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We were really hoping to make todays newsletter squarely about the implications of the Law of the Sea Treaty but, you know, this Biden storyline! And so, weve decided to dutifully keep covering it, with a mix of some fresh reporting, exclusive focus group data, and a poignant plea by Bill to the Democratic Party establishment.

Happy Thursday! [Its not Friday, right?]

Bidens campaign team, the influencers on his payroll, and a small cadre of loud political obsessives have argued this past week that there is a cabal of hand-wringing elites engaged in a palace coup against the will of Democratic base voters.

Im getting so frustrated by the elites now Im not talking about you guys the elites in the party, Oh, they know so much more. Any of these guys that dont think I should run, run against me,Biden said in an appearance on Morning Joe, the breakfast show of choice for coastal elites.

Nancy Lee Grahn, a white actress on daytime soap operas, offered a representative sample of how that argument was playing out on social media.

This framethat there is a cloistered, privileged media class playing games with democracy for shits and giggles while the average Democrat pines for Dark Brandonis a compelling one. Thats because it presents clear, digestible heroes (marginalized Americans worried about how Trump 2.0 could hurt them) and villains (know-it-all limousine liberal environmentalists who are personally protected from the Trumpian threat).

But heres the main problem with that story. Its just not true. In fact, as Ezra Klein shared with me on yesterdays podcast, the opposite is whats taking place.

The real conspiracy is that the Democratic elites are the ones protecting Biden. They dont believe he can win and they are sanguine about what a second Trump term would look like. And their stay the course talking points are merely an attempt to manipulate the desperate and worried Democratic base voters who are willing to do whatever it takes to beat Trump.

Heres Klein:

Klein: You don't know how the party can replace him. You don't want to be blamed for any of this. You just stay quiet and walk the calm path to defeat. I think it is clear. People are weighing this set of things. Like,it would be quite unpleasant for me personally to come out against the president as an elected official in an Democratic party and weighing what will happen if Donald Trump wins and saying, in a revealed preference way, I can live with Donald Trump winning. And I've had people say that to me off the record, to be fair.

Tim Miller: Really?

Klein: Ive had top Democrats say to me basically something like, I dont know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. But the reason Im acting the way I am is because I dont think that.

You can live with Trump?! Are you sure??? Like really, really sure?

These fuckers are out there telling those of us who are desperately arguing that the Democrats should present a path to victory, that we are helping Trump by demanding this bare minimum. Meanwhile, in private, they have come to terms with Trump winning.

Outrageous.

Grassroots Democrats who genuinely care about beating Trump should demand more from those they have entrusted with the responsibility to represent the party and successfully beat the Trumpian threat that they have been assured is existential.

Tim Miller

If I took a drink every time someone in one of my focus groups used the phrase the lesser of two evils to describe how they make their vote choice, I would die of alcohol poisoning.

But theres another thread thats emerging: voters comparing Joe Biden to their aging relatives who wont give up their car keys. Thats not an analogy you want to hear with democracy on the line. On Wednesday, these comparisons were more common than ever among the voters I talked toa group made up of those who cast ballots for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 but were now undecided.

I've seen firsthand how difficult it is to get, you know, mom's driver's license or aging parents license away from them, one participant said. What does that look like when it's the president of the United States?

This is fundamental to understanding voters fears about Bidens age. They are disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because many have seen this all before. They dont want their octogenarian father (or grandfather) running the country, let alone driving a car.

Most of these voters believed Biden should leave the race: Letting him continue to run is like not taking the keys away from your parents, one said. Anyones letting him run to this point is just being weak.

Sarah Longwell

Im still recovering from venturing into Trumps lizard brain yesterday, so this morning I wont expostulate at length. I do want to make one point, building on the excellent items youve just read.

Sarah reports that the participants in this weeks focus groups of Clinton 2016 and Biden 2020 voters are very concerned about Bidens age and his capacity to govern for another term.

As they should be. And as they have been for a long time.

There has always been wide support for the idea that Biden should be a one-term president. Biden himself said in March 2020 that he viewed himself as a bridge, not anything else.

