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      Black swing voters in Georgia aren’t swayed by the ‘Trump okey-doke’ – and then there’s Biden

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      Inside a barbershop in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead neighborhood, eight Black men gathered to talk politics on the day before the presidential debate. Most were business owners around town, social media stars and notable conservatives.All but one.Mark Boyd, whose personal politics might best be described as insubordinate, somehow found himself next to two Republican representatives taking a phone call from Donald Trump.“When I came in and saw the doggone sign ‘Blacks for Trump’ or whatever, I’m like: ‘Well, that’s the okey-doke. But I’m going to get their ass,” Boyd said.In the race between Herschel Walker and the Rev Raphael Warnock for a Georgia senate seat two years ago, Boyd cast a blank ballot. He expects to do the same thing in the presidential race this year.The former presidentcalled in to the barbershop the day before the debate, talking about ending taxes on tips and rolling back regulations. Boyd got to ask him a question.“In the Black community, it’s been made a big deal about how you have been kind of railroaded here, as far as your court cases go,” Boyd asked Trump. “If you can acknowledge that you’re getting support from Black people because of this, then we can kind of acknowledge that we have been getting railroaded. So, my question is … what can we do about those Fani Willises and Alvin Braggs that are right now sending some poor Black person to jail for a crime?”It’s an interesting, nuanced question – better, perhaps, than many of the questions put to Trump by debate moderators a day later. Does Trump’s legal ordeal change the way he looks at how the criminal justice system treats common Black defendants?Trump dodged the question. “It’s weaponization, and it comes out of the White House,” Trump said, “even when it’s city and state, it comes out of the White House in order to attack a political opponent. But since that happened, the Black support I think, my representatives will tell you this, the Black support has gone through the roof. And I guess they equated to problems that they’ve had.”He then went on to talk about how his mugshot was more popular than Frank Sinatra’s or Elvis Presley’s.‘If these were white girls, it would be different’Boyd, a Marine Corps veteran who built airplanes for Lockheed, is a second amendment partisan who rejects any candidate advocating for gun control. But he’s also deeply concerned about racial justice, and can’t make common cause with politicians who aren’t. Boyd founded Helping Empower Youth to address a cultural phenomenon in Atlanta and one of the city’s most contentious problems: Black teens risking their safety by hawking water on street corners and at events. His question to Trump goes to the heart of his work, he said.“He pulled that Trump okey-doke on me,” Boyd said. “I learned about the Trump okey-doke firsthand.”Boyd’s work with kids focuses on training, professionalism and ultimately harnessing their entrepreneurial energy into a legitimate business. It’s a fundamentally conservative answer to a Black social problem, and one that conservatives would do well to listen to, Boyd said. “They’re always telling us we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” Boyd said. “I believe in that basic idea of capitalism.”The sight of Black boys risking conflict on the street, arrest or their very bodies just to make a buck has caused Atlanta’s predominantly liberal, Black political class to call the city’s moral and economic priorities into question. But conservatives – particularly white conservatives – have been unwilling to acknowledge that race and gender are central to the problems of Black empowerment, Boyd said. Young Black men don’t tend to have equal access to opportunity, and those with arrest records are nigh unemployable in traditional jobs.“If these were little blue-eyed blond white girls with lemonade stands, it would be seen as something totally different,” Boyd said.Even as Boyd was talking through this in the barbershop, two teenagers in 100-degree heat were selling water to drivers across the street. One of the cops working the event wandered over to shoo them away. The kids weren’t happy.They were expecting a $150 day. On a good day, they’ll clear $400 or $500, they said. “I would rather not have to ask my momma for nothing. I’d rather give her money,” one 17-year-old said. He’s been locked up a couple of times in the process of selling water, but there are no better options, he said: “I’ll make more money out here than a real job.”#BlackJob goes viralDebate moderator Dana Bash asked Joe Biden and Trump about their approach to Black economic issues during the debate Thursday.The president said he doesn’t blame Black voters for being disappointed, noting the effects of inflation. But he cited low unemployment figures for Black workers and a reduction in costs for childcare, and he touched on a topic that has been roiling Atlanta and other cities: the encroachment of corporate landlords on single-family neighborhoods and increasing consolidation in the housing market. “The fact of the matter is more small Black businesses have been started in any time in history,” Biden answered.Despite what even Biden has acknowledged was a poor debate performance, Trump’s response struck a chord with Black voters for all the wrong reasons.