Salem Political Snark

Biden pardons his son, Hunter. Good for him. Trump's pardons were way worse.

When I saw this afternoon that President Biden had pardoned Hunter, his son, my immediate reaction was "Great news! Hunter was given a raw deal by the special prosecutor who investigated him."

It seems clear that if Hunter didn't have the last name of Biden, he never would have faced such serious charges for merely stating on a federal gun purchase form that he wasn't an addict or user of illegal drugs. Hunter has said that when he filled out the form, he wasn't a user and didn't consider himself an addict.

I'm pretty sure that lots of people in states where marijuana is legal state on that form that they don't use marijuana, even if they do, since because marijuana is illegal under federal law, no one who uses marijuana can purchase a firearm if they say they use it. And if they lie on the form, that's a federal offense. 

Regarding Hunter's other offense, failing to pay federal income taxes, he has paid the IRS what was owed. Again, lots of people fail to pay their taxes, but they rarely face jail time, as Hunter did.

So President Biden is justified in pardoning his son. A Politico story says:

President Joe Biden on Sunday signed a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son Hunter, saying he “wrestled” with the decision but believed that “raw politics” had “infected” the process that led to the younger Biden’s criminal convictions on gun and tax charges.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” the president said in a statement.

It's amusing to hear the predictable Republican cries of outrage over the pardon. Astoundingly, another Politico story is about Republicans decrying Biden's lying, since he had been saying that he wouldn't pardon his son. Somehow those Republicans seem to have forgotten that Trump is the Liar in Chief, with just about everything he says being filled with blatant lies.

Biden didn't lie. He simply changed his mind. Trump has said that he's going to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. There's a good chance this will never happen. If so, hopefully Republicans will scream "Liar!" at Trump as loudly as they're calling Biden a liar. 

Trump's pardons during his first term as president were much more objectionable than Biden's pardon of his son. A December 2020 CNN story describes Trump's latest batch of pardons before he left office. 

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafortand White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.

The pardons of Manafort and Stone reward two of the most high-profile and widely condemned former advisers of the President, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, went to trial and were convicted by juries of multiple crimes.

Manafort, who is serving home confinement, admitted his crimes and initially agreed to cooperate with Mueller then lied to prosecutors, while Stone never cooperated after lying to Congress to protect the President. Manafort spent close to two years in prison for bank and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness tampering conspiracies before being released because of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Stone’s sentence for obstruction of Congress and threatening a witness was commuted by Trump earlier this year days before he was set to surrender.

Charles Kushner, meanwhile, had been prosecuted by then-US Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christie in the early 2000s for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions.

So I have no sympathy for Republican hypocritical moaning and crying over Biden using his pardon power to benefit his son. If the political shoe was on the other foot, Trump would have ordered a criminal investigation by the Justice Department into one of his sons to be dropped right off the bat. 

To his credit, President Biden allowed the special prosecutor's investigation of his son to proceed, stepping in with a  pardon only after it became obvious that the legal system was being used to single out Hunter for special punishment rather than treating him like any other defendant. 

Biden wanted to cling to power, which would have been a disaster. Pelosi saved us.

Thanks to an article in the September 2 issue of The New Yorker, "Life of the Party: The Democrats seem rejuvenated by their new candidate. Why was it so hard to get one?," I learned about how close the Democratic Party came to being stuck with Biden after his disastrous debate, because he and his staff were so adamant about him staying in the presidential race.

Below are excerpts from the article by Andrew Marantz that show the extent to which Biden was dangerously out of touch with reality until Nancy Pelosi and a few other leading Democrats put enough pressure on Biden to snap him out of his fantasy that rank and file Democrats didn't want him to withdraw and he had a good chance of beating Trump.

The following day [after the debate], his staff drove him [Vermont Senator Peter Welch] to various events -- a meet and greet with dairy farmers in Waitsfield, a media conference in Burlington. Whatever the ostensible topic, the only thing that people wanted to talk about was the debate. "It was maybe eighty-twenty, or ninety-ten, in favor of 'Biden cannot be our nominee,'" Welch told me. "And this is in Vermont" --  the state that gave the President his widest margin of victory in 2020.

...Adam Smith, a congressman from Washington State, told me that, the day after the debate, "I called up the White House and went, 'Guys, we all know what has to happen here.' I hung up thinking, He'll do the honorable thing. And instead I watched the palace guard go, 'Nope, fuck off,' and start circling the wagons."

...On a Zoom call with a political action committee associated with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Mike Levin, of California, told Biden directly that the overwhelming majority of his constituents wanted Biden to step aside. Biden responded, "I think I know what I'm doing," and the call ended soon after that.

The following day, on a call between Biden and centrist Democrats in the House, Jason Crow, from Colorado, said that voters were "losing confidence" that Biden could "project strength." Biden responded, "I don't want to hear that crap." Adam Smith, the representative from Washington, told me, "It was really defensive and frankly a bit weird."

Another Democratic representative put it to me even more vividly: "We were all prepared for 'This is so sad, we're going to have to take the car keys away from Grandpa.' We were not prepared for the scenario where you try to take the keys away from Grandpa and Grandpa points a gun at your head."

