After wall-to-wall Trump assassination attempt coverage, with the coda of the Republican convention visuals and speeches, Biden’s future, or lack thereof, is back in focus. Many prognosticators had assumed that the failed Trump kill shot would give Biden a respite. And since running out the clock favored Biden, he’d win up being able to hold his ground.
Despite the fact that, on paper, only Biden (or God) can dislodge Biden as the Democratic Party chosen, reality is more complicated. In US, with its grotesque TV ad spend, a candidate with no or not enough money is effectively not a candidate. The many reports, both public and private, of a big donor rebellion was and remains the one thing that can shift the seemingly immovable Biden. The actions of party leaders are merely reflections of that.
I said to Lambert some days ago, and should have put down a marker, that I did not see how Biden would survive the moneybags withholding contributions if they continued to do so en masse. There are simply too many at too many levels, from fundraisers to consultants to legislative staffers to other flexian operatives, who depend on Team Dem for their survival. It’s one thing to suffer a loss of the Presidency, another to suffer a wipeout that severely diminishes the viability of the party. Too many college tuitions depend on it remaining a credible political force.
And that’s before considering, as we have mentioned repeatedly, that spook whisperers like David Ignatius have been saying explicitly or signaling loudly for quite some time that Biden should step aside. Opposing the CIA is not a pro-survival move, on many levels.
Those who know party machinations will hopefully correct my assumptions as needed and add details, but an elephant in the room is that it seems vanishingly unlikely that a Democrat will win the Presidency in 2024. Those in the party with operating brain cells or adequate survival instincts know that, even if they have to do their best to spin otherwise. Lambert linked to the report in Puck of yet another Biden-confidence-building session with insiders doing precisely the reverse, with only the shameless Debbie Wasserman-Shultz claiming that Biden had performed well.Biden continues to come apart at the seams. No amount of porcine maquillage application will meaningfully improve Harris’ popularity. And as for the wannbes, there isn’t enough runway to build President-level support.
As most readers also likely know, the best of the dimming Democratic Party prospects is to try to and succeed in retaking the House. That would argue for diverting a lot of the money that goes to the top of the ticket to House races. That certainly can’t happen with Biden in the race and controlling the Presidential pot. Can he be persuaded to step down and turn his funds over in a way that allows some (a lot!) to be redirected to downballot contests? One can imagine that the party’s best 11th dimensional chess player, Nancy Pelosi, who is also personally very attached to Democratic standing in the house, is laser focused on this and related funding matters.
Let us first look at some of the sudden outbreak of lead stories on Biden being back on the ropes.
Notice this campaign to get Biden to quit looks to have picked up considerable steam before the announcement that Biden again has Covid and is cancelling campaign events over the next few days. The official count is that Biden now has his third case of Covid. A widely-reported study found that the odds of Long Covid at infection 3 were 38%. Perhaps Covid will be the agent of God that Biden was insisting had to remove him for him to stop his Presidential bid.
This struggle is very much in play, so I am not sure how much sense it makes to try to discern exactly where things are. The key is that the trajectory is increasingly against Biden and the Trump shooting (if not the Covid case) will allow him to rationalize exiting. Nevertheless, some accounts, first from the pink paper:
Democrats in Congress including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s top representative in the House, have privately expressed their concerns to Biden, it emerged on Wednesday.
Adam Schiff, another senior House Democrat who is close to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, publicly called on the president to “pass the torch”, citing “serious concerns” about whether Biden could defeat Trump in November….
Separately, CNN reported that Pelosi told Biden it would be hard to win if he stayed in the race and that doing so could damage other Democrats’ prospects. Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
But the US president has remained defiant. Referring to Biden’s conversations with Schumer and Jeffries, a White House spokesperson said: “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”
[Hakim] Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with Biden on Thursday night at the White House, and [Chuck] Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with him on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Del. In the meetings, the congressional leaders discussed their members’ concerns that Biden could deprive them of majorities, giving Republicans a much easier path to push through legislation, according to four people briefed on the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.
In a separate one-on-one conversation, a person close to Biden told the president directly that he should end his candidacy, saying that was the only way to preserve his legacy and save the country from another Trump term, the person said. Biden responded that he adamantly disagreed with that opinion and that he is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump
President Biden has become more receptive in the last several days to hearing arguments about why he should drop his re-election bid…
Mr. Biden has not given any indication that he is changing his mind about staying in the race, the Democrats said, but has been willing to listen to rundowns of new and worrying polling data and has asked questions about how Vice President Kamala Harris could win.
The accounts suggest that Mr. Biden, privately at least, is striking a more open-minded posture than he did last week when he lashed out at a number of House Democrats who pressed him to step aside.
One person close to the president said that it would be wrong to call him receptive to the idea of dropping out but that he “is willing to listen.” But this person emphasized there was no sign that Mr. Biden was changing course at this point.
So at a minimum, weakening poll results might dent Biden’s resolve.
Regardless, a big countervailing factor is that Team Dem may have lost a lot of its former big supporters across the entire ticket, and not just for Biden. In other words, bad outcomes may already be baked in and Democratic Party efforts to turn the tide may be too little, too late.
I have gotten quite a few private reports of companies run by one-time Team Dem loyalists who have moved all operations out of New York due to the Trump tax case. Antipathy for the party among the very rich increased with the hush money case. Since when is it illegal to give money or services to your own campaign? The failure of the judge to instruct the jury on campaign law or to let the Trump attorneys present a witness to contest repeated and unsubstantiated prosecution insinuations of campaign law abuses set up what many see as an indefensible verdict due to the judge putting his finger on the dial in a very big way.1
Similarly, I have received private reports of heavyweight Democratic Party supporters turning their backs not just on the Biden campaign, but potentially the entire ticket. The most systematic sightings come from IM Doc, who practices in a very wealthy, connected, and until recently deep blue pocket, and has billionaires, CEOs, and operatives among his patients. A sampling of recent reports, first from mid-June, as in before the debate:
I have now been told by two different what I would call scions of Hollywood business people (not talent ) both Jewish – that they and their families have pulled all financial support from Biden. They will both be sending big bucks to Trump – and will be voting for him. The talent is saying somewhat the same although not as vociferous. They will talk to me about it as a friend – but never in their wildest dreams would they say so out loud.
