Will Biden drop out? Who replaces him?

[lpetrich]

Why Biden Was Really Forced Out of the Race, According to Anita Dunn - POLITICO - "The longtime presidential adviser blames the press and her party."

Anita Dunn has no regrets about holding a historically early debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump — and still disputes the notion that Biden’s performance was “catastrophic” for the voters he needed to win over.

Playbook Deep Dive: Anita Dunn on why Joe Biden really dropped out on Apple Podcasts

“Voters didn’t particularly like Biden’s performance in the first half hour. He wasn’t scoring well at all. But it’s not as though they walked out,” she said. “They very much liked a lot of the second half of the debate for Joe Biden. They hated Donald Trump.”

But it was devastating. JB seemed old and feeble, unlike DT, who camouflaged his age with his vigor.

She had seen him at his political low point in the 2020 campaign — after he had lost the first three primary contests and looked like he was toast — and had helped him turn things around in South Carolina. In Biden world, the press, pundits and politicians always underestimated him.

What helped him is his main competition dropping out, with Barack Obama apparently being involved in convincing those candidates to drop out.

But this time it was different. Unlike Biden’s core team, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and Hakeem Jeffries were never convinced on the legend of Biden.

 

[lpetrich]

The interview with AD was mainly about that debate, but AD was asked about why JB dropped out.

Q: Do you agree with some of the people who were disappointed about this, that it was essentially a “coup?”

I don’t regard it as a coup, for a couple of reasons. One is because the vice president was nothing except unremittingly loyal and supportive to the president throughout this, and was fully engaged in the “What is your plan? What is our plan? What are we doing next?”

So if you’re going to have a coup, usually someone has to lead it. And she was 100 percent terrifically loyal. I give her remarkable props. Her staff, she made sure there was never a murmur from anyone in that camp, and that takes an enormous amount of discipline and also an enormous amount of loyalty.

Then mentioning HJ, CS, NP, and BO as having helped to push JB out.

Q: ... How difficult was it to be in the White House and watch those four leaders of the Democratic Party try and push Joe Biden out?

We were just trying to figure out a way to keep Joe Biden in as long as he wanted to. As long as he wanted to run, we wanted to make sure that we were coming up with a way to make sure he could run. And Joe Biden is a person whose personal resilience and ability to get knocked down and get back up is unquestioned.

Then about efforts to keep JB in office.

Q: When you say you had a strategy to sort of keep him in, what was the strategy?

Well, the first piece of it was to make it very clear to people that he wasn’t getting out. So that was the letter that was sent to Capitol Hill.

Q: Which among some members in Congress, it backfired.

Well, I’m sure it did.

Then about JB having defeated DT, meaning that his absence would make DT much more difficult to defeat. They then got into what drama llama a nominating convention at this stage would be.

Q: When did you personally think that you guys weren’t going to win this fight?

That weekend when he was at home.

Q: The final weekend.

The final weekend. I tend to be someone who doesn’t like to walk away from political fights. And I felt that some of the pieces that we had been putting together in terms of some key core constituency groups —

Then about JB being supported by the Congressional Black Caucus (?) (CBC), AOC, and Bernie Sanders.

 

[lpetrich]

Q: Can you tell us about your conversation with him when you got the news?

I think it’s been reported publicly that he got on a call with his senior advisers and told us right about the time he was sending it out. But everyone had figured it out by then.

Q: So on Saturday you’d figured it out?

I would say Saturday night, Sunday morning.

AD then said that JB's dropping out was "rough" for her.

Q: In his speech in his Oval Office address, he didn’t really explain why he wasn’t going to run again. He didn’t say, “I’m not going to be the nominee of my party anymore because I don’t have the energy to campaign,” or “If I’m reelected, I can’t serve for four more years,” or “I feel fine, but the voters think I’m too old.” He made an allusion to party unity. But he never really said why.

I think you’re going to have to wait until he writes his book. Maybe he’ll come on your podcast.

 

[lpetrich]

Q: Let’s talk about the aftermath, the decision to endorse Harris, and her quick consolidation of the party. I assume there was never any question that once Biden made this decision that he was going to endorse Harris?

Never a question.

It certainly helped that KH and her campaigners started phoning a lot of politicians and delegates. Something like half of Congressional Democrats endorsed her that first day, and a few days later, she had the de facto nomination.

 

[TomC]

Q: Let’s talk about the aftermath, the decision to endorse Harris, and her quick consolidation of the party. I assume there was never any question that once Biden made this decision that he was going to endorse Harris?

Never a question.

It certainly helped that KH and her campaigners started phoning a lot of politicians and delegates. Something like half of Congressional Democrats endorsed her that first day, and a few days later, she had the de facto nomination.

How hard is this to understand?
It was obvious to everyone that the Biden campaign was in a tail spin. A far more competent person was proposed and they all jumped on it.
Harris isn't my favorite person, but she is undeniably the best able to rescue the campaign.
Tom

 

[Copernicus]

Biden has given his first sit-down interview since his withdrawal from the race. Here is the video of the CBS interview. My take on it is that he is still deluding himself that he could have gone for another term, but he recognized that he didn't have the backing he needed from Democrats to win the election. He would not have withdrawn if he felt he had sufficient backing from Congressional and other political allies, so reason prevailed in the end. Judging from his behavior and mannerisms during the interview, it was clear to me that he was simply incapable of convincing the public that he was the best choice to go another four years. He was never the best communicator, but just four years ago he was a very different man--much more energetic and coherent. Now he sometimes fails to express ideas in grammatical language, he can't project his voice, which sometimes descends in volume to a whisper, and he has to stop himself from rambling. I think he can serve as a kind of caretaker president until January 20, primarily because he has a very strong staff to guide his decisions. I don't see him as suffering from dementia, but his age and the office he holds has taken its toll on him.

 

[lpetrich]

Kamala Harris and the Dangers of the “Glass Cliff” - July 23 2024, 11:50 a.m.

It’s a familiar story: Women of color get tasked with cleaning up the messes made by white men.

It’s a familiar story: a quick fix job, a woman of color tasked to clean up the mess made by a bunch of white men. Welcome to the “glass cliff.”

A now 20-year-old term, the notion of the glass cliff is a nod to the “glass ceiling” — that unseen but impenetrable barrier to the upward advancement of women. The “cliff” refers to the phenomenon of women being promoted or hired when an organization is on the brink of failure.

Coining the term in a 2005 research paper, British organizational psychologists Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam studied businesses in the London Stock Exchange and found that “companies who appointed women to their boards were more likely to have experienced consistently bad performance in the preceding five months than those who appointed men.”

So it might seem here.

Whatever one personally thinks of Harris, given the current slate of candidates and the growing threat of another Trump term, Democrats appear to have made the most solid choice they could have at this moment to help win the election. Because of her past run, Harris has already been vetted. The governors and senators named as other likely candidates would have left sometimes vulnerable empty seats in gubernatorial mansions and Congress. And an open convention could descend into chaos, resulting in Democratic disarray as the clock winds down on the race.

The potential for failure, however, remains.

So far, KH seems to have been a very good pick, and she's gotten much more enthusiasm from voters than JB did.