US "We are f***ed": Democrats despair over Biden debate performance

From CNN's Kasie Hunt
24 min ago


Biden speaks during the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday. John Nowak/CNN

Democrats are despairing over President Joe Biden’s debate performance Thursday night, a showing so halting some even privately raised questions about whether he should remain the party’s nominee.

Biden appeared onstage with a soft, halting voice and an open-mouthed, staring look. He struggled to finish thoughts at points, and ceded ground on issues like abortion where Democrats have an edge.

It took just minutes for Democrats to realize how bad it was becoming.

“Biden looks and sounds terrible. He’s incoherent,” one Democrat who spent time working in the Biden administration said.

“Horrific,” said another Democratic operative.

And one Democrat who’s worked on campaigns up and down the ballot said simply: “We are f***ed.”

The looming question as the debate came to a close was almost existential: Should someone else top the Democratic ticket?

“It’s hard to argue that Biden should be our nominee,” said an operative who’s worked on campaigns at all levels for over a decade.

This debate was historic for many reasons, but not least because it is taking place before each man is formally nominated at their respective conventions. The Democratic National Convention is set to convene August 19 in Chicago.

Democrats have spent much of the past year handwringing about Biden’s chances of beating Trump in an election many view as an existential one that will decide the very survival of American democracy. But Biden himself was determined to be the one to take on Trump, at one point even saying directly: “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running.”

No serious Democratic challengers stepped up to run against Biden, and at this point in the campaign he’d have to decide to step aside if Democrats were to pick another nominee. If Biden did withdraw, the Democratic nomination would be decided on the floor.

Democrats were even talking about who it might be instead: “If I was Gavin (Newsom) or Gretchen (Whitmer), I’d be making calls tonight,” one said.

Source (Archive)

 

[Dr. Henry Armitage]

Fuck it man just run Kamala Harris and have Vaush as her vp. Horse face and horse fucker 2024

 

[Pink Hotel On The Corner]

If I was the DNC, I'd just lose this election and win the next one.

The first thing I saw when this debate was on was how could they let that elderly man do this. He is way too old and not with it.

 

[clipartfan92]

Top liberal media voices turn on Biden
Semafor (archive.ph)
By Max Tani
2024-06-28 04:12:59GMT

Spoiler

The News
Prominent liberal columnists are calling for President Joe Biden to step aside following a widely-panned debate performance against former President Donald Trump.

Before the debate concluded, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof said he hoped Biden would step aside and allow another Democratic politician to be nominated and challenge Trump.


https://x.com/NickKristof/status/1806508213208248501 (archive.ph)

Others echoed Kristof’s message. Edward Luce, the Financial Times’ US national editor, pointed out that the two months between now and the August convention was plenty of time to nominate another candidate.


https://x.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1806500564886270107 (archive.ph)

Jacob Weisberg, the former CEO of Slate, similarly called for Biden to allow someone else to take up the nomination.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid said that she had heard from people circulating the convention nomination rules:

https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1806528083681259639 (archive.ph)

The New Republic had a simple headline: Ditch Biden:


https://x.com/alex_shephard/status/1806520251640930347 (archive.ph)

They join a small group of liberal commentators who have raised serious concerns about Biden’s candidacy in recent months. New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein dedicated a series of episodes on his popular Times podcast to why Biden should step aside, and how it would work. CNN’s David Axelrod has also drawn ire from Biden allies over his criticisms of the president’s campaign strategy, and doubts about his ability to win the race.

Max's View
Over the past several years, the White House, Biden’s communications team and the Democratic party have done an effective job pushing back and tamping down on stories about Biden’s age. They complained that a Wall Street Journal story about the president’s age and what lawmakers think of him behind closed doors was a partisan hit-job and did not include enough quotes from Democratic politicians who believe that Biden has not lost a step. They chastised the White House press corps for having ”collective memory problems" themselves that prevented them from remembering Biden’s strong qualities and past “rightwing age attacks.” They’ve argued to reporters that Trump’s old age effectively negated the subject.