Obviously the evidence of Bidens decline, in the debate two weeks ago and more broadly evident in recent months, only makes that sentiment more powerful. Its reasonable for voters to want Biden to be a one-term president.

Its not reasonable, on the other hand, to have Donald Trump as our next president. And a majority of Americans have also consistently balked at that, as well. Theres not as big a majority in resistance to that prospect as there should be, but still, its a majority.

So Americans dont want Trump, and they think Biden is too old. They are right on both counts.

Which brings us to Tims piece. Most of the time, in a representative democracy, voters have no direct way to effectuate their wishes and to solve the problems they see. It is the job of elitesrepresentative and responsive and responsible elitesto help do this.

Every society is going to have elites. In a liberal democracy, we try to structure things so that the power of those elites is checked. We try to see to it that elites are responsive to the broader public, that they can check and balance each other, and that, hopefully, they have a real sense of responsibility as well.

There is an organization that has been devised to try to tie together elites and the public in necessary and beneficial ways. That organization is the modern political party. Modern democracy depends on political parties to tie together the people and the elites, to ensure the circulation of elites, to arrange as much as possible for elites to be both responsive and responsible.

The failure of the Republican Party to do one of the main things a political party is supposed to doto check truly malevolent demagoguesis a signal elite failure of the last decade. Its been terrible to see for those of us who once had an attachment to and respect for that party. More important, its been terrible for the country.

Now its the Democratic Party that is being put to the test. Can Democratic elites get Joe Biden to step aside? Can they then arrange a process that allows for an open competition whose result will be responsive to public sentiment? This process will be somewhat more reminiscent of the old way convention delegates, influenced by party elites, selected presidential candidates. It produced some pretty good presidents!

This is the historic task of the elites of the Democratic Party today.

A Democratic Party that can rise to the occasion, and help arrange for Joe Biden to step aside in favor of a candidate able to win in 2024 and fit to serve for the next four years, would be a party whose voters and elites would be worthy of respect and support.

William Kristol

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Sam Stein asks: Upset at Biden for Sticking It Out? Blame the Voters. Why the voters? The presidents ability to survive has little to do with the steps hes taken. Its because voters can be weird and inconsistent.

About a third of [Barack] Obama 08 voters thought he might have been born in a foreign country. They still voted for him, said Stu Stevens, the longtime GOP political operative who, under Donald Trump, grew disaffected with his party. How many 1992 [Bill] Clinton voters thought he was trustworthy and honest? How many 2024 voters think a convicted felon should be president?

We have a strange human ability to hold contradictory ideas and decide which to ignore, he added. People are weird and inconsistent.

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The Bonfire of the Democrats - The Bulwark

For years, Democrats mocked Republicans for their politically craven fealty to former president Donald Trump.

They rolled their eyes when their Republican colleagues claimed they just hadnt seen the latest tweet. They talked knowingly about how, behind closed doors, many Republicans conceded that, yes, they wished Trump would just disappear Rumpelstiltskin-style, in a poof of smoke never to be heard from again.

But now, theyre borrowing a page from the Republican playbook.

Following President Bidens halting and politically damaging debate performance on June 27, Democratic lawmakers and strategists who regularly lambasted Republicans are offering one, often painfully candid, assessment in private (Biden cannot beat Trump and needs to step aside) and a different, less-than-truthful one in public (Biden had one bad night, but hes up for the job of beating Trump).

They have also begun offering variations of the I just need to see more of Biden to feel confident in supporting him excuse their version of the fail-safe Republican I didnt see the tweet chestnut.

Weve spent years shaming Republicans for blindly following Trump off the proverbial cliffs, especially when it meant an electoral disaster for their party, like the cycles of 2018, 2020, and 2022, said Michael LaRosa, a former Biden White House communications official. It turns out, were just as loyal to the name or leader of our party, as well, even if it invites political risk for everyone in the party running on the ballot.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, actor George Clooney, a prominent Democratic donor, also said the quiet part out loud, calling on party leaders to stop telling us that 51 million people didnt see what we just saw.

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, Clooney wrote, before urging Democrats to speak the truth.

