CHRIS CRUCIAL: 8 scary facts about Joe Biden 😱
PLUS: DNC delays virtual roll call!
This is my nightly newsletter — delivering all the political news you need from the day that was. If you are a paid subscriber, don’t forget that I am doing a live chat during the GOP convention starting at 10 pm eastern tonight. (I will send a link later!) If you aren’t a paid subscriber, I am running a sale right now! Just $5 a month and $50 for the year! Join us!👇
1. Biden is heading in the wrong direction
Joe Biden is still the Democratic presidential nominee. And, if I had to guess, he still has a better than 50-50 chance at holding onto the nomination.
But, man oh man, if I was a Democrat, I would be very worried about where all of this is heading — especially if Biden winds up as the party’s nominee this fall.
Let me run through a few (ok, 8) alarming facts we’ve all learned about Biden in just the last few days.
Biden’s inner circle appears to have shrunk to his wife, his son and his sister. That’s it. That’s the list. Here’s the New York Times: “In the nearly three weeks since President Biden took the debate stage in Atlanta and plunged his re-election campaign into chaos, his closest consultations have been not with his White House chief of staff, his top communications strategist or even the leader of his campaign.”
Biden has STILL not watched the June 27 debate. He told NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday that he had watched parts of it. Not good enough! Think of it in the sports context. If your team loses a game to a rival that you have to play later in the season, you absolutely watch the film to make sure you don’t make those mistakes again. Sure, it’s painful! But you have to do it! And Biden has to debate Trump again! I am not sure pretending like the first debate didn’t happen is a recipe for success.
Biden hasn’t talked directly to his team of pollsters since the debate. Again, the Times: “Mr. Biden has not consulted directly with the pollsters on his 500-person campaign team about the state of the race against Donald J. Trump, but has instead relied on Mike Donilon, a longtime friend, former pollster and Biden-campaign messaging guru, to summarize the numbers, with regular memos and numerous daily phone calls.” Huh? If you’ve got a slew of pollsters (and Biden does) and they are always conducting polls (and they are) wouldn’t you want to hear from them directly? Especially when you are in the most perilous period of your political career?
It’s not just the “elites” who want Biden gone. In a new AP-NORC poll, 65% of Democrats said that Biden should withdraw from the race.
Nancy Pelosi is making her opinion clear. No, Pelosi isn’t the Democratic leader anymore. But she remains the shrewdest and most respected political strategist in the party. And, it’s very clear that she thinks it’s time for Biden to go. The latest evidence? California Rep. Adam Schiff, a close Pelosi ally who will walk to a Senate seat this fall, went public Wednesday with a call for Biden to step aside. “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November,” said Schiff. There is a 0.0% chance he did that without a) alerting Pelosi and b) Pelosi’s approval.
Biden is drastically underperforming Democratic Senate candidates. Even before the June 27 debate, I’d noticed that in swing states that are also hosting competitive Senate races like Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin, Biden was doing FAR worse in polls than the Democratic candidates. The debate has accelerated that trend. Take a look at these numbers from the New York Times:
That, to me, suggests the problem isn’t with the Democratic brand. It’s with Biden.
Large majorities believe Biden isn’t mentally up to the job. Amid the flurry of poll numbers of late, one really stood out to me. It’s from a Pew poll released late last week. People were asked whether Biden and Trump were “mentally sharp” enough to be president. Here’s what they said:
Only one in four people thought Biden was mentally sharp. How, exactly, do you come back from that?
Democratic replacement candidates run better against Trump. Here’s Politico from this morning:
“Alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. Nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the President. This includes Vice President [KAMALA] HARRIS who runs better than the President (but behind the average alternative).”
“Some of the gains are coming from winning undecideds and those previously supporting a third party. However, alternative candidates are also pulling votes from Donald Trump. All candidates continue to hold the Democratic base.”
“Voters are looking for a fresh face. Those more closely tied to the current administration perform relatively worse than other tested candidates.”
And that’s far from an isolated finding. In Virginia and Pennsylvania, Harris ran better than Biden in polls released earlier this week.
