I'm less certain why the American political press keeps letting themselves get played like this. Probably because they're still pissed at Biden for taking away their war.
Or because they get more clicks portraying Biden as a bumbling old fool than they do portraying him as the leader of an administration doing a decent job.
I'm less certain why the American political press keeps letting themselves get played like this. Probably because they're still pissed at Biden for taking away their war.
Or because they get more clicks portraying Biden as a bumbling old fool than they do portraying him as the leader of an administration doing a decent job.
That would be more convincing if the same press hadn't been running a series of articles about how "today was the day Donald Trump finally became president!" from February 2017 to sometime in mid-2019.
Up to now I hadn’t given much credence to the possibility of a Trump 2024 win but Biden’s response gave me pause for thought. November is a long way off, but I think the concern over Biden’s ageing will continue. Trump’s mental deterioration ought to be a factor as well.
Up to now I hadn’t given much credence to the possibility of a Trump 2024 win but Biden’s response gave me pause for thought. November is a long way off, but I think the concern over Biden’s ageing will continue. Trump’s mental deterioration ought to be a factor as well.
Is this the response you're talking about? Because it seems like a perfectly cogent response to a bad faith question by nepo-baby Peter Doocy.
The Special Counsel report by Robert Hur is damaging for Biden: at first I thought of it as a sideways character assassination ('well-meaning elderly man with poor memory'). But the report itself is troubling in terms of security breaches and an entitled carelessness as much as forgetfulness.
For some years I worked on classified secret affidavits (very small potatoes in comparison, but still) relating to South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission and later policy docs relating to gross human rights abuses. We would be instructed to dispose of and delete recordings or emails as soon as we had submitted work, this was standard practice. Private notes and verbatim transcripts, though, remained personal property (a grey zone) and this is what struck me on reading through the background Hur investigated.
Since the early 1970s, Biden was a copious note-taker in meetings (he has never had a very good memory and admitted that at various points) and most of what he recorded in handwritten notebooks was retained by him for his memoirs. Promises to Keep was his political memoir and Promise Me, Dad was an account focusing on his son Beau's illness and death in 2015. He shared these notebooks and various documents with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who had no security clearance to see any confidential documents.
After learning of Special Counsel Hur's appointment, Biden's ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Biden during the writing of the book Promise Me, Dad. He admitted as much and most of these audio files were retrieved and examined. Zwonitzer also disclosed he had destroyed compromising material earlier because he had worked on a book about the capabilities of a cyber-surveillance system called Pegasus. His book discussed how Pegasus was used to spy on people around the world, including heads of state, diplomats, and journalists. The Pegasus tool could be used to "capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords -- encrypted or not." He was clearly aware that certain material provided by Biden was high-risk.
This related primarily to Biden's role in top secret discussions in the White House pertaining to US troop movements and surges in Afghanistan in 2009. Very few of those on the then-President's staff had Biden's experience and access to sources. Later he handed back some official correspondence on this but not his private notebooks since he had personal notes relating to traumatic family history (the sudden deaths of his first wife and daughter in 1972) alongside details of military briefings. Biden's journaled processing of trauma and grief is inextricably tied in with his political note-taking as an aide-memoire. Some classified files may have been kept for future memoirs or may have been moved to Biden's Delaware home without his knowledge: these were found in an open box in his messy garage. It's clear from the report that Biden had forgotten to check the contents of his home or ensure safe storage. Hur's report points out that Reagan did the same thing and kept all his notebooks in his home study. Only on Reagan's death were top secret details excised. Because of this precedent, ex-presidents might be excused from the same obligations as former staffers.
The Special Counsel report by Robert Hur is damaging for Biden: at first I thought of it as a sideways character assassination ('well-meaning elderly man with poor memory'). But the report itself is troubling in terms of security breaches and an entitled carelessness as much as forgetfulness.
For some years I worked on classified secret affidavits (very small potatoes in comparison, but still) relating to South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission and later policy docs relating to gross human rights abuses. We would be instructed to dispose of and delete recordings or emails as soon as we had submitted work, this was standard practice. Private notes and verbatim transcripts, though, remained personal property (a grey zone) and this is what struck me on reading through the background Hur investigated.