...The Democratic Convention was scheduled for August, but the D.N.C. [Democratic National Committee], apparently at the urging of the White House, had decided to make the nomination official a month early, via Zoom, like trying to rush a shotgun wedding before anyone could get cold feet.

...At dinner, Welch struck up a conversation with Jared Huffman, of California, and I asked them both whether the Party should make any structural reforms in light of the Biden affair. "No more uncontested primaries," Huffman said.

"I'm not sure it's a systemic thing," Welch said. "We had a good President who got too old. We didn't see it, and then we did. I think it's a one-off."

"I know he wants to be remembered as Cincinnatus, willingly giving up power," Huffman added, referring to the Roman leader who was said to have resigned to become a farmer. "The fact is, he desperately wanted to run out the clock and hang on to power."

Welch asked, "But isn't that what we all want?"

Like most Democrats I'm deeply grateful to Biden that he withdrew from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris. But the warm feelings (and higher approval ratings) Biden now is getting from a citizenry overjoyed to escape a Trump-Biden rerun in 2024 shouldn't lead us to forget that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming, metaphorically, from his reelection bid. 

The article says that the main heroine in this vital democracy rescue mission was Nancy Pelosi. 

In total, apart from Welch, only three Democratic senators publicly urged Biden to step aside. Neither Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, were seen as major factors in the process. A few people cracked jokes about how the congressional leadership was acting more like the congressional followership. Adam Smith told me that, after a while, “I went, O.K., this just isn’t going to happen.”

But Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, continued to push, using a combination of private conversations, press leaks, and carefully calibrated public statements.

On July 10th, Pelosi appeared on “Morning Joe,” on MSNBC, setting off a frenzy of Beltway tasseography. “It’s up to the President to decide if he is going to run,” she said, even though Biden had insisted repeatedly that he’d made up his mind. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.” (“Such a gangster move,” a ranking House committee member told me.)

More recently, when asked on CBS whether she had led a “pressure campaign,” she replied, “I didn’t call one person.” That may be true, but there are other ways to use a phone.

At one point, Welch sent Pelosi a long text message, sharing his fears about Biden’s candidacy, and she promptly sent him a brief but affirmative reply. (Some next-generation Robert Caro may already be at work on a multivolume biography of Pelosi, scrambling after screenshotted texts.) It’s also possible that Pelosi didn’t initiate calls, but that she sometimes picked up when her phone rang.

Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas and the first member of Congress to call on Biden to withdraw, told me that, before he did so, “I had a conversation with Pelosi. . . . It seemed to me that there was a recognition of the severity of the problem.”

On the cover of her new memoir, “The Art of Power,” Pelosi looms over the National Mall in a white pants suit. “She knew how much time she had on the clock, and she kept ratcheting up the pain until the Biden people got the message,” Smith told me. “An absolute master class.”

I'm a happy Democrat again, thanks to Harris replacing Biden

What a difference a day makes when it comes to presidential politics. I woke up on Sunday, yesterday, feeling fine about my personal life and crappy about the prospect of Biden refusing to withdraw from the presidential contest, thereby likely guaranteeing a Trump victory this November.

Then, later in the morning, I checked my phone and saw that Biden had withdrawn. At first I couldn't believe it. Maybe it was a sick joke? But a bit more scrolling on X revealed that yes, it was true. I raced to find my wife and tell her the good news. We both became happier Democrats instantly.

More good news followed. Biden, not surprisingly, was endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket. As I'd told a discussion group of eleven fellow Democrats on Saturday, it seemed to me that Harris was the best choice to take on Trump if Biden withdrew. 

Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin summed up the new mood among Democrats perfectly and succinctly. 

Today I saw Kamala Harris speak at the Harris (formerly Biden) campaign headquarters in Delaware. After her husband introduced her and Harris walked to the podium, I was moved almost to tears by her opening remarks. 

It wasn't what she was saying, which was fine. It was the fact that here was the 2o24 Democratic presidential nominee, almost certainly, who I was truly enthusiastic about. It just felt so good to not be thinking about Biden, "Joe, you've done some great things, but you're too old and too down in the polls to have a decent chance of beating Trump. It's time for you to go."

Which he did, thankfully, showing that while I had my doubts about this, in the end Biden recognized reality and chose to put the country above his understandable desire to persist with his campaign against Trump, who Biden correctly understands is an existential threat to our democracy. 

I can even forgive Biden for taking so long to decide that he should withdraw from the race, even though the need for this to happen has been evident for many months, and especially evident after Biden's horrendous debate performance in late June.

What seems to have happened is that Biden repeatedly proclaiming that he was going to stay in the race acted like the heavy weight on top of a pressure cooker (remember those? only if you're as old as me and Biden). That stifled the enthusiasm of Democrats across the country who desperately want to keep Trump out of the White House, but didn't see Biden as being capable of defeating Trump.

Now that Harris is the presidential candidate -- she already has commitments from enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to assure this happens -- the pent-up "steam" that until now didn't have any place to vent is on full display among Democrats. This power is coming at just the right time: a bit over 100 days to election day, enough time for Harris to make her case to voters.

The Harris fundraising is amazing. I was one of the first-time donors, since until now I had no interest in supporting Biden's presidential campaign.

Of course, the big question now is whether Harris can overcome the lead that Trump has both nationally and in most of the battleground states. An initial poll has some encouraging results.