From the end of June, as in after the debate:
At a big party today – lots of politicos there that are in the know. Both Dem and GOP.
Official party polls are showing Trump has gained 2-5 points in 13 states since Thursday. No indication if they are swing states. Also learned that Trump is now in striking distance in VA and MINN. And WASH, ORE, NEW JERSEY, AND COLORADO Trump is really getting close. These are not public polls but party polls.
The Biden numbers in the Asian and Jewish communities are in free fall for Dems. The numbers in Latinos have collapsed and the Blacks are not doing well either. They are having no good ideas that work in any of these groups. “People are pissed”. “The Dem coalition we have depended on has split and is shrinking before our eyes in real time” “Inflation is a bitch” “Kamala is an albatross around the neck of the party” The cope is amazing.
These people are literally shitting their pants. The problems were already bad before the debate but now are in the toilet. A few of them seem to realize that the lies are finally catching up with them.
At the start of this week:
2 billionaires and 1 Hollywood person this AM – all 3 previous Biden supporters.
1 billionaire will be supporting Trump –
The other 2 have completely cut off all funding to Biden – and are now sitting on their hands. “What a disgrace – I do not think I will even bother to vote.”
Later in the week:
The number of these billionaires/hundreds of millionaires that are switching to Trump has been a big surprise to me. They talk to me about it literally ALL the time. Part of my job is being “mother confessor” – and I am also one of the few people in their lives they can trust – their lives are filled with vipers. They are almost universally telling me how guilty they feel doing it – but they just cannot not do it. It is almost like they are asking me – a member of the normie class – for permission.
So even if Biden actually does get Long Covid, which given his ego looks to be the fastest track for him to turn over the reins to another contender, it’s not clear that Team Dem can rescue its Federal elections. “Orange Man bad” has lost its selling power with too many important audiences. Even worse, the revulsion that was supposed to focus on Trump him looking increasingly, at least among top donors, to be attaching to Biden.
____
1 Let us not forget that Judge Merchan’s daughter, a Democratic party operative, has been reported as fundraising off her father’s case. I have been told, but have not been able to independently confirm that there are 24 judges in New York’s lowest trial court, which is confusingly called the Supreme Court. Cases are supposed to be assigned at random. Yet all three Trump case in New York were assigned to Merchan. Pull out your calculator. The odds of that happening are 0.0072%. No typo. As in one in .000072.
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One thing that I wonder is how much of this is about politicians trying to CYA in case Biden loses big. If Biden loses the popular and electoral vote significantly, the party officials and electeds get to say “it’s Biden’s fault, I told him that he was too old and needed to drop out.” And if there is a very small chance of him winning reelection, there isn’t any pushback as many in the party say the same thing and Biden will be gone in just over 6 months, including 2 as a lame duck.
> Biden will be gone in just over 6 months
“Vote for the corpse. It’s important!”
Let Biden run. Democrats have a weak bench. Why waste a live any of the live possible candidates when the one on life support can take the fall?
Democrats can ride out the next four years with the rest of the country. They can test electoral waters in ’26 at midterm. Meanwhile they can be grooming people they hope Wall Street and Silicon Valley will support in ’28 in a run against Vance–whose VP could well be one of the Trump clan or a Kushner. Democrats are unlikely to look out White House windows for the next 20 years, if ever–if the Party still exists by then. That’s how long Republicans will need to work through Program 2025 and for an alternative to form. AMLO got Morena together in a decade or so. But he really cares for people who are struggling.
It is too bad that we don’t have AMLO-style politicians here. The sticking point is that none of them give a damn about us. They only care about their individual political careers.
Any of the contenders would want it. First, trump is old. God might act at any time. Then, the next bullet might work. Or, he might have a great debate against trump. Finally, the losing guy has a good shot at getting the nom next time, especially if he runs a good campaign.
What possible candidates? They’re all cringe-horrible. The BS rhetoric about actually doing anything substantive to improve the lives of the left-behinds is pathetically transparent. If I had a complaint about the only guy who actually and unapologetically campaigned on substantive issues, it would be that there’s no one mentored through the lower ranks to take his place.
My feelings exactly. Newsom aside (he’s waiting his ‘turn’), there’s not
a drop of charisma in the whole Democratic party bench.
Harris? Don’t make me laugh!
Charisma? Her Kamalaness does or at least did have a surface charisma, somewhat like the sharklike attractiveness of Newsom, but mentally, she appears to have issues.
If you look at the destruction of the last major American political party, the Whigs, it was the refusal to deal in any real way with slavery, which was being shoved into the collective face of Americans; the Slavocracy was using violence and corruption including threatening people on the streets, politicians, and judges to have the right to not only maintain slavery, but to kidnap people off the street often lying about their legal status, which were slave raids.
In five years Whig Party ended, the Democratic Party split into the separate Northern and Southern Democratic Parties, and the Republicans formed and survived because they were willing to face the issue. The same process here is happening here.
The Democratic Party with its rump anti-Trump and anti-populist Republican faction attached is determined to not only ignore the economic collapse, along with the concurrent corruption and incompetence, they are willing to use both the corruption and the security agencies to maintain power. See Operation Mockingbird and COINTELPRO along with the often extremely illegal tactics used against reformers and their movements including murder in the United States.
People often do not want to fight, never mind fight ruthless, powerful interests until they have no choice. With the America Civil War, it was cycle of violence over decades with the more peaceful faction being forced into open warfare.