Since the early 1970s, Biden was a copious note-taker in meetings (he has never had a very good memory and admitted that at various points) and most of what he recorded in handwritten notebooks was retained by him for his memoirs. Promises to Keep was his political memoir and Promise Me, Dad was an account focusing on his son Beau's illness and death in 2015. He shared these notebooks and various documents with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who had no security clearance to see any confidential documents.
After learning of Special Counsel Hur's appointment, Biden's ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Biden during the writing of the book Promise Me, Dad. He admitted as much and most of these audio files were retrieved and examined. Zwonitzer also disclosed he had destroyed compromising material earlier because he had worked on a book about the capabilities of a cyber-surveillance system called Pegasus. His book discussed how Pegasus was used to spy on people around the world, including heads of state, diplomats, and journalists. The Pegasus tool could be used to "capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords -- encrypted or not." He was clearly aware that certain material provided by Biden was high-risk.
This related primarily to Biden's role in top secret discussions in the White House pertaining to US troop movements and surges in Afghanistan in 2009. Very few of those on the then-President's staff had Biden's experience and access to sources. Later he handed back some official correspondence on this but not his private notebooks since he had personal notes relating to traumatic family history (the sudden deaths of his first wife and daughter in 1972) alongside details of military briefings. Biden's journaled processing of trauma and grief is inextricably tied in with his political note-taking as an aide-memoire. Some classified files may have been kept for future memoirs or may have been moved to Biden's Delaware home without his knowledge: these were found in an open box in his messy garage. It's clear from the report that Biden had forgotten to check the contents of his home or ensure safe storage. Hur's report points out that Reagan did the same thing and kept all his notebooks in his home study. Only on Reagan's death were top secret details excised. Because of this precedent, ex-presidents might be excused from the same obligations as former staffers.
Not good news then for a number of reasons.
I think you're right on principle and wrong on the politics.
The culture around classified documents at the executive level is problematic and needs fixing regardless of who is president.
However, the number of voters who will decide on who to vote for on this basis in miniscule. Painting Biden as a frail, confused, weak, old man - regardless of how much truth there is in the charge - does damage his reelection chances if the charge sticks.
What is so galling is this one simple fact: even if Biden's harshest critics are right (they're not), Trump is demonstrably worse for memory, cognitive function etc. But that's a little beside the point at this stage, winning (defeating Trump) is all that matters.
Agree with AFZ. There are no photos of boxes stacked up in a bathroom in Biden's case, and almost no one is going to read the special counsel's report (including me). But he looks old and he sounds old and he will be hammered for it constantly.
It's a legitimate concern. He's 81. The Social Security actuarial tables say the average life expectancy for a man his age is 89.4. He's telling us he wants to do a demanding, exhausting job until shortly after he turns 86. It's a bad idea. Electing Trump is a far worse idea, but electing Biden is not great.
No, and I don't see why people in either party aren't making a real, serious attempt to put up a younger candidate. I never understood the fear of Trump thing--I mean really, he's not some omnipotent god--and as for Biden, I understand why he doesn't want to step aside, but surely the rest of the party can see the danger here?
Challenging an incumbent president in the primaries gets ugly; the incumbent survives and becomes the nominee, but is weakened as a candidate in the general election. The last time a challenger beat an incumbent president for the party nomination was before the Civil War, long before the primary system emerged. In 1992 Pat Buchanan's challenge hurt Bush and he lost to Clinton. In 1980 Teddy Kennedy's challenge hurt Carter and he lost to Reagan. In 1976 Reagan's challenge hurt Ford and he lost to Carter. 1968 was its own special kind of mess: McCarthy's challenge was bad for Johnson, and Bobby Kennedy's entry into the race made Johnson drop out altogether.
