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      RFK Jr claims Republicans, Democrats and CNN conspired to exclude him from debate

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent US presidential candidate polling at about 8%, won’t be at tonight’s Biden-Trump TV smackdown in Atlanta. But he’s not taking the diss quietly, and has accused debate host CNN of colluding with the major party campaigns to exclude him.In an email statement on Wednesday, the Kennedy campaign claimed that 71% of Americans want to see him on the debate stage, and in an act of counter-programming he plans an alternative “real” debate on Elon’s Musk’s Twitter/X platform at the same time.“The American people want leaders who trust them to make up their own minds,” Kennedy said. “Instead, our last two presidents are restricting voters from choosing anyone other than themselves. Presidents Biden and Trump have sucked trillions of dollars from the pockets of working people and Americans deserve to hear from the one candidate who can hold them to account.”Kennedy’s anger and frustration at what he describes as his exclusion despite six qualifying polls and confirmed ballot access in five states – with Democratic legal challenges to his inclusion in five more, including one in New Jersey under the state’s “sore loser law” – comes as Democrats accuse him of being a political stooge for Republicans.“RFK Jr was recruited to run by Maga Republicans, is being propped up by Trump’s largest donor, and his own campaign staff has said their goal is to hurt President Biden,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CBS News.Corridoni said Kennedy had “no real grassroots support, no pathway to 270 electoral votes, and his campaign is resorting to a pattern of deception and shortcuts to circumvent state rules for independent candidate ballot access”.Biden supporters worry Kennedy’s famous name and his history of environmental advocacy could sway voters from the left. His family members are largely against his candidacy, which they have made clear in public statements and by visiting the Biden White House en masse on St Patrick’s Day in March.But Republicans also have not welcomed his quixotic intervention in a tight race that could serve to siphon off vital votes from both candidates. Donald Trump has described him as “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat, including West and Stein,” referring to third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein.But Kennedy, who filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in April claiming the Biden and Trump campaigns and CNN violated federal campaign laws in scheduling the debate, has predicted Trump will win the 90-minute debate, telling Piers Morgan this week that the ex-president could in fact “win a prize for the greatest debater in modern American history, probably since Lincoln-Douglas”.Many of Kennedy’s supporters come from among the “double-haters” – polls show that about one in four voters don’t like either Biden or Trump – including a growing percentage of US adults who identify as independents, from both sides of the political spectrum, and from what has been described as “wellness world elites” attracted to conspiracy-minded views on health and medicine, and environmentalists.Christy Jones, 54, a holistic health and mindfulness coach from Glendora, California, told the Associated Press that she worries people won’t know Kennedy is running if he’s not on the debate stage. “He could still win if people choose to be courageous,” she said. “If all the people that actually want change voted for him he would be in. People are asking for change.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSujat Desai, a 20-year-old student from California, told the AP that Kennedy’s absence from the debate is a major hurdle for him to overcome. “I think it’s a pretty lethal blow not to be in this debate, and it would be detrimental not to be in the next.”On Thursday, TV doctor Dr Phil released a preview of an interview with Kennedy also scheduled to be broadcast tonight in which Kennedy said he’d invited Biden to co-fund a poll in October “and whoever is least likely to beat Donald Trump will withdraw”.But this surge of debate-surrounding publicity may only serve to obscure another reality that Kennedy, after months of campaigning and fundraising, is approaching a lull in events, and he lacks money for a television commercials while he fights for ballot access.A Kennedy campaign spokesperson said the candidate “has a full schedule for July with many public events, mostly on the east coast and including one big rally” that would be announced next week. More

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      US presidential debates: the 10 most memorable moments