For now, who believes the Democratic Party about anything, including its ability to reform? The party with its links to the security state and its use of blackmail, subversion, and murder, is likely to push us into open warfare. However, the Democratic Party is merely the first mainstream party to hit the wall.
What about the Republican Party? It has never been a friend of the poor, rarely of the working class, and occasionally of the middle and small business classes. It also suffer from similar amounts of corruption as the Democratic Party with its only real strength being its shallower roots in the American nation, which is also a weakness. The Republicans might be able to transform into the “Party of the Working Man,” but that would require a similar, combined shifts of the creation of the New Deal Democrats in the 1930s and the destruction of the Solid South’s Democratic Party in the 1970s and 80s and change into a Republican monolith.
My best guess is the collapse of the Democrats within the next two election cycles and if the the Republicans fail within three for them.
Cogent reply, mate. Mussolini, who literally wrote the book
on Fascism, started as a socialist newspaper reporter. He first
came to power in the 1920’s. The essence of fascism was
1) control of the Judiciary 2) support of the autocracy
3) control of the military 4) control of the legislature.
The unwritten ‘law’ of Fascism is- someone must die.
For example, Hitler killed off the brownshirts when they were
no longer useful. I think your succession scenario is a little
too tidy. In four years Trump will be Biden’s age. His father
contracted dementia. Obviously, Trump has other major mental
problems as well. Thus, we are probably looking at a President
Vance in the near to midterm future.
My calculator agrees that a 1-in-24 chance will come up three times in a row only .0072% of the time . . . but it says that that works out to one cumulative chance out of 24 x 24 x 24 = 13,824.
Cases that are related in some manner are typically assigned or transferred to the same judge in order to conserve judicial resources.
So the judge assignment for the three cases could have been above board and in compliance with NY procedural law concerning related cases, instead of a series of supposedly random events that are highly unlikely.
No, not true. I know of an identical case (save one filed v. a person, a later attempt to continue the harassment v. a closely-held corp owned by the person) where the defendant asked for the case to be assigned to the same judge, in a mere 5 judge circuit, and the case was denied.
Assigning cases with the same defendant or private plaintiff to the same judge when the matters are different is prejudicial.
The process of having a judge determine whether is a case is related to another is started by an attorney or party filing papers with the court bringing the existence of a potentially related case to the attention of the judge in the earlier filed case.
That judge in the earlier filed case then examines the various legal factors that indicate whether a case is related to another under the laws of that jurisdiction and makes a ruling. If that judge determines the cases are related, the case or cases are ordered transferred to that judge’s courtroom. If the judge determines the cases are not related, each remains in the original courtroom.
I, same as you, am aware of cases that were not deemed related by a judge after a party asked the court to made a relatedness determination. That doesn’t mean that the information contained in the comment you responded to is false.
The procedure for the state in question was not to make a relatedness determination, but simply to petition the court to have the case assigned to a particular judge who had handled another matter with effectively the same parties. So relatedness was never argued. As I said, the plaintiff’s causes of action and demands were the same in both cases.
I suggested a week ago Biden was going to come down with an “unexpectedly severe, highly unusual and rare” reaction to a manufactured case of Covid. lol.
What are the chances that someone hellbent on getting Biden to drop out intentionally got him infected? How easy would it be to do that, given asymptomatic COVID combined with lax to non-existant protections anymore?
Short clip here of Biden getting out of his car and into Air Force One after testing positive for COVID.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/us/politics/biden-covid-positive.html
No mask on anyone. Does he really have it, or are they that feckless? Not a rhetorical question.
Feckless and Patches. The two presumed nominees.
I’m sure he’s vaxxed so those around him can relax…
On the plane yesterday, a boeing 737 max which seemed to work ok this time, there were far fewer masks than I expected. I think there were more when I flew a month ago but even then they were almost nonexistent, This in spite of personally knowing of several cases in my small circle so extrapolating the covids are all over but seemingly declining on the west coast so certainly there were positive travelers. You can’t refund your ticket if you have covid and there’s only so many plane tickets a mope can afford and besides, covid is over.
Walter Kirn isn’t buying the rona diagnosis. From Taiibi’s RNC livestream last night around the 1:02 mark –
https://rumble.com/v57cpup-rnc-day-three-biden-emergency-tucker-carlson-more.html
I’m just imagining election night in November and by a miracle, the Democrats win under Biden. Cheers and shouts erupt among the Democrats – until the realization creeps in that they now have to prop up Biden for up to four years. Four very long years. And as he has shown no inclination to step down now, sure as hell he will not step down if he is reelected as President. And he will not give up the Ukraine no matter how many Democrat Neocons want to shift the attention to China. The Ukraine is the hill that he will die on – and take the Democrats with him. It might cause some Democrats to ask whether Thomas Matthew Crooks had a brother by any chance.
Would it be ironic for the party that lived by defiant delusion to finally be brought down by its embodiment in the stubborn confusion of a senile covid patient?
There is no way that an 80 year old should be President (that includes Trump). The physical and mental demands are too great for someone in their Eighties. The physical decline of both Biden and Trump since they were each at 75 years, is very apparent. The physical decline in your 80’s are accelerated. While Trump is more “responsive” than Biden, that will likely not be the case when he passes the 80 mark.
Trump spent his whole term vegging in the can. I’m pretty sure he can repeat the
process.
I’m in the blue to deep blue suburbs of NY. Heavy financial services executive presence (I-banking, PE, etc.). I heard two things…
About 6 weeks ago Biden spoke at a private fundraiser in Greenwich, CT, that I had some close friends at, and was hosted by Blumenthal. They walked out shaking their heads and saying the scuttlebutt then was he was a dead man walking and they weren’t giving more money. These are first hand accounts and pre the debate debacle.
