Evelyn Reynolds

After a day of private meetings on Capitol Hill, congressional Democrats appeared torn over whether Joe Biden should remain the party’s nominee, as concerns deepen over the 81-year-old president’s age, mental acuity and ability to win the White House for a second term.Lawmakers emerged from closed-door gatherings on Tuesday stone-faced, appearing uneasy about Biden’s path forward, even if most weren’t ready to publicly call on him to step aside. Asked if the party was on the same page after a House Democrats meeting, Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee quipped: “We’re not even in the same book.”Senate Democrats offered a similarly assessment. “We’ve got a ways to go,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont told reporters, after a lengthy caucus meeting over lunch on Tuesday afternoon.Hours after the House meeting, Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey became the seventh congressional Democrat to call on Biden to step aside, a reflection of the deep disagreement with the party over how best to respond to Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month in which he appeared weak and confused while Donald Trump, 78, spewed a stream of unchecked lies.“The stakes are too high – and the threat is too real – to stay silent,” Sherrill said in a statement. “I realize this is hard, but we have done hard things in pursuit of democracy since the founding of this nation,” she said in a statement. “It is time to do so again.”Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have yet to prod the president to end his campaign, a move Biden himself has categorically and repeatedly ruled out.The president’s adamance that he would stay in the race, outlined in a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday, appeared to have forestalled – for now – a flood of widespread defections, and possibly even beat back some public criticism.“Right now President Biden is the nominee, and we support the Democratic nominee that will beat Donald Trump,” Representative Pete Aguilar of California, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, said at a news conference following the House Democrats meeting at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Tuesday morning.Aguilar said it was incumbent upon the president to prove to voters that he was up to the task, “campaigning and hustling” across the country, while demonstrating his ability to square off with the press at a news conference, scheduled for Thursday, at the end of the Nato summit in Washington. Few Democrats were eager to talk to reporters, who lined the pavement, pelting lawmakers with questions, as fresh polling shows Biden falling farther behind Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee viewed by the incumbent and his party as a singularly dangerous figure to American democracy. Most ignored the questions, some held a phone to their ear, and the Pennsylvania representative Summer Lee walked with headphones on, declining to stop.“Joe Biden is, will be and should be our nominee,” the Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former DNC chair, said tersely after the meeting.Biden’s closest allies were also eager to voice their support.“We’re ridin’ with Biden,” Representative James Clyburn repeated several times as he strode toward a waiting car. The South Carolina Democrat is credited with reviving Biden’s successful 2020 campaign against his presidential predecessor Trump – and is seen as one of the few people whose opinion on the matter could sway the president.“He’s our guy,” said Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has emerged as one of Biden’s most vocal supporters in the days since the debate. “I’m with Joe,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer repeatedly said in response to any question about the president’s standing.Several prominent Democrats, including senior members of the Black and Hispanic caucuses, have joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in voicing support for the president. On Tuesday morning, Representative Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat facing a serious primary challenge, likened her fight for political survival to Biden’s and said the party must unite to defeat the influence of Trump-aligned “Maga Republicans”.Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, a member of House Democratic leadership, said she shared her constituents’ “real concerns” about Biden’s “ability to beat Donald Trump”, given that a second Trump presidency would “do irreparable damage to women and to our country”. Demanding the president “act with urgency to restore Americans’ confidence so we can win in November”, Trahan said she would do “everything in my power to help”.On Monday night Biden also held a private meeting with the Congressional Black caucus, a key support bloc representing voters who form a powerful part of Biden’s base, having fueled his surge to the Democratic nomination in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You’ve had my back, and I’ll continue to have yours,” Politico reported Biden saying in the meeting. “I need you guys. They were wrong in 2020, 2022 [when Democrats did much better than expected in midterm elections] and now. With you guys, I know we can win this thing.”Congressional Hispanic caucus leaders, Nanette Barragán of California and Adriano Espaillat of New York, said on Monday: “We stand with President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.