still sounded parched.

Eh he lost me at point #2. I’m not saying Biden has dementia, but there is a wide spectrum of cognitive slippage and it’s absurd to say he’s “fine.” Fine for an 81-year-old, probably, or at least within statistical norms. But that doesn’t mean he’s “fine,” in a way that would or could be reassuring to people with doubts. As the interview imo illustrated. He rushes together ideas and sometimes jumbles them in the explication. More to the point, is he capable of persuading voters he’s fine? The evidence does not suggest so.

Anyway, I remain skeptical of the “media feeding frenzy” complaints. Yes, it’s a feeding frenzy, but the blood in the water is real, the widespread voter doubts and dissatisfactions are real, and I just hear a whole lot of denialism in all this stuff. Every Biden diehard to whom I have cited years worth of approval ratings and polling data has just waved them off entirely, just like Biden’s doing, and how that differs from thisisfine.jpg I don’t know.

Approximately 3/4 of voters in multiple surveys have said they think he is not up to the job. That obviously includes a bunch of people who will vote for him anyway, but it’s a lot to ask. And they seem to be pretending this is just a bunch of nervous nellies. It’s insulting and arrogant.

Anyway, I remain skeptical of the “media feeding frenzy” complaints. Yes, it’s a feeding frenzy, but the blood in the water is real, the widespread voter doubts and dissatisfactions are real, and I just hear a whole lot of denialism in all this stuff

Both things can be true! It's fair to report that Biden's not up to the job and also to point out that the fervor with which the political press has snapped back caught me offguard; the press is often more supine than this.

I think the media reaction is pretty similar to a lot of voters’ tbh. Everyone — voters and the media — has been talking about Biden’s age ever since he got in the race in 2019. It’s never gone away as an issue and concern, it’s always been there (and imo is a major cause of his unpopularity). But the debate ratcheted it from smoke to break-the-glass fire.

I just think people putting the ultimate blame here on anything but Biden’s ego and actual deficits as a candidate are engaging in wishful thinking.

the fervor with which the political press has snapped back caught me offguard; the press is often more supine than this

Not when it's a Democrat. There was another Twitter thread (can't find it now) where someone posted examples of the press calling for every single Democratic candidate of the last 50 years to drop out of the race, for one reason or another. Fuck these people.

I get frustrated by accusations that the media is just trying to create chaos and/or elect Trump because it's good for business. I think it's inarguable that the mainstream news media is governed by certain incentives that often favor Trump, but I don't think that there is a long-term strategy to cover the campaign in a way that promotes Trump's candidacy and weakens Biden's. I very much doubt that most individual journalists who work for mainstream pubs are salivating at the prospect of a second Trump presidency.

^^^ that's true. It goes back to the exchange tipsy and I had on Wednesday about corporate media.

I didn't want Biden to be the nominee. I wanted Warren first, then I thought Harris would be better. But he's been the best president of my lifetime on domestic policy, and in lots of foreign policy ways too (Afghanistan, which let us not forget is another reason the press hates him — they tried to bring him down over that, and it didn't work). Yes, his military support of Israel is a black mark on his presidency, but that's been true of every president since Israel's founding. It's baked in. I genuinely do not look at Joe Biden and see someone in "cognitive decline." I see someone who's old. Maybe people are panicking because, as Grandpa Simpson said, his withered face reminds them of the grim specter of death. And fuck knows if there's one thing Americans hate, it's realizing that one day they will die. But the press hates him, and if you don't recognize that and make it a major part of your interpretation of current events, you're fucking up. If the press talks and talks and talks about a thing, eventually people start talking about what they're hearing on TV all goddamn day, and then it's "voters and the media" reaching a consensus. I believe Noam Chomsky had some thoughts about this at one point.

Just remember this: Every story editorial pushing the "Biden must go" line is a story not talking about Trump's blatant fascism and the quite literally insane shit he spouted during The Debate That Changed America Forever.

Here are some things that don't matter, nope, not at all, because Joe Biden Is Old. (Reposting the entire story because it's behind a paywall.)