If Biden doesn't want to step aside and some meaningful subset of the Democratic party supports another candidate, then the primaries become an ugly fight and a candidate damaged from the intra-party attacks emerges. Given that Trump is facing no real challenge because the Republicans have given over their party to the MAGAheads, the Democrats can't afford to have a primary battle that produces a battered candidate. Parties always try to give a show of unity after a bruising primary season, but that only works when a party doesn't have an incumbent president. Nobody buys it when enough people in the party are so unhappy with the incumbent they give real support to a challenger.
Also, it pretty much can't happen now. There's a good discussion in the NY Times (free link) of why it's virtually impossible to replace Biden at this point: state primary filing deadlines are mostly past so it's too late to put someone else on the ballot; Biden has a crapton of money in his campaign fund; no one who seriously wants to be president wants to shoot their shot now when they can just wait till 2028 (only one of challengers discussed above later became president -- Reagan pulled it off, but he had challenged an unelected president who had been an unelected vice president).
Thanks for the responses, @alienfromzog , @Lamb Chopped , @Ruth. I don't think though that we're in disagreement at all, my point was general in one way because I do feel Biden should have known better and the images of an open box with files labelled top secret and Afghanistan standing in a really messy garage came as a shock. Trump's more criminal behaviour is of another order and more reprehensible, nobody could expect him to observe rules on this. But I'd be as shocked if any previous vice-president or president was discovered to have files lying around and not stored in a safe. Intelligence at that level is extremely dangerous and Biden of all people would have been aware that the lives of agents and those involved in intelligence work could be placed at risk if such files were stolen or disclosed to the wrong person. I've thought of him as being surrounded with very skilled and discreet staff and that his home would be monitored and made secure.
As regards the bias of that special counsel report, there's no doubt this was an attempted hatchet job on Biden from Hur, and analogies have been made with FBI director James Comey exonerating Hillary Clinton on the grounds of abusing emails while calling her 'extremely careless' which gave ammunition to Trump and the Republicans.
I'm not suggesting anyone wade through that report on Biden -- I had an insomniac night -- but it did give me pause to think hard about my own perceptions around Biden. During the lead up to 2016, I was among those defending Hillary Clinton because she was competent, experienced, sophisticated and clearly the better, more ethical, candidate. I thought the criticism about mishandling emails was a red herring. At the same time, I had this niggling feeling in the back of my mind that Clinton wasn't somebody I liked very much, a far better candidate sure, but she made me uneasy: too hawkish under Obama, too sharp-tongued, too much of a Washington insider, too practised in politics, too masked. And I pushed all those thoughts away because I wanted her to win and the alternative was unthinkable.
Biden has given me the same uneasiness and again I know what the stakes are in this election year (that quick historical overview from @Ruth makes for chilling reading). For me though, this uneasiness isn't about ageism or cognitive decline so much as looking at someone preoccupied with a great deal of baggage and missing the ball on important stuff. I get the feeling that he is too volatile and emotionally labile at times, too easily triggered by old traumas, too embedded in the past. I agree with @Ruth that it is too late for the Democrats to look elsewhere. The focus should perhaps be on who might be Biden's vice-president as being more flexible and open to fresh solutions for unforeseen crises.
I guess it will be about momentum. It shouldn’t be. Trump is a dreadful human being. By contrast, Biden is well meaning and decent. But there is this myth of the ruthless strong leader. A lot of people buy it.
Apologists will spin it as "He just meant he doesn't give a damn if deadbeat eurotrash countries get attacked by Russia", not literally that he would call up Putin and tell him to attack NATO countries.
But even the less drastic interpretation essentially means that he wants to abolish NATO, because if he would break it up so easily over funding squabbles, he must think it's pretty useless to US interests anyway.
Of course, the Democrats will prefer the more literal interpretation. If I were them, I'd run ads using Canada as my example of a country Trump could encourage Russia to attack, with maps emphasizing the location of Alaska.
People already inclined to be positive about Trump who hear that he is anti-NATO will think that he's probably onto something; they might not have given NATO a whole lot of thought either way before, but if Trump says it, they'll be on board. They probably didn't already know anything about how NATO works, and Trump telling them that other NATO countries are not paying their share will play very nicely into things they already think about isolationism and the US being looked to for payment for everything. They are supporting people in Congress who don't want to fund the defense of Ukraine.