Nate Silver has frozen his election forecast for Trump vs. Biden as of yesterday. Here's how it stood when Biden announced he was withdrawing. Trump had a 73% chance of winning, Biden 27%. In a week or so Silver said he will start up the forecast model again once enough Trump vs. Harris polls have been released. Hopefully it will begin to show Harris closing the gap with Trump. 

This is Silver's final national polling average for Trump vs. Biden. Trump has a four point lead. Not good, since given the advantage the electoral college has for a Republican candidate, Silver says that a Democratic candidate has to have a 2-3 point lead nationally in order to have about a 64% chance of winning the presidency. 

BIden will destroy the Democratic Party if he doesn't withdraw

Every day President Biden dithers around, now with Covid clouding his already-suspect thinking, trying to decide whether he should withdraw from the presidential race, he sets the stage for a catastrophic destruction of the Democratic Party if he fails to do the right thing and turn the nomination over to Kamala Harris.

I say this as a (formerly) proud Democrat who always backed my party's candidate for president with enthusiasm.

Now I rejoice in replying "stop" to every text message asking me to donate to Biden's campaign. I have no interest in helping his candidacy in any other way, either, because along with two-thirds of my fellow Democrats, I want Biden to withdraw and do what he said he'd do when he ran in 2020: be a one-term president who sets the stage for a younger generation of Democratic leaders.

Just about everything Biden does now irritates me, because I view him as a massive threat to democracy by his so-far stubborn refusal to heed the advice of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, Adam Schiff, George Clooney, and many other Democratic leaders: get out, because if you don't, you're greatly increasing the chance Donald Trump wins in November.

When I listen to his speeches, I hear an old man with diminished faculties who talks about his prior successes, failing to realize that voters are looking ahead to the next four years, not backward to the past three and a half years.

I hate it when Biden says something like, "Republicans want to make abortion illegal everywhere; we can't let that happen," his audience applauds and cheers, and Biden inexplicably says, "No, no, I'm not joking." Geez, dude, they weren't laughing at you; they were agreeing with you. You've just gotten into the habit of saying things that make no sense, like how you start to make a point, lose your train of thought, then say "Anyway..."

Before I looked on these sorts of utterances as Biden quirks, almost endearing, because I was a Biden backer.

Now I see them as signs that Biden is too old and set in his ways to be either an effective president or an effective candidate. And I say this as a 75 year-old man who recognizes how I've developed some senior citizen weaknesses of my own -- the big difference obviously being that I'm not claiming to be competent to lead our country.

Today my political spirits were lifted by reporting that Biden is finally starting to listen to the calls from Democratic leaders for him to withdraw from the presidential race. I seized on the headline of a New York Times story (even with the caveat in smaller type), like a drowning man thrown a life preserver.

Several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.

One of the people close to him warned that the president had not yet made up his mind to leave the race after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out. But another said that “reality is setting in,” and that it would not be a surprise if Mr. Biden made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.

Some people in Mr. Biden’s camp have told Democratic allies that the president’s resolve to stay in the race has been most shaken by three developments: The decision by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, to weigh in so strongly, new state polls showing that his path to an Electoral College victory has grown far more remote and the boycott of key party donors.

Great news.

It's good that Biden appears to have given up on his absurd statement that the only way he'd leave the race was if polls showed that it was impossible to win the election. If Biden truly believes that a poll in July can predict with 100% certainty an outcome in November, his mind is in even worse shape than it looked to be at his debate with Trump.

Polls don't predict. They are a snapshot of a particular time. But there's such a thing as prediction markets, where people bet on all kinds of things, including whether Biden will withdraw from the presidential race. One such market has the chance of this happening at 90% currently.

I sure hope the traders are correct. Our country can't endure another four years of Trump. Right now Biden only has a 28% chance of beating Trump, according to Nate Silver's website, which uses his successful approach to analyzing state and national polls, taking into consideration many factors that go beyond simply aggregating poll results. 

If Biden stays in the race, then loses to Trump, this will cause a schism in the Democratic Party that will be extremely difficult to repair. People like me will delight in saying "I told you so!" to those who urged Biden not to withdraw.

Biden's reputation will go from being a president with many accomplishments to  "Ruth Bader Biden" -- a stubborn old person who put self above country, just as Ruth Bader Ginsberg did when she refused to step down and allow Obama to appoint a younger Supreme Court justice. Ginsberg hung on too long and died when Trump could appoint her replacement, a tragic mistake that I'll never forgive her for.

I'll never forgive Biden either if he stays in and loses this November. Nor will most in the Democratic Party. Nor should they. Biden has been told by both Democratic leaders and the Democratic electorate that he needs to withdraw. If he doesn't, his place in history will become "the stubborn president who handed the presidency to Donald Trump."

Why I'm a depressed Democrat (it's all Biden's fault)

What a difference a debate makes. Prior to June 27, 2024 I was an optimistic Democrat, looking forward to watching President Biden kick Trump's lying ass face-to-face. 

After the debate, along with many millions of other members of my party, I was deeply disturbed by the inescapable reality that Biden not only didn't do any ass-kicking, he appeared befuddled during much of the debate and at times couldn't express a coherent thought. 