Since Joe Biden’s face-plant in the CNN debate with Donald Trump, the sitting president has faced unyielding pressure from The New York Times, many within his own party, and top donors to step aside from the 2024 race ahead of next month’s Democratic nominating convention in Chicago.

Yet in the exact same nine-day span, Trump has been offering America a stark display of his own disqualifying temperament and mental state — behavior that’s been met with a shrug by the powers-that-be in the media and the GOP. Among other alarming behavior, Trump has amplified a violent conspiracy theory; called for political foes to be tried for treason; lobbed an obscenity at the sitting vice president; and suggested that he is God’s “chosen” candidate.

The leader of the Republican Party promoted on his Truth Social feed a meme featuring the words, “Where We Go One We Go All,” the catchphrase of QAnon conspiracy theory cult. The meme featured a photo of Trump and Melania in the White House, and also a superimposed letter ‘Q’ — leaving no doubts as to the intentions of its creator.

The extremist QAnon movement imagines a paranoid master-narrative in which the heroic Trump is battling a shadowy network of Democratic and Hollywood pedophiles, many of whom he will one day round up and execute. It has been linked to horrific violence, and even MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene has tried to distance herself from QAnon beliefs.

That wasn’t Trump’s only bout of conspiracy mongering this week. Trump also amplified a meme on Truth Social about the Soros family. George Soros is a billionaire financier and longtime mega donor to liberal politics and progressive causes; his son Alexander has recently stepped up as the face of the family’s political largesse. The meme featured Alexander Soros’ selfies with top Democratic politicians, as well as international leaders like Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, and declared: “TIME TO EXPOSE THIS COUP AGAINST AMERICA! BRING DOWN THE ENTIRE SOROS FAMILY AND ALL THESE TREASONOUS TRAITORS THAT HE FUNDS!”

Such supposed treason by political foes was weighing on Trump’s mind this week. The former president also “retruthed” — his platform’s version of a retweet — a meme calling for a show trial of the vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, now-former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney. It read: “Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of TREASON. Retruth if you want want televised military tribunals.” The typical punishment for treason, to be clear, is the death penalty. (Cheney responded on her own X account writing, “Donald — This is the type of thing that demonstrates yet again that you are not a stable adult — and are not fit for office.”)

This week, top Trump ally Steve Bannon was actually sent to prison — to serve a four month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. In response, Trump also retruthed a meme featuring a mosaic of head shots of prominent lawmakers that declared: “THEY SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL ON MONDAY NOT STEVE BANNON!”

The politicians Trump apparently would like to see locked up — for the supposed crime of having “HID THE J6 FOOTAGE” — include Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as Democrats like Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

McConnell is among the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill who have formally endorsed Trump for 2024, even though Trump is clearly okay with promoting calls for his jailing.

Trump’s victory in the CNN debate had everything to do with Biden’s failure. If the Republican fared better, it was only only by comparison; Trump was, himself, frequently incomprehensible — though his nonsense was more conversationally fluid than that from Biden. Nonetheless, Trump spent much of the week exalting in his own performance, describing it “as “the greatest single debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates.” (In “complete and total modesty,” Trump attributed this sentiment to “many, on both sides of the political spectrum.”)

Trump was clearly feeling himself this week — going so far as to endorse the idea (popular among Christian nationalists) that his candidacy is being guided by divine providence. He retruthed post by user Patriot4Life that featured Trump’s profile picture and the words: “GOD HAS CHOSEN HIM TO LEAD THIS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. GOD WINS!”

As pressure was building on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, Trump was filmed at a golf course giving his impromptu thoughts on the state of the race. He claimed (mistakenly) that he’d already forced Biden — whom he called a “broken-down pile of crap” — to quit the race. Trump then turned his ire to the president’s presumptive replacement, Kamala Harris. Trump was profane in his assessment of his prospective new rival: “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s just so fucking bad.” Far from being chagrined by this hot-mic moment, Trump promoted a video of it on his Truth account.