People outside the US may underestimate how far away most of the rest of the world seems from here. It's very easy for Americans to say to each other, "Why should we care about stuff that happens on the other side of the world? Why is everything our problem?"
The Republicans' actual spin for the news media is available, though -- you don't have to speculate about it. Marco Rubio said, "“He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now."
One other example of Trump's unhinged remarks is his attacking Haley's husband for not being by her side during the campaign. Michael Haley is currently serving his country in the South Carolina National Guard stationed in Africa.
One other example of Trump's unhinged remarks is his attacking Haley's husband for not being by her side during the campaign. Michael Haley is currently serving his country in the South Carolina National Guard stationed in Africa.
Of course, Trump calls such people losers.
I wonder what that will do to the military vote.
Trump's disdain for the military has been on open display since at least 2015, and I think any damage it coulda done to his popularity was maxed out a long time ago. His fan club simply doesn't care.
Robert Hur is not a doctor -- he's a lawyer. His opinions re: Biden's mental capacities may be taken with a truckload of salt. His legal findings are what should matter, and on that score he has said clearly that criminal charges against Biden are unwarranted.
I haven't been wildly impressed by Kamala Harris's performance as VP so far, but in fairness you often only tend to notice VPs when they do something bad, so there's a bit of a selection bias there. But there isn't an obviously better candidate - there is no younger Democrat that stands out as obvious presidential material, significantly above their peers.
And I agree with Ruth that it would be politically impossible to replace Harris with someone who wasn't a black woman. Once we've had a couple of black female presidents, then maybe, but in the present circumstances...
A vice president who goes unnoticed is likely to be doing their job right, is what I think. Considering the alternatives who’ve been causing scandal left right and center, one who isn’t is a gift from God.
If Biden had pledged at the outset to serve for only one term, I think VP Harris may have been primaried pretty determinedly. I also think that if Trump wins in November she'll have a hard time becoming the nominee in 2028. If Biden wins this fall, however, I don't see how she wouldn't be the nominee in 2028.
If Biden had pledged at the outset to serve for only one term, I think VP Harris may have been primaried pretty determinedly.
There is no primary for the vice presidential nomination. There used to be negotiations around the position in the "smoke filled room" era of party conventions, but in modern times it's regarded as the choice of the presidential nominee.
What I mean is that if Biden wasn't running this year, VP Harris surely would have run for POTUS, and other Democrats would have challenged her for the Democratic nomination.
What I mean is that if Biden wasn't running this year, VP Harris surely would have run for POTUS, and other Democrats would have challenged her for the Democratic nomination.
Doubtless. An incumbent vice president trying to take over from their president (other than via presidential vacancy) is typically not in as strong a position in the primaries as a successful incumbent president running for a second term. Al Gore in 2000, George H. W. Bush in 1992, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Richard Nixon in 1960 all faced contested primaries to one degree or another on their way to their party's nomination.
If Biden wins this fall, however, I don't see how she wouldn't be the nominee in 2028.
I can easily see the Democrats landing on someone other than a Black woman from California. A good bit of the rest of the country despises California (and not just right-wing nutjobs), and plenty of people will feel the country "isn't ready" for a Black woman to be president, to use the phrasing I heard over and over at church about why we shouldn't call a woman to be rector.
What I mean is that if Biden wasn't running this year, VP Harris surely would have run for POTUS, and other Democrats would have challenged her for the Democratic nomination.
Doubtless. An incumbent vice president trying to take over from their president (other than via presidential vacancy) is typically not in as strong a position in the primaries as a successful incumbent president running for a second term. Al Gore in 2000, George H. W. Bush in 1992, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Richard Nixon in 1960 all faced contested primaries to one degree or another on their way to their party's nomination.
True. But if Biden had chosen not to run and instead endorsed Harris, that would have been a powerful expression of his confidence in her and beneficial for her chances. More so, because voluntary, than the endorsement of a two-term president who wouldn't be able to run themselves anyway. But it's too late now.