“For the last year and a half, the Biden-Harris administration partnered with the Congressional Hispanic caucus’ initiative to take CHC on the Road. Through that initiative we have worked to empower Latino communities across the country.“We look forward to our continued partnership on the road and legislative wins to benefit the American people.”Prominent progressives have also rallied to the president’s side.“The matter is closed,” Ocasio-Cortez, told reporters outside the Capitol on Monday evening. “He had reiterated that this morning. He has reiterated that to the public. Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race, and I support him.”In her re-endorsement of Biden she pointed to a lack of Republican calls for Trump to step aside, even after he was convicted on 34 criminal charges in his New York trial arising from hush-money payments made to an adult film star.Fellow progressives Pramila Jayapal from Washington state, Jasmine Crockett from Texas, and Ilhan Omar from Minnesota have joined Ocasio-Cortez in their support for Biden.On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden should “commit to the issues that are critically important to working people across this country.“If we can do that and continue our work on student loans, secure a cease-fire [in Israel’s war against Hamas], and bring those dollars back into investing in public policy, then that’s how we win in November.“That’s what I’m committed to, and that’s what I want to make sure that we secure.” More

Joe Biden has suffered less polling damage than might have been expected after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump, while Kamala Harris, the vice-president, and the president’s most likely replacement should Democrats switch candidates, had mixed results when positioned against Trump.Those were analysts’ key takeaways from new polling nearly two weeks after the debate, as Biden continued to fend off calls to quit from within his own party, and majorities of Americans say he should drop out because of concerns over his age and health.Mark Murray, senior political editor at NBC News, noted that the 81-year-old president was trailing Trump “within the margin of error … in many national and battleground polls before [his] debate debacle” in Atlanta on 27 June.In that contest, a frail and confused Biden proved unable to counter Trump’s glut of invective and lies.In polling carried out since then, Murray noted: “Biden is trailing by one to two points more in some surveys, but the movement is still within the margin of error, and few of the results reflect a radically altered race.”That was relatively good news for the Biden campaign but there were words of caution elsewhere. Speaking to ABC News last week, Biden said experts told him “the same thing in 2020 – I can’t win, the polls show I can’t win. Before the vote, I said that’s not going to happen, we’re gonna win”.This week, Harry Enten, a senior data reporter for CNN, took a skeptical look at that claim.“Right now,” Enten said, “Donald Trump leads in an aggregate of national polls by about three percentage points. If you go back four years at this point, Joe Biden was ahead by nine points. This right now doesn’t look anything like what we saw four years ago at this point.“I then decided to take it a step further. What was Biden’s worst 2020 polling position? He was ahead by four points – basically, what he ended up beating Donald Trump by in the national popular vote.“So [the current] three-point advantage for Donald Trump is Donald Trump’s best position versus Joe Biden.”Enten also pointed out that the last Republican to lead presidential polling at this point in an election year was George W Bush, in July 2000.Bush beat Bill Clinton’s vice-president, Al Gore, in November. If Biden did choose to step aside, another Democratic vice-president, Harris, would be in pole position to step up.But polling has not been kind to Harris either, and in one survey released on Tuesday she scored less well in a notional head-to-head with Trump than did Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state who lost the presidency to Trump in 2016 and is not touted as a serious option for Democrats this time.Clinton beat Trump in the poll, from Bendixen & Amandi, a Democratic firm. Harris and Biden lost.There was better news elsewhere for Harris, with one poll putting her ahead of Trump by a point, 42% to 41%. That was countered by Emerson College, a mainstream polling operation, putting Trump ahead of Harris by six, 49% to 43%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEmerson also tested Trump against a range of other possible Biden replacements.All of them – from Bernie Sanders, senator of Vermont, to Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan – came off a clear second-best.Back in the actual race, Emerson found Trump leading Biden by 46% to 43%.Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said: “Since before the first presidential debate, former President Trump’s support remains at 46%, while President Biden’s support has decreased two percentage points.”When third-party candidates were included, the independent Robert F Kennedy Jr attracted 6% support – a worrying sign for Biden.Kimball had worse news for the president’s campaign about notionally persuadable voters.“Notable shifts away from Biden occurred among independent voters, who break for Trump 42% to 38%. Last month they broke for Biden 43% to 41%.” More

