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It feels like a tipping point has been reached with Biden – politicalbetting.com
It feels like a tipping point has been reached with Biden – politicalbetting.com
Prominent Democrats interviewed by CNN blamed the president's inner circle for keeping Biden away from unscripted settings and hiding his decline. https://t.co/WJvGc2Iy6P
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ETA Churchill's Secret (about the stroke & recovery) can be seen on YouTube or Amazon Prime, but not ITVx, oddly.
Keir Starmer favourability rises 8pts following election victory
What goes up must come down.
The media story has all moved away from from his legal problems to Biden being unfit to govern. Dems now on the back foot.
Just not sure he's done enough or got enough support to just ignore it and KBO.
Is there a smoking gun? Could most of his delegates just go faithless?
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1811533805829689460 <<— HIS OWN CAMPAIGN ACCOUNT.
Biden in the press conference afterwards:
“I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if I didn’t think she was up to the job”
https://x.com/tpostmillennial/status/1811547150557290543
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-katie-johnson-allegations-sexual-assault-case-dismissed-1921051
Painful as this is, the Democrats have a better chance of getting rid of their bad candidate than the Republicans do of getting rid of theirs.
The time for him to have stepped down was before going through the rounds of primaries and caucuses.
Nominate a better VP, stand for election, beat the Trumpdozer then stand down is a scenario.
This latter point gives Harris an almost insuperable advantage, something she would not have had if the Primaries had been used properly. I am not sure she is a great candidate. But she is not senile and will have to do.
The problem with Biden is not so much his current state, which has clearly declined in the last year or two, but more whether he is up to 4 more years. He clearly isn't and a change to Kamala is the right thing to do.
America is a country that worships youth to the point of denying ageing, so does seem to have far too many ancient politicians.
Just retire FFS.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Biden has to go.
The delegates vote for the Presidential candidate on who's behalf they were elected - the 'Robot Rule'.
See Kennedy, E. vs Jimmy Carter in 1980.
To quote Robert Blake, 'Mentally he was never the same again. There was a lack of grip and decision and cabinets degenerated into monologues. Macmillan, who was in a position to give disinterested advice as he had no prospect at that stage of become Prime Minister himself, was the man who pressed Churchill most strongly to set a retirement date.'
Also, a gradual decline is often less noticeable than a sudden one.
(Wilson's Vice President was unaware Wilson was incapacitated for the final two years of his presidency, as Mrs Wilson kept the news quiet. But that was in a rather different era.)
It might be, but it's quite a cumbersome process unless the incumbent co-operates or is actually in a coma.
This is what the rules now say, with magnificent ambiguity:
“Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
There is neither precedent nor guidance to say what that means
4 people die trying to cross the channel. The French don't have a domestic government to talk to and seem unlikely to have one for months. Labour (rightly) find the disincentive of the Rwanda scheme abhorrent and want to bring it to an end. What do they do? Its a tricky one that Starmer largely ducked during the election.
I think the time has arrived to be truly radical. Everyone who has been here 10 years, whether legally or not, is granted an amnesty. The backlogs are vigorously attacked after the elimination of tens of thousands of cases through the amnesty and acted upon. Those who arrive are processed within weeks and then either granted asylum or removed. We have the worst of all worlds at the moment because the previous government was scared of bigots and racists. Act, act now.
With three months to go this was not the campaign the Democrats thought they would be fighting.
And it has been unacceptable for all those 20 years.
Also difficult to enforce without ID cards.
The best way is for Biden to step down.
But achieving either option is, for now, problematic.
Everyone in the senior echelons of the Democratic party and the liberal media have known about Biden for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/
“Stay Alive, Joe Biden
“Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But we managed to have a couple of million EU citizens given indefinite leave on the basis that they had been here at the relevant date. The reality is we don't look too hard. We just need to dig ourselves out of the quagmire where there is an immigration industry and hundreds of thousands in expensive, crap, temporary accommodation at our cost.
Right now, this government can do what it wants. It will not always be that way. Carpe diem.
Trump makes 3 speaking gaffes for every one of Biden's—and Trump may be the most scripted US politician ever. If he's not reading off a teleprompter, he's repeating a lie or made-up anecdote or rhetorical setpiece he shovels at fans *each and every rally*.
https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/1811584133417640013
Remember too Trump has been ruminating on sharks and batteries.
This is beyond madness now.
“Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
This might now be the only way to remove him from the nomination, if he’s unwilling to do so himself. But it requires Harris to weird the sword.
https://x.com/buccocapital/status/1811556972250169507?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
And at least Trump gaffes with a great deal of energy, like a mad uncle at Christmas. Biden is equivalent to the aged patriarch who is wheeled in for a token hour of crackers and toasts, quickly returned to the care home.
"Mr Biden’s inability to deliver cogent, or for that matter complete, sentences was “not surprising” to those present at the LA fundraiser hosted by Clooney, according to Jon Favreau, another former Obama staffer.
“I was there. Clooney was exactly right, and every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing, except for the people working for Joe Biden, or at least they didn’t say that,” he told CNN."
Telegraph
This means they’ll find the polls which aren’t great for her and promote them. The next debate is in September and it’s hard to imagine that won’t be a car crash.
At this point either the Dems come out in force and ask for him to stand down or accept he’s not going anywhere .
The odd Dem asking for him to go isn’t going to work .
Given how many Dem Reps and Senators have already come out in favour of him stepping down, the sticking point is going to persuading the Republicans that he’s not the best Dem nominee ever!
The Atlantic now is pretty clear over Biden:
https://x.com/elainaplott/status/1811245622898377203?t=NTiDvPojxZTkH-3NHGm1kw&s=19
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/
Biden has a superb grasp of foreign policy which came out last night and if he's forced out Democrats can wave goodbye to the White House.
Once announced, realpolitik forces everyone to vote accordingly.
The Democrat Congress, having seen Harris and the Cabinet oust Biden, will have no realistic option but to ratify it.
The GOP Congress realistically can't and won't vote to say that Biden is fit to continue.
So the Congressional element is a dead rubber. Its the pressure on Harris that she has to be the one to wield the sword that is the hardest element there.
Imagine if Biden that.
This is creating an opportunity/risk for the whole Dem leadership to be taken down.
Be careful what you wish for. The future of Ukraine most likely hinges on Trump not being President in Six months.
It's an incredibly hard job that can only work if you have the selfless and unquestioning support of your family, combined with an unshakeable belief in your own importance.
It's no surprise that Biden is trying to stick this out, nor that Jill is backing him completely (in public at least). It's sad, and self-defeating, but not surprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Joe_Biden
If it's something like Parkinson's it's the physical exhaustion that will cause all the issues, or the side effects from the medication he is on for it (according to my partner). The key is to challenge Biden's fitness in the round, not just pure mental faculties.
It’s a seminal moment for the country, and I’m not sure it ends well for anyone.
It’s unlikely to happen this cycle, but someone in the US needs to turn up soon and force the centre ground rather than the extremes.
I’ll go with the unpopular view that Trumpism dies with Trump, so the best thing might be to elect him this year becuase there’s no way he’s going to amend the Constitution on term limits.
The much wider issue, as we saw in the UK election, is that the established parties have record low support in the face of globalisation and wages failing to keep up with the average man’s experience of earnings and inflation - with official statistics rendered meaningless to the experiences of that average man.
Resulting in either the Dems defending him or arguing amongst themselves.
Instead they spent the last year investigating supposed misconduct.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
Only slight gaffe that springs to mind is when Blinken played Rockin' in the free world - perhaps slightly tone deaf at the time.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
https://europeanspaceflight.com/cnes-chief-responds-harshly-to-eumetsats-decision-to-ditch-ariane-6/
Plus it seems that Trump wants to face Biden - revenge? Plus he lost very narrowly last time. Given Biden's issues.....
Barack Obama has expressed private concerns about Joe Biden’s reelection chances, according to CNN.
Dozens of Democrat lawmakers are expected to soon call for Joe Biden to step out of the race for November’s US presidential election, according to CBS News.
Austin, Blinken, Yellen and Harris - the big beasts as it were seem good picks. He's never stuck a Zahawi in the treasury
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
And both are often different to what he thinks he deserves.
The western world is not going to be meeting many people's expectations for the foreseeable future.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1811533805829689460
They’ve left this up for 10 hours now.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”