Some three weeks later, my mood hasn't improved. If anything, I'm even more depressed now. Politically, not clinically, thankfully. (I've experienced actual depression; it's way beyond what I'm feeling now, though that's bad enough.)

The basic reason is that soon after the debate, there was such an uproar among Democrats about Biden's extremely bad performance, I held out hope that this would spur Biden to recognize that his already slim chance of defeating Trump now was considerably slimmer, and he needed to withdraw from the race to avoid a catastrophic loss to a man who absolutely must never become president again. 

That was wishful thinking. For it's now looking increasingly certain that Biden is digging in his heels in a reality-defying display of incompetence, egotism, and a disinclination to do what's best for the country. 

I'll list some of my reasons for despair. Hey, maybe this blog post will find its way to a political therapist of sorts, someone who can refute those reasons with such impressive logic and facts, I'll be persuaded to break out of my depression and become an optimistic Democrat again.

Well, I can dream.

(1) At the moment Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" gives Biden a 30% chance of winning. The Economist gives him a 22% chance (it was 29% the day of the debate). FiveThirtyEight has the race as about a toss-up, slightly favoring Biden (but the analysis relies in part on economic data that was a good predictor in the past, but seems not so good now).

(2) Biden's approval rating is at 39%. No president has been re-elected with such a low rating.

(3) Rep. Adam Schiff, who I respect a lot, is reported to have said this, according to a New York Times story today, "Biden Circle Shrinks as Democrats Fear Election Wipeout."

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is running for Senate, warned during a private meeting with donorson Saturday that his party was likely to suffer overwhelming losses in November if Mr. Biden stayed in the race, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Schiff’s remarks at the meeting.

“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Mr. Schiff said at a fund-raiser in New York, according to a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event. “And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”

(4) The New York Times story cites polls showing Biden trailing in most or all of the battleground states. 

(5) A Vox story today, "Democrats shouldn't use Trump's shooting as an excuse to stick with Biden," starts off with: 

Many congressional Democrats believe their party is hurtling toward a cliff’s edge and shouldn’t even bother trying to turn around.

Late last week, Senate Democrats held a private meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s electoral viability in the wake of his disastrous debate performance and subsequent revelations of his apparent cognitive decline. According to Politico, no more than four of the caucus’s 50 Democrats said they were committed to sticking with Biden as their party’s nominee.

By many accounts, a large majority of Democrats on the Hill believe that Biden has little hope of defeating Donald Trump and that a different candidate would have a better chance. The Capitol Hill reporters Heather Caygle and Jake Sherman claim that they haven’t spoken to a single congressional Democrat “who privately says they think Biden is capable of running and beating Trump at this point.” Unnamed “senior Democrats” have told Politico they’re convinced the president will lose the election.

(6) Nonetheless, in an interview yesterday with Lester Holt, Biden said that he doesn't believe the polls and, when asked who he relies on to give him advice about whether he should stay in the race, said "Me." The White House clearly has a bunker mentality: ignore reality and hope nobody will notice that the emperor (in this case the president) has no clothes, politically-speaking.

(7) Biden keeps talking about how 15 million people voted for him in the Democratic primary, and he has to respect their decision. Well, I was one of those people. There wasn't a genuine primary. I voted for Biden because the only other option was Marianne Williamson, if I recall correctly. And many Democrats voted for "none of the above" in a protest vote against Biden running again. Today polls show that most Democrats want Biden to withdraw from the race, feeling he is too old to run again.

(8) A Washington post story, "Biden allies worry he is not getting complete information about race," shows that his inner circle isn't being honest with him.

Democratic lawmakers and strategists inside the effort to reelect President Biden have grown concerned in recent days that he is listening to a small number of aides who are limiting the data he receives.

....The calls for broader advice come as Democratic lawmakers are raising new doubts about what Biden has been told about his support, after a Zoom call Saturday when Biden argued without evidence that he was leading in national polls outside the typical margin of error. An eight-minute portion of a roughly 45-minute video of the call with the New Democrat Coalition was given to The Washington Post by a Democrat.

So, yeah, I'm depressed. Biden is sinking farther behind Trump, with no prospect of a turnaround. Biden isn't in touch with political reality, choosing to listen to a small number of advisors who aren't telling him the truth about how badly he's doing. 

And the Democratic National Committee wants to have Biden nominated electronically this month, not at the Democratic convention, in order to forestall further efforts to have him withdraw. So much for Biden's vow "challenge me at the convention." This is another sign of weakness. 

Democratic bosses are moving to kill off efforts to force Joe Biden from the party’s presidential ticket by rushing ahead with plans to formalise his candidacy before next month’s convention in Chicago.

The move comes while the rebellion triggered by last month’s debate fiasco – which prompted multiple calls from within the party for Biden to be replacedas the candidate – has stalled following Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Committee is seeking to exploit the impasse by pushing ahead with a plan that would secure the president’s nomination by arranging for convention delegates to vote electronically in a week-long roll call starting in late July, Axios reported.

If a majority of the 4,000 delegates back Biden, it will make his candidacy technically unchallengeable when the convention starts on 19 August.

Here's what I predict will happen with Biden. It doesn't end well.

Everybody deals with stress in different ways.

Being a compulsive writer, now mostly in the form of my three blogs, I feel better when I get things off my mind and onto a computer screen, then into cyberspace.