Nikki Haley is releasing the delegates she won during this year’s Republican primary so that they’re free to support Donald Trump at next week’s convention, a move that goes toward solidifying GOP support around the party’s presumptive nominee.Haley on Tuesday opted to release 97 delegates she won across a dozen primaries and caucuses earlier this year, according to her former campaign.In a statement, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador called for party unity at the upcoming Republican national convention in Milwaukee, also calling the Democratic president, Joe Biden, “not competent to serve a second term” and saying that the vice-president, Kamala Harris – whom Haley repeatedly intimated would end up as president in Biden’s stead – “would be a disaster for America”.“We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt and get our economy back on track,” Haley said. “I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.”Haley won’t be in attendance in Milwaukee next week, according to spokesperson Chaney Denton.“She was not invited, and she’s fine with that,” Denton said. “Trump deserves the convention he wants. She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”Haley was the last major Republican rival standing against Trump when she shuttered her own campaign following Trump’s Super Tuesday romp, having accused him of causing chaos and disregarding the importance of US alliances abroad.Trump, in turn, repeatedly mocked her with the nickname “Birdbrain”, though he curtailed those attacks after securing enough delegates in March to become the presumptive Republican nominee.Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Haley’s move, which was first reported by Politico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has been working to win over her supporters, whom they view as true swing voters. But Haley said in May that she would be casting her vote for Trump and left it up to the former president to work toward winning over support from her backers. More

Republican former senator James Inhofe, a climate denier who once brought a snowball to the chamber floor in a stunt attempting to disprove global warming, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19. Elected in 1994, his time as the state’s longest-serving senator was notable for his ultra-conservative positions on numerous issues, including calling the climate emergency “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.His death was announced on Tuesday in a family statement, which stated the cause was a stroke.The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican ally during Inhofe’s chairing of the Senate’s armed forces and environment committees, was among the first to pay tribute.“The people he served, a group much larger than the proud residents of the Sooner state, were better for it,” a statement from McConnell’s office said.“Jim’s diligent stewardship of massive infrastructure projects transformed life across the heartland. His relentless advocacy for American energy dominance unlocked new prosperity across the country. And his laser focus on growing and modernizing the US military strengthened the security of the entire free world.”As perhaps the most vocal Senate Republican climate denier, he called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a “Gestapo bureaucracy”, opposed efforts by Democrats to cap greenhouse gas emissions, and pursued lucrative tax incentives for domestic oil and gas producers.His widely ridiculed snowball stunt came in 2015, during a rambling speech during which he claimed climate conditions on Earth were the work of a supreme being, and attempted to discredit a Nasa report that found that 2014 was the hottest year recorded globally to date.“My point is, God’s still up there,” Inhofe said during a 2012 interview during promotion for his book focusing on global warming as “a conspiracy”.“The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is, to me, outrageous.”According to Open Secrets, between 1989 and 2022, Inhofe received campaign donations worth almost $4m from energy producers.As chair of the Senate armed services committee, Inhofe was an advocate for a large US military presence on the world stage, and supported sizable defense spending budgets to pay for it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFollowing the scandal over US service members photographed abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, Inhofe said he “was more outraged at the outrage” than the torture of the inmates.Inhofe was born on 17 November 1934 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city he served as mayor from 1978 to 1984.He was elected to the state house in 1966, aged 31, and state senate three years later.His career in Washington DC began in 1986 as a US congressman for Oklahoma’s first district, and he won re-election three times before stepping up to the Senate in 1994 when Republican incumbent David Boren became president of the University of Oklahoma.A keen aviator, Inhofe married his wife, Kay, in 1959, and they had four children. A son, Perry, died in a solo airplane crash in 2013.Reuters contributed reporting More