Since then what I hear from them is that the word is going out quietly from Trump supporters on Wall Street is a message along the lines of “it really is in your best interests to get in line behind Trump or you might not like things when he wins.” At a minimum this is freezing them as given Trump’s history of retribution they don’t want the profile. Also, apparently Jamie Diamond getting in line in his way was a massive signal and perceived as shivving Biden.
I don’t have the link but apparently Bloomberg did a story on Trump’s proposed 2nd term agenda. It included the phrase Secretary of Treasury Dimon. From my seat of the pants perspective I think it’s entirely possible that the assassination attempt may cause the establishment to do penance by finally accepting Trump as one of their own (which he always was anyway). That may not apply to the Dem rats like Schiff trying to jump the already sunken ship. But history shows that the public mood can swing from center left to conservative. Biden and the Dems have gone to incredible propaganda (or, politely, PR) lengths to prevent that from happening but “events” seem to be in the saddle. The economy is poor for the lowers. Our foreign policy is a disaster. Corruption is rampant.
Going by Bloomberg a Trump 2 would be much the same agenda as Trump 1 but without Jared and Ivanka and, we only pray, without Pompeo and Bolton. The SC will become still more conservative and AGW will get little attention (which is true now anyway). But if nothing else it is healthy for the powerful who think they are “running the world” to find some limits.
Yes, I thought Dimon’s positive comments about Trump not long ago were of far greater significance than was acknowledged at the time.
I’ve been telling people (or at least those without TDS, lest their heads explode) for a while that the Democrats are doomed for structural reasons, but watching them shatter so soon and so rapidly is giving even me a bit of vertigo.
Erm….. Howsabout, ‘She’s old’. Isn’t that the main argument against Biden?
I remain concerned that Hillary is the only viable candidate as a “plug-n-play” option. The short runway benefits her:
1. She’s a known quantity, already battle tested (or hardened)
2. The Clintons are known for their fundraising prowess. No money? No problem. Better call Bill!
3. Other candidates (Newsom, Whitmer) are less well-known and would need more runway to build campaigns.
Of course, all the negatives are still there with “She who cannot be denied”:
1. high negatives in the polls
2. she already lost to Trump
3. She’s old, and may have her own progressive medical condition
I wonder if the Bidens hate the Clintons so much that Joe is just running out the clock until late August. After that it will be next to impossible to do the old switcheroo. It’s Harris time!
Maybe before last weekend but doubt she’d want to take it on now. After all she was among the first to call Trump Hitler. Their fangs have been drawn.
I will say, if they were keeping her on ice and preparing to roll her out of deep storage, I would think that something would have leaked out by now. At least some sort of media tour would already be in place, you know, appearances on “The View”, maybe, or an interview with Lester Holt.
All I have heard are crickets.
The longer we go without such evidence of a secret plan, the less the odds. Still, I won’t believe she’s really dead until late August.
(I think we can look at a Hillary switcheroo as a kind of “put option” – gives the Dems the right to dump Joe but it has an expiration date of Aug. 19 or whenever the roll call of delegates happens.)
She has her fan base, but I think there is a limited pool of moneyed people anxious to back someone that a majority of Murcans just simply dislike and/or hate. If the whole idea is to get someone to top Trump, she ain’t gonna be it.
I agree with this. I agree that she seems most viable, but I also think if that was the plan, someone other than Herself wouldn’t be dropping the hints and putting Her name out there. There’s something about Her whole situation that makes me feel like She had her shot in 2008 and when she blew it, it was over. Would have been the same for Biden in 2016 had he lost. No one will come out and say it, but it seems like the only places she gets any attention these days is people still riding “With Her”, a shrinking portion of the media and inside Her own head. She just doesn’t strike me as a force in the Democrat party or anyone who they care about anymore.
Those two thoughts seem contradictory, but I also feel she’s the most viable and least likely candidate. Maybe if they get Biden out somehow and they decide to run a kamikaze, who GAF campaign? Because I also can’t imagine anyone expecting a future with the Democrats walking into this meat grinder, except Herself who has just the ego to think this will be the time!
I don’t think she has forgiven voters for picking Trump over her in 2016, and I really don’t see her giving them the chance to inflict that humiliation a second time (which they almost certainly would at this point).
I’m betting she will do what she usually does, viz. stay in the background and lob grenades at Trump if he wins (like she did with Russiagate).
And she’d be subject to much ridicule for her lie about having to dodge sniper bullets while SoS.
Obama still hates her and he seems to be the biggest not-well-hidden hand behind the Biden defenestration campaign.
Would it be fair to assume Nancy Pelosi is fully aligned with Obama in running party affairs?
Not sure about fully in other maters but she is joined at the hip with Obama on the Biden removal effort and thus probably on who the replacement would be.
Clooney-Swift ’24 is looking increasingly likely…
Hey, they have less baggage than Biden and Harris!
(I can say that, while I have not voted for any candidates Taylor endorsed, I have refused to vote for two candidates based on what their running mates said about her…)
Clooney has a lot to answer for. A mere actor using putative financial clout
to determine the future of the entire country. That’s a HUGE ego. Also
a lot of unwarrented hubris!
At this point it won’t matter if it’s Biden, Harris, Clinton, Newsom, or even St. Michelle, none of them can possibly beat the guy who remains in the race due to divine intervention. When the imaginary sky daddy speaks, the voters listen.
Yes, and Trump thanked the SS agents (after the divine intervention) for protecting him. The deity gets no thanks.
What if it wasn’t divine intervention? What if somebody came back from the future and stop the bullet so that Trump could be president and save the future?!!
We’re finally seeing proof of time travel my friends…
Imagine the assassination attempt was successful. That photo of Trump and the bullet whizzing past would become the “Napalmed Naked Girl” from the Vietnam War, but bloodier.