Was that Trump’s lone display of bad taste? Hardly. He also retruthed a meme version of a Weekend At Bernie’s poster that showed Barack Obama and Kamala Harris propping up a sunglasses-wearing Joe Biden corpse.

The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about the former president’s erratic week, which showcased the Republican’s poor impulse control and thirst for vengeance in equal measure.

Trump’s outlandish behavior came the same week the Supreme Court ruled he would enjoy nearly-dictatorial power should he return to office, emboldening the reactionary agenda his team laid out to Axios that includes: deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants, seizing political control of the Justice Department to embark on a campaign of retribution against perceived enemies, and hollowing out the career expert staffs of government agencies, replacing them with MAGA loyalists.

As questions continue to swirl around Biden’s health and fitness for office, Team Trump is still eager to lash “the media” for allegedly having tried to cover for Biden and save the Democrats ahead of Election Day 2024. But privately, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Trump campaign officials and longtime confidants to the ex-president are elated at all the media hyper-focus on Biden’s age, and some have been giddily joking about it with Trump.

Some advisers to Trump are hoping the former president continues to stay (at least by Trump’s standards) below the radar for the coming weeks, and simply allow, in the words of one Republican close to Trump, “the media to devour Biden.” To a certain extent — going by Trump’s garrulous, routinely scandalous standards — they’re currently getting their wish. And yet, especially on his own social media site, Trump just can’t help himself.

“Trump is clearly trying to let the focus be on Joe Biden,” says Doug Heye, a former senior official at the Republican National Committee. “What we saw with Biden is so disastrous for him as a candidate.”

“But with Trump — even with his call for a military tribunal for Liz Cheney — his language, for years, has been so over-the-top that even with his record as president, he still gets graded on a massive curve by so many voters,” Heye says. “It’s already factored in, in a way that it could never be for almost any other candidate for the presidency. Trump saying something crazy is the oldest news there is at this point. It doesn’t mean it’s not crazy, and it doesn’t mean it’s not damaging. But this [dynamic] benefits him greatly.”

If the press had come out of that debate fixated on the breaking news that Donald Trump spews a never-ending line on venal nonsense, that would have been a dereliction of duty. That was not the story of the debate.

I've never seen anything to indicate that the press collectively hates Biden. From what I've seen, his presidency has been covered like any other.

"line of"

Sorry but this “why aren’t they writing about Trump” trope I’m seeing a lot of places from libs-in-denial is also absurd. “The media” has covered Trump and all of his deficits from wall to wall for a decade. There is no lack of coverage of Trump and all of his objectionable qualities. There was blanket coverage of his felony trial, there’s a ton of stuff about Project 2025, even all the editorials and columns calling for Biden to step down are rooted in “because is so particularly terrible” rhetoric.

This isn’t the media’s fault, it’s Joe Biden’s and his team’s and the DNC’s.

“because Trump is so particularly terrible” I mean

Just a data point which I'm sure means nothing at all. The New York Times, which has published 140 stories and 50 editorials about Biden's infirmity and how he should drop out of the race since the debate, today published this about Donald Trump:

A Mark of Shame for 900 Years. Until Now?
“Felon” carries an ancient stigma — one that falls on millions of Americans today. Trump might well redefine it.

A felony, as Associate Justice Clarence Thomas once wrote in a 1994 Supreme Court opinion, is “as bad a word as you can give to man or thing.” When Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in May, by a jury in a Manhattan courtroom, the nation was confronted with a historical novelty: a felon who once held the highest office in the land. The question now is whether the label will actually tarnish Mr. Trump, as it has so many people over the centuries.

President Biden seems to be betting that it will. For weeks on the campaign trail, and more recently during the first presidential debate, he has called Mr. Trump a “convicted felon.” A Biden campaign ad called “Character Matters,” calls Mr. Trump “a convicted criminal, who’s only out for himself,” and says the felony convictions reveal “who he is.”

Felon is a word with 900 years of historical baggage, a remnant of the harsh punishments and routine discrimination that were the norm during the Middle Ages. But in a sense, its power derives from its elastic boundaries: Unlike specific crimes, which hinge on the defendant’s behavior, the felony category is defined only by its punishments.

