Recently on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, President Biden phoned in to announce that he's not going to withdraw as the presumptive Democratic nominee, no matter what the "elites" say, because Biden claims to know that the average Democratic voter wants him to stay in the race.
As evidence he cited what people were telling him at campaign events following his debate debacle. Wow, what a non-shock: most of those who take the time and trouble to attend a Biden rally support his candidacy.
Next Biden should attend a Kansas City Chiefs home game. He'll probably find that most of the people there are fans of the Chiefs. Which obviously doesn't prove that most Americans are.
Virtually all of the news has been bad for Biden today. I've seen nothing that would make me change my conclusion that Biden needs to withdraw in order for our country to have the best chance of avoiding the horror of a second Trump presidency.
Here's a tour of what struck my eye today.
Richard Hasen is a professor of law at UCLA and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He's a regular commentator on MSNBC where he always makes good sense about the danger Trumpism poses to our democracy. Today he wrote a scathing piece for Slate, "Democrats Sure Aren't Acting as if Trump Beating Biden Is an Existential Threat to Democracy."
For all the talk from congressional Democrats about Donald Trump being an existential threat to democracy, they sure aren’t acting like it. That’s true in how they are handling the situation with President Joe Biden’s precarious reelection campaign, but the problem goes much deeper.
...A recent CBS poll showed that only 27 percent of people think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, compared to 72 percent who think he does not. (A month ago, before the debate, the numbers were 35/65.) In swing-state polls, Biden is losing, and polls are moving in the wrong direction. Careful election analyst Dave Wasserman wroteon X: “The notion that the presidential is a Toss Up was a stretch even before the debate. Today, Trump has a clear advantage over Biden and a much more plausible path to 270 Electoral votes.”
Dave Weigel notes that this is the first time in 24 years that a Republican is leading in polling averages after July 4. In July 2020, Biden was leading by 9 points. He ended up winning that race by exactly half that margin—a feat that raises further questions about his ability to overcome Trump’s growing lead.
...If you genuinely believe that Democrats’ dire warnings about Trump and democracy are entirely reasonable, then their cowardice to have a hard conversation with Biden about the president’s path forward is itself a threat to the future of American democracy.
George Clooney wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, "George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee."
I’m a lifelong Democrat; I make no apologies for that. I’m proud of what my party represents and what it stands for. As part of my participation in the democratic process and in support of my chosen candidate, I have led some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party’s history. Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden in 2020.
Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election. I say all of this only to express how much I believe in this process and how profound I think this moment is.
I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.
But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
...We love to talk about how the Republican Party has ceded all power, and all of the traits that made it so formidable with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to a single person who seeks to hold on to the presidency, and yet most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks. But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.
NBC News reports, "'It's already disastrous': Biden campaign fundraising takes major hit."
President Joe Biden’s campaign has already suffered a major slowdown in donations and officials are bracing for a seismic fundraising hit, with the fallout from a debate nearly two weeks ago taking a sizable toll on operations, according to four sources close to the re-election effort.
“It’s already disastrous,” one of the sources close to Biden’s re-election said of fundraising.
"The money has absolutely shut off," another source close to the re-election said.
The Oregon Capital Chronicle has a story, "Rep. Blumenauer calls on Biden to withdraw while other Oregon Dems stay silent." Blumenauer has the courage of his convictions. I sure wish his Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives did.
Oregon’s longest-serving U.S. representative on Wednesday called for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, while other members of Oregon’s Democratic congressional delegation and nominees are keeping mum.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from east Portland who plans to retire in January after nearly three decades in the House, became the first member of Oregon’s delegation to take a public stand on Biden’s ability to win in November.
...Rep. Andrea Salinas, meanwhile, said Biden should do the best thing for the country, without specifying what that would be.
The Washington Post tells us, "Pelosi opens the door, subtly, to replacing Biden."
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