The tumult in D.C. over the incompetence of the SS, now growing evermore apparent, would make Jan. 6th a kiddie show. The Civil War movie would be made prophetic. Grocery shelves would empty within hours. The EU/Israel would probably implode. Life in the US would…be very different.
It came that close!
The only Clinton I’d vote for is George.
One nation under a groove!
He’s already been in Parliament!
Jajaja! Definitely the only Clinton that I’d vote for.
And Bootsie would make a fine Bassmaster General …
One idea from the article is that they need to spread the money around from the presidential campaign to the house races in an effort to hold the house. Of course Hillary would never agree to that!! So that is definitely not happening.
I think it makes sense to go with Harris, they explain to her that they need to use the money for the house, but they will remove Biden now so that she can be the first female president anyway. But for that she has to understand that the funding will be raided for putting Democrats in the house. I think she’d go right along with it.
It also solves the problem of not damaging or roughing up or staining any of their up-and-coming candidates that they will want to use for the next presidential election. Trump was very good at destroying the presidential ambitions of the other Republican candidates in 2016.
Ah, the ‘Next’ presidential election. Do you really think there will be one?
Why?
If Hillary had “a plan” she would have spent the summer away from booze, getting fit and rest, and getting a photogenic tan.
I don’t recall any public appearances. And she wasn’t with Bill when Bill was spotted by Twitter at LGA boarding a commercial flight, lol.
Bill boarding in group 0, lol. https://x.com/itslinklauren/status/1808974891690893423
(And Bill was looking fit for whatever age he is, and being filmed impromptu w/no cosmetology help
NOW would be good time for Russian President Vladimir Putin to endorse Biden for re-election as President.
(Revenge is best serviced cold or something something)
Too bad he did it already in February (bbc).
From IM Doc comments (I think)
The Biden numbers in the Asian and Jewish communities are in free fall for Dems. The numbers in Latinos have collapsed and the Blacks are not doing well either. They are having no good ideas that work in any of these groups. “People are pissed”.
And
The other 2 have completely cut off all funding to Biden – and are now sitting on their hands. “What a disgrace – I do not think I will even bother to vote.”
Me: Yes It really is a disgrace, that our (extremely old heavily senile long over baked) leaders have not yet fixed (disposed of Biden) this problem. Not having done so, is like spitting on all are faces.
I am amazed by that fact alone. The all need to be swept out of office. This is blatant a problem, it is something they should have corrected long long ago. That didn’t happen. They are beyond redemption.
For all the talk, mostly con, since it’s the MSM, about Vance, not once have I heard his age mentioned, which I find exciting. 39! A young, smart, successful Yale grad. Why is this not being emphasized? Biden is in big trouble with under 40s, this could swing more votes to Trump, although JD’s Zionism could negate that.
I am amazed that he was allowed to run in the first place. The minute he and his team started making noises about running again he should have been discouraged. And at the latest two years ago every major Democratic leader (yes including Barry and Bill and the Congressional leaders) should have had a sit down with Joe and Jill and said flatly you are NOT running. That there would be no more donations and the various Democratic operations (DNC, DCCC, DSCC, etc) would be backing credible primary candidates. You can either bow out with dignity or you can face multiple investigations and possible impeachment and your accurate medical records will be leaked to every major donor and if necessary every friendly media organization. As of today no Democrat in Congress will have Candidate Joe Biden’s back.
I don’t know if Kamala’s and Pete’s utterly unimpressive turns in office scared them from doing or it was the thought of rabid Joe and Jill Biden so they hesitated far too long. I don’t care how unimpressive the bench or what Joe had on people, they had as much on him. And they should have bitten the bullet and played chicken THEN.
Greenwald did a great piece all about Biden last week, pre ear shot.
https://youtu.be/zRZ7xVsbykE?si=SNVGsb-3TncnDhOe
Cliff notes are that, no, this is not a Good Man, this is a nasty, lying, driven man who finally achieved his goal of the Oval Office, and no way is he giving it up easily. After all, this is somebody who blatantly lied about his resume and life’s story in 1988 (!) in order to set up for a presidential run. Now he can’t remember enough to sort out his lies.
I still think he and the wife are negotiating a 8-9 figure buyout from the Big Donors.
I think Jill likes being president and isn’t going to give it up under any circumstances.
At the time (2020), by far the biggest Democratic priority was defeating Sanders, who looked like he had a very good shot as of Super Tuesday. I think Biden was seen as the best vehicle for doing that, since the other candidates in the Dem primary were all relative unknowns and had inexperienced organizations and comparatively little fundraising power. Obama famously convinced/commanded everyone else to drop out and consolidate behind Biden.
At the time I remember thinking this seemed like a very desperate move by Obama, who famously had no love for Biden and had cautioned against him running for president many times previously.
Interesting to think what it would be like now if it was Sanders versus Trump in 2024. I imagine that would be a pretty easy call for a lot of people.
“I am amazed that he was allowed to run in the first place.”
Couldn’t agree more. Given Biden’s condition in 2020 it was already extraordinarily risky to make him the preferred candidate then, but they got away with it in part due to the pandemic allowing them to keep him home and run it as a virtual campaign.
Trying to do it again after four years of further decline on Biden’s part was foolhardy and now it’s blowing up in their faces.
The Dem Party owns this and their problems go well beyond Biden’s issues. This is a party that seems to think it can run candidates who are donor-approved but widely disliked by voters (e.g., Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris), and respond to voter disapproval with their governance with indifference and deflection – deflection to making it about how bad the opposition candidate is.
It is remarkable to look back at the media spectacle that was the 1/6 hearings and all of the time and money they spent and see how utterly unmoved voters were by it.
If the Dem Party can’t get back to offering a platform and candidates that actually appeal to a majority of voters, and following through when in office, it should just go away.