So that's what I'm going to continue to do with my #1 stressor, President Biden's all-important campaign against Donald Trump for the presidency. 

I can't do what I heard Michael Steele and Joy Reid pontificating about on MSNBC as I drove around this afternoon.

Steele was super annoying, and dead wrong, as he loudly proclaimed that the only people who want Biden to withdraw from the race in favor of Kamala Harris or some other Democrat are the "elites" -- elected officials, wealthy donors, and Hollywood types -- while ordinary Democrats are backing Biden.

Well, I beg to differ. I'm no elite. Neither is my wife. Nor are the 56% of Democrats nationally who want Biden to withdraw according to a Politico story about a new poll released yesterday. 

Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 67 percent of all Americans believe Biden should withdraw “given his performance in the debate,” The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll found, while new highs of 85 percent of Americans say Biden is too old for a second term and 60 percent say the same of Trump. Both men receive 46 percent support among all registered voters, nearly unchanged from the last edition of the poll in April.

I've been following the ups and (mostly) downs of Biden following his disastrous debate performance on June 27, just two weeks and a day ago, though it seems like a political eternity. I obsessively pour over the latest poll numbers and how analysts such as Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, and the Economist are predicting the outcome of the presidential contest.

So here's another in my attempts to lower stress by writing about my anxieties, this time in the form of predictions about what will transpire with Biden between now and election day, November 5.

I'll be pleased if what I predict doesn't happen, because I want Trump to lose. Which is why I'm so stressed, because I don't see that happening. 

(1) There will be more calls from elected officials and other "elites" for Biden to withdraw. He'll ignore them. Biden is stubborn. He seems to truly believe that he's the only Democrat who can beat Trump. Campaign rallies with adoring supporters will strengthen Biden's determination to stay in the race.

(2) Biden will continue to have senior moments, a charitable way of describing the evident decline in his mental capacity. But not so many of them, at least for a while, to make Biden decide that he's unelectable. So Biden will hang on through July, past the point of no return to choose a different candidate.

(3) The Republican Convention next week will cause Trump to gain a few more points in the polls, both nationally and in the battleground states, notably the Democratic must-win states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

(4) It's a distinct possibility that Trump will spring a surprise by choosing a vice-president candidate who isn't on the usual short list: Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Doug Burgum. He might pick a woman like Elise Stefanik to shore up his support among women. This would be bad for Biden, as Harris would be against a fellow female in a likely vice-presidential debate rather than a man.

(5) By all accounts Trump's campaign staff are experienced and competent. They've already taken steps to moderate his positions on controversial issues like abortion. Trump will act and speak even more like a Republican moderate as November approaches in a successful attempt to further peel away Biden's base of support.

(6) National polls will continue to show a fairly close race, albeit with Trump leading once the polls are aggregated. However, this will mask a large difference in enthusiasm between those backing Biden and Trump. Biden voters won't be nearly as inclined to donate to his campaign and volunteer for it as Trump voters will. After all, 56% of Democrats don't even want him in the race. 

(7) If Trump has a comfortable lead in September, there's a good chance he will duck out of the second debate. This would deprive Biden of his best chance to reach a very large audience, 50 million or more, and show them that his first debate meltdown was an aberration. 

(8) As much as the Biden campaign will try to make the race about Trump (danger to democracy! unhinged! trampler of reproductive freedom! etc.), the media will continue to largely focus over the next four months on Biden's mental status. Every misstatement, every inability to finish a sentence, will be discussed in depth as another indication that the first debate was a window into Biden's fragile state of mind. 

(9) The Trump campaign will feature clips of Biden looking senile over and over and over. The campaign ads will almost write themselves. Biden saying "Vice-president Trump" yesterday when he meant to say "Vice-president Harris" will be what people remember of his NATO press conference, not his strong command of foreign policy.

(10) Those who continue to express doubts about Biden's ability to beat Trump will be attacked by the  party faithful as traitors who are undermining Biden's ability to win. Eventually they, which includes me, will largely stay silent, choosing to let events do the talking, while hoping they are wrong.

(11) Up until the end, the Biden campaign will argue that the polls showing Trump comfortably ahead are wrong, just as they showed Clinton beating Trump in 2016. 

(12) But on election night, November 5, the race will be called for Trump before midnight West Coast time. Depression will set in for Democrats. However, Biden will give a fairly upbeat concession speech, saying that because he did his best in an attempt to defeat Trump, he doesn't have any regrets about staying in the race.

(13) I'll do my best to avoid throwing up in disgust upon hearing those words. Then I'll go to bed and hope that either I never wake up, or find that all of this was just a bad dream and that I'm living in the Matrix, not really real reality.

Again, I'll be beyond joyful to refer to this post on election night as a massively inaccurate prediction, given that Biden pulled out a victory over Trump. I'd be ever so happy to be proven wrong.

More bad news for Biden. He needs to withdraw, or our country is screwed.

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." 

In a 10-minute TV appearance on “Morning Joe” at 7:40 a.m., Pelosi — who has a decades-long relationship with the president and still commands the deep respect of her colleagues — left her mark on the biggest political crisis facing the Democratic Party in years.

“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” the California Democrat said. “He is beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision.”