All of which leads me to two contradictory fact that I currently believe to be true.
First, Joe Biden does NOT want to get out of the race. And there has not been an adequate and/or organized groundswell of key Democratic elected officials to try to force his hand. With each passing day, the likelihood of that groundswell diminishes.
Second, nominating Biden would be a MASSIVE gamble for Democrats with the highest possible stakes (aka a second term for Donald Trump). To nominate Biden at this point you have to believe he will be able to make it through four more months without making any serious errors in public that would reaffirm the age and competence issues coursing through the electorate. I think that’s an INSANE bet to make.
2. DNC delays virtual roll call
Earlier this week, in a transparent attempt to cut off ongoing concerns from within the party about whether Biden should remain as the presidential nominee, the Democratic National Committee announced that it would conduct a virtual roll call vote next week rather than wait to formally choose a nominee at the convention in mid-August.
The gambit backfired as more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress penned a letter protesting the move. “This idea of jamming this in mid-July never made any sense and was just going to divide us and undermine our unity and morale at the worst time,” said California Rep. Jared Huffman. NBC News reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was also pushing the DNC for the delay.
The DNC blinked on Wednesday, announcing that no virtual roll call vote would take place until at least August 1. It remains to be seen whether that will be acceptable to Huffman and his colleagues.
What’s going on here is simple. The DNC, an arm of the Biden campaign, is trying its damndest to drag the president across the line. They know that once Biden is formally nominated it becomes MUCH harder to remove him as the party’s standard-bearer.
The faster that happens, therefore, the sooner the movement to replace Biden loses steam. But, the danger — as the DNC learned this week — is that if you look like you are cutting off honest debate about who is best positioned to beat Trump, the tactic will backfire.
3. Meet JD
For many Americans, tonight’s GOP convention will be the first time they have ever heard from vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
It’s worth watching Vance’s victory speech when he won the 2022 Senate race in Ohio. Politico has 55 things you should know about him. The New York Times has 27. My favorite recent profile of Vance was written by John McCormack for The Dispatch — you can read it here. Slate went back and read “Hilbilly Elegy.”
I’ll be watching Vance’s speech live tonight — and chatting with paid subscribers! If you’re not one yet, now is the time! I am running a sale so you can get “So What” for $5 a month or $50 for the whole year. Subscribe — and join us tonight!
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
“The Trump name become synonymous with luxury and with beauty in the real estate world.” — Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance
ONE GOOD CHART
Why are you hearing so much talk about inflation and immigration at this week’s Republican convention? Because GOP voters see those as the two big problems facing the country, according to Pew.
SONG OF THE DAY
Confession: I am not the world’s biggest Phish fan. (Jam bands aren’t really my thing.) But, this Phish “Tiny Desk Concert” is pretty great.
Thanks for reading! This nightly newsletter brings you ALL of what you need to know from the world of politics. Think of it as a daily cheat sheet! If you want to get it in your email inbox every night at 7:30 pm, become a subscriber today!
I am a lifelong Democrat and it's clear to me that the only way to prevent Trump from winning the presidency, likely by a landslide, is if Biden steps aside and lets someone who is electable be the Dem nominee. I called Chuck Schumer's office again today to ask him to push for Biden to step aside, and by contacting friends and acquaintances I got at least four other people to make the same call to Chuck Schumer. It is incredibly important that we not give Trump an easy victory and that is what will happen if Biden is the Democratic nominee
One of the striking things about the "should Joe step aside" question is how so many on the left turn on people who discuss the issue or dare to suggest he step aside. Chris gets called a "Trumper"; people are on social media saying Adam Schiff is a "traitor" and they will write in Katy Porter's name; people boast about cancelling their subscriptions to the NY Times, Bulwark, etc; people recount all the MSNBC hosts who are on their bad lists. It's more than denial, although it is that. It's also trying to bully people and the media into silence or compliance. I don't know how anyone looks at polling showing over 70% think Joe's unfit and then thinks it's an outrage to suggest that he should step aside. Joe caused all this by failing to pass the torch , as he said he would, and by failing to acknowledge that Father Time remains undefeated.