Donald Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025 after extreme comments from one of its leaders falls flat given the extensive Trump ties and similarities between the project’s policy ideas and the former president’s platform.On Truth Social last week, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said: “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.”Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation effort to align the conservative movement behind policies that an incoming rightwing president should undertake. The far-reaching plan, which would upend the way the federal government operates, includes a lengthy manifesto and recruitment of potential staffers for a second Trump administration.Trump’s comments show that an alignment with the project could hurt him with key voters and that he doesn’t appreciate being seen as someone who could be controlled by an outside group.But, in reality, Trump and Project 2025 share the same vision for where the US should go in a conservative presidency. His platform, dubbed Agenda 47, overlaps with Project 2025 on most major policy issues. Project 2025 often includes more details on how some key conservative goals could be carried out, offering the meat for Trumpian policy ideas often delivered as soundbites.As the Guardian has reported, Project 2025 wants to gut civil service, putting far more roles in federal government in the hands of a president as political appointees, which would erode checks and balances. Trump, for his part, tried to do the same in 2020 shortly before losing the election, an idea known as “Schedule F”.Project 2025 proposes mass deportations of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and stringent rules on migrants. So does Trump, and so does the Republican National Committee’s platform.Trump wants to get rid of the federal education department, as does Project 2025, echoing a long-held policy wish on the right. The project details how this could happen and other ways to give states more control over education, at the potential expense of students. Both Trump and the project share goals of limiting LGBTQ+ rights and diversity initiatives in schools.Trump often rails against cities run by Democrats, especially Washington DC, and talks about ways to crack down on them, renewing the idea he attempted in his first term to withhold federal funds as a way to enforce immigration policies. Project 2025 has some ideas on how he could do that more forcefully next time.Since the project was announced in 2023, people have questioned whether Trump would actually do any of it. In some areas, like abortion, the project, rooted in Christian conservatism, goes farther than Trump has indicated in recent months. But on the bulk of the issues, the project simply presents rightwing, at times far-right, consensus, albeit with much more detail than normally released to the public.Beyond the policy goals, the people behind the project are certainly in Trump’s orbit. This is not a shadowy group of people – the publicly available manifesto includes named authors, editors and contributors throughout.Roberts, the Heritage leader, has said he met with Trump several times and they were friendly. Trump gave the signature speech at a Heritage conference after Roberts took over the foundation. When Roberts was tapped for the role, Trump said he would be “so incredible” and “outstanding”.Paul Dans and Steven Groves co-edited the project, which includes chapters on federal agencies written by former Trump officials, allies or other conservative experts. Both Dans and Groves served in multiple roles in the Trump administration. Another big contributor to the project is Russ Vought, who Trump appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAll told, journalist Judd Legum documented how 31 of the 38 people who helped write or edit the project served in some manner in Trump’s administration or transition.In recent weeks, Democrats have latched on to Project 2025, putting out explainers about how the project would impact voters in hopes of showing the dangers of an incoming Trump presidency. The Biden campaign made a webpage detailing what Project 2025 proposes, and campaign social media accounts have repeatedly been drawing attention to its goals. Actress Taraji P Henson gave the project’s impacts a further boost by warning about it at the BET awards.Trump’s campaign has repeatedly tried to move away from the project, telling the media he isn’t privy to it. And Project 2025 and Roberts have also repeatedly said their work isn’t tailored for any specific person. The Trump campaign told Semafor recently that it wouldn’t be taking references for future political appointees from the project.In a statement after Trump’s effort at distancing, a project spokesperson again noted how they have repeatedly said they aren’t speaking for any specific candidate and that “it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.” More