In those few sentences on a program Biden is known to watch, Pelosi didn’t directly call for Biden to step aside. But she did significantly reframe a delicate but urgent conversation taking place among Capitol Hill lawmakers, Democratic donors, party strategists and voters after Biden’s faltering debate performance two weeks ago raised questions about whether he can beat Donald Trump and serve another term as president.

Lastly, it's important to realize that as a man who works for Nate Silver reported today in a message to subscribers of Silver (I'm one), the electoral college bias toward Republicans, including the conservative leaning of most swing states, means that Biden has to make up 5 points in the national polling average to have a decent chance of winning the presidential election. 

After last month’s debate, Donald Trump leads by about 3 points in our national polling average. But even now, the natural variation in polls means that we’re going to get individual polls that show a tied or even Biden +1 national race — just as we get others that show Trump ahead by 6 or 7. It’s obviously wrong to cherry-pick these polls to claim the race is tied. But things wouldn’t look great for Biden even if he and Trump were tied in the polling average. Why? Trump still has an edge in the Electoral College.

...Here’s a chart showing each candidate’s chance of winning the election at different popular vote margins. Biden becomes favored to win the election when the popular vote margin is between D +2 and D +3. But even in this scenario, Trump has an almost 1 in 3 chance of winning, like he won against Clinton in 2016 with a margin in this range. If Biden wins the popular vote by less than 2 points, he has less than a 50/50 chance of winning the election and is usually the clear underdog. Even if Biden wins the popular vote by between 1 and 2 points, for instance, he only has a 38 percent chance of winning a majority of electoral votes.

Biden's interview with Stephanopoulos showed why he shouldn't run again

President Biden's debate with Trump was painful to watch, since Biden looked lost and confused, and often couldn't speak coherently.

Yesterday Biden had a second chance, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, to reassure Americans that he was capable of both beating Trump this November and of serving competently for another four years as president.

He failed again, though in a different fashion than at the debate. Debate Biden appeared senile. Interview Biden appeared like an old man who has lost touch with reality, yet wrongly believes there's nothing wrong with him.

It was fortunate for me that the interview was only about 22 minutes long, because at the 15 minute mark, my wife was begging me to turn off the recording I'd made of it, Biden was speaking so annoyingly. 

I convinced her to watch the remaining few minutes. But just barely.

Prior to the interview both of us believed that Biden should withdraw from the presidential race and allow Vice President Harris to take his place. After the interview we felt even more strongly this should happen.

It's even more clear now that Biden is seriously out of touch with both his own aging and the state of the race between him and Trump. While it's obvious to just about everybody in the country, Biden denied that he is any different now than he was four years ago when he first ran for president.

That's obviously false. So either Biden is lying to the American public or he has deluded himself about his physical and mental health. Not a good look whichever is true.

Over and over, Stephanopoulos presented facts that Biden discounted or outright denied. I'm not saying that Biden acted as badly as Trump does with his griping about "fake news," but I heard enough of this from Biden to make me feel that I was watching Trump-lite.

Check out a transcript of the interview to see for yourself how much Biden was truth-impaired and annoyingly clueless. 

Biden was asked if he'd watched a recording of his disastrous debate. He answered, "I don't think I did, no." You don't think you did? How could you not know? And if you didn't, why not? There was general agreement that Biden performed very poorly. Football teams watch a game where they played badly to learn how to improve. Yet Biden hasn't done this. Really disappointing.

Biden was asked "Are you the same man today that you were when you took office three-and-a-half years ago?" He dodged the question, talking about his accomplishments as president rather than what he was asked about, his physical and mental condition now compared to 2020.

Fifty million people who watched the debate saw a very different Biden from his first campaign for the presidency. About three-fourths of all voters and almost half of Democrats consider he is too old to run for president again. Yet Biden never addressed this concern straight-on in the interview. That was an insult to the American public.

Biden was asked if he'd agree to take a cognitive exam by a neurologist and make the results public. He said he wouldn't do this, coming up with some B.S. about how he passes a "cognitive exam" every day via his duties as president. Again, an insult to the majority of Americans who have doubts about his mental capacity.

Biden was correctly told by Stephanopoulos that he was behind Trump prior to the debate and was farther behind now. Biden said that the polls weren't accurate. Wow. Sure, they're not totally accurate, but they give a snapshot of the current state of the race. For Biden to deny this is absurd.

Biden was told that his approval rating is 36%, a big drop from 2020 when he narrowly defeated Trump.  This is an undeniable fact. Yet Biden's reply was a reality-denying "Woah, woah, woah."

Biden was asked, "Do you really believe you're not behind right now?" He replied, "all the pollsters I talk to tell me it's a tossup." Well, the three major predictors of the presidential race all say that Biden is behind, with two of them saying by a lot. 

The Economist gives Biden about a 25% chance of winning. FiveThirtyEight is kindest to Biden, giving him a 49% chance of winning. Nate Silver gives Biden a 30% chance of winning. So either Biden is in poll-deniability mode, or he's grievously uninformed about the state of the race.

Two final irritations from the interview.

When asked if there was any way he'd withdraw from the presidential race if he could be convinced that he couldn't beat Trump, Biden said, "It depends on-- on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that." He repeated that line, adding that the Lord Almighty isn't coming down.