That battle will be much more difficult after Biden’s debate with Trump, and will ignite a fresh round of questions about whether Biden will or should be the nominee. The president’s primary surrogates took a relatively short stint in the spin room, before ceding much of the spin room to Trump’s surrogates. Biden’s poor performance also overshadowed one of the strongest complaints Democrats and left-leaning media pundits had: CNN’s failure to fact-check President Donald Trump’s numerous misstatements.

Before the debate began, Semafor asked California Gov. Gavin Newsom whether it would put to rest the question of whether the Democrats would replace the former president.

“One hundred percent,” said Newsom. “Enough. I mean, honestly — enough!”

The View From CNN
In a brief interview after the debate, CNN CEO Mark Thompson said he felt that “the entire point of debate was to let the American voters, the American public and the world see the two candidates, setting out their visions for America, and also critiquing each other’s versions of America. And I thought that the program succeeded at doing that.”

The CNN chief said that the debate largely went according to how the network game-planned it, saying that in general most of the answers to the questions and the sort of political points and the repartee between two candidates was “very close to the way we prepared for it before and thought about it,” though there were a few surprises.
Asked about criticism that the moderators should’ve done fact-checking, Thompson chuckled and said it “should’ve been your first question” and walked away.

The View From The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal faced the fury of the White House and criticism from other media after reporting that people who had met Biden privately said he was “slipping.”

I asked Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker whether she felt vindicated by the debate.

“Very much so. The reporters took a lot of grief for covering a story that needed to be covered and that no other main stream publishers were willing to touch. I am very proud of them.”

 

[FamicomGorby]

Zero percent of them will acknowledge that Biden has been like this for years and they willfully ignored it.

I could see Biden just resigning now so that Kamala becomes president, solely for the dems to say "BLACK WAHMAN PRESIDENT!"

 

[clipartfan92]

Was the Debate the Beginning of the End of Joe Biden’s Presidency?
The New Yorker (archive.ph)
By Susan B. Glasser
2024-06-28 05:20:23GMT

Spoiler

Photograph by Ioulex

t didn’t take long. From the very start of Thursday’s CNN debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the question was not so much whether Biden was losing but exactly how much damage it would do to the President’s reëlection campaign. His first shaky answers, it turned out, were no outlier: Biden, his voice raspy and often unclear, struggled for the entirety of the debate, an agonizing hour and a half that, amazingly enough, Biden’s own campaign had sought out in an effort to make up ground against Trump, the defeated, criminally convicted ex-President who was nonetheless leading in the polls.

Let’s stipulate to this: Trump was no champion, either. For much of the debate, he reiterated familiar lines, often out of context or wildly untrue, from his rallies and social-media feed. CNN’s moderators, having announced in advance that they would not be doing any fact checking, stuck to their plan, and the Trumpian B.S. flowed freely: The Greatest Economy Ever! Biden’s Is the Worst Administration Ever! Russia, Russia, Russia! Some of Trump’s lies were flagrant and damaging; others were merely bizarre.

But did anyone care? The news of the debate was not Trump saying crazy, untrue things, though he did so in abundance. It was Biden. The President of the United States, eighty-one years old and asking to be returned to office until age eighty-six, looked and sounded old. Too old. His voice was muffled. He lost his train of thought. He raced through answers. When Trump talked, the split screen showed Biden staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, in a way that made him look even older.

Biden struggled so much that even several scathing pre-planned lines failed to land with any force, as when he brought up Trump’s hush-money conviction and said, “You have the morals of an alley cat,” or when he fumbled over himself saying that Trump was the first President since Herbert Hoover to lose as many American jobs. Sure, Trump was also rambling and incoherent, but at a much louder decibel level. He looked and sounded healthier; Biden was literally painful to watch.