Doubtless. An incumbent vice president trying to take over from their president (other than via presidential vacancy) is typically not in as strong a position in the primaries as a successful incumbent president running for a second term. Al Gore in 2000, George H. W. Bush in 1992, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Richard Nixon in 1960 all faced contested primaries to one degree or another on their way to their party's nomination.
True. But if Biden had chosen not to run and instead endorsed Harris, that would have been a powerful expression of his confidence in her and beneficial for her chances. More so, because voluntary, than the endorsement of a two-term president who wouldn't be able to run themselves anyway. But it's too late now.
The other thing to note about that list is that they all successfully won their party's nomination, even if they didn't win the presidency. Vice presidential incumbency does have some power in the nominating process.
Of the vice presidents who served under post-WWII* term limited presidents or presidents who chose not to run for an additional term, only Joe Biden in 2016 and Dick Cheney in 2008 chose not to pursue their party's presidential nomination at the end of their term. The last incumbent vice president to unsuccessfully seek their party's presidential nomination was Alben Barkley in 1952.
I think that covers all post-WWII vice presidents who were similarly situated (serving under a president who was not going to run for re-election).
* The pre-WWII presidential nominating process was sufficiently different that it's really difficult to make valid inferences that are applicable to today.
Yet another thing to note about that list is that they were all white men. I'm all for looking to recent history for indications of how things might play out, but in any scenario Kamala Harris would face a harder uphill climb for the Democratic nomination than a similarly placed white man would. Starting with who her big funders would be.
If Biden wins this fall, however, I don't see how she wouldn't be the nominee in 2028.
I can easily see the Democrats landing on someone other than a Black woman from California. A good bit of the rest of the country despises California (and not just right-wing nutjobs), and plenty of people will feel the country "isn't ready" for a Black woman to be president, to use the phrasing I heard over and over at church about why we shouldn't call a woman to be rector.
I'll note that @Crœsos's careful phrasing obscures the fact that the most recent VP to immediately become his party's presidential nominee was Al Gore, who as we know lost the presidency by a whisker (on a hanging chad) to George W. That was a quarter century ago.
So "recent history" actually provides us with rather scant data.
I agree with you that "the country" might decide it's "not ready" for a black woman president. Removing the first black woman VP and replacing her with someone else would be politically impossible, but there isn't quite the same barrier to just not selecting her as presidential candidate.
As an aside, the relationship between the country and the president is so impersonal that "not being ready for a black woman" shouldn't be a thing. The question should be whether the black woman in question is ready to be president.
I'll note that @Crœsos's careful phrasing obscures the fact that the most recent VP to immediately become his party's presidential nominee was Al Gore, who as we know lost the presidency by a whisker (on a hanging chad) to George W. That was a quarter century ago.
That's the trouble with trying to determine trends from presidential elections. They only happen every four years so it's not a very big data set. Another way to put it is that 2000 was six elections ago. If we look only at the more particular case (an election featuring a president who can't or won't run for re-election) we only have seven examples in the 73 years since the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment, so that's an even more limited data set. Interestingly the most recent two presidential elections to feature such conditions (2016 and 2008) are the only cases in that 1951-2024 timeframe where the incumbent vice president didn't make a run for the presidency.
Out of 46 Presidents, 15 were previously Vice Presidents. (Eight advanced because of deaths and one because of resignation.) If you want to be President someday, being Vice President is a great springboard. Don't count Harris out; even if Biden loses in 2024, we may see her again in 2028 or later (provided Trump doesn't have her killed) (and that's
not a joke).
Just been reviewing CPAC 24. I’d never looked at previous conferences so I wasn’t really prepared for the nonsense they discuss seriously. Paranoia rules. I found it jaw-dropping.
Just been reviewing CPAC 24. I’d never looked at previous conferences so I wasn’t really prepared for the nonsense they discuss seriously. Paranoia rules. I found it jaw-dropping.
How important is it for the GOP?
It used to be huge, but seems to have faded in importance in recent years. I believe they've been supplanted by folks like Turning Point USA.
It's largely a MAGA conference, now. Interestingly (maybe?), this year there's a new counter conference for 'traditional' Conservatives.