This was a terrible answer.

It shows that Biden is putting himself above what's good for the country, since even if there's every indication that his running would result in Trump becoming president again -- a full-on disaster for the United States and the world -- Biden's erroneous belief that he's the only Democrat who can beat Trump is going to make him continue on with a doomed campaign.

Which brings me to an even worse answer. 

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And if you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you're warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about.

Aside from Biden's response not making much sense, it shows a lack of concern about how disastrous a loss to Trump would be. Just as I've been fearing, if Biden remains the Democratic candidate and loses to Trump this November, Biden will be just fine with the loss, because he's deluded himself into believing that no other Democrat, including Kamala Harris, could have beaten Trump.

Bottom line: Biden has to be forced to withdraw from the race in order to save our country from another four years of a Trump presidency. The alarm bells are ringing. Everybody is hearing them except for Joe Biden. That's why he has to go.

I'm a Dem eager to see Biden withdraw. Tell me why I'm wrong.

Maybe obsession for what I'm experiencing is too strong a word. But maybe it isn't.

Because I can't stop thinking about how much better it would be for the country, and also for Biden, as I argued in a recent post, if he withdrew from the presidential race.

My anxiety about Biden losing to Trump, which is looking increasingly likely, as I'll describe below, only increased after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that basically said a president can't be held criminally liable for official acts during a presidency.

I have zero worries that Biden will get all gangster'ish. I have a whole lot of worries that Trump will.

After all, he's been promising to vastly expand the powers of the presidency if he gets another four years in the White House, including directing the Justice Department to indict his opponents and critics, regardless of the inconvenient truth that they haven't committed any crimes.

So now the only way to make sure that Trump doesn't throw our country into constitutional chaos is to have a Democrat defeat him this November. Until last Thursday's debate, I was fairly confident that Biden could do this. Now, I'm almost totally convinced that Biden can't. 

Here's reasons why I feel this way. If you disagree with any or all of these points, I'm eager to learn why. Educate me via a comment on this post.

(1) Post-debate polling shows Biden even farther behind Trump. The Biden campaign asked for, and got, a very early debate because they recognized that Biden was trailing Trump and they wanted to shake up the race by what they expected would be a strong performance by Biden.

Instead, the horrendous way Biden acted at the debate has caused him to lose even more ground to Trump. Here's a X post about this.

This fits with Nate Silver's model of the odds that Trump or Biden will win this November. It's based on more than just polls, so Biden has slumped post-debate to a greater degree than the change in battleground states polling. (I'm a subscriber to Silver's site; the chance of winning figure below is only available to subscribers.)

And a Politico story, "Two new post-debate polls have bad news for Biden," says this: 

Two new polls taken after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump offer discouraging news for Democrats.

A Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll published Tuesday found Trump beating Biden by 3 percent in a six-candidate presidential ballot — a post-debate reversal from a survey a month earlier that had the two candidates tied.

Another poll conducted for CNN by SSRS similarly found Trump holding a 6 percentage point lead over the president, unchanged from an earlier survey, but also this: Fifty-six percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters said their party has a better shot at winning with a candidate other than Biden.

(2) Kamala Harris is a stronger candidate than Biden against Trump. The CNN poll mentioned above found that voters believe someone other than Biden would fare better against Trump, with Harris showing more strength than Biden.

Three-quarters of US voters say the Democratic Party would have a better shot at holding the presidency in 2024 with someone other than President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. His approval rating also has hit a new low following a shaky performance in the first debate of this year’s presidential campaign.

In a matchup between the presumptive major-party nominees, voters nationwide favor former President Donald Trump over Biden by 6 points, 49% to 43%, identical to the results of CNN’s national poll on the presidential race in April, and consistent with the lead Trump has held in CNN polling back to last fall.

...The poll also finds Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of Trump in a hypothetical matchup: 47% of registered voters support Trump, 45% Harris, a result within the margin of error that suggests there is no clear leader under such a scenario. Harris’ slightly stronger showing against Trump rests at least in part on broader support from women (50% of female voters back Harris over Trump vs. 44% for Biden against Trump) and independents (43% Harris vs. 34% Biden).

Several other Democrats have been mentioned as potential Biden replacements in recent days, and each trails Trump among registered voters, with their levels of support similar to Biden’s, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom (48% Trump to 43% Newsom), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (47% Trump to 43% Buttigieg), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (47% Trump to 42% Whitmer).

Keep in mind that the other Democrats polled as an alternative to Biden are much less familiar to voters than Biden, so they have a lot more upside potential than Biden. 

(3) Biden and his campaign aren't being honest about the reason for his poor debate performance. Biden puts himself forward as a truth-teller. Indeed, he is hugely more honest than Trump, who lies constantly. But it bothers me that Biden and his campaign keep coming up with excuses for his very weak debate performance that don't make sense.

Midway through the debate panicked staffers started to say that Biden had a cold. But a cold doesn't take away someone's ability to speak in coherent sentences. And the next day, Biden was speaking much more clearly and strongly at a campaign rally -- where he spoke from a teleprompter, as he did at the State of the Union address. 

Today Biden said that he was tired from two trips overseas. But a Politico story, "Biden's latest excuse: blame it on the travel," casts doubt on this theory.

