Our team pulled together thoughts from the Bulwark, The Atlantic, politico, and others on the state of the race as debate rages on regarding President Biden:
President Joe Biden's big interview with ABC could go a long way in deciding his fate on the 2024 ticket. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images |
BIDEN’S TEST — President JOE BIDEN’s effort to prove to Democrats that he’s up to the task of leading is off to a rocky start, as he faces down a critical stretch trying to demonstrate that he’s worthy of the nomination. Yesterday, Biden appeared to stumble, stutter and sometimes cut himself off mid-sentence in two radio interviews and remarks at the White House. No, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the debate. But it was noticeable, especially as eyes are trained upon him, parsing his every move for signs that last Thursday was more than a singular “bad night.”
The Biden campaign has accused the media of devolving into hysterics in its coverage, and taking something that’s “not news” out of context — that even as he phrases things inelegantly, his intent is often apparent, and that some of the trip ups are the remnants of the stutter he had as a child. But right now, these flubs matter. Biden faces a public that broadly sees him as too old and lacking in the mental acuity to be president. And while political journalists and plugged-in Democrats may know the point Biden is trying to convey as he stumbles over words, an Average Joe voter may not — and the trip-up is far more likely to go viral and reinforce impressions of him. There are also real stakes here: This is the guy tasked with prosecuting the political case against both Trump and Trumpism. Case in point: In Madison, Wisconsin, where Biden is set to campaign today, one Democratic voter told WaPo’s Hannah Knowles that he wants Biden to be replaced by, basically, anyone else: “I’m not asking for much,” he said. “Just, like, knows how to address a camera … Can shake hands.” And then there’s this: From our conversations, Democrats appear increasingly resigned to the belief that the campaign is unsalvageable and Biden has to go. The one thing that could maybe turn that impression around is if Biden proves that he’s up for the grueling campaign ahead. Lawmakers are not convinced he is. Some aren’t even sure there is anything he can do or say over the next week to restore their confidence — despite the $50 million July ad blitz the campaign is announcing this morning. It won’t help, of course, that Biden reportedly told Democratic governors during their Wednesday-evening meeting that he needs to sleep more, work fewer hours and avoid events after 8 p.m., NYT’s Reid Epstein and Maggie Haberman scooped yesterday. (Good luck with that, Mr. President: You’re the leader of the free world.) When asked about his health status, he told governors he was fine — “it’s just my brain,” he said per the NYT, in a remark that is only going to exacerbate Democratic heartburn, even if he was joking, as Biden allies have argued. Meanwhile, deep-pocketed donors are starting to organize to push Biden out of the race in what NYT’s Ken Vogel, Teddy Schleifer and Lauren Hirsch call “a remarkable and growing rift between the party’s contributor class and its standard-bearer that could have an impact on down-ballot races.” Some donors are trying to raise what’s essentially a $100-million escrow fund that will be used to bankroll a Biden replacement, the trio scooped. Others are threatening not to give to Democrats until their party leader steps aside, including an heir to the Disney fortune, ABIGAIL DISNEY, who told the Times the Biden campaign and groups that support him “will not receive another dime from me until they bite the bullet and replace Biden at the top of the ticket.” All of this is to underscore that Biden’s interview with ABC News today is just about as high stakes as it gets. In the president’s sit-down with GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS — who, as a former White House comms director and senior adviser to President BILL CLINTON, has been on both sides of this kind of PR crisis — presents the longtime news host with a different opportunity than debate moderators: He has the chance to “play the roles of devil’s advocate, voter surrogate and fact checker,” as Brian Stelter previews this morning for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The White House, incredibly, is leaning into this dynamic, almost casting Biden-Stephanopoulos as a televised cognitive test,” Stelter writes, arguing that “it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most important interview of Stephanopoulos’s long and distinguished career.” But it’s also likely the most important interview of Joe Biden’s long life. The POLITICO newsroom huddled to put together nine questions we’d ask the president if we were in Stephanopoulos’ shoes. Among them:
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Coming out of the holiday, Politico has the state-of-polling level-set: “President Joe Biden’s debate face-plant has put him in his worst shape of the 2024 election.” Driving home the point:
More voters now than ever say they have an unfavorable opinion of the president, think he’s too old for the job and want someone else leading the Democratic ticket this fall.