Of course, the situations are hardly analogous. With Trump who can be bullying, cruel, misogynistic and routinely traffics in racist tropes and falsehoods issues of character are what have long repelled Republican voters and officials alike.

During the 2016 presidential race, an Access Hollywood video emerged of Trump boasting about groping women, and more than a dozen women came forward accusing him of sexual misconduct. Last year, a New York jury found that Trump sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll and, more recently, another New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He also refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, encouraging his supporters to do the same a decision that ultimately contributed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

By contrast, Bidens only sin in the minds of his supporters right now is aging, and publicly grappling with the indignities and fragility of entering his ninth decade.

I reject the scale of Bidens failures compared to Trumps its just not a comparison, said Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist and ardent Trump critic who works as a writer for the Bulwark website.

But, Miller added, he nonetheless sees similarities between his former party and how Democrats are handling the current moment.

The gap between private and public as a means of self-protection, of career protection, is very similar shrouding that careerist unwillingness to say the truth in some fake, high-minded notion that theyre doing the right thing in private, Miller said.

Even here, Democrats on the whole are being more candid than many Republicans beholden to Trump. So far, 12 House members and one senator have called for Biden to step aside as the partys presidential nominee, and several other lawmakers from both chambers have gone public with their concerns. On Wednesday, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pointedly told MSNBCs Morning Joe that Biden who has repeatedly said he has no plans to bow out needs to make a decision on whether he is running for president.

During the Trump years and even now the Republicans who dared to publicly utter what many of their colleagues privately whispered could almost be boiled down to a lonely trio: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. (The two House members no longer hold office, and Romney is retiring when his term ends at the end of this year.)

Will Ritter, co-founder of Poolhouse, a center-right ad agency, said that during Trumps presidency, the constant message from Democrats was brokered convention, 25th Amendment, protecting the party, protecting democracy.

Now, however, Ritter said, the Democrats are headed over a cliff, and the new message has become one bad night and hes always had a stutter a reference to comments from Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a co-chair of Bidens campaign, who said Tuesday that Biden has long had a stutter and should not be held to too high a standard.

Were getting honest talk from George Clooney, and cute word games from almost every elected Democrat, he said.

Since Bidens debate debut, the presidents team has also lost credibility with the media a public rupture that comes after years of Biden aides browbeating reporters for daring to broach the age of the 81-year-old president.

The other point Republican staffers have just been laughing about is how finally the Biden administration is getting a big dose of what the normal Republican candidate faces in terms of the press, said Elise Jordan, a former George W. Bush staffer and aide on the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who now considers herself an independent. Its just so much harder to deal with, and its not going to end, either.

Biden, too, is exhibiting some characteristics that are shared by Trump and some other politicians. He distrusts negative polls. He has begun lashing out at elites and the media. He is now relying heavily on what he personally sees and hears, in situations tailored only to feature his supporters. And he has surrounded himself with a small, insular circle reluctant to bring him bad news.

Jordan said her takeaway from watching Bidens interview with ABC Newss George Stephanopoulos last Friday was that Biden was absolutely Trumpish.

He was so arrogant and seemed to feel entitled to the office, not that it was an honor to serve, and he didnt seem to be concerned with democracy, which is allegedly the whole reason for his candidacy, Jordan said.

In some ways, the about-face from many Democrats may not matter. A key voting bloc this election cycle is the double hater voters disillusioned with both major-party options. Nonetheless, many remain driven by negative partisanship the belief that the other side is so cosmically awful that party tribalism kicks in and they will show up and vote for just about anyone to stop, in the case of Democrats, Trump.

LaRosa, for instance, describes himself as a Biden supporter who has never supported a challenge to Biden or a third-party candidate. But since leaving the White House, he has at times been publicly critical of Democrats and the Biden operation, and noted their strategy for the last year has been to deny data, undermine or ridicule anyone who questions them, and wage war against the free press.

Now, President Biden is left without any goodwill and his message is undercut, LaRosa said. You cant say that Trump is a threat to democracy while you crucify reporters for asking questions, tell us not to believe poll after poll, and manipulate the primary process to crush your political opposition.

Its all, he added, sort of Trumpian, to be honest.