President Joe Biden is now chalking up his fumbling debate performance to a heavy travel schedule ahead of the face-off with Donald Trump — the latest in a series of explanations for an episode that has caused some Democrats to call for him to drop his reelection bid.

The president told donors Tuesday that he was offering “not an excuse but an explanation” for his struggles during the debate.

...“I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate,” Biden said at a fundraiser in McLean, Virginia. “I didn’t listen to my staff and I came back and then I almost fell asleep on stage.”

Biden went to France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day in early June, then to Italy for the G7 meeting on June 12. The president followed that up with a Los Angeles fundraiser on June 15. He returned to Washington on June 16, or 11 days before the debate. He and his team holed up at Camp David for prep for nearly a week prior to the event with Trump in Atlanta.

So actually Biden took no trips for 11 days before the debate. That doesn't fit with Biden saying he traveled around the world "shortly" before the debate. And reporting has said that Biden's team scheduled an afternoon nap time during the six days of debate preparation.

It's clear that Biden and his campaign staff are desperate to throw out excuses for his poor debate performance that avoid the most likely explanation: he's 81 years old and has been having increasing trouble with his mental focus. 

Lastly, I can recommend a Vox story, "5 terrible reasons for Biden to stay in the race," if you're still convinced that he should do this.

I abhor the cult of Trump, and I won't join the cult of Biden

As I said in my preceding blog post a few days ago, "Why Biden should withdraw from the presidential race (but he won't)," along with countless other Democrats I consider Biden's debate performance to be an unmitigated disaster, so much so, another candidate should be chosen to replace him.

Over the weekend I've seen nothing that would make me change my mind. If anything, I'm even more committed to dumping Biden from the presidential ticket, though unfortunately that requires the willingness of Biden, since at the moment he's the Democratic nominee.

I'm irritated that so many Democrats are behaving just like Trump-loving Republicans: circling the wagons around Dear Leader to protect him from criticism.

I heard a Democratic operative say approvingly on MSNBC that after Trump was convicted of multiple felonies in his hush money trial, Republicans backed Trump strongly, while after Biden's horrendous debate last Thursday, lots of Democrats are calling for him to withdraw from the presidential race.

Ari Melber, the MSNBC host, responded just the way I'd hoped he would. He told the operative that Trump has formed the Republican Party into a cult that forbids any serious criticism of Trump, requiring that he be supported no matter what he does or says.

I have no interest in being part of a Democratic Cult of Biden.

But there's disturbing signs of this manifesting. On X (formerly Twitter) I follow many liberals and moderates who are active in politics. Quite a few -- more than I would have expected -- are saying in posts that Democrats should stop complaining about Biden's debate performance, because this will hurt his election chances.

Well, my response is that Biden, along with his campaign, is the one who's hurting his ability to beat Biden by failing to achieve the primary goal of the debate: reassure voters that Biden isn't too old to be a capable president. 

What we learned last Thursday is that Biden is incapable of even answering simple questions in a coherent manner, much less perform the duties of the leader of the free world. But members of the Cult of Biden want his critics to shut up and support his reelection no matter what.

Fortunately, most Democrats aren't like most Republicans. We think for ourselves. We enjoy the oft-heard metaphor that getting Democrats to agree on something is like herding cats. We don't want to be sheep all placidly moving in the same direction.

I understand that replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket would be a risky move. So would keeping him on. There's no risk-free option after the debate. Fifty million Americans, at least, saw Biden fumble and mumble for 90 minutes, looking like a befuddled deer in the headlights for much of that time.

My wife and I haven't donated to the Biden campaign yet. I was all set to do that after the debate, figuring that while Biden would make some gaffes, he wouldn't self-destruct. Which, of course, he did. Now we have no interest in making a contribution, since both of us want to see him withdraw.

A poll conducted after the debate found that 46% of Democrats don't want Biden to run. My attitude is that the other 54% should be donating to the Biden campaign, not those of us who want him to drop out.  Maybe after the Democratic convention I'll change my mind, but for now I don't want to express any form of support for Biden, as this will just encourage him to stay in the race.

I'm hoping that Biden and his family will come to realize that not only is it best for our country that Biden withdraw, it also is best for Biden. Because if he ignores the fact that 72% of voters don't want him running for president, then loses to Trump this November, Biden's legacy will be markedly diminished.

Most people won't remember all of his accomplishments as a Senator, Vice-President, and President. Instead, he'll be remembered as the guy who lost to Trump in 2024, giving Trump four more years to wreak havoc on our nation and the world. 

Sure, there will be no way to prove that another candidate would have fared better against Trump. But damn it, it's so important to defeat Trump, sticking with Biden is a risky move that will look terrible to presidential historians, given how evident it is that Biden has some serious mental problems that make him a weak candidate.

In 2020, I recall Biden saying that he viewed himself as a transitional candidate, setting the stage for a younger generation of Democratic leaders. This wasn't exactly a promise, but it came close to sounding that way. Now it's time for Biden to do just that: withdraw his candidacy and allow the Democratic convention to choose from appealing potential candidates like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

I'd love to see a Whitmer - Harris ticket, two women running for president and vice-president. This would take the spotlight off of Trump and rekindle enthusiasm among Democrats like me who are decidedly unexcited about Biden's candidacy.