No incumbent president has had an approval rating this low at this stage of the election since George H. W. Bush more than three decades ago—and, other than Biden’s 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, no incumbent has trailed this far behind in the horse race polling since Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid 44 years ago.
On the bright side, we’re almost to the weekend? Happy Friday.
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Rearranging the Deck Chairs
One week after his catastrophic debate against Donald Trump, President Joe Biden thinks an interview he is giving to George Stephanopoulos, airing tonight on ABC News, will save his nomination.
Nope.
Biden may appear “with it” in his teleprompter-free exchange, and even answer tough questions crisply with energy and detail. But for all the hype this interview is getting, on the big matter it will be largely immaterial. The Biden reelection effort is over.
The Democratic party won’t nominate Biden after what they saw on June 27, but more importantly what they have learned since. The president and his family were given several days’ grace after he humiliated himself—time they used to gaslight voters and donors while Biden read written remarks instead of actually demonstrating he has the mental and physical capacity to serve four and a half more years.
It was insulting. And the response to it was, effectively, a jail break. Devastating leaks about Biden’s condition were first published Tuesday, and continued throughout the week.
The New York Times: “several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations . . . the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome.”
A report from NBC quoted an unnamed senator: “The country saw [at the debate] what those of us who have had personal interactions with him have all known for the last two and a half years.”
New York magazine reported yesterday that disturbed “Democratic officials, activists and donors” have been questioning since January whether Biden could serve another term, or even serve until Election Day: “Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names. At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception.”
Biden, urged on by his wife and son, remains stubbornly in the race. His campaign is planning more travel and big spending. But that money is now being devoted, in part, to damage control, not going after Trump.
On Wednesday, meeting with Democratic governors, Biden declared: “No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.” Last night he insisted he’s “going nowhere.”
Yet he conceded in that same meeting that he isn’t up to the grueling 24-hour-a-day job, telling the governors he needs more sleep and can no longer do evening events.
The American people have seen a tired face, the old-man stare, and we could hear the quieter, slower speech. But we have now learned the truth—that he cannot lead us.
Donors are abandoning him and creating a new PAC for a future candidate because no more money should be spent on Biden’s denial.
Republicans are asking, Just who has been presidenting? The voters will too. And they will feel lied to. They have been.
—A.B. Stoddard
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Pelosi Matters Most
When, a week from now, President Biden will have withdrawn as a candidate for reelection, I suspect Nancy Pelosi will have played a pivotal role.
It was Pelosi who, on July 2, cut to the heart of the matter: “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode, or is this a condition?’ And so when people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate.”
Pelosi hastened to add that the question should be asked “of both candidates”—Trump as well as Biden. “Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health—both of them.”
Pelosi is well aware that Republican leaders have proven, time and again, that they lack the courage or the patriotism to insist on any kind of test that might hold Trump accountable.
But she also knows that Republican dereliction of duty is not a model Democrats should emulate.
When asked Tuesday about her own judgment of President Biden’s condition, Pelosi understandably demurred: “I’m not a doctor. I can’t say what happens three, four years down the road.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn echoed that sentiment shortly after: “I’ll have to wait on the experts in medicine to give their opinion, because I’m not a doctor, so I have no idea the extent to which all of this may have occurred.”
But as Pelosi and Clyburn are well aware, there are doctors who could be consulted. The White House, after all, has access to the best neurologists, the finest medical specialists.
Have they taken advantage of this? Has President Biden seen a specialist?
Apparently not.
Has his family or staff tried to persuade him to do so?
Not that we know of.
If one judges by everything the White House and Biden campaign have done in recent months to try to shelter the president, they are not confident all is well. Rather they seem—shockingly, irresponsibly—not to have wanted to know the answer to the question: “Is this an episode, or is this a condition?”
I think we know the answer.
So does Nancy Pelosi. And she knows what should happen.
Pelosi stepped down as House Democratic leader two years ago, at the age of 82, which happens to be the age Joe Biden will be at the end of his presidential term. Pelosi then seemed to be—and thankfully still seems to be—in good health.