None of them care who is in charge, either side will do the moneyed interest’s bidding. The people are given a false choice every time. The only reason I would vote for Biden at this point is Khan as she seems to be at least shining a light on the “Red line must go up at all costs” ways of doing business.
Speaking of money, one wonders how much the Biden team has spent on “Trump is Hitler and must be stopped in any way possible” ads that they had to pull after the ear shot.
Schumer must be getting really good at talking to daft old people in power after going through this with Feinstein for all that time. He should write a book before he loses it.
The husband and I keep having this recurring argument about who is the scariest authoritarian, Putin or Biden.
Biden is still asserting against all evidence that only he can beat trump, that he is doing more to help the palestinians, that he ended the pandemic (which just infected him again!), that the economy and job growth are sustaining broad improvements. Etc.
I’m hard pressed to think of anything Putin is saying in public that is doing comparable damage to Russian public. I’m planning to start asking him for citations.
Forgot to add – the refusal to ask for the head of the SS resignation. Not even under discussion. It’s the authoritarian who values loyalty over performance. Sort of Biden’s brand if you think about it.
My take as well.
I’ve long thought Biden to be an enormous liability. His lifetime in the Senate has only served to deceive him into believing he’s something he’s not: exceptional. He’s arrogant and mean (more so with age and senility), deluded into believing he deserves to win, deserves the post-term grift of Clinton and Obama (both of whom had more smarts and charisma). Because he’s a Biden, someone he’s warned one doesn’t F with. Unless literally incapacitated, my guess is he will not back out now. He knows the party has no one — why else accept Harris as running mate in 2000?
Someone (wonder who?) made that difficult by running stories about right-wing misogyny in the criticism of SS….now headed by a woman.
On the front page of the FT a couple of days ago but below the fold: Secret Service target of misogynistic backlash after Donald Trump assassination attempt:
https://archive.ph/Ze1RT#selection-2339.0-2365.245
The wee problem is the right wingers have a point. A YouTuber new to me interviewed Erik Prince, who went on at length about how the protection detail operated so top-to-bottom badly that it was hard not to think it was deliberate.
The interviewer did a Google image search for Biden with the Secret Service. Many different pix. All pretty to very big guys, not a single woman.
Oh, and then after the shooting, the right wing-o-sphere on Twitter showed the new Trump SS protection detail at the convention. All sturdy men.
One has to wonder if Biden’s propensity to swim nude in front of his female SS minders was to run them off.
Just a thought, but you might throw a few health statistics at him. America’s falling life expectancy, addiction, maternal mortality, etc vs. Russian numbers even with an active war. Personally I find the authoritarian who is smart enough to want a healthy peasant population to be far less scary than the guy who wants them to get sick and die after spending everything they have on useless tests and drugs. But I suppose that one is subjective as well.
I’m curious what is known about pandemic control/CV mitigations in RF. Early in the pandemic when the Johns Hopkins dashboard was still aggregating (doubtless incomplete) official statistics, it looked, IIRC, like RF had uncontrolled spread, basically same as US.
I sincerely apologize if this is a dumb question but I will genuinely appreciate an answer-
I understand why deep pocket donors are no longer giving to Biden.
What I don’t understand is why are they then giving to Trump?
Why don’t they just not give $ to either and let the chips fall where they may?
Is it merely as banal as needed tax deductions ?
Is it they are afraid the small donor hoi polloi will somehow bring about some craziness?
Both Biden and Trump seem to be happy to mostly protect the wealthy class so …?
I wonder if some part of it has to do with Gaza – even the weak and meaningless protestations that the Biden administration has occasionally made are a bridge too far for a good number of Americans.
The donor class likes thinking their phone calls will be answered. They think if they don’t donate to Trump, that isn’t likely to happen.
But rich people’s interests aren’t all the same. The real estate guys may not worry about the airlines. And the Big Pharma folk aren’t going to need the same things as the Oil folk. For instance Buffet could easily have contacted Biden when the railroad workers were striking and say ‘Hey, Joe. I know you want a win here, but we really cannot have the safety rules they want in the new contract. Can you ‘end the strike’ but make sure that none of that costly safety stuff happen? Thanks, I’ll pop a bunch of money into the reelection coffers…” But if you don’t have a history, you are at best talking to an aide, and if you gave a lot to the opposition you are talking to an intern. (I have no idea if it was Buffet who called, but someone did, to Joe and to everyone in Congress. Which is why we could have multiple train derailments after East Palestine and still not have the sensible safety requirements for them.)
My brain must not be working. It really was a stupid question.
Of course you are correct – access is everything!
Thanks to all who responded and didn’t call me an idiot – an appellation I richly deserved.
It is the naked selling of access. Like most things it’s cheaper in bulk. The wealthy simply prefer to pay wholesale prices.
They don’t have to bother with who is in the office as long as they believe he’ll take their calls.
You must be very wealthy yourself to know all the secret motivations of the
plutocracy. Who did YOU contribute your munificent largess to this year/
Not giving = no access. Sure, Trump isn’t likely to do anything to change their standard of living, but it’s all about what else you can get and without donations, you get nothing. And, as mentioned in the article, fear of retribution should Trump win.
It’s good to have friends in high places.
Political donations are not tax deductible to the donor. Only charitable donations are.
Isn’t that what PAC’s are for? The PAC takes the funds (and masks its origin) while keeping a “black book” for future access.
No, political donations are NEVER tax deductible. IRS rules dead clear on this.
Only the winner can return the favor.
Lots of attacks on tech. Tech needs friends in high places. Tech has lots of money.
I think he might really have been diagnosed with COVID recently and not wear a mask. Who’s going to make him? Masks are for the little people. And with regard to those around him – they believe that COVID is just about always mild and that wearing a mask is too much trouble, and not as comfortable as being facially naked especially in the summertime, and makes you look fearful and weak.
