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Circling the Wagons Around Joe
The Biden family met at Camp David on Sunday, 30 June, to discuss what to do about the aftermath of the debate. That evening it was leaked that the family had decided unanimously that Joe would continue as the nominee. It was unlikely that Jill was ever going to give up her chance at four more years of power.
Jim Clyburn, who rallied South Carolina for Joe in 2020 and thus a key Biden supporter, said that the problem was that Joe was overprepared!
Fancy Nancy Pelosi said that it is actually Trump who has dementia.
The Biden/Harris campaign announced that Joe would absolutely continue as the nominee. Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom both added their support.
In addition to Jill’s lust for power, there are several reasons why there will be no change in Joe as nominee. First, as many have observed, the Democratic Party hates Kamala and thinks she would be more likely to lose to Trump. And it would be hard to remove Kamala.
Second, Joe controls 99% of the delegates to the convention. They are bound to vote for him on the first ballot unless Joe withdraws or 2/3 of the delegates vote to change the rules at the convention.
Third, according to campaign finance law, all the money raised by the Biden/Harris campaign can only be used for Biden’s or Harris’s election. If the Democrats nominate someone other than Biden or Harris for president, that person would have to start over on fundraising. The campaign had raised $155 million by March 2024 (not sure if that is total receipts or cash on hand), so that big pot of money would be useless unless either Biden or Harris is the nominee.
But the biggest reason is that an open convention would open a civil war in the party. The Democratic party is a collection of interest groups, and their disputes would suddenly have to be resolved in short order to pick a candidate. Imagine the demonstrations in Chicago at the convention if the nomination were actually on the line. Bernie and the Squad, Antifa, the gender confused, the pro-terrorist Hamas lovers, and many more would be out in force.
Immediately after the debate, it was the pundits and congressional delegations calling for Joe’s ouster. The pundits realized that they had been caught praising the emperor’s gorgeous new threads when he was actually naked. And the congressional delegations are worried about a wipeout in the fall if Joe is at the head of the ticket. But they have limited power to force change when Joe and Jill are determined to stay in. With the party leadership rallying around Joe, they will have to come around to supporting Joe or at least mute their despair.
As long as Joe is not dead or comatose by November, he will be the nominee. Get your popcorn ready.
Published in Elections
I would say that the least popular between Joe and Kamala, is whichever the voters saw most recently.
NBC News: Biden’s family urges him to ‘keep fighting’ as donors look for alternatives
Quote:
As top Democrats offered a public show of support for President Joe Biden throughout the weekend, his advisers worked privately Sunday to push back against suggestions that he step aside, with his campaign manager describing the mechanics of replacing him on the ticket as messy and impractical.
During a tense call with a group of about 40 of Biden’s top financial backers, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez laid out what could and could not be done with the campaign’s infrastructure if Biden were to step aside while emphasizing throughout the call that he had no intention of doing so.
Most of the campaign’s significant war chest would fall to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chavez Rodriguez said, according to two people familiar with the discussion. Only a smaller pool of money would be kept by the Democratic National Committee.
As several donors posited what a participant derisively referred to as fanciful “West Wing”-type scenarios for replacing Biden, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who joined for part of the call, emphasized that the process would be “messy” and predicted that Harris would ultimately end up as the nominee.
Sunday’s call was just one of a series of similar conversations top Biden advisers and campaign leaders have been holding with Democratic officials and donors after Biden’s halting debate performance rattled the party elite.
The conversation was among the more candid the campaign has held with a larger group in recent days, wading into the delicate question of exactly who might succeed Biden if he were to step aside.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair of the Biden campaign, is also set to hold a call with a larger group of donors Monday night, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
Meanwhile, Biden’s family — the people who have most influence on him — met and discussed the future of his campaign during a long-planned gathering at Camp David, Maryland, NBC News first reported.
The message from Biden’s children and grandchildren, together for a photo shoot Sunday with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, was to “keep fighting,” said two sources familiar with the discussions.
In recent days, some of Biden’s family members have expressed deep frustration with the aides and advisers responsible for preparing him for the debate, which carried over into conversations over the weekend, multiple sources said. A senior Biden adviser called such suggestions false, while a campaign spokesperson said Biden still has confidence in his most senior staffers.