More:
Analysis | Democrats criticize Biden privately, back him publicly. Sound familiar? - The Washington Post

President Biden faces a problem with no solution. No interview or speech will convince a doubtful public that he is still fit to serve. Perceptions of him had years to harden. In June 2020, 36 percent of voters said Biden was too old to serve. By 2024, that number had roughly doubled. In the Times/Siena poll conducted in February, 73 percent said he was too old to be an effective president. In the April poll, 69 percent said the same. In the June poll, 70 percent. After the debate, 74 percent.

The debate didnt change what voters believed about Biden. The debate made it impossible for the Democratic Party to continue ignoring what voters already believed about Biden.

And make no mistake: They were ignoring it. After calling for Biden to step aside in February, I had a lot of conversations with top Democrats about Bidens age. They universally knew it was a serious, perhaps lethal, political problem. So why didnt they do anything? They thought the criticisms were unfair to Biden, who has been a good president; they thought the problem was unsolvable, because he would not step aside; they thought there were no other options; and above all, they thought Donald Trumps malignancy would overwhelm fears of Bidens infirmity.

They now know it wont. In a post-debate Data for Progress poll, voters were asked which concerned them more: Bidens age and physical and mental health or Trumps criminal charges and threats to democracy. By 53 percent to 42 percent, they chose Bidens age.

The Democratic Party is realizing it must act. But how? If Biden steps aside, it has two options: a coronation or a contest. In a coronation, Biden names Vice President Kamala Harris his successor and asks his delegates to throw their support to her. To some Democrats, this is the safest path. My newsroom colleagues Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg report that several Democrats said that no matter the risks, a new nominee could bring a host of benefits to the party, particularly if Mr. Biden anointed a successor in an effort to assure a smooth transition and minimize intraparty battling.

But a coronation would repeat the mistakes that brought the party to crisis in the first place. What Democrats denied themselves over the past few years was information. If Biden had run in a competitive primary race, including debates, Democrats would have seen earlier how hed perform. If Biden had routinely sat for extended, tough interviews and given news conferences, his shortcomings wouldve been clearer. In February, the special counsels report questioning Bidens memory and cognitive capacity led to an extraordinary evening press conference in which Biden mixed up Mexico and Egypt, deepening the very doubts hed meant to quell.

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Opinion | Jim Clyburn Is Right About What Democrats Should Do Next - The New York Times

President Biden in Harrisburg, Pa., on Sunday. As lawmakers returned to Washington, Biden sent them a two-page letter telling them to stop speculating about his departure, because he's not leaving. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption

President Biden sent a two-page letter to Democratic lawmakers on Monday to say that I am firmly committed to staying in this race," saying speculation over his future was helping former President Donald Trump and that it was time to stop.

The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And its time for it to end. We have one job, Biden said.

Biden, 81, has been insistent that he would continue his campaign even after he badly faltered in a debate with Trump a performance that alarmed Democrats worried about his ability to run, win and govern. He has said he had a cold and jet lag, and has been working since to try to demonstrate he is still up to the job.

On Monday morning, he made an unusual live call in to MSNBC's Morning Joe and angrily defended his electoral and policy record. He angrily expressed his frustration with the Democrats who are questioning his stamina.

"I'm not going to explain anymore about what I should or shouldn't do I am running," Biden said during the 20-minute conversation with the show's hosts.

"I don't care what those 'big names' think. They were wrong in 2020, they were wrong in 2022 about the red wave. They're wrong in 2024," Biden said.

He said he last had a neurological exam as part of his annual physical, which the White House disclosed in February.

Biden spoke with donors on a campaign call on Monday, and was preparing to speak with world leaders in Washington for the NATO summit this week. He is slated to hold a solo press conference on Thursday.

Biden dared would-be candidates to challenge him at the Democratic convention next month.

"Come on, give me a break. Come with me. Watch. Watch," he said, referencing voter support in recent campaign stops. "I'm getting so frustrated by the elites... in the party who 'they know so much more.' But if any of these guys don't think I should run, run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president. Challenge me at the convention."

In his letter, Biden said that Democratic voters had spoken during the primaries and that it was their decision to make, not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors.