“We don’t have a positive definition,” said Elise Wang, a historian who has traced the word’s origins back to medieval literature. “We only have a tautology.”

A felon, in other words, is simply anyone who has been found guilty of a felony, and a felony is any crime punishable by a year or more in prison — “the most serious crimes,” according to a Justice Department handbook.

Many felonies — like Mr. Trump’s and Hunter Biden’s as well — amount to lying on official paperwork. “This is one of the places where there’s a gap between the popular understanding of the term, and the law on the books,” said Alice Ristroph, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “Ordinary understandings of ‘felony’ associate it with violent conduct, like murder. But in practice, almost anything that is criminal in any way can be charged as a felony.”

...

When Justice Thomas wrote that felony was “as bad a word as you can give to man or thing,” he was quoting from an older opinion, which in turn quoted an old history of English law. That text identified in the usage of “felon” a subtle undercurrent of praise. “Occasionally we may hear in it a note of admiration,” wrote the authors, “for fierceness may shade off into laudable courage.”

The electorate seems tuned into this ambiguity. After Mr. Trump was found guilty, initial polls pointed to a slight dip in support for him among independent voters, but the number of Republicans who said the convictions were a “good thing” for Mr. Trump’s campaign outnumbered dissenters by a ratio of 7 to 5.

...

While Mr. Trump’s lawyers prepare to argue in court that his convictions should be thrown out in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, the former president has been embracing his new criminal status on his own terms, by framing himself as the victim of an unjust system. “This is bigger than me,” he said the day after the verdict. “The people understand it.”

This wasn’t the first time someone called Mr. Trump a bad name. It wasn’t the first time he was the target of a criminal investigation, nor the first time he was taken to court. But after the jury announced its verdict, he seemed to recognize that being a felon would be something different. It would be a new frontier of disgrace for him, and for the presidency.

While his lawyers make a last-ditch effort to fight the verdict in court, Mr. Trump is engaged in a second line of effort, experimenting with ways to turn his new status into a badge of honor. If his attempts to peel off the label don’t work, it seems he will try to flaunt it instead. The inversion of 34 felony convictions into a reason to vote for Mr. Trump, were it to succeed, would perhaps be his most audacious transgression of all.

In conclusion, Joe Biden Is Old.

Yeah the apparent lack of urgency —that democracy is on the line—in the Biden camp is certainly worrying.

Just remember this: Every story editorial pushing the "Biden must go" line is a story not talking about Trump's blatant fascism and the quite literally insane shit he spouted during The Debate That Changed America Forever.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Saturday, July 6, 2024 10:53 AM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

as slowly and clearly as I can say this, for the hundredth time: this is *why* we are all talking about biden. trump is a known, evil, dangerous entity, a convicted felon, someone so unpopular and whose disreputable qualities are so widely understood that it seems inconceivable that he could win a national election. any person of integrity would seemingly see this and vote for his opponent; as joy reid says, and I agree with her — I would vote for biden over trump even if he were in a coma.

AND YET. biden, (by the standards of presidents) a decent man and a solid president, is somehow poised to fumble what should be the easiest re-election in history. he is behind badly and has no clear path to reverse course. this is why everyone is freaking out. it’s not because we hate biden. (though — stay with me — multiple things can be true.) it’s because we’re scared of another 4 years of trump

k3vin relentlessly otm throughout the last few days

AND YET. biden, (by the standards of presidents) a decent man and a solid president, is somehow poised to fumble what should be the easiest re-election in history.

I just don't think this is true. I don't think it's even close to true. In a world where Biden had stepped down two years ago, and Kamala Harris were president now, or in a world where Harris or Warren or Sanders or Mayor Pete or whoever had won the 2020 primary and won the election, I don't think they would be facing an easy re-election fight against Trump right now. It's not even clear to me they'd be better positioned than Biden is right now. Maybe you mean "should" in some normative sense, in which case, fine, it's too bad this is the case, but I don't think we ought to lose sight of the fact that the reason Trump might get re-elected is that lots of people are going to vote for him and would vote for him against any Democrat.