Within minutes, Democrats were panicking; would they seek to replace Biden at the top of the ticket? And how would that work anyway? Even before the first commercial break, Biden’s fortunes tanked in the online prediction markets. On social media, jubilant Republicans were convinced that the election was all but won. Finally, Americans of different political persuasions found something they could agree on. The White House spent the last two years denying that Biden’s age was a legitimate subject in this campaign. What will they say after this? Late in the evening, Vice-President Kamala Harris appeared on CNN, where she conceded that Biden had a “slow start,” but insisted that she was there to talk about the last three years, not the previous ninety minutes. Oof. She then went on to warn about Trump as a would-be dictator “on Day One” of his Presidency and the continuing threat to women’s reproductive freedom. She was a million times more coherent making the argument for Biden than Biden was himself.

Four years ago, in Cleveland, Ohio, Trump and Biden had a shouting match that made a strong case for the worst Presidential debate ever. On Thursday night in Atlanta, their rematch easily stole that title. Between Trump’s lies and Biden’s weak performance, it was not even close.

he pre-game theatrics from Trump and his team had relied heavily on the usual cocktail of pre-made excuses and preëmptive attacks: the CNN moderators were biased against him; Biden was going to be pumped full of performance-enhancing drugs; and what about that suspicious tape-to-air delay? In the hours leading up to the debate, Trump complained on social media about Fox News putting a Biden spokesperson on air. As for Biden, well, he “IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, AND TO THE SURVIVAL AND EXISTENCE OF OUR COUNTRY ITSELF!!!” Such a windup suggested that a rerun of their infamous 2020 debate was coming, with Trump casting himself in the role, once again, of rogue gasbag.

The difference this time was not, then, because of any suspense surrounding the two well-known principals but in the surround-sound of palpable dread with which the event was suffused. Two angry old men shouting at each other was bad enough four years ago; would this rerun serve merely to underscore the unappealing choice America has in 2024?

In that 2020 debate, Trump had interrupted Biden and the debate’s beleaguered moderator, Chris Wallace, constantly—a hundred and forty-five times, according to one count. This time, the rules agreed to by both campaigns in advance did not permit it, and CNN installed a kill switch on their microphones. But in the end, Trump did not need to interrupt Biden much; the President was doing all the damage to himself. The only time the two really rode roughshod over the mikes was in an extended dispute toward the end of the debate over their golf handicaps. The wrangling went on so long—with gripes about whether Trump could carry his own golf bag or just how far Biden could hit a drive—that even Trump got tired of it. “Let’s not act like children,” he said to Biden.

At the end of a grim night, this might have been the comic relief we all needed. But it did not seem funny so much as very, very sad. Is this how democracy dies, in a shouting match between two seniors about their golf game?

There will be much shouting (and not about golf) over the next few days and weeks, as Democrats attempt to sort through the wreckage from this ill-advised debate. History suggests that the winner of a Presidential debate can expect a bounce—a slight one, averaging seven-tenths of a point—in the two weeks afterward. Perhaps that’s why both Biden and Trump readily agreed to have one so early in the election cycle, before either man has even been formally nominated by his party: plenty of time to clean up the mess.

But if that assumption was what drove the decision to debate, it looks potentially catastrophic for Biden. The question now is not so much about what kind of bounce Trump might get from Thursday’s debate but an even bigger one that we can’t quite answer yet: Was this the beginning of the end of the Biden Presidency?

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I locked it in that they will not switch out Biden but I could be wrong. He is getting a lot of heat.

I want the removal or non-removal to result in a lot of anger at the convention. If they clean the slate and pick yet another boring establishment candidate who bows to Israel again, the progressives are going to riot. Especially if the war is still going on by that time.

I'm racking my brains trying to think of possible people that the DNC could try to rally around at an open convention that has a _remote_ possibility of beating Trump.

RFK Jr. could beat Trump as the Dem nominee, even with his spasmodic dysphonia, but Congress struggle sessioned him back in July 2023 and he exited to run as independent so that ship has probably sailed.

 

[Product Placement]

That was a total disaster for Biden.

Not just bad, but the worst debate performance ever given by anyone.

Legendarily bad.

He's not going to be on the ballot in November.