This was a process open to anyone who wanted run. Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated, he said, apparently referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., respectively.

NPR's Elena Moore contributed to this report .

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Biden tells Democrats he's not leaving the race, and it's time to stop talking about it - NPR

It seems obvious to me that the threat of a second Donald Trump presidential term, with its authoritarian inclinations unchecked, poses a civic emergency that supersedes any other normal political consideration. Because it is so obvious to me, I had long assumed the Democratic Party would consider it equally obvious.

But it is no longer clear to me that the partys elected officials actually share that assumption. They very much wish for Trumps defeat. But to the extent that goal conflicts with other, more mundane imperatives, more than a few Democrats seem to view beating Trump as a secondary objective.

I want to clarify that I am not assuming that my view of how to defeat Trump is the correct one. Some Democrats truly believe President Biden is the strongest possible nominee. I find that conviction absurd, given Bidens persistently abysmal approval ratings and faltering health, but people believe absurd things. Other Democrats join me in wanting to replace Biden and have different ideas than I do about whom to nominate or how to go about it. I can disagree with their plans without doubting their desire to defeat Trump.

What Im describing here is not a disagreement about the best way to beat Trump. I am referring more narrowly to a category of arguments that has emerged within the party that either imply or state directly that there are more important considerations than maximizing the odds of denying Trump a second term.

Over the weekend, Jonathan Martin reported on schisms within the party over how to handle the nomination crisis. House Democrats, he reports, suspect that numerous Democratic governors are focused on maximizing their chances of winning the presidency in four years. Thats impossible if Kamala Harris is the sitting president. The path for the ambitious governors is clearer if Harris goes down with a Biden-led ticket this year if she is, to put it in blunt terms, Dan Quayle by 2028, observes Martin.

Of course, congressional Democrats have incentives that also dont align perfectly with the goal of saving American democracy. Martin reports that House Democrats know they cant overcome [Bidens] drag if hes losing their seats by 15 points rather than mid-single digits.

Is the goal to contain the drag on the ticket? Or to maximize the odds that Trump loses? Those are not the same thing. If youre the coach of an underdog, youd follow different strategies if youre trying to pull the upset than you would if youre only trying to beat the point spread.

John Harris observes a different but related dynamic. Numerous Democratic officials privately wish Biden would leave, but dont want to say so publicly, because their party would blame them if the replacement candidate loses. What if efforts to push the incumbent out succeed, and Trump wins anyway?, he asks, Who owns that failure?

It is true that elected officials who participate openly in an attempt to change the nominee are putting their own reputations at risk. If they hesitate, they are saying they would rather lose than take the blame for defeat.

Another story by Martin reports, One House Democrat from a competitive district who is furious at Biden and was poised to call on [Biden] to drop out of the race decided to remain quiet after detecting little appetite for such a demand from local unions and rank-and-file voters.

It is true that the Democratic Partys rank and file is divided over Bidens fitness to serve. Speaking out to change the nomination will alienate some of those voters, while saying nothing at all will bring little cost. Again, if you think keeping Biden reduces the chances of defeating Trump, but you refuse to say so because you dont want to anger some of your own supporters, then you are explicitly deprioritizing the goal of defeating Trump.

Biden is a politicians politician, and he understands very well the petty calculations that go into his colleagues minds. His emerging plan is not to convince Democrats hes the best nominee but instead to dare them to go public with their desire to replace him and to maximize the personal and professional discomfort they face by taking this stand.

An element of this strategy is to exploit the partys commitment to racial justice. Biden is emphasizing his continued support among Black voters. Its a strange argument given that Bidens anemic support among Black voters is one of the most important reasons why he is losing. In any case, while Black voters are less critical of Bidens cognitive abilities than white voters are, theyre hardly enthusiastic. A majority of Black voters said in a recent poll that Biden is too old to be an effective president.

If Democrats truly believe Biden is their best chance of stopping Trump, they should stick with him. But if Biden holds on because his fellow Democrats refuse to speak up, I am going to have serious doubts as to whether they simply miscalculated or whether they decided to save their own skins at the expense of their country.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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The Democrats Who Care More About Their Careers Than Beating Trump - New York Magazine