Yeah the apparent lack of urgency —that democracy is on the line—in the Biden camp is certainly worrying.

They think their guy has the best chance of beating Trump. This would all be easier if it were obvious they were wrong.

If you think "there's a zero chance Biden can stick it out and get re-elected, we need to make a move, anything would be better than nothing," I get that, but I disagree. I think it is very fair to say that given what we know now, Biden's chances of winning this election are under 50%. I think the same is true of anybody who would replace Biden. Obviously you want to go with the biggest lower-than-50% number you can get, but I at least don't feel like I have any clear sense of what that is.

Age is his biggest disability anyone younger might have a leg up.

Exactly! *Might*!

Everything is a "might" at this point. An 81-year-old man who has now multiple members of his own party calling for him to step aside and who has dismal approval ratings at a level where no incumbent president in the history of approval ratings (the postwar era, essentially) has ever won a second term and who is underperforming candidates from his own party in crucial states ... he might win. It's possible.

But what's missing is the affirmative case for why he in particular is the best candidate for his party. What strengths does he bring to the ballot that no other top Democrat could bring? If there's not a good answer to that question, then the question is, does he have specific weaknesses and vulnerabilities that other top Democrats wouldn't? If the answer to that is yes — and obviously I think it is — then it's hard to say what the rational basis is for keeping him.

AI can be used to polish how the president comes across, allowing voters to focus on his substance. How many times have we heard voters and pundits alike gripe that “Biden would be the perfect candidate if he were just 10 years younger?” With modern technology, this exact deliverable is possible.

This is not The Onion. They're talking about replacing Joe Biden with AI on the campaign trail. https://t.co/pVo9vaPoA6

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) July 3, 2024

That sounds like a Hunter idea

my jaw is on the floor

apparently the people around joe biden don't think a second trump term is as big of a danger as i do.

Jeezus, no one knows nuthin' anymore:

President Joe Biden is just 2 percentage points away from former President Donald Trump among seven swing states recently polled, despite the president's dismal debate performance last week.

Biden is still reeling from a weak showing against Trump during the first presidential debate in Atlanta last Thursday. The 81-year-old president mumbled through his administration's accomplishments and goals in a hoarse voice. Often times he struggled to give a coherent answer. Biden's team later said he had a cold and was suffering from jet lag.

In a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll conducted from July 1 to 5, Trump led Biden by only 2 percentage points (47 to 45 percent) among all the swing states polled—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Across all seven swing states, 4,902 registered voters were polled and there was a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage points.

Bloomberg News reported that the 2 percentage point gap between Trump and Biden is the smallest it's been since they began this type of polling in October 2023.

But:

This poll was conducted on the heels of last week's debate, which prompted calls from some prominent Democrats for Biden to drop out of the race. Of all the respondents across the seven swing states in the new Bloomberg News poll, only 17 percent thought Biden was mentally fit when thinking about the recent debate, while 49 percent thought Trump was. Trump, 78, is only three years younger than Biden and has also faced scrutiny about his age and cognitive ability.

In other words "Swing voters in these states rate the basket case slightly higher than Trump." Fucking polls.

lol well the good thing is approximately half the country wants nothing to do with Trump under any circumstances. That's obviously the best hope for any Democratic candidate. But again, it is asking a whole lot of voters to vote for someone they think is mentally unfit. It would be better not to.

But what's missing is the affirmative case for why he in particular is the best candidate for his party

I think it’s a combination of devil-you-know and that it’s already so late in the game

I’m very, very cautiously assuming the AI tweet was not posted as an endorsement of the idea, due to all of the immediately predictable ways that would backfire…but it would be funny. roman roy ass idea

Yeah, but “devil you know” is clearly working against him at this point. So really the argument becomes “We have a terrible candidate, but oh well it’s too late to do anything.” Which isn’t literally true — they could make a change — but in any case isn’t much of an “affirmative case.”

People have swallowed the AI hype that it can do anything (it cannot, but it can tell you to eat a rock daily).