DO NOT SURRENDER PREMATURELY - PART 2

In 1979, when I went in for my annual flight physical, the examiner told me “I don’t know what it is you do, but if you keep doing it, you’re going to have an ulcer in two years and a heart attack before you’re 40.”

What I was doing was working to keep Democrats in office and get their replacements elected.

The bullshit that led me to that state of affairs 45 years ago was bad, but not nearly so bad as what is being done by the surrender monkeys cosplaying themselves as French Generals in 1940, that’s going on today.

This is from today’s Atlantic Magazine feed. Written by David A. Graham. I suggest you swallow all liquids before proceeding and you may want to go pull that bottle of Pepto Bismol out of the bathroom medicine cabinet.

God I hate these motherfuckers. Even more, I hate the situation we are in that leaves us with this.

THE END OF BIDEN’S CANDIDACY APPROACHES

At the start of the day yesterday, it was conceivable that Joe Biden might manage to hold on to the Democratic nomination for president. But this morning, things seem to be slipping out of his grasp.

The blows to Biden were both procedural and political: The Democratic National Committee delayed a pivotal vote that would have made replacing him more difficult, a prominent Democrat called for Biden to step down, and reports of behind-the-scenes maneuvering made clear that other top party leaders have lost faith in Biden’s candidacy, even if they aren’t willing to say so publicly yet.

The president’s strategy for riding out the calls for him to step down was apparently to survive until a virtual roll-call vote sometime in July. (Even this might not have been enough: Elaine Kamarck, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution and a member of the DNC Rules Committee, told me last week that she was skeptical that would have done the trick. “There’s work-arounds for all of these things,” she said. “Monday night at the [Democratic National] Convention is really the drop-dead night.”) But yesterday, the chairs of the committee said the vote would not occur until at least August 1. That means more time for more negative polls, more chances for the president to stumble, and most important of all, more rounds of significant defections.

After the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend, the revolt among prominent Democrats appeared to peter out, or at least pause. But as my colleague Russell Berman reported yesterday, the concerns among congressional Democrats have persisted—in part because of the risk of subjecting the country to another Trump administration and in part out of fears for their own down-ticket political fortunes.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, currently running to become one of the state’s senators, called for the president to step aside. He praised Biden’s record but added, “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Schiff’s public statement is notable because he is a protégé of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is revered in the party for her strategic acumen and will to win, and it’s unlikely he’d speak out without her knowledge and perhaps encouragement. According to Politico, Pelosi doesn’t want to publicly call on Biden to back down, but she has been a de facto field general for efforts to nudge him out. CNN reports she told the president privately that he is dragging down the party. Pelosi isn’t alone. Her successor as House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both told Biden it would be better if he left the race, ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported.

Biden’s campaign also faces money woes. Not only has Trump erased what was expected to be a big advantage in fundraising, but Jeffrey Katzenberg, the president’s close ally and major donor, privately told Biden that new cash is drying up as donors lose faith that he can win, according to Semafor. And MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a steadfast media ally of the president’s, suggested this morning that it’s time for him to go. “It’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing,” he said.

Strikingly, as Politico’s Playbook notes, these Democrats are not making much effort to downplay the reports. Schumer’s office called reports “idle speculation” but didn’t quite deny them, saying, “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus.” Jeffries’s office said that his counsel to Biden was private.

The only person who can get Biden out of the race right now is Biden. Other Democrats have little recourse but pressure. Although the president has remained publicly defiant, and reportedly privately defiant, there are signs that he is slowly opening to the idea. Both CNN and The New York Times reported that Biden is more “receptive” to stepping aside and has quizzed advisers about Vice President Kamala Harris’s path to victory were she the nominee.

In an interview, Biden also laid out a possible path for leaving the race. “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said you got this problem and that problem,” he might be willing, he told BET News’s Ed Gordon.

Hours after that interview was released, the White House announced that Biden had tested positive for COVID-19. That may not be the off-ramp that Democrats want—the president’s symptoms are reportedly mild—but it will give Biden several days to sit at home and think about his future.

The Hill now reports:

Four prominent Democrats would perform significantly better than President Biden in key swing states if they replaced him as the party’s presumptive nominee, according to a memo from a Democratic-funded polling group.

The BlueLabs draft memo, first acquired by Politico, found that “nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the President” in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The memo singled out four Democrats who bested Biden’s results by roughly 5 points overall across the battleground states: Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

These bastards think they can abandon the first black woman Vice President and not lose the support of the most reliable group of Democratic voters? What fucking planet do they live on? It certainly isn’t Earth One.

Joe Biden wasn’t my choice the first two times he ran for president. He wasn’t my first choice in 2020. But he became the best president of my lifetime since President Truman. I hatehatehate contemplating this future. And I won’t forget after November. Especially if the surrender monkeys take us into the darkness of Project 2025.

And Adam Schiff will never get my vote again so long as I am alive. For anything.

This is about as fine a mess as I never thought I would be writing about at That’s Another Fine Mess. We have to find a way to step away from discouragement, regardless of what happens. The future is too important. Your support here as a paid subscriber helps do that.

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