WHERE THINGS SEEM TO STAND

We are right now in the midst of what would be called in other circumstances “The fog of war.” It is certainly “a time that tries one’s soul,” to recall Tom Paine.

The are a few shapes emerging in the fog that can be identified. While the intra-party insurgency against Joe Biden’s continued candidacy still exists, active efforts one way or the other have ended - or perhaps been driven underground. For the moment at least.

AOC’s strong statement of support for the president and call for party unity was strengthened by Chuck Shumer’s persistent answer “I stand with Joe” to reporters looking for a way to keep stirring the pot, along with Hakeem Jeffries reiterating that nothing had changed since his statement of support for the president following the Atlanta fakakte, that “this question has been asked and answered, one of my favorite phrases when I was a lawyer,” has put further developments on hold.

Things have been disturbing, to say the least. In the past two weeks, watching people who had stood by the president suddenly get cold feet while elected Democrats and even a senior White House official (albeit anonymously) called for him to drop out, with donors saying they would close their wallets if he remained in the race gave the feeling that the ground was shaking, that the dam was breaking. Pick your cliché, hour by hour it looked like Biden was done, no matter how defiant he was about staying in.

The Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus both reaffirming their support on Monday went a long way to stabilize things, along with AOC cutting the ground out from beneath the Diaper Democrats in the Progressive Caucus. Senator Mark Warner’s failure to organize a group of Democratic Senators to tell the president he had to leave was a good sign.

Quite frankly, so far as I am concerned, the performance by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet infuriated me, to remember that Colorado voters had the choice to elect a senator with a spine, rather than this weathervane. I was unsurprised when Jerry Nadler, the King of Wishy-Washy, who had let it leak over the weekend that he had privately suggested Biden bow out, waffled when asked about that and publicly crawled back under the tent flap in hopes no one had noticed his absence.

What was the most confounding move in the whole sequence was Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi saying in an interview this morning that Biden must consider his choices, as though he has not been very clear about what he wants to do. “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short.” What???

So far as I am concerned, George Clooney stepping up to be George Clooney again was nothing to think about other than to be reminded I have been close enough here in Hollywood in the years since the fluke of his career-changing success with ER 30 years ago to see his flailing without need of my opera glasses. I’ll just mention that his movie career has been defined by the repeated fuckups of every failed movie he’s made. George is a nice guy, which is the secret of his success in repeatedly getting people who should know better by now than to say yes to the latest looming disaster.

Napoleon once observed that half of success is refusing to admit that one has been beaten, knowing that the tide can still change.

It took Biden a week from the “CNN clickbait baby-kissing competition” to regain his feet, during which time the Professional Panickers among the “progressive” left demonstrated that Professional Panicking indeed is as disgusting as it looks.

The Stephanopoulos interview on Friday wasn’t one of those “inspiring moments” but it was a demonstration that not making things worse is not that different from a “win.” The phone interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe has been described as “downright vinegary” (Biden has acknowledged using notes, but that’s a good thing). The campaign has also been able to cherry-pick new polls that show the president tied with Trump in most places and closing the gap in key swing states; the news that voters who watched the Baby-kissing have said it didn’t affect their choice also hasn’t hurt.

The strong public performance yesterday at the opening of the NATO conference has also added to the argument that the failure to properly kiss the baby was a one-off bad night.

Right now it is reported that if the coming press conference tomorrow at the end of the NATO conference sees the president come off well, that things will have been resolved. Fingers crossed on that one. It appears to be the thing Pelosi has in mind.

Perhaps the most effective thing was Biden’s show of defiance. It reminded me of Ulysses Grant at Shiloh, or Vicksburg, or The Wilderness, recognizing a setback but refusing to consider it a defeat, and going on to “beat ‘em tomorrow though.”

Let’s recognize that anyone who has wanted him to drop out is not a bad-faith critic who is aiding Trump - “uninformed” is the worst charge that would stick, as I see it. Most of them have been steadfast Biden supporters who are nervous because they’re properly scared of the possibility of a Trump victory as existential. We have all been there at one time or another this past year. There is no dispute that changing candidates now would be a risky maneuver.

Because these critics are motivated by fear of a Trump victory, they are also worried about a drawn-out public debate that might weaken Biden but fail to force him out. The president’s defiance brought them up short. If Biden can ride out the next nine days, Democratic National Committee rules will make it much harder to remove him.

As usual, my friend Josh Marshall is his usual perspicacious self in his latest EdBlog:

“When we collectively wrestle with a situation like the one Democrats are now grappling with, it is important to remember that multiple things can be true at once. I’ve spent most of the day thinking that Joe Biden has very much not ended this “drop out” question — which I kind of thought he had by Monday evening — and thinking that withdrawing in favor of Kamala Harris may be the least worst bad option available.

“These are Democrats terrified that Joe Biden is going to lose the election for them. And they may be right. But I’ve seen indications that the reaction has been quite different among actually undecided voters.

“I was in touch with one person who really has their hand on the pulse of what undecided voters are saying in swing states. And what I heard from this person was that the whole thing hasn’t made a big impression on these voters. They mostly assumed Biden was super old and at least borderline senile because they’ve been awash in Biden viral videos for two or three years. So it just didn’t land with any of the force it did for politically active or aware Democrats. These two realities aren’t really in contradiction at all. They can both be happening. And I suspect they are both happening. I don’t think polls are dispositive right now. Because a lot of this really comes down to predicting — with far less data than we need — how the next four months play out. But actual polls show little movement. Yes, there are headlines about big movements. But if you look at them critically there’s really not much and they seem to be shifting back at least a bit.

“Another point is a breakdown of how these collective freakouts happen, the precise mechanics. Much of what we saw in the days just after the debate was a kind of hotwire situation in which reporters responded en masse to the debate debacle, often with a feeling of aggrieved vindication. Donors — especially major donors who often have the cell phones of the elected officials — see that coverage and freak the F out. Donor calls elected officials. Now the elected official if freaked the F out and they’re talking to the reporters who are churning out a new run of stories, which notches up the volume several points each day. So you have this kind of chain reaction. And maybe the message of that chain reaction is valid. But it is largely a closed loop and understood this way you can see how it can escalate very, very rapidly.”

For some reason, you all like to get advice from me. Here is a collection of clichés that have become such because they are also true:

Follow the Old Navy Chief’s advice: when you’re so scared you have pissed your drawers and crapped your pants and your brain is frozen, if you just do your job, that’s being a hero.”

There’s another old Navy Rule about scuttlebutt (i.e., rumors and guesses and such): Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see.

In an emergency, remember to Fly. The. Plane.

If at the end of the day you can look back and tell yourself that you did everything there was that you could do, as well as you could, that is Enough.

Nobody knows the future till it gets here, so don’t listen to the idiots who claim they do know.

Act as if it’s going to work out. There’s a good chance it will.

And remember: right up to the point where the bomb Dick Best dropped was unexpectedly accurate and exploded in the hangars on “Akagi,” the United States was losing the Battle of Midway.

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