But she knew it was time.
Speaking on the floor of the House on November 17, 2022, she said that, “For me, the hour has come for a new generation to lead.”
Nancy Pelosi stepped aside with dignity. She should now help Joe Biden do the same.
—William Kristol
Table 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College rating changes
Map 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings
The state of the race after the debate
In agreeing to the earliest-ever general election presidential debate, President Joe Biden sought to change the focus of this election from a referendum on himself to a choice between him and a flawed rival, former President Donald Trump. Needless to say, not only did Biden fail in this objective, but he exacerbated perhaps his biggest weakness—a widely-held belief that he is simply too old and diminished to lead the nation for another four years.
Biden’s performance was, as our Editor-in-Chief Larry Sabato said in a post-debate reaction, the worst performance ever by a major party candidate in a general election presidential debate. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Trump turned in a good performance, but this was a debate in which neither candidate should have wanted to be the focus of post-debate commentary, and Biden has definitely been the focus in the days following the debate.
Perhaps the most striking failure from Biden’s performance was his inability to make the case against Trump on issues that should be layups for the Democratic nominee—abortion rights and Jan. 6. That inability to articulate a strong argument could be even more glaring in the aftermath of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision on Monday. Democrats and other critics of former President Trump worry that if given another term, the former president—who has already been convicted of felony charges in New York, albeit ones that are less serious than other indictments he still faces—would govern lawlessly without fear of accountability from either the courts or Congress. We suspect that many voters would be concerned about Trump acting in such an unconstrained way if restored to the White House. Biden did give a brief statement on Monday evening strongly disagreeing with the decision and warning that Trump would be “more emboldened to do whatever he wants” if reelected. But is this incumbent president capable of consistently and persuasively making such an argument about the dangers of reelecting Trump, either in a future debate or on the campaign trail? This is among the many things that should concern Democrats about Biden continuing on as the nominee. There also is going to be additional reporting calling into question Biden’s ability to do the job—which we have already seen immediately following the debate.
There have been notable calls for Biden to leave the race, albeit mainly from prominent voices on the left and in the media as opposed to elected Democrats. However, on Tuesday afternoon, veteran Austin-area Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D, TX-37) became the first sitting Democratic member of Congress to ask Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. Perhaps more will have joined him by the time you are reading this. Still, there was not much indication as of this writing that Biden would voluntarily step aside. It really is his decision, and his decision alone, barring a very difficult-to-imagine revolt against Biden at the Democratic National Convention.
Democratic convention delegates allocated through the primary season to candidates are “pledged.” The official 2024 delegate selection rules adopted by the Democratic National Committee in 2022 defines these delegates as such: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That phrase, “in all good conscience,” seems to give some wiggle room for delegate defections, but remember that almost every single delegate to the Democratic National Convention is pledged to Biden—and these delegates are actual people who, presumably, are loyal to the president. Expecting roughly half of them to revolt against the sitting president on the first ballot at the convention seems like fantasy talk. Additionally, Biden is slated to be nominated virtually in advance of the actual convention, because of the DNC acting to prevent Biden from not making the ballot in Ohio because of a ballot access deadline that fell before the convention, even though Ohio Republicans subsequently passed a legal fix that would allow Biden to be on the ballot there. This is why we, and many others, describe the decision on the Democratic nomination to be firmly in the hands of Biden, the presumptive nominee.
That said, if a critical mass of Democrats do indeed want to try to push Biden to the exits, they will need to be more public and forceful to have a chance of succeeding. There are risks in speaking out—the replacement nominee, most likely but not necessarily Vice President Kamala Harris, may not actually be stronger than Biden, and any public arguments made against Biden that fall short of persuading him to exit would only serve to damage him further. But there are risks in not speaking out, too—there is a second debate scheduled for September, and the convention address before that in late August. These major events could set the stage for a Biden comeback—or they could go the way the first debate did.