Can they even get rid of him if he doesn't want to go?

Remember when Biden said he would be a one term president, it's like he still had some awareness then, and lost it all in the past 4 years.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/474027-biden-indicates-he-will-only-serve-one-term-as-president-report/

 

[Absolutego]

Can they even get rid of him if he doesn't want to go?

Remember when Biden said he would be a one term president, it's like he still had some awareness then, and lost it all in the past 4 years.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/474027-biden-indicates-he-will-only-serve-one-term-as-president-report/

The rumor mill is that if Obama, Clinton (Bill, not Hilldawg), Pelosi and Schumer all told him to drop out he'd override Jill and step down. She's the one blowing smoke up his ass and telling him he's the best Democrat since FDR and should run for reelection.
I'm not sure what she gets, personally, out of it, she hasn't been a super active and respected First Lady.

 

[nonespecified]

Doesn’t the reaction and panic of Dems prove that the election is NOT rigged?

If Dems were skilled enough to rig elections and get away with it, a bad debate performance would be irrelevant.

This is part of the rigging, removing a defective figurehead so a new one can be installed who's not OBVIOUSLY demented.

 

[Dafuqisdis?]

Doesn’t the reaction and panic of Dems prove that the election is NOT rigged?

If Dems were skilled enough to rig elections and get away with it, a bad debate performance would be irrelevant.

No it doesn't prove anything. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Party central doesn't do the cheating, they make sure that the conditions are ripe for bad actors to cheat (like getting rid of voter verification) and putting bad actors in places of authority.

Not that I think that Trump won in 2020. I crunched the numbers in Wisconsin and Georgia after the election and Trump lost support in rural red counties as well as urban areas. This is especially relevant in Wisonsin where they did a hand recount. The numbers said that he just simply lost. I don't really think that illegal votes would have tipped the balance there either but that's hard to prove.

 

[FamicomGorby]

Can they even get rid of him if he doesn't want to go?

The democrat party can do whatever they want, they don't necessarily have to pick the the incumbent as their candidate. Of course before now we didn't have a corpse president so there was never really a situation where a party wouldn't pick their incumbent as their candidate. So the democrat party could just pick someone else and tell Biden to either drop out or run as an independent.

 

[Bill Evans 45]

This is the opportunity for the progressives, the communists and the hamas supporters to battle their way into the convention and push for their candidate to win.

Please let this happen.

the one I wish he did most was "you care about soldiers so much you kept checking your watch as their caskets passed you by."

Hopefully this has been noted for Debate 2: Dementia Boogaloo.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Can they even get rid of him if he doesn't want to go?

Remember when Biden said he would be a one term president, it's like he still had some awareness then, and lost it all in the past 4 years.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/474027-biden-indicates-he-will-only-serve-one-term-as-president-report/

No, it's more like he told his constituents what they wanted to hear to placate them so he could get what he wants.

 

[Otis Mallebrok]

Hahaha, as retarded as Trump is, I cannot help but feel immense schadenfreude at this. Democrats CHOSE to infest everything with trannies and sodomites. They CHOSE to let millions of thieves, rapists and cannibals invade the country. They CHOSE to let hordes of BLM rioters burn and plunder, because of one dead fentanyl addict. And now their electotal succes depends on one widely despised alzheimer patient. Get fucked lefties, your are going down

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Can they even get rid of him if he doesn't want to go?

Remember when Biden said he would be a one term president, it's like he still had some awareness then, and lost it all in the past 4 years.

Well, there is one way....

Jon Stewart says Biden had ‘resting 25th Amendment face’ at debate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_4:_Declaration_by_vice_president_and_cabinet_members_of_president's_inability

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

Apparently RFK debated tonight and did okay. Arguably better than Trump and Biden because it wasn’t bickering.

Did he debate the Brain Worm?

 

[Rotollo 2]

If I was the DNC, I'd just lose this election and win the next one.