“As sure as you’re sitting there, the fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border,” Trump said. “They’re taking Black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”The term #BlackJob began to go viral on Twitter even before the debate ended, as incredulous watchers derided the idea of a racially coded job and considered what Trump must think of Black workers if they can easily be replaced by an undocumented laborer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The ‘Black job’ has actually not been defined in America, which is why DEI initiatives which are now being rolled back were put into place to begin with,” said Bem Joiner, an Atlanta cultural critic and creative consultant who expected the debate to generate memes. “#BlackJobs is the cultural moment that came from the debate.”Losing GeorgiaMuch has been made of the purported gains Trump has made with Black voters in polls. Those polls are questionable: a collapse in response rates has been coupled with tiny sample sizes and statistically illiterate reporting to present the impression of a meaningful shift.But small gains will matter in a state like Georgia, where about 30% of the electorate is Black. Black men have long been more likely to vote for Republican candidates than Black women are. They are also far less likely to vote, noted Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project.In Georgia, 584,228 Black men who are currently registered voted in the 2020 presidential election, Ali said. For Black women, the figure is 931,232. Nationally, Biden overall won 48% of men and 55% of women, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Biden won 87% of Black men and 95% of Black women.Conservatives tend to overperform that mark a bit in Georgia, because the Black electorate here is somewhat more conservative than it is nationwide. But all else being equal, if Trump were to win one in five Black men in Georgia instead of one in six – even if figures for Black women remained in the same low single digits of support – that would represent a gain of about 25,000 votes, more than twice the margin of his 2020 defeat.Losing Georgia because Black voters underperform is a nightmare scenario for progressives here. The New Georgia Project’s political action committee hosted a debate watch party Thursday at the Prime Cigar bar on Peachtree Street in Atlanta as part of a campaign of deliberate outreach to Black men. The room filled with smoke, political candidates and party officials, mostly Democrats, mostly there to cheer for tBiden.Then Biden began to speak, and bit by bit people started to pay less attention to the giant screen above the bar and more to what they were drinking.“I don’t think [Trump] did anything special. He kind of showed up,” said Domonic Brown, a progressive voter who watched the debate at the bar. “Joe Biden, in my opinion, made it easier for him. … I think that’s one of the scarier things about Joe Biden or Donald Trump as our only options. I definitely see why the Democratic party is in kind of disarray right now. But it’s kind of like, how could you guys just not see this coming?”Javarius Gay is the swing voter both Biden and Trump wanted to reach Thursday night. Gay owns Prime Cigar and several other bars in town – a Black business owner in a city that presents itself as a land of opportunity for Black entrepreneurs.Since the night of the debate, Rocky Jones, owner of Rocky’s Barbershop where Trump called in, says he was misled into hosting the event, which he thought would be a forum for Black businesses.“I thought it was going to be something real private,” Jones said to the local news station 11Alive. “I’m thinking about Black businesses in Atlanta, small Black businesses in Atlanta. And I’m like: ‘OK, so when are we gonna start talking about this?’”Jones has seen backlash from angry members of the community, and customers to his shop have dwindled. But he hopes the controversy will pass, emphasizing that the barbershop is not a place for politics.“I have no involvement in politics. We don’t even talk politics in my barbershop. It’s all sports. The World Cup, soccer, baseball, basketball – politics is not what I do. I commend everybody to vote, but that’s your business. You know, I don’t tell you what to do,” Jones added.Though Gay’s cigar bar hosted a debate watch party for a progressive political action committee that night, Gay himself was undecided.“I’m open. I didn’t have my mind already made up,” he said a few minutes after the debate ended. Gay generally votes for Democrats. But after the debate, he’s still thinking about it. Gay was looking for substance on issues close to his interests: support for Black businesses, small business in general and homelessness.“I was looking for Biden to be more natural with his arguments and his key points. He was all over the place a few times,” Gay said. “I don’t feel like his team prepared enough to fully win this debate. I honestly think he should have waited, should have never taken the stage, and come back later.” More

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      Should Democrats stay the course or replace Biden? | Robert Reich

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      If anyone were to doubt the menace of Donald Trump, they had only to watch his performance in Thursday night’s debate.His bullying lies were not just lies – they were frightening opposites of the truth, uttered with the vigor and certainty of someone who has now mastered the dark art of demagoguery.Joe Biden had good and often detailed answers to the questions put to him, but the debate was never going to be about the president’s answers. It was always going to be about his age.Sadly, Biden’s stiff, halting, withered delivery, coupled with his slack-jawed expression and frozen stare when not trying to form sentences, made him seem not just old but on the decline.In the wake of Biden’s performance, many Democrats are in a panic. Some believe it’s urgently necessary to replace Biden with another candidate.But there are many problems with trying to replace Biden at this point.For one, Biden would have to willingly give up the nomination in order to release delegates already pledged to him.I have a hard time seeing how this could happen, unless Jill Biden, along with others of his closest and most trusted advisors, and Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries, all teamed up and told him he must exit the race.A second problem is the public doesn’t know any other Democrat nearly as well as they know Biden, and it would be difficult to introduce someone to the public at this late date without them being defined by Donald Trump, the Republicans and Fox News in the worst possible ways.The only people I can think of as possible nominees are Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom and (my personal favorite) Sherrod Brown.Out of all of them, Harris is obviously best known because she’s vice-president, but if the criterion is who can beat the former president, it’s far from clear she’s the best choice. Yet, if it’s not Biden, a failure to nominate Harris might upset lots of Black people, women and younger voters.The Democratic national convention is only seven weeks away. An open convention, in which potential candidates duke it out, would be a chaotic mess (anyone remember 1968?), particularly in comparison to what’s expected to be Trump’s seamless and worshipful inauguration by the Republicans.There are also not-so-pesky details about money and organization. All of the money now lodged in Super PACs dedicated to Biden would have to be redirected. All of the national, state and local party machinery, advertising, and internet capacity now designed to get out the vote for Biden would have to be totally redesigned.I’m not saying it’s impossible to replace Biden at this juncture, only that it would require extraordinary deftness and collaboration on the part of the leaders of the Democratic party, who are not always known for their deftness and collaboration.I give it ten days. By then, we’ll know whether Biden will be replaced.In the meantime, you can bet that his campaign, his advisors and Jill Biden are doing whatever damage control they can – which centers on showing Biden to be vigorous, energetic and on top of his game.On Friday, at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cheering supporters, Biden nearly shouted:
      I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.
      Watch the clip, if you can. In it, Biden shows the kind of energy and vitality he lacked in the debate. These are not the words or actions of a candidate contemplating an emergency exit from the race.But nor does Biden’s behavior in Raleigh explain what the hell happened in the debate. And frankly that’s what troubles me more than almost anything else.Biden is smart. He can show energy and vitality, as he did in Raleigh and at the State of the Union.But he can also reveal something else, as he did at the debate – a man who in many respects seems older than 81 years, who has trouble walking and speaking, and who, at least in those times and moments, doesn’t seem to stand much chance of being re-elected president of the United States – even when his opponent is a twice-impeached convicted felon, pathological liar and dangerous sociopath.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      American media heavyweights tell president: it’s time to quit

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      Amid a howling chorus of derision over Joe Biden’s substandard debate performance against Donald Trump, one voice seemed to resonate more powerfully than others.At 6.15pm on Friday – roughly 19 hours after the two presidential candidates left the stage in Atlanta the previous evening – the verdict of the New York Times’s editorial board dropped online to the newspaper’s subscribers.The judgment was devastating. The US president, the board forcefully argued, had presented such an alarming spectacle of aged frailty that the best thing he could now do for the country he had served for more than half a century was to withdraw from the race and allow his Democratic party to choose another candidate.The newspaper long venerated as “the old Grey Lady” of American journalism pointed out that Biden had presented himself as the figure best positioned to defeat the threat to democracy represented by Trump – and acknowledged that he had successfully done so in 2020.“But the greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” it intoned.“As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency … It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.”The judgment evoked memories of February 1968, when Walter Cronkite, the magisterial CBS anchor, used his television platform to openly question the US military commitment in Vietnam after the Vietcong launched an offensive that led to guerrillas storming the US embassy compound in Saigon. Watching, President Lyndon Johnson – another Democratic president, to whom Biden is sometimes compared – reportedly said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”Just over a month later, Johnson withdrew from that year’s presidential election, announcing he would not seek a second term.Times have changed since 1968; media has become more fragmented, with newspapers and, arguably, television less influential. Biden’s response to the editorial – if he has even seen it – is unknown.Yet the article echoed equally eviscerating critiques from other weighty and normally friendly sources – some of them so respected by the president that their views cannot have failed to wound.Similarly pleading with Biden to stand down were his favourite columnist, Tom Friedman – also of the New York Times – who wrote that he had wept as he watched the debate from Lisbon.Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe – a programme the president is known to revere – had an identical message, all the while saying that he “loved” Biden and calling his presidency “an unqualified success”.The highly respected, and liberal, website the Atlantic published six articles on Friday, all arguing for an end to the Biden candidacy.View image in fullscreenThe media cacophony reflected shock with the persona that Biden, 81, presented in the debate. Rather than allay nagging voter concerns that he was too old to run – his campaign’s goal when it pressed for the event – he seemed to confirm them with his octogenarian mien. He looked infirm and sometimes stuck for words, in contrast to Trump, who – although just three years younger – presented a picture of fluent, if mendacious, loquacity.Biden came out swinging on Friday, appearing much more upbeat at an election rally in North Carolina, admitting that “I don’t debate as well as I used to” but telling a cheering crowd: “I know how to tell the truth … I know how to do this job. I know – like millions of Americans know – when you get knocked down, you get back up.”Messages of public support poured in from Democratic luminaries including Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, vice-president Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California.Yet the defiantly positive messaging is unlikely to soothe fears that reach into the upper echelons of the Democratic party and even into the White House itself.Several officials in the presidential West Wing were so demoralised by Thursday’s debate that they opted to work from home the following day, Politico reported, expressing their fears on text threads.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“We were all a bit nervous about the debate, but no one thought it was going to be as bad as it was,” one West Wing staffer was quoted as saying. “The vibes are really bad. People feel demoralised.”The acid test may be whether demoralisation extends to Democratic donors – a sensitive area, given that Trump has recently overtaken Biden in campaign fundraising after lagging for months.The early signs are hardly encouraging. The debate triggered waves of panic among Democratic mega-donors in Silicon Valley, where some have emailed and texted each other about how to persuade Jill Biden, the first lady, into talking her husband out of running.One tech-industry donor who had planned to host Biden in a fundraiser reportedly cancelled the event because of the debate.The negative drumbeat has focused minds on alternatives if Biden does step aside. Two frontrunners would be Harris and Newsom, yet both have vulnerabilities. Harris, who would be the first woman of colour to be a main party’s presidential nominee, is plagued by low approval ratings barely higher than Biden’s, while Newsom’s term as governor of California has drawn criticism over high taxes, surging homelessness and rising housing costs.Other likely names are Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, both leaders of key swing states the Democrats need to win to keep the White House. Another possibility – the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker– a billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel chain fortune – has won attention for his acerbic attacks on Trump.But with Biden apparently determined to stand his ground, it remains to be seen if the current discontent is strong enough to transform such speculation into reality.For that to happen, drastic action may be required, such as an eminent group of Democratic party elders approaching the president and persuading him to withdraw.Alternatively, one or more credible candidates could declare a public intention to challenge him – potentially throwing the power of nomination to delegates at the Democratic national convention in August, an event that was expected to rubber-stamp Biden’s candidacy.Either scenario would take political will, yet neither is far-fetched, according to seasoned commentators.If either come to pass, Biden may end up reflecting that the New York Times’s withering verdict was indeed his Walter Cronkite moment. 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      If Biden drops out now, how do the Democrats choose a new candidate?

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      Joe Biden gave no indication on Friday that he planned to drop out of the presidential race, even as his widely panned performance in his debate against Donald Trump attracted censure from many fellow Democrats.Some commentators had called for replacing Biden as the nominee even before the debate, largely citing the president’s age as a potentially decisive vulnerability in the election. (Biden is 81, and Trump is 78.)Biden’s dismal showing on Thursday transformed those conversations from scattered whispers to a full-blown shouting match, with many in Washington openly speculating about who might step in for the president.With all of the presidential primaries over, the process for replacing Biden would be complicated and politically volatile. Biden has already won far more delegates than he needs to secure the nomination, and the Democratic national convention, which will bring a formal end to the primary process, is less than two months away.Here’s everything you need to know about the process for replacing Biden:Have Democrats already officially named Biden as their nominee?No. Democrats will convene in Chicago from 19 to 22 August to formally select their presidential nominee, so Biden is still considered the presumptive nominee at this stage. The Democratic national committee plans to virtually nominate Biden before the convention to meet an Ohio ballot deadline of 7 August, but no date has been announced for that vote.However, Biden has amassed 3,894 pledged delegates through his victories in state primaries, so he already has more than enough delegates to secure the nomination.What will happen to Biden’s pledged delegates if he withdraws from the presidential race?If Biden drops out of the race, his pledged delegates would arrive in Chicago uncommitted to any specific candidate, which would likely kick off a frenzied fight to win their support.“Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time,” Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic national committee rules committee and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in January.Democrats have not seen a floor fight for the presidential nomination since 1968, when their convention was coincidentally (and infamously) held in Chicago. In a potentially eerie parallel to 2024, then president Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election just months before the election. The assassination of Robert F Kennedy left Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as the main opponent against Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam war candidate.The fraught nominating process was overshadowed by the violence on Chicago’s streets, as tens of thousands of police officers and national guard officers confronted anti-war protesters. In the end, Humphrey won the nomination – even though he had never appeared on a state primary ballot – but he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.Would Kamala Harris automatically win all of Biden’s delegates if he dropped out?No. Because the delegates would be uncommitted if Biden withdraws, they could theoretically vote on the floor for any candidate. In the hours after the debate on Thursday, a number of names – including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer – were floated as possible replacements for Biden.But Harris would probably go to the convention as a strong favorite for the nomination. As the vice-president, she has the largest national profile of any potential candidate, and Biden’s pledged delegates are mostly party loyalists who would be looking for the safest possible choice if he stepped aside.How would a nominee be chosen on the floor?On the first ballot, a winning nominee would need to secure the votes of a majority of Democrats’ roughly 4,000 pledged delegates. If no candidate won a majority on the first ballot, Democrats would continue on to a second ballot, in which so-called “superdelegates” would have an opportunity to vote.Superdelegates are mostly senior Democratic party leaders, and they would go to the convention not pledged to any candidate. With the roughly 700 superdelegates added to the voting pool, the winning candidate would then need to secure about 2,300 delegates to capture the nomination.Although superdelegates would make up a relatively small share of the delegate pool, they could play an important role in choosing the nominee. Their support for a particular candidate would speak volumes and could sway fellow delegates.How likely is any of this to occur?It appears highly unlikely at this point. Biden and his top advisers insist he will continue on to November, and Democrats do not have a mechanism to force Biden out of the race. Unless Biden undergoes a radical change in thinking or suffers a major health setback in the next few months, he will be the Democrats’ nominee in November. More

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      Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?

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      Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.” More

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      The stakes of the US election are higher than ever | Sidney Blumenthal

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      I saw western civilization pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned.“Putin is waiting for Trump,” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has said. When the presidential debate turned to foreign policy, the former president made an apparently startling revelation. He implied that he had a previously unknown conversation with Vladimir Putin before his invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in late 2021 or early 2022. According to Trump, Russia’s president discussed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my – this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream,” he said. That dream, of course, is the conquest of Ukraine as the restoration of the major piece of the collapsed Soviet Union after the cold war.Biden, overprepared to hit his voluminous talking points, was not listening closely. He did not pick up on Trump’s astounding claim: “I talked to him about it, his dream.” The president’s response was accurate and so concise his words jumbled: “And listen to what he said when he went in, he was going to take Kyiv in five days, remember? Because it’s part of the old Soviet Union. That’s what he wanted, to re-establish Kyiv. And he in fact didn’t do it at all. He didn’t – wasn’t able to get it done. And they’ve lost over – they’ve lost thousands and thousands of troops, 500,000 troops.” Abruptly, Biden ended.He had the time, but did not explain the meaning. He bollixed what he wanted to say about Putin’s effort to occupy Ukraine into “re-establish Kyiv”. Biden did not draw any conclusion. He had not listened closely to Trump’s winding patter. He didn’t sift through the word salad to find the nugget of gold. He did not expose Trump’s worship of Putin, whom he “idolizes”, according to Fiona Hill, the Russia expert formerly on Trump’s national security council, who also wrote that Trump believes Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. Trump shares Putin’s “dream”, to make Russia great again. He aspires to be an unfettered strongman like Putin, dictator “for day one”. That is why, as Bolton says: “Putin is waiting for Trump.” Trump’s campaign is the essential linchpin of Putin’s strategy. Without Trump, he faces endless winter. Trump is his indispensable useful idiot.Biden’s whiff on this or that exchange was more than isolated missed opportunities. His painful performance showed him trying to spew out his numbers, often missing the main point. He often countered without making any argument. It seemed like a PowerPoint presentation missing the closing slides. At times, he lost the plot. “We beat Medicare,” he said confusedly. His acuity and agility were evanescent.Yet sometimes Biden hit his mark. He tore into Trump’s low character, “the morals of an alley cat”, though unfair to cats who don’t choose to be in the alley. He called out Trump’s lies, though accounting for them would have consumed every second in every response.But Biden’s physical appearance was more than a problem of optics. His stiffness was accompanied by a frequently vacant look. He was not the Biden of less than four months ago with his firm and adroit handling of his State of the Union address in which he spontaneously talked down his Maga hecklers.Biden cannot hope for a recovery through a future performance. There is not another State of the Union. The acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention will be read through a teleprompter. There will almost certainly not be a second debate with Trump. What’s in it for Trump? He has already banked what he needs, a gift beyond his wildest dreams, not to mention Putin’s. Trump will not lend Biden a second chance. And would Biden’s handlers risk it?Biden’s halting image will cast a shadow over any message he wishes to make. He will not be able to deflect the fake videos because of the real debate. He will not be able to have his aides explain his capability as chief executive without doubt falling on him.Biden’s age had been set aside until the debate. His accomplishments are the result of his political skill, experience and knowledge. For the Democratic party, Biden was a political necessity. The center held around him. His renewed candidacy prevented a tumultuous free-for-all. But his ability to run on the platform he has built through three and a half years has been severely undermined in 90 minutes.Biden has run for more reasons than his grasp of the state of the party. He understands the state of the world. Biden has held together the center of the western alliance. He decided he would run again because he was the crucial leader at an unprecedented, perilous time. His premise that he must win the presidency to sustain the west against the overarching menace of Putin and his sidekick Trump has been the fundamental reason for his second candidacy.Post-debate, Biden soldiers on. He flies to fundraisers. He campaigns. He is overcoming another obstacle in the pattern of his story, his self-image up from underestimation. But if Biden is not politically viable, the stakes not only remain but are even higher than ever. The cause is always greater than the man.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      New York Times first US paper urging Biden to drop out of presidential race

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      The New York Times’s editorial board has called on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.Biden’s poor performance sent leading Democrats into a panic on Thursday night, after the US president appeared shaky and at points struggled to finish sentences. It amplified fears about his age and fitness for office that it had been hoped the debate would allay.Shortly after the debate, senior Democrats including the vice-president, Kamala Harris, acknowledged Biden’s “slow start” but emphasised his “strong finish”, while others privately suggested he should step aside.In a move that will add further pressure on the White House, the New York Times editorial board said in an opinion piece on Friday that “the greatest public service [Biden] can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election”.“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant,” it said. “He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to [Trump’s] provocations. He struggled to hold [Trump] accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”“Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” it added.Earlier in the day, the leading New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman called on his “friend” to step aside. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” he said.The former US president Barack Obama defended Biden in a social media post on Friday. “Bad debate nights happen,” he said. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”In a campaign stop in North Carolina on Friday, Biden appeared far more energised and coherent. He acknowledged his widely panned debate performance.“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”The New York Times has become the first US newspaper to call on Biden to drop out of the race, but other influential publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Atlantic have published op-eds by their leading columnists calling on Biden to step aside. Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said allowing Biden to continue “looks like elder abuse”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2020, the New York Times jointly endorsed Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary.In response to the NYT’s call, the Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told CNN: “The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement, it turned out pretty well for him.”Biden and Trump are neck and neck in national polls for November. A New York Times/Sienna poll published this week before the debate found that Trump had a three-point lead over Biden. In the “battleground” states that are key to winning the White House, Trump is ahead in six out of seven, according to RealClearPolling. More