It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.But anyone following mainstream media coverage could not miss knowing about the latest polls on whether Biden should step aside, how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head competition with Trump, and which members of Congress have called for a new Democratic nominee.And those are just the news stories – not to mention the nonstop punditry on cable news and the near takeover of the opinion sections of major publications.Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same.Erik Wemple of the Washington Post queried the Times about any pushback, specifically from the White House. “Have you gotten any complaints about age coverage since the debate?” Wemple asked top Times editor Joe Kahn, who recently praised the paper’s coverage in a note to staff. Kahn said no.He also dismissed as “factually wrong” the criticism from former Times editor Jill Abramson that the Times “failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable” because reporters didn’t break through what she described as an enormous White House cover-up of Biden’s mental and physical decline. Kahn also brushed off criticism on social media from the left and the right.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Monday, the Times sent out as “breaking news” a story whose headline announced that an expert in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times in a recent eight-month period; much further down in the story we learn that the same doctor also had made 10 visits to the White House in 2012, and that he has supported the White House medical team for more than a dozen years. But many people never get past the headline.“I’m starting to think the Times will see it as a ‘win’ if Biden drops out,” one media observer told me this week.Of course, the problem certainly is not just the New York Times, despite its agenda-setting influence. It’s also TV news, both network and cable. And, to a lesser extent, it’s other major US publications.Where does that leave us?All of these disturbing elements – the Democrats’ dilemma, the media’s failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump – could add up to one likelihood in November.A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

There’s one thing Donald Trump knows how to do well: maximizing suspense in an elimination contest and treating contestants with exquisite cruelty. Competing for a spot on his presidential ticket is as close as politics can get to The Apprentice, the show that fooled millions of Americans into thinking that Trump was a successful businessman.A number of Republican candidates for running mate, from the endlessly self-humiliating Tim Scott to the nondescript Doug Burgum, are vying for what surely looks like a political suicide mission: they must know that Trump betrays everyone eventually, yet they seem to think that their fate as a faithful no 2 will be different. Not all aspirants are equally threatening to American democracy, though. The top prize not just for sycophancy, but for clear and present authoritarian danger must go to the man widely considered the “veepstakes” frontrunner, JD Vance.The junior senator from Ohio has a massive advantage that makes him more similar to Trump than any other contender: a presence in popular culture, created by Hillbilly Elegy, the moving memoir to which both conservatives and liberals dumbfounded by Trump’s triumph turned eagerly to understand why the “left behind” were opting for rightwing populism.People think they know Vance, because they know his narrative: growing up in poverty in Appalachia and making it to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley, only to then turn into political champion of blue-collar folks. Josh Hawley et tutti quanti might have more impressive credentials (Yale and Stanford), but only Vance has spawned a Netflix series. Why opt for a cold rightwing technocrat when you can have the rock star of “national conservatism”?Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals. Mobilizing voters is less about programs, let alone a real legislative record (Vance has none; his initiatives like making English the official language of the US are just virtue signaling for conservative culture warriors). Rather, it’s to generate political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood.The point for the rightist trolls is not that Democrats have all the wrong goals, but that they are hypocrites who say one thing and do another. Vance faults Trump’s opponents for pontificating about the rule of law, but in practice only caring about power – an update of the “limousine liberal” slogan for an age of rightwing autocracy.Few others would try to impress readers of the New York Times with an invocation of the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, who, in the 1930s, claimed that liberals were either weaklings or prone to betray their own ideals. Schmitt is an obscure reference to most outside the hallowed halls of Yale Law School, but a signal to cognoscenti that Vance is all in on antiliberalism.As with so many self-declared rightwing champions of the working class, economics isn’t ultimately where the action is; much more than factory floors, “elite campuses” feature in an increasingly feverish Maga imagination. Vance has declared universities the enemy and asserted that “the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with leftwing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary”. Supposedly the lesson is not to “eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching”.The reality is that Orbán has simply shut down entire academic subjects which conservatives don’t like – no more gender studies – and handed over Hungarian universities to cronies; he also managed to chase out the country’s best school, Central European University. When pressed, Vance re-describes his Orbánism as giving taxpayers a say in how their dollars are spent in education – a startling admission that politicians should be in control, and of course a blatant contradiction with the free speech pieties Vance’s allies in Congress have become so good at weaponizing. How the