That article is from last March. As I noted at the time, the main draw of the Club for Growth conference was to let presidential candidates reach out to the deep pockets of the Club for Growth. Interestingly only that year's CPAC attendees are still in the Republican presidential primary.
Another possible reason CPAC has diminished in popularity recently is the legal difficulties of chariman and conference organizer Matt Schlapp. Most conservatives these days are willing to wave off sexual assault allegations (cf. Trump, Donald) but alleged gay sexual assault by someone presenting himself as straight (and married) may be a bridge too far for the typical MAGA bro.
Poll results at this stage are not a very reliable guide. But is appears that November might actually be close. I find that disturbing. The polls from the marginal states which Biden won in 2020 have moved and are favourable to Trump.
Now the views of the faithful are not unexpected. But why should others change their minds? I’m not sure I get that.
Comments
Or because they get more clicks portraying Biden as a bumbling old fool than they do portraying him as the leader of an administration doing a decent job.
That would be more convincing if the same press hadn't been running a series of articles about how "today was the day Donald Trump finally became president!" from February 2017 to sometime in mid-2019.
Is this the response you're talking about? Because it seems like a perfectly cogent response to a bad faith question by nepo-baby Peter Doocy.
For some years I worked on classified secret affidavits (very small potatoes in comparison, but still) relating to South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission and later policy docs relating to gross human rights abuses. We would be instructed to dispose of and delete recordings or emails as soon as we had submitted work, this was standard practice. Private notes and verbatim transcripts, though, remained personal property (a grey zone) and this is what struck me on reading through the background Hur investigated.
Since the early 1970s, Biden was a copious note-taker in meetings (he has never had a very good memory and admitted that at various points) and most of what he recorded in handwritten notebooks was retained by him for his memoirs. Promises to Keep was his political memoir and Promise Me, Dad was an account focusing on his son Beau's illness and death in 2015. He shared these notebooks and various documents with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who had no security clearance to see any confidential documents.
After learning of Special Counsel Hur's appointment, Biden's ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Biden during the writing of the book Promise Me, Dad. He admitted as much and most of these audio files were retrieved and examined. Zwonitzer also disclosed he had destroyed compromising material earlier because he had worked on a book about the capabilities of a cyber-surveillance system called Pegasus. His book discussed how Pegasus was used to spy on people around the world, including heads of state, diplomats, and journalists. The Pegasus tool could be used to "capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords -- encrypted or not." He was clearly aware that certain material provided by Biden was high-risk.
This related primarily to Biden's role in top secret discussions in the White House pertaining to US troop movements and surges in Afghanistan in 2009. Very few of those on the then-President's staff had Biden's experience and access to sources. Later he handed back some official correspondence on this but not his private notebooks since he had personal notes relating to traumatic family history (the sudden deaths of his first wife and daughter in 1972) alongside details of military briefings. Biden's journaled processing of trauma and grief is inextricably tied in with his political note-taking as an aide-memoire. Some classified files may have been kept for future memoirs or may have been moved to Biden's Delaware home without his knowledge: these were found in an open box in his messy garage. It's clear from the report that Biden had forgotten to check the contents of his home or ensure safe storage. Hur's report points out that Reagan did the same thing and kept all his notebooks in his home study. Only on Reagan's death were top secret details excised. Because of this precedent, ex-presidents might be excused from the same obligations as former staffers.
Not good news then for a number of reasons.
I think you're right on principle and wrong on the politics.
The culture around classified documents at the executive level is problematic and needs fixing regardless of who is president.
However, the number of voters who will decide on who to vote for on this basis in miniscule. Painting Biden as a frail, confused, weak, old man - regardless of how much truth there is in the charge - does damage his reelection chances if the charge sticks.
What is so galling is this one simple fact: even if Biden's harshest critics are right (they're not), Trump is demonstrably worse for memory, cognitive function etc. But that's a little beside the point at this stage, winning (defeating Trump) is all that matters.