Heck, the last time I – an elderly immunocompromised person – was immunized, and also the last time I saw my primary care physician, both earlier this calendar year, I was the only person who was masked. I went to a funeral mass earlier this week – a couple of hundred people, of all ages but heavily skewed to the elderly – four or five were masked, and spouse and self were two of them.
History is one thing after another. Stuff will happen, and people will follow the Harvard Law of Behavior in responding to it. Peace will be with us all, sooner or later, one way or another
These are very good points, but then you have to ask, who decided to test Biden for covid in the first place?
Dr. Jill
Dr. Jill is a doctor of books, not people. :)
The well-known Vermont civic booster, Sylvia Holden, recently passed away from cancer just one month after contracting Covid.
I can’t find the link, but weren’t gay bundlers putting pressure on Obama, one of the reasons his position “evolved”?
The Five Reasons Behind Obama’s Statement On Gay Marriage
I can’t find anything more explicit, so I don’t know if there was an actual donor strike, just a threat, or whatever.
There were distinct rumors that Obama was threatened with the cancellation of several major high profile west coast fundraisers unless he got off the fence. In many ways these were important because so many of the ‘guests’ had massive social media presence. And lots of the political class were only catching on to how this could and did translate to both donations and votes.
And I hate to give Biden credit for anything, but when this was going down he had already opened his big mouth and supported gay marriage at some event, making it seem that the sticking point was Obama himself.
Actual progressives need to put a play book together like the conservatives did when they paid for the heritage foundation to put out Mandate for Leadership.
It might actually lead to policy that could reverse the 45 year take over by the corpos with their complete corruption of the body(corpse) politic through moneyed influence….. something once fought against and now pushed as perfectly fine.
Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies.
April 29, 1938 -Franklin D. Roosevelt
To the Congress:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.”
It may not matter what the dems do.
Orange Hitler is due to speak at the convention sometime, but will he? Does he have the nads? He literally dodged a bullet last week, which might be quite humbling. Can the world’s most famous huckster become humble? Millions of people will be watching to find out. If he is humble and sounds presidential, he will win in a landslide over the Party Of Snobs (POS).
The blame cannons will look like the 4th of July, but will be pointed in the wrong direction. Incapable of self-reflection, the POS will serve up endless excuses and blame as they wallow in their own pool of tears, clueless as to why they were rejected.
This will be, for the second time, a giant middle finger to the POS and their endless stream of blue BS, and a giant dose of STFU.
– “Can the world’s most famous huckster become humble? Millions of people will be watching to find out. If he is humble and sounds presidential, he will win in a landslide over the Party Of Snobs (POS).”
This has been my view ever since it was reported that Trump had jettisoned his original convention speech and was rewriting it with a “unity” theme. If he can actually stay disciplined enough to do this, I think your prediction will prove correct.
Having watched him at the RNC convention I’d say Trump looks genuinely humbled and it’s a good look. Only time will tell but if the edges have been seriously blunted he will win in a landslide.
Even if they manage to push Biden out by hook or crook, who else is reckless enough to jump into the ring now especially after the shooting? We have about 90 days for the early voting to start, and 110 days to the election day. It is like running into a hurricane with an umbrella. The wannabe usurpers (Harris, Newsom, Whitmer etc) would rather have Joe take the fall in ’24 and live to fight another day in ’28 or ’32. Because headlining this Hail Mary ticket now would be political suicide.
Then there is the Kamala problem. Will she be ok playing second fiddle to another person, or want to run herself? Looks like that Kamala running is worse than Joe. If she is also pushed out, how will they handle the optics? Get someone like Stacey Abrams? Is she reckless
It is possible that they bicker and wring their hands for a while, then settle for Joe 2.0. Because they have backed themselves into this corner.
Another possibility is Hillary 2.0. She is still salty about ’16. Her future is more or less secure, so she can afford to be reckless.
As I said, but perhaps not clearly enough, a big point of getting rid of Biden is NOT the presidency, but to redirect cash under his control to down-ballot races. But with so many Game of Thrones survival games afoot, not clear how much of that could happen.
The Trump assassination attempt has stubbornly reminded me of the movie The Manchurian Candidate (novel in 1959, movie in 1962, remake in 2004). There are some eerie parallels, IMHO — the premise is to propel a presidential candidate into office with an assassination attempt. It doesn’t help that there seems to be no apparent motivation on the part of Crooks (same with the would-be assassin in The Manchurian Candidate), and that the Republican National Convention is just days later.
I’m not seriously proposing that’s what’s happening here, but the parallels do give me pause.
Fun movie if you haven’t seen it before!
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/18/president-biden-drop-out-election-democrats
Behind the Curtain: Top Dems now believe Biden will exit
We’ll see.
At this point I don’t think it makes any difference.
Fantastic post and comments.
It cannot be over-emphasized that Our Billionaire Overlords and hundred-millionaire billionaire-wanna-bes see politics as transactional. They believe in the Ayn Rand world-view that everyone has a price and can be bought. Trump and Vance have been signaling quietly that they’re purely transactional even while the GOP convention engages in their phony populist theater.
But what about Kamala? Last week Patrick Lawrence described Harris as giving “…no indication she harbors even a single conviction not subject to opportunistic change or abandonment.” I can confirm second-hand that this is in fact the case. But isn’t this what Our Billionaire Overlords want? Harris is the perfect candidate under Inverted Totalitarianism: reliably bought in a way that the senile Biden and the loose-cannon Trump aren’t.
Perhaps the DNC has finally realized that a lady of negotiable virtue very nearly won in 2016 and that increasing turn-out by making her a BPoC just might push them over the line in 2024. I think that Harris is far more viable a candidate than conventional wisdom is giving her credit for.
Eventually she will have speak and ‘Old Joe’ will be the sound you hear.
Which specific lies are we talking about here?
Seriously.
I have been listening to outrageous lies from all the political classes since I came of age in the 1970s.