So, where does the presidential race stand following the debate? Immediate polling after the debate, unsurprisingly, showed the public clearly thought Trump won, although the horse race did not change dramatically. An Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight survey of voters taken before and after the debate showed that the share of likely voters considering voting for Biden only dropped 1.5 points, from 48.2% to 46.7%, and the share of those considering voting for Trump only increased 0.4 points, from 43.5% to 43.9%. Other polls also generally showed only modest movement. Dan Guild, a polling chronicler who wrote a piece for the Crystal Ball last week on the importance of those who just somewhat disapprove of Biden’s job performance, noted Tuesday that Biden's margin on average against Trump had dipped a little more than a point when comparing post-debate polls to pre-debate polls conducted by the same pollster.
Overall, though, we’re afraid we’re going to have to give that old, familiar, and unsatisfying answer about the polling—we’d like to see more data before coming to conclusions about whether the race has fundamentally changed, and any big changes we do see could be because of partisan non-response (in other words, energized Republicans being likelier to respond to polls than depressed Democrats, something that seemed to artificially deflate Barack Obama’s support after a poor first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012).
Still, this comes at a time when Biden is already behind, so even if he doesn’t meaningfully fall further back, he really needed the debate to improve his numbers.
One thing that has crystallized for us after the debate is that it may no longer make sense to give Biden the benefit of the doubt. Our working assumption has been that whatever the polls say now, this was shaping up to be another very close election. A few weeks ago, we moved several Electoral College ratings to better categories for Republicans, but we also wrote the following: “Our general assumption is that Biden is going to perform at least a little better in November than polls are showing now, much like Donald Trump generally performed better in November of both of his election years than what late spring polling suggested.” We went on to say that Biden has “a little bit more base consolidation to do than Trump.” That is probably still the case, but the debate performance calls into question Biden’s ability to actually make that happen. What Biden needs to do is show that the debate was a fluke, not a reflection of day-to-day reality. He can only do that by turning in better performances in unscripted settings—performances he may not be able to produce.
That brings us to this week’s rating changes. We had been giving Biden the benefit of the doubt in Michigan, keeping it as Leans Democratic even though polling there has been close for months. But we really can’t justify giving Biden an edge there now, even though we do still expect it to be the bluest part of the “Blue Wall” trio (the group of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). With Michigan as a Toss-up, it also makes sense to downgrade Minnesota from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic. Powered by Democratic growth in the Twin Cities and its suburbs that has mostly counterbalanced a Republican trend in outstate areas, Minnesota is the second-bluest Midwest state, trailing only Illinois. But Trump almost won Minnesota in 2016 and it’s just one shade bluer, not two shades bluer, than Michigan (hence why it should be just Leans Democratic in our ratings if Michigan is a Toss-up). Just to be clear, Biden has zero plausible paths to the White House without Michigan (and of course Minnesota).
These are moves that we could have made in our round of updates a few weeks ago, or, realistically, before then as well. But as we said, we were working off an assumption that this election would be just as nip and tuck as 2016 and 2020 were, collectively, in the key states. In questioning that assumption, we thought it was reasonable to downgrade Biden’s position further, although we’re just taking electoral votes away from Biden in our ratings for now, not adding any more to Trump’s total.
We still believe that Biden needs to carry all of the Blue Wall trio, and he’s really no better than 50-50 in each of them at the moment. If Biden’s position deteriorates further, the next states to move to a more competitive category would be Maine’s two statewide electoral votes as well as Virginia and New Mexico; the ratings for those states remain Likely Democratic. We would also have to consider moving Arizona and Nevada, states where Trump consistently leads in polling, from Toss-up to Leans Republican, as we recently did with Georgia. Trump currently has 251 electoral votes at least leaning to him in our ratings; Arizona and Nevada would make it 268, just a couple of electoral votes shy of 270 (and Trump likely would have advantages in the House of Representatives tiebreaker vote in the unlikely event of a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College).
One other thing that these rating changes we are making in Michigan and Minnesota today do: In the (still seemingly unlikely) event that Biden is not the Democratic nominee, our updated ratings as shown in Map 1 also would serve as a decent starting point for a reset race.
I just released an emergency live episode of the pod, trying to explain the situation the Democratic Party faces: who will replace Biden, why it’s likely Kamala Harris, why Bernie should be her running mate, and what all that means for foreign policy. The episode will be available wherever you get podcasts soon enough, but in the meantime, you can watch the full video of the episode (rant?) here:
