Illiberalism
Gilead
Donald Trump
Hush money
Fig. 1. Cartoon by Jesse Duquette, undated, via “Minneapple23” [pseud.] on Imgur, April 1, 2023, fair use.
Shayna Jacobs and Devlin Barrett, “Trump’s sentencing in N.Y. hush money case postponed until September,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/trump-sentencing-delay-supreme-court-ruling/
Coup attempt
Fig. 2. Donald Trump still has his fans. Photograph along Washington Road in Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, by author, April 28, 2024.
John Fritze, “Supreme Court rules Trump has limited immunity in January 6 case, jeopardizing trial before election,” Cable News Network, July 1, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity
Ankush Khardori, “The Supreme Court’s Stunning Gift to Trump,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/02/jan-6-trump-supreme-court-00166130
Joseph De Avila, “Rudy Giuliani Disbarred by New York Court,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2024, https://apple.news/AIMW0KAidSv6Y21ZUNZ21Fg
Neoliberalism
Democratic (neoliberal) Party
Joe Biden
Fig. 3. Joe Biden and Pope Francis, unknown photographer, April 29, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The story I’m getting today (July 2) largely confirms what John Heilemann said yesterday (July 1):[1]
[Lloyd] Doggett, 77, is the first Democratic member of Congress to call for [Joe] Biden to withdraw from the ticket since his debate. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, ran a challenge against Biden in the Democratic primaries but has stayed muted since the debate.
Shortly after his statement, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro joined Doggett in calling for Biden to withdraw. Castro ran against Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries and was quick to criticize his debate performance last week.[2]
Some other Democrats, however, are still falling back on “the other guy is worse.”[3] But:
Privately, many Democratic lawmakers have raised questions about Biden’s viability as a candidate, and have expressed anger at Biden’s campaign. These Democratic lawmakers and donors say that campaign aides are dismissing legitimate concerns about Biden’s fitness and are furious that the campaign is trying to spin the debate as an unfortunate one-off, multiple members and aides said. The lawmakers worry about Democrats’ ability to retain control of the Senate and potentially capture the House in an election with Donald Trump at the top of the GOP ballot and pre-debate polling showing a tight race.[4]
Democrats feared [Joe] Manchin — a moderate West Virginia senator who recently registered as an independent but caucuses with Democrats — would call for [Joe] Biden to step aside. If he did, the senator would then become the first prominent elected official allied with the party to call for Biden to exit the presidential race.
But he didn’t. Senior Democrats heard of Manchin’s plans and started making calls to the independent-minded senator, who once used a Sunday show appearance to announce his opposition to Biden’s top agenda item and effectively kill it. The “full-court press” was quickly assembled to help dissuade Manchin from appearing on the show, according to two people familiar with the response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. . . .
Manchin’s reversal illustrates Democrats’ rapid tamping down of internal dissent over the 81-year-old Biden remaining their presumptive nominee as the campaign and party leaders argue that only the president and his family can decide his political future. Urging drastic action before examining post-debate polling is unwise, party leaders have argued, and Democrats are aware that being the first prominent Democratic official to do so could come with a political cost.
“Nobody wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar,” one Democratic Party official said.[5]
The point about polling (a research method I most definitely do not trust) was one that Heilemann made, suggesting that that, rather than any number of senior Democrats telling him he’s got to go, may be what alters the decision.[6]
That dam may soon break, however, if polls show a steep decline in Biden’s standing or he does not ramp up his public appearances to show that he can do the job. Democrats in the House, which Republican control, now consider their chances of regaining the majority in November as the only firewall to a possible Trump administration, but also worry that Biden will drag down their chances to flip the chamber if he remains atop the ticket. And Democratic senators running in a gantlet of red and purple states must all hold onto their seats to keep that chamber in Democratic hands.[7]
And guess what?
A confidential polling memo circulating among anxious Democrats is confirming some of their worst fears: President Joe Biden’s support has started to tumble in key electoral battlegrounds in the wake of his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, and Biden’s diminished standing is now putting previously noncompetitive states like New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico in play for Donald Trump. What’s more, Biden has taken such a reputational hit that he is polling behind other alternative Democratic candidates—including Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer—in hypothetical one-on-one matchups against Trump. . . .
