Why Pelosi Matters—And Stephanopoulos May Not
Slouching toward the inevitable.
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.
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 re-election 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 jailbreak. 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 watched the tired face, seen the old-man stare, heard the quieter, slower speech. But we have now learned the truth—that he cannot lead us.
Donors are abandoning the president 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
Pelosi Matters Most
When, a week from now, President Biden will have withdrawn as a candidate for re-election, 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 this 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
Catching up . . .
Democrats start moving to Harris as Biden digs in: CNN
Keir Starmer becomes prime minister after Labour’s historic win: Washington Post
U.S. economy adds 206,000 jobs in June: New York Times
Battleground map shows signs of Trump expansion: Wall Street Journal
Doug Burgum’s rebranding—‘He’s playing the game now’: Politico
Quick Hits: Trump 2.0 and Ukraine
Donald Trump’s meandering, vague, and self-contradictory rhetorical approach to foreign policy can sometimes play perversely to his political advantage: Quarreling factions within his coalition all have at least a fragment of a reason to hope he’s on their side. In an excellent and exhaustive piece for the site today, Cathy Young dives way deep into Trump’s jumble of comments on Ukraine to try to figure out how much we can actually know about a second Trump administration’s Russia posture:
TRUMP’S EVER-SHIFTING STANCE on Ukraine gives pro-Ukraine Trump supporters enough cover to claim that, actually, a President Trump will be good for Ukraine. Given how mercurial Trump is, making predictions is near-impossible. It may be, for instance, that if Trump gets elected and Putin is seen as losing the war (or at least in a bad position) by Inauguration Day, Trump will decide that he doesn’t want to back a loser and will ratchet up the bragging about being the first American president to give Ukraine lethal weapons.
But overall, the odds that a Trump 2.0 administration would be pro-Ukraine are pretty low. One thing to remember is that in 2024, the MAGA caucus in the Republican party and in the right-wing media has gotten both far more powerful and far more rabidly anti-Ukraine compared to 2016. When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, there was no Marjorie Taylor Greene and no J.D. Vance in Congress. Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, and Tucker Carlson were not on a full-time anti-Ukraine crusade. MAGA may be a “follow the leader” cult, but today, Ukraine hate is such a core part of the MAGA identity that it may be hard even for Trump himself to sell a pro-Ukraine turn. Nor would Trump 2.0 have the old contingent of Russia hawks like John Bolton or Fiona Hill in the White House.
Cheap Shots
"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'.”
(loud sigh as fingers touch keyboard) I sit down this morning to type my thoughts on the pressing issue of our presidency and democracy and just can't find any new words. I feel like I've said them already. I feel like I've heard them already. And I feel tired -- the kind you can't sleep off. Tired of drama. Tired of reading news reports that contradict other news reports that contradicted still others. And tired of wondering why we are going through this at all.
At this point each new story of Stay, Joe or Go, Joe drives me further into anger with the Democratic Party for putting us into this box in the first place -- by making choices in the dark in which we had no input, no chance to decide, and no ability to avoid the outcome. They have had years to figure this out and get it right. But they decided that they know better than everybody else how to massage a presidency and the perception of a candidate, allowing for no loyal opposition, hoping that a ticking time bomb would not explode while we all were gaslighted into thinking that all is well, nothing to see here, move along. And so here we are now, hoping that after bungling and botching the job for so long they suddenly will hit upon the answer and make everything right in the end. Honestly, what are the odds of that, no matter which fork in the road they take?
I will vote Democratic no matter which option they choose, as the alternative is utterly impossible to support. But I need to tell them that it also is something that they no longer should take for granted. I feel tricked, lied to, and embarrassed, and not just when conservative friends call me out for something I had nothing to do with. Worse still is seeing DJT sitting happily, taking it all in, watching the house fire knowing that he stands to acquire the property afterward and redevelop it. We always wanted for him to shut up. But not this way. Feeling like he is in control simply because the Democrats yielded it, in the mother of all unforced errors, sits badly with me this morning, along with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do other than watch as the ship continues to approach the iceberg. Thankfully I have two new kittens to take my mind off of the mess. For a while. Then there is beer, and lots of it.
What everyone seems to be ignoring is WE ALL SAW IT. His debate performance was NOT GOOD.
Look, I'm a lifelong Democrat (you can look up my voter profile if you want--I'm not a troll and I'm not lying) and I'm going to vote for a piece of burnt toast with a D spray painted on it if I have to. But I'd feel a lot better if we had someone who could bring the fight to Trump and make it about him.