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on Thursday for the first time this election cycle, and it holds the potential for some history-making moments.Debates can inform voters on both the issues and temperaments of the candidates, potentially swaying an undecided voter toward one candidate’s direction. They can also make for good TV, creating soundbites that resonate for decades to come.From the candidates’ physical appearances to gaffes to planned attacks to off-the-cuff retorts, here are some memorable moments from US presidential debate history.View image in fullscreen1960: The first and possibly still the most famous televised American presidential debate pitted the telegenic Democrat John F Kennedy against Republican vice-president Richard Nixon, creating defining moments for both presidential debates and television itself. The clammy Nixon was recovering from illness and had a five o’clock shadow but refused makeup. TV viewers are said to have judged Kennedy the winner, whereas radio listeners gave it to Nixon or called it a draw. Kennedy won a narrow election. He was assassinated three years later.View image in fullscreen1976: Republican president Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after the Watergate scandal, had been closing the gap on Democrat Jimmy Carter but then remarked: “There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” It was seen as a critical gaffe in the context of the cold war and Carter went on to win the election.View image in fullscreen1980: Carter accused Republican Ronald Reagan of planning to cut Medicare healthcare funding for the elderly. Reagan, who had complained that Carter was misrepresenting his positions on numerous issues, said with a chuckle: “There you go again.” The audience erupted. The duel attracted 80.6 million viewers, the most ever for a presidential debate at that time, according to Nielsen.View image in fullscreen1984: Reagan, at 73 the oldest president in US history at the time, took the sting out of the issue of his age during the second debate with the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, 56, with this line: “I want you to know that, also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan was re-elected.View image in fullscreen1988: Democrat Michael Dukakis, taking on the Republican vice-president George HW Bush, was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. “No, I don’t, Bernard,” the Massachusetts governor replied. “And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.” He was criticised as cold and unemotional and lost the election.View image in fullscreen1988: In the vice-presidential debate, Bush’s running mate Dan Quayle compared himself with John F Kennedy. The Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen shot back: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” It is probably the most famous line ever uttered in a vice-presidential debate and has been much parodied since.View image in fullscreen1992: In a three-way contest with Democrat Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot, President George HW Bush made the fatal mistake of looking at his watch. It gave the impression of a haughty, aloof incumbent who did not want to be there and took too much for granted. Bush later admitted what had been on his mind: “Only 10 more minutes of this crap.” He lost to Clinton.View image in fullscreen2000: Democratic vice-president Al Gore went into the debate leading in the polls but sighed loudly when his rival, Republican George W Bush, spoke. In another incident, he was criticised for invading Bush’s personal space when Bush strolled forward and Gore rose and moved towards his rival, as if looking for a fight. Bush dismissed him with a nod and won a close and bitterly disputed election.View image in fullscreen2012: President Barack Obama was widely felt to have “phoned in” his first lackluster debate performance against Republican Mitt Romney, who performed above expectations. But in the second debate, Romney, responding to a question about gender pay equality, said he had “binders full of women” as candidates for cabinet posts. The phrase became a meme on social media and Romney lost in November.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
      What to know about the Biden-Trump debate
      Debate could open up the race for the White House
      An election rarity: two ex-presidents in an contest
      RFK Jr fails to qualify for the first debate and blames CNN
      View image in fullscreen2016: With no incumbent in the mix, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton debated like an outsider and a seasoned public servant, respectively. In perhaps the most enduring soundbite, Clinton hit at Trump’s failure to pay income taxes in the few tax returns that were public at the time. “That makes me smart,” Trump retorted. He also called people coming into the US “bad hombres”, botching the pronunciation of the word. And in one eerie moment, Trump stood close behind Clinton as she answered an audience question, which Clinton later wrote made her skin crawl. Trump also refused to say whether he’would accept the results of the election – which he would go on to win in 2016.View image in fullscreen2020: Trump, now the incumbent, debated Joe Biden in his characteristically testy way, replete with interruptions. At one point, an exasperated Biden pleaded, “Will you shut up, man?”. That memorable line came as the debate schedule was affected by a new virus, Covid-19, spreading through the country. Trump tested positive for the virus, leading to the cancellation of the second debate. His former chief of staff claimed Trump tested positive before the first debate but didn’t disclose it, a claim that Trump called “fake news”. Biden went on to win the election.
      An earlier version of this article was published in 2016 More

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      Biden and Trump look to debate to open up race currently in a dead heat