AFZ
It's a legitimate concern. He's 81. The Social Security actuarial tables say the average life expectancy for a man his age is 89.4. He's telling us he wants to do a demanding, exhausting job until shortly after he turns 86. It's a bad idea. Electing Trump is a far worse idea, but electing Biden is not great.
If Biden doesn't want to step aside and some meaningful subset of the Democratic party supports another candidate, then the primaries become an ugly fight and a candidate damaged from the intra-party attacks emerges. Given that Trump is facing no real challenge because the Republicans have given over their party to the MAGAheads, the Democrats can't afford to have a primary battle that produces a battered candidate. Parties always try to give a show of unity after a bruising primary season, but that only works when a party doesn't have an incumbent president. Nobody buys it when enough people in the party are so unhappy with the incumbent they give real support to a challenger.
Also, it pretty much can't happen now. There's a good discussion in the NY Times (free link) of why it's virtually impossible to replace Biden at this point: state primary filing deadlines are mostly past so it's too late to put someone else on the ballot; Biden has a crapton of money in his campaign fund; no one who seriously wants to be president wants to shoot their shot now when they can just wait till 2028 (only one of challengers discussed above later became president -- Reagan pulled it off, but he had challenged an unelected president who had been an unelected vice president).
As regards the bias of that special counsel report, there's no doubt this was an attempted hatchet job on Biden from Hur, and analogies have been made with FBI director James Comey exonerating Hillary Clinton on the grounds of abusing emails while calling her 'extremely careless' which gave ammunition to Trump and the Republicans.
I'm not suggesting anyone wade through that report on Biden -- I had an insomniac night -- but it did give me pause to think hard about my own perceptions around Biden. During the lead up to 2016, I was among those defending Hillary Clinton because she was competent, experienced, sophisticated and clearly the better, more ethical, candidate. I thought the criticism about mishandling emails was a red herring. At the same time, I had this niggling feeling in the back of my mind that Clinton wasn't somebody I liked very much, a far better candidate sure, but she made me uneasy: too hawkish under Obama, too sharp-tongued, too much of a Washington insider, too practised in politics, too masked. And I pushed all those thoughts away because I wanted her to win and the alternative was unthinkable.
Biden has given me the same uneasiness and again I know what the stakes are in this election year (that quick historical overview from @Ruth makes for chilling reading). For me though, this uneasiness isn't about ageism or cognitive decline so much as looking at someone preoccupied with a great deal of baggage and missing the ball on important stuff. I get the feeling that he is too volatile and emotionally labile at times, too easily triggered by old traumas, too embedded in the past. I agree with @Ruth that it is too late for the Democrats to look elsewhere. The focus should perhaps be on who might be Biden's vice-president as being more flexible and open to fresh solutions for unforeseen crises.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68266447
Missing that made my post rather nonsensical...
Apologists will spin it as "He just meant he doesn't give a damn if deadbeat eurotrash countries get attacked by Russia", not literally that he would call up Putin and tell him to attack NATO countries.
But even the less drastic interpretation essentially means that he wants to abolish NATO, because if he would break it up so easily over funding squabbles, he must think it's pretty useless to US interests anyway.
Of course, the Democrats will prefer the more literal interpretation. If I were them, I'd run ads using Canada as my example of a country Trump could encourage Russia to attack, with maps emphasizing the location of Alaska.
People outside the US may underestimate how far away most of the rest of the world seems from here. It's very easy for Americans to say to each other, "Why should we care about stuff that happens on the other side of the world? Why is everything our problem?"
The Republicans' actual spin for the news media is available, though -- you don't have to speculate about it. Marco Rubio said, "“He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now."
It has to be Kamala Harris. The Democrats don't dare kick a Black woman off their ticket; it would alienate their most loyal voters.
Of course, Trump calls such people losers.
I wonder what that will do to the military vote.
Trump's disdain for the military has been on open display since at least 2015, and I think any damage it coulda done to his popularity was maxed out a long time ago. His fan club simply doesn't care.
I would agree if the candidate for president was 30 years longer and in good health
From whom, and what cause do you have to trust their opinion?
Various people on tv political programmes. I didn't make notes.