The first thing I saw when this debate was on was how could they let that elderly man do this. He is way too old and not with it.

they should have just done this for 2024, have trump deal with the economic fallout of covid, have him take the fall for it have it so his cult of personality falls and he can't run again. having biden win 2020 was grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

So this is how Bernie can still win.

 

[clipartfan92]

‘A turning point’: US allies wince at Biden debate performance
Politico (archive.ph)
By Nahal Toosi, Alexander Ward, and Paul McLeary
2024-06-28 04:06:00GMT

Spoiler

The world was watching Thursday’s U.S. presidential debate, and it cringed.

Foreign diplomats and officials expressed disappointment and even alarm at Joe Biden’s performance in particular. While Trump made his typical outlandish statements, Biden’s seeming feebleness stood out even more. Some hinted at concern that the current U.S. president was ready for a second term as the leader of a nuclear-armed superpower.

“Enormous lies by Trump,” one Western diplomat said. “On the other hand, at least we understood what he says. Maybe we are witnessing a turning point” for Biden.

Some of it was about expectations. International officials and diplomats were ready for Trump to spout falsehoods. But Biden, they’d hoped, would present as stronger and more vigorous. By the end of the debate some were questioning whether either was fit to lead.

“Internationally this isn’t a great look for America, at the risk of stating the obvious,” a European diplomat texted.

Foreign policy rarely plays a big part in U.S. presidential debates, but the wars and threats from adversaries such as Iran and Russia played a large role in the first half of the event, which touched on Afghanistan, Gaza and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine and the future of NATO.

Neither man broke significant ground in terms of policy substance, and neither was able to articulate new ideas for how to fix the wars in Europe and the Middle East that are dragging on with no end in sight.

Trump accused Biden repeatedly of potentially leading America into World War III, and claimed that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas militants’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel would never have happened if he were still president, while Biden accused Trump of fumbling numerous global policies and abandoning America’s allies.

“The debate on foreign policy is shallow. Biden cannot present his case, and Trump is overstating it,” a second European diplomat said.

The debate came just two weeks before Biden will host Western leaders in Washington for NATO’s 75th anniversary summit. He and his team hoped to use the moment to showcase his leadership of the alliance and present himself as a statesman with a steady hand on the wheel. But Biden’s debate performance could undermine that plan.

The foreign diplomats and officials spoke after having been granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. People in such positions usually avoid commenting on other countries’ internal politics.

Several noted that Trump appeared more vigorous than Biden and spoke more clearly even as he bent facts. “Frankly, he looks more and more like a guy we can do business with,” an African diplomat said.

Trump raised eyebrows when he claimed that he would settle the war between Russia and Ukraine while still president-elect.

“I’m not sure what that means,” an adviser to a European government said.

But the main talk of the night among the diplomatic set was about how wooden and tired Biden came across.

“It’s no secret that Biden is old, and he’s showing his age,” a European official said.

Polish FM appears to link Biden’s disastrous debate with decline of Roman empire
Politico EU (archive.ph)
By Seb Starcevic
2024-06-28 10:08:18GMT

Spoiler

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski took what appeared to be a shot at U.S. President Joe Biden by drawing a parallel between his widely panned debate performance against Donald Trump and the decline of the Roman empire.

Sikorski posted Friday morning on X: “It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset,” just hours after Biden’s stumbling debate display led to growing calls for him to pull out of the race for a second White House term.


https://x.com/sikorskiradek/status/1806597637740576910 (archive.ph)

Sikorski drew a cryptic parallel with Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, calling him “a great emperor” who “screwed up his succession” by passing the mantle to his son, Commodus, whose “disastrous rule started Rome’s decline.”

The popular idea that Marcus Aurelius’ reign marked the end of the glory days of Rome goes back to the ancient historian Cassius Dio, who said the end of his rule marked the transition “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”

Biden’s debate performance in the early hours of Friday was at times unintelligible with a raspy voice, wandering eyes, pallid complexion and a halting delivery, sparking horror among Democratic operatives and the European media.

For Sikorski, the latest comments aren’t the first time he has courted controversy on social media.