“The aides who prepped the President have been with him for years, often decades, seeing him through victories and challenges. He maintains strong confidence in them,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
The campaign’s public posture Sunday was to draw attention to the positive, or at least neutral, response that voters and grassroots supporters have had to Biden’s first debate against former President Donald Trump.
“Every time Donald Trump opened his mouth, those dials dropped. They just absolutely plummeted,” Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy said on MSNBC, referring to live panels the campaign conducted Thursday. “[Voters] felt like the president came across as someone who cares about middle- and working-class Americans, and when compared to Trump he came across as more presidential, more likable, more truthful.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in another MSNBC interview: “It certainly was a setback. But of course I believe a setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”
During the call with donors, Chavez Rodriguez noted that the campaign has raised $33 million since the debate and even received hundreds of new applications from people wanting to join the campaign.
Coons also made a “fiery” case for Biden, pointing to his performance during recent international gatherings and his campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday to say there’s no evidence that Thursday’s debate was anything other than a bad night.
One participant said that many on the call were still firmly behind Biden but that “a lot of the participants are frightened.”
“There were some tough comments from those on the call. Some were upset that they are just hearing campaign talking points,” the participant said, adding that some donors even asked about having their contributions refunded.
Another senior Democratic official who has spoken directly with Biden and members of his campaign team said he has been reassured about Biden’s staying in the race and characterized his team’s posture as “powering through.”
But he also said he has had a lot of “one-off texts and conversations” with his peers and predicted the next two weeks would be critical.
“We’ll have polls and we’ll have a money count. If they’re good, it leans that he [remains in the race]. And if it’s not, all bets are off,” the official said. It will be “decided on data more than emotion. It’s too early to make the call.”
Joe staying in is the best news for Trump, no?
Arguably, any option is good for Trump.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has published an editorial stating that it’s Trump who should drop out of the race:
It’s quite something.
Thursday night, the long-running game of “Monkey in the Middle” that the MSM has been playing with the White House since 2020, in which they threw and caught the ball back and forth to each other, over and around the heads of the American people, came to an end.
What’s unfolding now looks like a variation of “Chicken.” Quite a few of those same MSM, and their established pundits, put themselves way out on the line immediately and said–unequivocally–that Biden was unfit to serve, that they and the public have been misled, and that Biden must go. (How much of the alleged “shock” they expressed was real, and how much of it an attempt at CYA is a matter for another comment. That’s what they said on Thursday night and Friday morning.)
So now what? Now that it’s clear that–at least today–the Bidens and the Democrat machine don’t care what the people who’ve been covering up for them for years said in what might have been the greatest explosion of sudden truth in American media on record, and now that they are circling the wagons, and setting their sights on Trump, what are those MSM people going to do about everything they said and wrote during their major panic attack on Thursday and Friday? Is Morning Joe going to retract his statement that Biden is unfit for office? Is the NYT going to publish another editorial stating that they were wrong to call for Joe to leave the race? What’s Van Jones going to say?
No doubt some of them (Morning Joe probably, for starters), will retract, apologize, and grovel, now they’ve been spoken to and got their minds right. But what about the rest of them?
An optimistic person might hope that this is the beginning of a schism in what has been an impenetrable wall, and that once a few in the MSM, and a few of their established pundits, realize that they are being gaslighted just like the rest of us with cries of “He’s fine! He’s fine! He does cartwheels in the Oval Office every morning and runs faster than Usain Bolt!”* they’ll get mad.
And then–maybe–they’ll get even.
Could it be possible?
*Perhaps there is a modified strategy coming out from the White House, one which does acknowledge–as in the Philadelphia Inquirer piece–that Biden is failing somewhat. I think it’s Axios who said yesterday that “sources” have told them that “Biden isn’t at his best,” after 4PM, something–until yesterday–that was widely known, but which none in the MSM dared say for fear of being called a conspiratorial right wing nut job.
But now it’s official White House spin: From 10AM to 4PM (Eastern, I presume), Joe is simply brilliant.
Hear that Vlad? And you, the guy with the funny haircut? And the mullahs? And….
Good grief. As usual, the only real losers in these games are the country and its people.