That high a bar, eh?
Worse, it's almost certain some if not all of them were on GBeebies.
Doublethink, Admin
And I agree with Ruth that it would be politically impossible to replace Harris with someone who wasn't a black woman. Once we've had a couple of black female presidents, then maybe, but in the present circumstances...
Worth 8 minutes viewing.
I think @Leorning Cniht has accidentally hit on why @Telford's anonymous sources think Kamala Harris "is not up to the job".
There is no primary for the vice presidential nomination. There used to be negotiations around the position in the "smoke filled room" era of party conventions, but in modern times it's regarded as the choice of the presidential nominee.
Doubtless. An incumbent vice president trying to take over from their president (other than via presidential vacancy) is typically not in as strong a position in the primaries as a successful incumbent president running for a second term. Al Gore in 2000, George H. W. Bush in 1992, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Richard Nixon in 1960 all faced contested primaries to one degree or another on their way to their party's nomination.
I can easily see the Democrats landing on someone other than a Black woman from California. A good bit of the rest of the country despises California (and not just right-wing nutjobs), and plenty of people will feel the country "isn't ready" for a Black woman to be president, to use the phrasing I heard over and over at church about why we shouldn't call a woman to be rector.
True. But if Biden had chosen not to run and instead endorsed Harris, that would have been a powerful expression of his confidence in her and beneficial for her chances. More so, because voluntary, than the endorsement of a two-term president who wouldn't be able to run themselves anyway. But it's too late now.
The other thing to note about that list is that they all successfully won their party's nomination, even if they didn't win the presidency. Vice presidential incumbency does have some power in the nominating process.
Of the vice presidents who served under post-WWII* term limited presidents or presidents who chose not to run for an additional term, only Joe Biden in 2016 and Dick Cheney in 2008 chose not to pursue their party's presidential nomination at the end of their term. The last incumbent vice president to unsuccessfully seek their party's presidential nomination was Alben Barkley in 1952.
I think that covers all post-WWII vice presidents who were similarly situated (serving under a president who was not going to run for re-election).
* The pre-WWII presidential nominating process was sufficiently different that it's really difficult to make valid inferences that are applicable to today.
I'll note that @Crœsos's careful phrasing obscures the fact that the most recent VP to immediately become his party's presidential nominee was Al Gore, who as we know lost the presidency by a whisker (on a hanging chad) to George W. That was a quarter century ago.
So "recent history" actually provides us with rather scant data.
I agree with you that "the country" might decide it's "not ready" for a black woman president. Removing the first black woman VP and replacing her with someone else would be politically impossible, but there isn't quite the same barrier to just not selecting her as presidential candidate.
As an aside, the relationship between the country and the president is so impersonal that "not being ready for a black woman" shouldn't be a thing. The question should be whether the black woman in question is ready to be president.
That's the trouble with trying to determine trends from presidential elections. They only happen every four years so it's not a very big data set. Another way to put it is that 2000 was six elections ago. If we look only at the more particular case (an election featuring a president who can't or won't run for re-election) we only have seven examples in the 73 years since the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment, so that's an even more limited data set. Interestingly the most recent two presidential elections to feature such conditions (2016 and 2008) are the only cases in that 1951-2024 timeframe where the incumbent vice president didn't make a run for the presidency.
not a joke).
How important is it for the GOP?
It used to be huge, but seems to have faded in importance in recent years. I believe they've been supplanted by folks like Turning Point USA.
That article is from last March. As I noted at the time, the main draw of the Club for Growth conference was to let presidential candidates reach out to the deep pockets of the Club for Growth. Interestingly only that year's CPAC attendees are still in the Republican presidential primary.
Another possible reason CPAC has diminished in popularity recently is the legal difficulties of chariman and conference organizer Matt Schlapp. Most conservatives these days are willing to wave off sexual assault allegations (cf. Trump, Donald) but alleged gay sexual assault by someone presenting himself as straight (and married) may be a bridge too far for the typical MAGA bro.
Now the views of the faithful are not unexpected. But why should others change their minds? I’m not sure I get that.