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      It could be the moment when a rematch that few seem to want finally comes to life: like two ageing prizefighters, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will enter the arena of political bloodsport on Thursday evening to resume a verbal sparring bout that will revive memories of the ugly exchanges when the two debated face to face four years ago.A CNN studio in Atlanta will host the first presidential debate of the campaign between the same two candidates who contested the last election, which Biden won.With more than four months to go until polling day in November, it is the earliest in any US presidential campaign that a debate between the two main candidates has ever been staged.While some see the timing as premature, it could provide a chance to open up a contest that has become overshadowed by, among other things, Trump’s recent felony conviction, as well as assorted other legal travails that see him facing 54 criminal charges for trying to overturn the last election and for retaining classified documents.Knife-edge polls indicate a race essentially tied, with a national polling average for May and June showing the candidates at 46% each. Polls in seven key battleground states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina – give Trump a narrow advantage, though usually within the margin of error.For non-Trump supporters, it is a troubling scenario given he incited a violent insurrection against the US Capitol to stop Congress certifying the results of the 2020 election that he refused to accept that he lost, despite Biden winning by more than 7m votes.Both candidates are deeply unpopular: Trump because his opponents see him as an aspiring dictator who threatens democracy, Biden because, at 81 (although just three years older than his Republican opponent), he is viewed – even among many Democrats – as too old for another term as president.Both will attempt to change their respective narratives in the debate. Trump, openly hostile towards immigrants, will probably attack Biden over an uptick of migrants at the border, despite Biden’s recent moves to tighten it. But Trump advisers know he needs at least some moderate voters to win, and will be hoping he can tone down his most virulent rhetoric, such as saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.Biden, for his part, will be aiming to dilute criticism of his age with an energetic performance along the lines of his State of the Union address earlier this year. He could be prepared to go on the offensive regarding Trump’s criminal record, and for how Trump takes credit for stacking the supreme court with conservatives in order to overturn the right to abortion.The stakes for both could not be higher. “We have a majority of voters who are unhappy with the incumbent, but they don’t have great recollection of what the prior officeholder did either,” said Patrick Murray, head of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University. “That sets us up for a very tight race where people just don’t know when they want to go.“Very rarely do you have anything like 18, 19, 20% of an electorate who say [as they do now] ‘I don’t like the fact that I could vote for either one of these.’ We’ve only seen this phenomenon one other time in living memory, which was eight years ago, with the Clinton-Trump race.”The two men will meet in transformed circumstances from 2020, when the world was still grappling with the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown rules limited political campaigning.Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine and Israel has become embroiled in a long and devastating war in Gaza, developments requiring US military aid and diplomatic commitment.The lingering effects of inflation, fuelled by Covid-era public spending, is partly dousing the otherwise rosy economic situation, pulling down Biden’s approval ratings even as the US outgrows other developed economies and unemployment sees historic lows. Meanwhile, Biden – contrary to his pre-election promises – has embraced some of Trump’s fiercely anti-immigrant policies by temporarily shutting the southern US border to a tide of asylum seekers should a number of daily crossings be exceeded.Many of these changes have rebounded to Trump’s advantage, with polls showing a majority favouring him on the economy over Biden, a trend Murray attributed to “rosy retrospection”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You think you’re not happy with the way things are right now and you automatically remember the past as having been better. We’re seeing that now with Donald Trump,” he said. “When we ask [voters] looking back to Donald Trump’s presidency, to approve or disapprove of the job he did, he gets 48% approval. He never got a 48% approval rating when he was president.”Trump’s achilles heel – and the possible key to Biden’s salvation – may lie in arguably the most startling domestic change to have happened since the last election, the US supreme court ruling in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that guaranteed women’s right to abortion.“It’s a good issue for Democrats in an election where they’re hunting for issues that are good for them,” said Kyle Kondik, of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Pretty clearly the public opinion is closer to them on abortion rights than it is to the Republican position.”That advantage was illustrated in a campaign video Biden released on Monday that blamed Trump personally for the court’s abortion ruling, pointing out that the decision had depended on the votes of three conservative justices appointed by him when he was president.The video followed an equally personalised attack in another television advert released and widely circulated in swing states the week before. Titled Character Matters, it targeted Trump’s criminal status arising from his felony conviction in a New York court last month of falsifying documents to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor who testified that the pair had sex.According to Murray, the president’s only route to victory is to intensify and broaden such attacks to woo a bloc of an estimated 6-7 million anti-Trump voters who backed Biden last time but have cooled on him and are inclined to sit out the forthcoming election.“Those are the voters I’d be going after, if I was Biden,” he said. “There’s a host of issues – Roe v Wade, January 6, book banning – but the real issue is that Donald Trump represents a change in how the government deals with your personal freedoms.“That’s the kind of thing that can move this, this group of voters sitting on the fence. This group was for Biden; if he can win them back, he moves the needle four points in his direction and we’re talking about an entirely different ballgame.” More

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      Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat leaves progressives angry at role of Aipac

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      Progressive groups reacted with disappointment and anger over Jamaal Bowman’s decisive primary loss to a moderate Democrat in New York’s 16th district, calling for the party to cut ties with pro-Israel lobbying groups they blame for the result.In a letter to the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, more than a dozen progressive organizations said they had “dire concerns” over the party’s continued association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), “the future of the Democratic Party, the future of our multiracial democracy, and the future of our planet”.Aipac and its affiliates plan to spend $100m across the election cycle, and Bowman’s defeat marks their most significant victory to date. Looking ahead, they have already set their sights set on the Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush, who will face Wesley Bell in her August primary. United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with Aipac, has already spent nearly $1.9m promoting Bell’s candidacy.The signatories of the letter included the Center for Popular Democracy Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, New York Communities for Change and New York City Democratic Socialists of America.In the letter, they said that in the run-up to the vote, UDP had flooded the Westchester county–northern Bronx district with nearly $20m in mailers and ads “funded largely by Republican billionaires, to drown out Jamaal Bowman’s message of humanity, dignity, and a thriving future for all”.The result, they said, had been to unseat a a candidate that Jeffries had personally endorsed, who retains “a deep well of support among the Black and brown communities in the district”, and to replace him with “a conservative politician with a history of racist remarks and governance”.Bowman, a Black former middle school principal who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, lost to challenger George Latimer by a wide margin of 58% to 42% of the vote. The race was called within an hour of polls closing.Bowman had been supported on the campaign trail by heavyweight party progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who called the race “one of the most important in the modern history of America”.Sanders said in a statement after Bowman’s loss that it was “an outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded Super Pacs to buy elections.”“Aipac and other Super Pacs spent over $23 million to defeat Bowman. He spent $3 million. That is a spending gap which is virtually impossible to overcome,” he said, adding: “It is not a coincidence that with our corrupt campaign finance system we also have a rigged economy that allows the very rich to get much richer while many working people are falling further behind. Big Money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.”Progressives, like Sanders, attempted to characterize the race as an example of big-money influence in politics after pro-Israel groups and a number of wealthy residents of the New York suburban parts of the district weighed in with their checkbooks.Bush underscored that Latimer’s victory represented a clear threat to the progressive movement, saying in a statement: “These same extremists are coming to St Louis. They are bankrolling a faux-progressive, former Republican campaign operative to buy our deep blue Democratic seat. But let me be clear: St Louis will not be silenced or sold out.”The progressive groups said that Aipac had “turned the NY16 race into the most expensive Democratic primary in history, waging an unacceptable assault on our democracy, our communities, and our shared future” and called on Jeffries to take action against “destructive actions in your own backyard”.Jeffries, along with most of the House Democratic leadership team, has received Aipac’s endorsement, and the progressive groups demanded that he reject the pro-Israel lobby group’s financial support to protest against Bowman’s defeat.Protect Our Power said in a statement that Bowman’s defeat was a “loss for young people and anyone who cares about our continued movement toward justice, peace, and building a multiracial democracy”.The progressive group blamed “Aipac and the Maga billionaires who recruited and paid for George Latimer’s campaign from start to finish” for the defeat, and vowed “to tell Aipac they have no business creating division in our democracy”.In a separate letter of protest, Jewish Voice for Peace Action said it was “saddened” by the results that had unseated a congressman who “has been one of the few members of Congress committed to defending Palestinian human rights”.“Today is a sad day for American democracy,” said JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. “To protect progressive candidates moving forward it is essential that Democrats reject Aipac,” she added.Bob Herbst, a member of the group and a constituent of NY-16, called Aipac’s multimillion-dollar spend in the district “a dangerous interference in our democracy”.The race had been viewed as a crucial test of Democratic party unity over an issue that threatens to separate traditionally Democratic-voting Jewish Americans from the party in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, and a nine-month Israeli counter-offensive that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and driven hundreds of thousands more to the point of starvation.Bowman claimed that the results would show “fucking Aipac the power of the motherfucking South Bronx”, though the Aipac campaign focused primarily on Bowman’s weaknesses overall and not specifically or solely his stance on Israel. One UDP attack ad against Bowman specifically called out his votes against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling agreement, accusing the representative of failing his constituents.“Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda and refuses to compromise, even with President Biden,” the ad’s narrator says. “Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and it’s hurting New York.”Nonetheless, Aipac is using Latimer’s victory to claim that Bowman’s stance on Israel is why he lost.“This race presented a clear choice – between George Latimer, who reflects the views of the Democratic mainstream in his congressional district and across the country, and his opponent, who aligns with the extremist, anti-Israel fringe,” an Aipac spokesperson, Marshall Wittmann, told Axios.Bowman was no stranger to scandals while in office. In December 2023, he became the 27th House member in history to be censured after pulling a fire alarm on his way to vote on a stopgap spending bill. He was also linked to problematic blogposts that pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The posts, which Bowman said were from more than a decade ago, were unearthed by the Daily Beast earlier this year and the former representative has since said he regrets them.Bowman’s opponent, Latimer, offered a more measured approach in a district with a large number of Jewish voters.After Latimer accepted his win on Tuesday night, he told supporters: “We have to fight to make sure that we do not vilify each other, that we remember that we’re all Americans, and that our common future is bound together.”Joanie Greve contributed reporting More

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      Trump rehashes baseless claims about Biden in barrage of pre-debate bluster

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      Donald Trump has unleashed a fusillade of baseless accusations against Joe Biden and CNN moderators ahead of Thursday’s first US presidential debate in an apparent “pre-bunking” exercise designed to have his excuses ready-made if he is declared the loser.In a familiar rehash of tactics used in previous campaigns, the presumptive Republican nominee has intensified demands that Biden should take a drug test and accused him of being “higher than a kite” in last January’s State of the Union address, when the president won praise for an energetic performance.“DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform this week.The post came after Trump repeatedly told audiences that Biden would come to the debate “jacked up” after being given “a shot in the ass”.One Trump adviser graphically illustrated the imagery of Biden needing an injection by sharing a picture of a syringe.Even Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician under Trump and Barack Obama who is now a Republican congressman for Texas, got in on the act by writing a letter to Biden calling on him to take a drug test.Trump has also taken aim at Jake Tapper, one of the CNN moderators in Thursday’s debate in Atlanta, repeatedly calling him “fake Tapper” in speeches and interviews.The barbs were reinforced by the Trump campaign’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Monday when she twice attacked Tapper in an interview on the network, prompting the presenter Kasie Hunt to abruptly terminate the exchange.Trump’s son Eric has also joined in the chorus, reinforcing the view that the attacks are part of a coordinated strategy to minimise the debate’s importance.“Understand that he’s not just going to be debating Joe Biden, he’s going to be debating CNN,” Eric Trump told Fox News on Sunday, adding that the network planned to give Biden “a free pass”.Conservative supporters of Trump have also questioned the impartiality of Dana Bash, Tapper’s co-moderator, partly by falsely stating she is married to Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff, who has been critical of the former president. In fact, the pair have not been married for 17 years.Both lines of attack reprise well-worn Trump tactics.The unfounded allegations of drug use by Biden appears designed to forestall a stronger-than-expected debate from the president following months in which Trump’s campaign have denigrated the president’s supposedly failing mental powers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt echoes similar specious claims Trump made against Biden in 2020 and also against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, when he accused her of being suspiciously “pumped up” at a presidential debate and demanded that she take a drug test before the next one.The complaints against the moderators are also familiar. In 2020, Trump repeatedly branded Kristen Welker, the moderator of the second debate screened by NBC as a “dyed-in-the-wool, radical-left Democrat”.“It’s called pre-bunking. He’s preparing his audience to dismiss the entire event,” Joan Donovan, a media studies professor at Boston University told the Washington Post. “It’s a communication strategy that is part of his playbook.”Even sources sympathetic to Trump have acknowledged that the accusations may either be false or part of a planned strategy.Maria Bartiromo, a Fox news anchor, responded sceptically to the earlier accusations by Trump supporters that Biden was taking performance-boosting drugs. “These are very serious charges. We don’t know that, we’re not doctors. We have no idea,” she told Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman for Florida, when he accused the president of being ‘jacked up”.Referring to Trump’s criticism of Tapper, one unnamed Republican source close to the former president told the Washington Post that it was “Trump being Trump”, adding: “There’s nothing unusual about any of this stuff in terms of how it’s playing out.” More

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      Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger endorses Biden for president

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      The former Republican representative Adam Kinzinger has endorsed Joe Biden for president, as the Biden campaign attempts to win over anti-Trump voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.In a video released on Wednesday, Kinzinger said he was a “proud conservative” who had put “democracy and our constitution above all else.“And it’s because of my unwavering support for democracy that today, as a proud conservative, I’m endorsing Joe Biden for re-election,” Kinzinger said.Kinzinger warned that former president Donald Trump poses a “direct threat to every fundamental American value.“He doesn’t care about our country. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself,” Kinzinger added.Biden acknowledged Kinzinger’s endorsement in a reply on X.“This is what putting your country before your party looks like. I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam,” Biden said.Kinzinger’s announcement has received predictable flak from far-right Republicans.In a reply to the endorsement, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said: “Oh look, Kinzinger finally came out of the closet. As usual, we knew all along, so not a surprise and none of us care.”Kinzinger has remained one of the most staunch Republican critics of Trump.Following the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Kinzinger publicly denounced Trump for inciting “an angry mob” with false claims of stolen election results. Kinzinger was also among 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.Later, Kinzinger and Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the only two Republicans who joined a committee to investigate the Capitol insurrection.Kinzinger later announced he would not seek re-election in 2021 after facing a potential primary challenge from a pro-Trump candidate due to changes in district mapping.In a February interview with the Guardian, the former congressman warned that a second Trump term would be “devastating for the world order”.“The best-case scenario is a completely inept, ineffective government,” Kinzinger said.“The worst-case scenario is look, in his four-year term, he did not understand what he was doing. He was just trying to survive and he actually listened to people around him until the end. Now he’s going to put people around him that share his views, that will only reaffirm his views and, frankly, some of these people are pretty smart and they know how to work around the constitution or around the law to bring these authoritarian measures in.”Kinzinger’s announcement comes weeks after the Biden-Harris campaign announced that Kinzinger’s former chief of staff Austin Weatherford would be running the Biden campaign’s outreach to Republican voters. More

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      The Aipac-funded candidate defeated Jamaal Bowman. But at what cost? | Ben Davis

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      The Democratic primary in the congressional race in New York’s 16th congressional district between the incumbent congressman Jamaal Bowman and the Westchester county executive, George Latimer, was a victory for Latimer, and one of the first successful primaries by the right wing of the Democratic party against the left. The contest was by far the most expensive congressional primary in history, and came to be viewed as a battle for the soul of the Democratic party, and specifically a fight around the Israel-Palestine issue, with Latimer and his advocates in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spending over $20m to elect him, and to rebuke Bowman’s criticism of Israel and support for a ceasefire.Bowman’s defeat represents a victory for Aipac and a defeat for the progressive and pro-Palestine movements. But it is a pyrrhic victory. The first election overtly fought on the Israel-Palestine conflict has resulted in a victory for pro-Israel forces, and the movement for Palestinian rights has been dealt a severe blow at the ballot box. Elected officials will be far less willing to take a stand in the near term. But the result of this election masks a considerable shift in the balance of power within American politics away from unconditional support for Israel as an unquestioned political consensus.Sometimes, a major electoral victory is a sign of a movement in retreat and a crumbling consensus. Take California’s gay marriage ban in 2008, at the time seen as a major defeat for gay rights advocates. But the victory of Prop 8 hid the underlying shift: the very fact that gay rights, unthinkable even a few years prior, was a polarized electoral issue showed that anti-gay rights forces were losing in the long term. The same is true here and now, about Israel and Palestine.The fundamentals of this race were poor for the left. New York’s suburban 16th congressional district would never be a progressive target in a vacuum, containing some of the nation’s wealthiest communities. Redistricting cleaved many of the working-class communities of color that powered Bowman’s 2020 primary win, and even that was in large part due to incumbent Eliot Engel’s chronic absenteeism from the district. Beyond that, Bowman had several compounding low-level mistakes and scandals that could easily be hammered home to voters, like pulling the fire alarm at the Capitol or his controversial hip-hop lyrics. Beyond that, Latimer is a popular politician who has represented most of the district’s voters for years. Add in more money than any group has ever spent on a congressional primary by an enormous margin, and you have the conditions for a win. But the fact that this win, and this amount of spending, was even necessary should give advocates of Israel serious pause. The election represents Aipac’s attempt to rebuild a dam that has already broken. The water is out.The linchpin of their strategy for decades was to make support for Israel a third rail. By successfully building up universal support for Israel beyond the divides of partisan politics, Aipac and Israel’s other supporters in the US were able to successfully create a political culture with hard boundaries on the limits of acceptable speech. In the halls of Congress, discourse around Israel fell within these limits, represented by liberal groups like J Street, where a degree of sympathy for Palestinian people and criticism of rightwing figures of the Israeli state were acceptable for progressive Democrats, but questioning the basic logic undergirding the status quo was outside the bounds of permissible speech, and met with moral opprobrium.This universal consensus undergirded Aipac’s strategy in the US for decades. That is no longer the case. Before 2018, zero members of Congress could plausibly be considered actively pro-Palestine, and that didn’t seem like it would change. But the dam burst, and starting with the elections of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and, in particular, Rashida Tlaib, there were for the first time critics of Israel that brought a perspective outside of the established consensus, and to the left of J Street. While once a fringe position, support for Palestine and criticism of Israel is now mainstream among the American public. It will continue to exist in Congress, no matter how much money is spent. There are now millions of Americans who have heard this perspective and agree with it. The era of complete Aipac consensus is over for good.While Aipac and their allies, or any political group with $20m to spend on a single congressional primary, can eliminate nearly any adversary, this is not a sustainable strategy. While this level of financial power may deter many politicians from challenging them in the near future, Israel is now a polarizing, partisan issue. The collapse of previous bipartisan consensus and discursive limits is a catastrophe for Israel’s position in the US in the long term. Aipac did not spend directly on elections until 2021. They didn’t need to. Transitioning from an untouchable position to a fiercely polarized one that necessitates massive, unprecedented spending should be a cause for concern for Aipac. Israel and Palestine are now, for the first time, a live issue in American politics.Make no mistake, Latimer’s win is big for Aipac and the conservative wing of the Democratic party and harmful for efforts at a ceasefire in Gaza. But the very fact that Aipac has to spend $100m on Democratic primaries in a vain attempt to silence their critics is a sea change from the last few decades of American politics. Most of their hitlist is still around. This win was, ultimately, a successful rearguard action for the Israel lobby. Having prominent advocates for Palestine and pro-Palestine speech move toward public acceptability in the US is a crisis for Israel, which is why their partisans are spending so much money to stop it. There will be many more battles to come.
      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC More

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      ‘Will you shut up, man?’: memorable moments from Biden’s past debates

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      According to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is either a very accomplished or utterly incompetent debater.When details of the presidential debate, which takes place in Atlanta on Thursday, were announced last month, Trump mocked Biden as “the WORST debater I have ever faced”, adding: “He can’t put two sentences together.” And yet, while speaking to the All-In podcast last week, Trump commended Biden’s showing in the 2012 vice-presidential debate.“He destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “So I’m not underestimating him.”The flip-flop could be Trump’s belated effort to temper expectations of how he will perform against an incumbent president with extensive debating experience. With four presidential campaigns and two terms as vice-president on his résumé, Biden is no stranger to the debate stage, and he has shown a sharp ability to deliver pointed attacks on his opponents.But as a sitting president who has reckoned with historically high inflation and multiple wars abroad since he took office, Biden goes into his next debate with a unique set of challenges that he must overcome to sell voters on re-electing him. Although Biden, 81, is only a few years older than Trump, 78, voters have expressed more concern about the president’s age than his opponent’s, and he will be looking to address those fears at the debate.These five memorable moments from Biden’s past debate performances offer some insight into the president’s strengths – and vulnerabilities:A lasting dig at GiulianiIn 2024, Biden is the president of the United States while Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s disgraced former lawyer. But in 2007, both men were presidential candidates. As the former mayor of New York who led the city through the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Giuliani was widely viewed as a frontrunner in the 2008 Republican primary race.During a Democratic primary debate, Biden mocked Giuliani as “the most under-qualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency”, arguing he was incapable of making a coherent pitch for his candidacy.“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. There’s nothing else,” Biden said.The debate audience greeted the quip with laughter and applause, and the remark became one of the most enduring criticisms of Giuliani, whose presidential campaign eventually failed in spectacular fashion, giving way to an even more disgraceful downfall. Biden will be looking to deliver similarly memorable attack lines against Trump on Thursday.A sorrowful moment during the Sarah Palin debateBefore the 2008 vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin had already made headlines for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric and Tina Fey’s devastating impersonation of the self-proclaimed “hockey mom” from Alaska.Biden’s debate strategy rested on amplifying his credentials without descending into condescension against Palin, who invoked the importance of “Joe Six-pack” Americans in an apparent effort to paint her opponent as out of touch. Biden confronted the criticism head-on by referencing his family background and the death of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash, demonstrating how he had known hardship in his life.“I understand what it’s like to be a single parent,” Biden said. “I understand what it’s like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says: ‘I’ve got to leave, champ, because there’s no jobs here … ’“The notion that, somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to make it – I understand. I understand as well, with all due respect to the governor or anybody else, what it’s like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They’re looking for help.”The exchange marked one of the most humanizing moments of the debate for Biden, who has now developed a reputation as the consoler-in-chief. Biden’s ability to connect his personal story with voters’ lives could give him an advantage over Trump, who has struggled to do the same.A challenge to Paul Ryan’s expertiseWhile Biden may have pursued a more careful debate strategy in 2008, he came out swinging in 2012 against Paul Ryan, who was then Mitt Romney’s running mate.As Ryan explained his plan to cut taxes by 20% while still preserving benefits for middle-class workers, Biden slammed the proposal as “not mathematically possible”. Any time Ryan attempted to justify the policy, Biden was quick to cut in with criticism.Ryan then said: “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and increased growth.”Biden replied: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe comment alluded to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen’s infamous mockery of Republican Dan Quayle at the 1988 vice-presidential debate, and it appeared to successfully deflate some of Ryan’s grandiose vision for a new tax system.If Biden pursues a similar approach on Thursday, it may serve two aims of undercutting Trump and mitigating concerns about the president’s mental sharpness.A rebuke to Trump’s constant interruptionsThe first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 was defined by chaos. Trump repeatedly talked over Biden, while even moderator Chris Wallace struggled to get a word in edgewise. At one point, Biden attempted to answer a question about the supreme court, but he kept getting derailed by Trump’s comments about the “radical left” and efforts to “pack the court”.Then, Biden reached his breaking point. “Will you shut up, man?” he said to Trump. “This is so unpresidential.”The comment could have come off as petulant, but instead, it seemed to resonate with viewers as an attempt to inject order into a debate badly in need of it. Looking ahead to Thursday, CNN’s decision to mute the candidates’ mics when it is not their turn to speak may prevent similar interruptions, but Biden’s willingness to stand up to Trump could still play to his advantage.An unforgettable instruction to the Proud BoysPerhaps the most memorable moment from Biden and Trump’s first debate came when Wallace asked Trump to specifically condemn white supremacist and militia groups. Despite the simplicity of the request, Trump tried and failed to brush off the question.“Almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” Trump said. Pressed by Wallace, he added: “I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”Biden replied: “Say it. Do it. Say it.”Trump then asked: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”Biden supplied the name of the Proud Boys, a far-right and neo-fascist group, and Trump then issued this infamous instruction: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”The comment bolstered Democrats’ warnings about Trump empowering the far-right faction of his party, which appeared prescient after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. (The former national chair of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the attack.)As he prepares for his next debate, Biden will be looking to again put Trump on the record about his relationship with far-right groups and the violence they have caused. More