Disagree but hope you’re right. My guess is if the Dems rolled out a shiny new human pander unit, they could win comfortably.
[Jaw drops.] Seriously?
Do you remember how back in 2016 mental health specialists were coming out of the woodwork to tell us how Trump was mentally unfit? Now, crickets. Our medical professionals are bad.
Yep. At this rate, it won’t be long before someone writes a post with a title something like “Top Reasons Biden Supporters Give As To Why He Lost the Debate and Trump Won”:
No doubt, when all is said and done, there will be many more.
Yes. It happened to Reagan in 1984. His disastrous performance in the first debate is what prompted the famous line from the second: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
It also prompted the equally famous line from his staff: “Let Reagan be Reagan.”
Now, Joe Biden is no Reagan. The Gipper was a spry 73 at the time. And Biden’s sense of humor, such as it is, is not Reaganesque, either. He is unlikely to turn fire on himself. Reagan was the nation’s grandfather, Biden is the angry pervert running out to steal your baseball if it lands in his yard.
The Biden camp has also made it known that the President had a cold and that he is practically robust from 10a to 4p. I’m sure Chairman Xi will make sure that any invasion of Taiwan will be confined to Joe’s “good hours.”
Which raises the question of replacement. If Joe is too old to run for president, he is too damn old to be president. The Dems can have their cake and eat it, too. If they were to find a way to get Joe to resign, Kamala could have the honor of being the first woman to hold the title of president and whoever is running the country now will continue to run the country. At the same time they can run someone else to replace her.
That severs 90% of Trump’s campaign rhetoric.
It would mean running against a new person. There would be different attacks on that person.
Somehow, I think Trump is up to it. As VDH says, he is great at that.
Knowing that I am probably literally the only Republican who feels this way at this moment, I respect the Democrats for how they are treating Joe. I think–don’t everyone yell at me at once–their support for him over the past couple of years is admirable and is setting a good example for the entire country.
I used to read Wesley J. Smith‘s daily blog on death and dying in America. I finally stopped because I had become so depressed from reading it. If we believe in the worth of human beings just because God created them and has them on the planet wherever they happen to be, then the Democrats’ “culture of death” and “you get to live only if you’re useful” attitudes are abhorrent trends in philosophy.
To see the euthanasia-supportive Democrats support Joe in the way they have in the past two years is, frankly, reassuring to me that they have a heart somewhere after all.
Of course, if the situation were reversed and it was Trump going down this aging path, they would be all in with their stated philosophies of “You’ve got to know when you’re ripe” and everyone over the age of 75 is sucking the life out of the Medicare system and should take the “death with dignity” pill. Peter Singer for the win!
But for the moment, I am glad they are supporting Joe’s right to life and to make his own decisions and to have good and bad moments in his day.
Don’t everyone throw the eggs and tomatoes at once. It will make a mess. :) :) :)
Sometimes you have to take away the car keys, for the good of the oldster and the public.
You analysis would be fine if the man were not the leader of the free world.
Thursday was not “just one bad night.”
I think you mistake what is–on the part of most folks–a genuine concern that a man who presents as Joe Biden did on Thursday night and as he has many times on camera, and as he did–apparently–over the course of long-form interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur, as an elderly man with a poor memory who could not be called to account for his actions because he often can’t remember what they were, is not simply experiencing the ups-and-downs of normal old age, but actually suffers from what is very likely a diagnosable cognitive impairment and diminishment to such an extent that it’s not really clear if he is able to make decisions for himself. Many people who suffer such indignities late in life are not capable of such things. And none of them should be leading the Executive Branch of the United States government and making decisions which have serious ramifications for the country and the world, just because we fear being “mean.”
Conflating the attitudes of people who hold the above opinion with some sort of animus against old people, or believing that people who hold such an opinion subscribe to a “culture of death” in which you “get to live only if you’re useful,” does us a huge disservice, and assigns a malevolence and sickness to our thoughts that I completely reject. You insult me, and millions like me, when you say thinks like that.
I’ve had a lot of experience with elderly loved ones who suffered from cognitive impairment, Alzheimers, fronto-temporal dementia and Lewy body dementia, and–once they lose the ability to think clearly for themselves–I recognize that it’s my privilege to think clearly for them, represent their best interests, and make sure they have the best quality of life possible, for the longest time possible.
I hope Joe Biden lives another twenty years. I hope he write a book. I hope he plays golf. I hope he rides his bicycle. And I hope he enjoys the family he loves so much. Encouraging a person in his condition to live within his limits and enjoy the time that’s left to him on this earth in such a way that he’s not damaging either himself or others isn’t elder abuse.
Quite the reverse.
As long as Joe is not dead or comatose by November, he will be the nominee. Get your popcorn ready.
It would not be the first time that democrats killed somebody in the pursuit of keeping their power.
Seth Rich Vince Foster, to name a couple.
According to the Democrat rules for their convention, the delegates are not bound on the first ballot. Byron York broke it down:
The actual rule
I don’t really care how Biden did in the debate as such. What bothers me is that he is just as likely to go into Zombie mode at a moment when we need a functioning, intelligent, informed POTUS. Someone who had a moment like the one he had Thursday night is highly unlikely to be given a driver’s license or be allowed to fly an airplane, much less pilot a jumbo jet with hundreds of people onboard. No one can convince me that a pilot’s job is more demanding than that of the President of the United States, nor does it require more focus on a 24/7 basis.
Rather than circling wagons I see vultures.
The grifters like theBulwark and the Lincoln project will live and die with FJB
Yes on the hourly news summary on National Public Radio I heard them touting this editorial (after they reported that dozens of other newspapers are calling for President Biden to drop out of the race.) Dozens of other newspapers to highlight but NPR chose to highlight this editorial. NPR understands its donor base does it not?
This line from the editorial points out that the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board has high fever levels of Trump Derangement Syndrome, “But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. ”
Lies? Which lies in particular? I am aware of weak prevarication because the POTUS cannot call out a state’s national guard. Gov. Walz got a call from President Trump strongly encouraging him to call out the MN NG. Gov. Walz though called it out on his own…after telling his daughter who promptly tipped off her riotous friends who then burned down a Minneapolis police precinct a day before the MN NG mustered in. Trump may think it was because of him that the MN NG got called in but technically it wasn’t his call.
Hyperbole? Yup we’re pretty used to that? AND…so what.
Bigotry? Please show me where President Trump made bigoted statements?
Ignorance? Please show me where President Trump showed ignorance?
Fear Mongering? Have these people covered politics for any period of time? Yes, all politicians engage in fear mongering. Can anyone tell me who used this fear mongering phrase on Thursday night’s debate, “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.”
The word is Hunter is the one pushing hardest for Joe to stay in.
Essentially, Hunter Biden the crackhead felon is now Biden consigliere…
None of this even makes a difference since the same election rules that allowed the steal in 2020 are still in play.
With the added bonus that we have all been warned that if you try to protest the theft you will do hard time in prison.
Was working in the ER one day when the next patient was an elderly man. He was in the ER to have me fill out his drivers license physician form, required in Wisconsin for people over a certain age when applying for renewal. This was really unusual as its normally the job of the patients primary physician. In fact it was the first and only time I saw this.
The patient explained to me that his primary refused to fill out the form, and demanded I do it. He was as angry and agitated as, well Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, his son was standing behind him, signaling to me and mouthing “don’t do it !”
A vote for Biden is in fact a vote for Kamala “Heels Up!” Harris. ( Stastically Biden has about an 8% chance of dying in the next 12 months ).
Trump needs to pound that fact too.
Would you allow him to fly a plane full of people ?
Operate on your loved one?
He’s the President of the United States. He can make all the decisions in his private life he wants. He can pick his ice cream or decide on his bed time. I don’t want him being briefed at 3am on Chinese troop movements against Taiwan.
Obama still needs Joe.
On the ” 10 am to 4 pm” excuse, didn’t some Democratic presidential candidate run ads several years ago about the importance of the president’s ability to answer the phone at 3 am?
“Too many Americans have been through the sad decline of their own parents and grandparents. They understand age-related decline all too well. They understand how hard it is to get Grandpa to hand over the car keys, much less the nuclear codes.”
– HollyMathnerd in Holly’s Substack 6/30/24