Biden’s Dam is Starting to Break

A tough day in Wilmington as Pelosi says the age questions are fair game and the first House Dem has now called for the president to withdraw from the race.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)

In the days since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump, Democratic lawmakers have formed an unhappy but relatively disciplined wall around their presumptive presidential candidate. 

But serious cracks are starting to show.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, on Tuesday, became the first sitting House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw from the race. “President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” the Texas Democrat said in a statement. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.” 

Perhaps a more ominous sign for Biden: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on MSNBC to say concerns about the president’s physical abilities were fair game. 

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” she said. “When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate—of both candidates.”

Pelosi is fully aware that when she validates this type of discussion, it gives the green light for the rest of the party to have it. But even prior to this point, several Democratic lawmakers were publicly expressing frustration with both Biden’s performance last Thursday and the sluggish cleanup effort that has followed. 

“I think like a lot of people I was pretty horrified by the debate,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told WPRI’s Ted Nesi, adding:

I think people want to make sure that this is a campaign that’s ready to go and win, that the president and his team are being candid with us about his condition—that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days. . . .

I’ve been critical of the campaign all along, so the upside is that this could be the jolt that they need to make a more compelling case against Donald Trump and for President Biden and the goals Democrats want to achieve.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) told CNN Tuesday morning that “we have to be honest with ourselves that it wasn’t just a horrible night.” He spoke candidly with host Kasie Hunt:

The decision he has to make now is clearly only his, and as much as I greatly respect him and appreciate the extraordinary job—I think his four years are one of the great presidencies of our lifetime—but I think he has to be honest with himself. This is a decision he’s gonna have to make. He clearly has to understand—I think what you’re getting to here is that his decision not only impacts who’s going to serve in the White House the next four years, but who’s going to serve in the Senate, who’s going to serve in the House. And it will have implications for decades to come.

But while Quigley made clear the weight of all that hangs on Biden’s candidacy, he stopped short of actually calling on the president to remove himself from the ticket: “I won’t go beyond that. . . . It’s his decision.”

Finally, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz convened a conference call for his fellow Democratic governors yesterday to discuss their concerns about Biden’s fitness and candidacy, according to Jake Tapper. Some of them expressed surprise that no one from the White House has been in contact since the debate.

Staffers to Govs. Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) and Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) both pushed back on that reporting, saying their bosses talked with the president yesterday. And a person familiar with the matter told Press Pass that Biden is set to talk with a number of Democratic governors tomorrow.

But the overall lack of direct contact between Biden and fellow lawmakers is still notable, considering the president’s self-perpetuated reputation for being a schmoozer.

Democrats are naturally shy about speculating about what all this means or getting ahead of Biden on the issue of his campaign’s future. The party faces many branching paths in the months ahead, as JVL noted yesterday. But they won’t start down any of them until Biden at least signals what he is going to do. And the campaign, an operative familiar with its working told us, is waiting to see real, reliable polling first.

Champagne for My R Prez, Real Pain for My D Prez

The Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity for anything that falls under a broad definition of “official acts” elicited horrified reactions from congressional Democrats and jubilation from their GOP colleagues.

According to Dennis Aftergut and Philip Lacovara for The Bulwark: 

The Supreme Court has put a torch to the first principle of constitutionalism—that no person, no matter how powerful, is above the law. Monday’s ruling in Trump v. United States holds that so long as presidents operate within their “core” responsibilities, and often when they are at the outer edge of their duties, they are immune from prosecution.

In the short term, it is the death-knell for any trial of former President Donald Trump on January 6th-related charges before the presidential election. Special Counsel Jack Smith may still be able to proceed with a slimmed-down trial of the sort that he laid out in his brief to the Supreme Court, but not in time for voters to hear before Election Day whether a jury has found Trump guilty of trying to illegally overthrow the 2020 election.

During a call with reporters, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said:

It is a sweeping and devastating opinion for our separation of powers and for our fundamental belief and notion that no one is above the law. The implication of it is significant. There will certainly not be a trial in that case before the election, and Donald Trump is given license to do the same thing that he did before, and . . . he will view this as his continuing quest for the presidency as a personal get-out-of-jail-free card.

Goldman made a further interesting point: The Supreme Court has essentially legitimized the initial argument Trump’s legal team made during the Senate trial of his first impeachment—that “what Donald Trump believes is in his personal interest is in the country’s interest.”

“That is an incredibly dangerous approach,” Goldman added.

In 2019, the House Intelligence Committee released an impeachment inquiry report arguing that Trump “placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security.” However, much of the behavior uncovered in that first impeachment investigation, which centered on Trump’s attempt to convince Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to give him political dirt on Biden in exchange for U.S. military aid, would now likely fall under the immunity-conferring heading of “official acts.”

On the right, small-government conservatives celebrated the massive expansion of the president’s impunity and power.

House Speaker Mike Johnson declared the ruling a victory for Trump “and all future presidents,” adding:

Remember this, the president and vice president are the only two offices in our constitutional system that are elected by all the people. No one who is elected to that office is going to be prone to this kind of crazy criminal activity. What the Court is saying here follows common sense and, of course, our Constitution as well.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went beyond celebrating the ruling and attacked the dissenting opinions. In a statement, Graham said:

The Supreme Court’s dissent in this case is foolish in every way, particularly Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson’s argument that this decision allows a president to assassinate their opponent. The liberal members of the Court and the Left have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump.

Graham’s suggestion that it is “foolish” to think this broad interpretation of “official acts” potentially includes an assassination of a political rival means he must have missed the oral argument in Trump v. United States. Trump’s own lawyer John Sauer made that exact argument in January, suggesting the commander in chief would only face consequences if he were impeached in the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate.

The Court’s ruling is objectively good for Trump: It will inevitably delay his criminal trials and could free him to pursue an even more radical agenda should he return to the White House. More immediately, it may lead to a delay in the criminal sentencing in the hush money payment trial as Judge Juan Merchan determines whether the Court’s ruling has complicated or even imperiled Trump’s conviction.

How to Run a Fashion Magazine in Wartime

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Conde Nast shuttered its Russian publications. But another publication has grown to fill the cultural vacancy from across the contested border. Originally launched in 2013, Vogue Ukraine has returned to print and continued to publish in spite of the ongoing war.

I was fortunate to sit in on a Zoom Q&A with Vogue Ukraine’s editor-in-chief, Vena Brykalin, who discussed the challenges of maintaining a fashion publication, bringing the magazine back to print, and finding inspiration during the war.

Brykalin noted that the magazine is about far more than just fashion, especially now:

What has changed, obviously, is the storytelling. What has changed the structure of the magazine? We’ve been like from day one, actually, we stopped print, but we never stopped digital. And our first news, new content that we put out on the website, on vogue.ua, was up at [nine in the morning] four hours after the first attacks in the country, and we never stopped for a bit. . . .

And I have a very vivid example of what my brilliant beauty editor, whose field of expertise is amazing, like beauty trends and nail polishes, and the way you can enhance your beauty, and all those amazing stories that people like so much. And then she would be literally working on stories how to survive rape and how to survive chemical attacks and all those kind of things. So paradoxically, these are two universes that live hand in hand.

Bulwark readers are already familiar with Ukrainian people’s heroism and sacrifices. Their edition of Vogue is yet another accomplishment. If you have a Vogue Club membership, check out the entire interview.