The [OpenLabs] poll—conducted online in the 72 hours after the debate and emailed to interested parties on Sunday—found that 40 percent of the Biden voters in 2020 that were surveyed now believe the president should end his campaign. That represents a significant shift from their last survey in May, which showed that only a quarter of Biden 2020 voters said he should drop out. Biden is also taking a major hit among swing voters: By a 2-to-1 margin, they believe Biden should exit the race.
This is, of course, only a single poll, conducted during the initial aftershocks of the debate. It will take a few weeks to determine if Biden’s slippage in the polls is a trend and not a blip. But given their reputation inside the party and connections to Future Forward [the preferred super political action committee for Biden’s reelection campaign], OpenLabs is a firm that Democratic campaigns take seriously. . . .
While the debate may have barely registered in national data, in their surveys of key Electoral College states where voters are paying closer attention to the campaign, Biden is doing noticeably worse. In a poll including third-party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president has fallen by around 2 points in every single core battleground—and also in states that were not even on the 2024 map last week. In the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania, Biden now trails by 7 points, compared to 5 points before the debate. He has also dropped in Michigan, where he now trails Trump by 7. OpenLabs also found that he is now losing by roughly 10 points in Georgia and Arizona, and by almost 9 points in Nevada.
The most worrisome angle to all this is that Trump is now within striking distance in a variety of states that weren’t considered campaign battlegrounds last week. Biden is now only winning by a fraction of a point in Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico—and he’s now only winning Colorado by around 2 points. [8]
I’m not a quantitative researcher. Given underlying doubts about polling as a methodology[9] (this is a step beyond what I remember from the statistics and methodology classes I had as an undergraduate and in my Master’s program), I can’t tell you how valid this longitudinal approach is. But if there is any validity to it at all, you would expect Democratic politicians to start laying rhetorical groundwork for change.
And so they are:
[I]n the past 24 hours, at least a half-dozen current or former Democratic members of Congress have bucked the trend, openly acknowledging their skepticism that his campaign is taking the right steps to restore voters’ confidence. Of those, two have called on [Joe] Biden to step aside.[10]
Top Democrats have begun forcefully and aggressively criticizing President Joe Biden’s debate performance and pushing back against what they call an unconvincing response from his campaign to worries that he’s no longer up for the job — delivering a dire warning to the party.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), called on Biden to drop out of the race. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key ally of the president, told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he will back Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden steps aside. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s completely legitimate to question whether Biden’s debate performance was “an episode or is this a condition?”
Democratic governors are also planning to meet with Biden, possibly as soon as Wednesday, after more than two dozen gathered on a call this week to vent about the president.[11]
Do not—I say again, do not—take this to the bank, but it sure looks to me like Biden is through—now. He will surely be done after the election—that you can take to the bank—but at this point, I’ll be quite surprised if he lasts that long.
Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade, and Ryan Lizza, “Team Biden tries to quell Dem panic,” Politico, June 30, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/06/30/team-biden-tries-to-quell-dem-panic-00165945
Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/
Maeve Reston, “Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/black-voters-georgia-election-biden-trump/
Alex Thompson, “Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, June 30, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate
John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/
Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/
Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/
Peter Hamby, “Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll,” Puck, July 2, 2024, https://puck.news/biden-plunges-in-swing-states-in-leaked-post-debate-poll/
Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208
Eli Stokols et al., “‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/biden-campaign-debate-inner-circle-00166160
Imperialism
Israel
Palestine
2024
Imran Mulla, “War on Gaza: UK accused of obstructing ICC prosecution of Netanyahu,” Middle East Eye, July 2, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-accused-obstructing-prosecution-netanyahu
- [1]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩
- [2]Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/↩
- [3]Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/↩
- [4]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
- [5]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
- [6]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩
- [7]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
- [8]Peter Hamby, “Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll,” Puck, July 2, 2024, https://puck.news/biden-plunges-in-swing-states-in-leaked-post-debate-poll/↩
- [9]David Benfell, “Human Science · Inquiry · Quantitative · Surveys,” Irregular Bullshit, n.d., https://disunitedstates.com/human-science/human-science-inquiry/human-science-inquiry-quantitative/report-phone-polls-arent-dead-yet/↩
- [10]Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208↩
- [11]Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208↩