I think here me means specific lies regarding this situation, like all the attacks against people who over the years and more so recently have been calling out Biden’s cognitive decline.
The only reason I can see for someone else to want to replace Biden at the top of the ticket is to jump-start a 2028 campaign. So person X comes in and loses to Trump but runs a credible campaign, thus setting themselves up to run against Vance (or whomever) in 2028. In the best case maybe they demonstrate strength by edging the House Democratic in 2024.
Just not sure what optimist would want to put the effort into that kind of a longer term play. It is pretty obvious that if they just dump Biden and go with Harris, the loss is still going to be of landslide proportions. Because, once again, they have wasted a presidency doing nothing for the people that were supposed to be their base (historically), and are acting surprised that no one is happy with their performance.
Democracy Inc. – the best money can buy. It would be far more efficient, transparent, honest and fair to simply sell-off political offices to the highest bidder directly. No sarcasm, I’m being serious.
Enduring months of stage-managed, contrived spectacle, and cheap melodrama is excruciating and insulting.
To your point, I have to admit to being drawn in to the melodrama of Trump’s surviving an assassination attempt, and the impending Defenestration of Joe. Go long popcorn.
Taking a step back, though, what has really changed? Gaza is still Genocide, and we have seen zero signs of any halt to the slaughter of 50,000 Ukrainian men per month. It’s actually accelerating, and nobody is talking peace save Orban.
France just had an election where a majority voted for the opposition parties to Macron, yet he hangs on and sends more weapons to his buddy Zelensky, who is himself illegitimate.
Hard to argue that these elections aren’t all just a farce. Policy will trump personality. And the Blob is in full control of policy.
Yes, just like always, no matter who wins Elections Inc., the Washington Consensus will prevail. Both geriatric freaks are pro-oligarchy, anti-labor, imperialist, warmongers, racists, and cheer-leaders for genocide. It won’t matter if JB steps down and another amoral asshole takes his place. I won’t matter if the DT becomes puppet emperor again either. No substantive policy change at all, just like last time. Politics is about convincing people to willingly undermine their own interests, and it works very well indeed.
Presidential campaigns are huge economic drivers, and not just to hookers and coke dealers.
We are talking about Billions of $ that flow to black preachers and anyone else who can deliver a vote, not to mention the advertising….
You did write the part about not seeing how he survives, without offering reasons. At the time I wasn’t sure how to square that with the lack of constitutional mechanisms for his removal, but perhaps this is what you meant.
I’m not convinced that Biden has Covid. Where are the masks? No one surrounding him is wearing a mask and neither is he. The guy is a walking superspreader if he’s really infected. I know that the CDC has reduced their recommended isolation period but the last time I checked it was still more than zero minutes. After the fact of superspreader exposure, the White House insisted that Biden was masked inside Air Force One. Sure.
I suspect that Biden’s Covid infection is a convenient way to get him out of public view for a soft ouster to spare the old creep and his awful wife a well-deserved public repudiation by the Party he was dragging over a cliff for a hard fall.
I consider him getting it not once but twice, now thrice, as a sign of deep disregard for his staff, family, and the American people. He said the pandemic was over, and I’ll never forgive or forget. So if they are indeed making it up as you suggest, a major self-own.
As he walks around un-masked. Maybe Dr. Jill has him doubling down on hand sanitizer. Long Covid Joe.
Biden swims naked in front of female Secret Service agents. He does not do consideration for others.
Also people in his entourage are likely current on their vaxxes and believe that protects them…even if Biden actually was and they did not protect him. The force of cognitive dissonance is powerful. Remember, the sainted Rochelle Walensky said wearing a mask was a scarlet letter, a sign you were among the sinning unvaxed.
It looks like the people trying to push Biden out are the usual Dem establishment ghouls who put him in (over Sanders) in the first place. Sanders himself, along with AOC et al, want Biden to stay in, so that makes me also want Biden to stay in.
Regarding Judge Merchan: it’s completely normal to consolidate related cases under the same judge. How Merchan got picked in the first place, idk, but being on one case can automatically lead to being on the other two.
Supreme Court in NYS is a court for cases above $XXXXX. In other states that would be called a superior court. Below it are the municipal and small claims courts. The Supreme Courts have an “appellate division” which handles appeals from that same court. And in Albany NY (the state capital) there is a statewide Court of Appeals which is what other states would call a supreme court: it handles second-appeals from the district courts. No idea if this amount of detail is of any use to anyone, but here it is.
Per @SyrianGirl’s X.com, Netanyahu has cancelled his trip to the US next week.
https://x.com/Partisangirl/status/1814129929199743127
IMO this is a tell that next week is “go time” for Operation: Defenestration. Too much heavy weather for the Genocider to get his message through, methinks.
lol. so true.
Mossad has to have the best DC intel vacuum, human and electronic
in my opinion. better than Russia or China
Wow, big if true and very fortunate!!!!
I cannot type STOP fast enough to every Dem money solicitation text and email that hits my phone and that includes messages from Bernie as well. Totally gone off Bernie. I started off a couple years back severely castigating and criticizing the gerontocracy in Congress and Senate (Pelosi, Schumer, Clyburn, Hoyer) but at one point realized, ‘where is Bernie’s hand picked successor?’. Should not the man be carefully and assiduously training someone to take his place soon? Why is he still running around Vermont and Washington at his age? I am done with the Democrats. Also, I am very sincerely hoping that Shifty Schiff will lose and lose enormously and significantly with terrible numbers in deep blue districts in California. I hope the good people in California will send this unmistakable message to both Schiff and his enabler-in-chief Pelosi.
https://x.com/ashishkjha/status/1813712162692510139
Nothing about all the people who breathed on him while he was on the road.
How’s the ventilation on Air Force One?
And don’t get me started on Paxlovid.