He tweeted a photo in September 2022 of the damaged Nord Stream pipeline and captioned it “Thank You, USA,” seemingly accusing the U.S. of being involved in the sabotage of the Russia-to-Europe pipeline and earning a rebuke from his own party. He later deleted that tweet.

Sikorski’s enigmatic Marcus Aurelius tweet is still up — for now.

‘The movement to convince Biden to not run is real.’
Politico (archive.ph)
By Jonathan Martin
2024-06-28 09:00:00GMT

Spoiler

ne House Democrat said he spoke for others in the wake of the president’s stunningly feeble debate performance on Thursday: “The movement to convince Biden to not run is real.”

The House member, an outspoken defender of the president, said that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should consider “a combined effort” to nudge President Joe Biden out of the race.

Crestfallen by the president’s weak voice, pallid appearance and meandering answers, numerous Democratic officials said Biden’s bet on an early debate to rebut unceasing questions about his age had not only backfired but done damage that may prove irreversible. The president had, in the first 30 minutes of the debate, fully affirmed doubts about his fitness.

A second House Democrat said “reflection is needed” from Biden about the way ahead and indicated the private text threads among lawmakers were even more dire, with some saying outright that the president needed to drop out of the race.

A Democratic lobbyist close to many party leaders also invoked Jeffries and Schumer — “Will they do something?” — before noting, hopefully, that Jeffries and former President Barack Obama are holding a fundraiser for House Democrats in New York on Friday.

Many top party officials, however, believe Biden can’t be persuaded let alone pressured. One Democratic governor called the debate “beyond bad,” but said it was “too late” to nominate a new standard bearer.

For those close to Biden, his appearance was the realization of their worst fears. His top strategists sought to make the best of it — citing focus groups and snap polls that showed voters also detested former President Donald Trump — but made no attempt to hide their disappointment. Nobody in Biden’s orbit wants to be the one to approach him about whether to stay in the race, but as one adviser told me: “It’s got to be a conversation, and he will hate it.”

A consistent theme from Democrats who know Biden: First lady Jill Biden would have to be a party to any intervention with the president.

With less than two months until the Democratic convention, Biden would have to agree to withdraw in order for the party to throw open the race to the delegates in Chicago. And there’s no sign, even after former Biden aides went on television to pan his performance Thursday, that he’d consider ending his half-century career in politics with a humiliating, mid-campaign exit.

There was also no indication, at least as of early Friday morning, that elected Democrats would approach Biden or even go on the record with their desire for him to quit.

Which has been the recurring story now since Biden’s first year in office. Out of fear of abetting Trump, loyalty to their incumbent or just lack of any obvious alternative, Democratic leaders have grumbled about the president’s performance and capacity to run for a second term — but swallowed their fears.

A few prominent figures in the party have spoken out, perhaps none more forcefully than longtime strategist James Carville, who on Thursday simply said, “I tried.”

However, most influential Democrats, particularly in Congress, stayed quiet. Few wanted to grapple with the next question they’d invariably get — well if not Biden, are you for the vice president?

And after the party’s better-than-expected 2022 midterm success, well, any movement toward trying to usher Biden to retirement dissipated.

Now it may, indeed, be too late.

But there will at least be a conversation, this one in public. Biden’s lackluster showing ensured it.

“There are going to be discussions about if he should continue,” David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief strategist, said on CNN immediately following the debate.

Biden has finally pushed into the public sphere the backroom chatter I wrote about in February of 2023 when one of the few Democrats to speak openly was the congressman, Dean Phillips, who wound up waging a quixotic primary challenge.

The Please-Joe-Go push may have as much a chance for success as Phillips’s candidacy. Yet Biden will have to quickly dispel it and there’s no obvious, high-profile forum for him to quiet the chatter before the Democratic convention begins on August 19.


The president is in for a difficult summer — with his own party.


Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. They stayed mum for three and half years and now they’re reaping the whirlwind.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Can the democrats even get someone else on the ballot on time if Biden drops out? I thought some states deadlines were already up lol