hillbillies of Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy will benefit from removing Judith Butler from reading lists at Harvard is anyone’s guess.Like so many faux populists, Vance talks the anti-elite talk, but walks the walk of what observers rightly call plutocratic populism. Slapping ever more tariffs on Chinese imports, promoting the fossil fuel industry in the name of helping the “heartland”, deporting people – whether these policies actually happen is open to question. But not a word is said about the promises Trump is actually most likely to implement (since no court will stop him): further cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations; deregulating such that companies can dump even more toxic waste, including into the pristine parts of what Trumpists like to call “real America”.Of course, the game of “no, you’re the real hypocrite!” isn’t much of a political strategy against aspiring authoritarians. But it is significant that a very intelligent man who also likes to describe himself as highly “self-aware” appears willing to change beliefs at any time for the sake of amassing power. Having called Trump an “idiot”, a “moral disaster” and a potential “American Hitler”, Vance now fawns over Trump as a man of depth and complexity with merely minor issues of style.Maybe he genuinely changed his mind: after all, the point of a free society is also that we can all learn from our mistakes. But praising a man who evidently relishes cruelty as a paragon of “compassion” beggars belief. Of course, despite all the sycophancy, Trump might pick someone else: the very fact that Vance can seem a bit of a “mini-me” of the aspiring autocrat might turn the political showmaster off.
Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

Joe Biden’s position among congressional Democrats eroded further on Monday when an influential House committee member lent his voice to calls for him to end his presidential campaign following last month’s spectacular debate failure.Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee in the House of Representatives, issued the plea just hours after the president emphatically rejected calls for him to step aside in a letter to the party’s congressional contingent.Biden had also expressed determination to continue in an unscheduled phone interview with the MSNBC politics show Morning Joe.But in a clear sign such messaging may be falling on deaf ears, Smith suggested that sentiments of voters that he was too old to be an effective candidate and then president for the next four years was clear from opinion polls.“The president’s performance in the debate was alarming to watch and the American people have made it clear they no longer see him as a credible candidate to serve four more years as president,” Smith, a congressman from Washington state, said in a statement.“Since the debate, the president has not seriously addressed these concerns.”He said the president should stand aside “as soon as possible”, though he qualified it by saying he would support him “unreservedly” if he insisted on remaining as the nominee.But his statement’s effect was driven home in a later interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the two moderators in the 27 June debate with Donald Trump in which Biden’s hoarse-voiced and frequently confused performance and demeanour plunged his re-election campaign into existential crisis.“Personally, I think Kamala Harris [the vice-president] would be a much better, stronger candidate,” Smith told Tapper, adding that Biden was “not the best person to carry the Democratic message”.He implicitly criticised Democratic colleagues – and Biden campaign staff – who were calling for the party to put the debate behind them as “one bad night”.“A lot of Democrats are saying: ‘Well let’s move on, let’s stop talking about it’,” said Smith. “We are not the ones who are bringing it up. The country is bringing it up. And the campaign strategy of ‘be quiet and fall in line and let’s ignore it’ simply isn’t working.”Smith joins the ranks of five Democratic members of Congress who publicly demanded Biden’s withdrawal last week. He was among at least four others who spoke in favour of it privately in a virtual meeting on Sunday with Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House.Having the ranking member of the armed services committee join the siren voices urging his withdrawal may be particularly damaging to Biden’s cause in a week when he is to host a summit of Nato leaders in Washington.The alliance’s heads of government and state will gather in the US capital on Tuesday for an event that is likely to increase the international spotlight on Biden, who is due to give a rare press conference on its final day on Thursday, an occasion likely to be scrutinised for further misstatements and evidence of declining cognitive faculties. Unscripted appearances have been rare in Biden’s three-and-a-half-year tenure.In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last Friday, Biden stressed his role in expanding Nato’s membership and leading its military aid programme to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion as a key element of his qualification to continue as his party’s nominee and be re-elected as president.In the surprise interview with Morning Joe on Monday, Biden put the blame for his current predicament on Democratic elites, an undefined designation which he may now expand to include Smith. More