Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been pondering the mega-kerfuffle about President Biden, and is willing to admit that he doesn’t know where this is going to end up. He and his crew offer some of the most insightful reporting and commentary on political news in my opinion, and it is more that worth subscribing given the mess mainstream political reporting has become. (Related diary I just posted.)
A recent newsletter of his, Groundhog Day But With Cognitive Exams is worth reading (full access link) because Marshall has some thoughtful observations. Here’s how it starts:
I am going to try to write a few pieces today and tomorrow taking stock of the truly unprecedented and almost unimaginable standoff that is not so much wracking the Democratic Party as simply holding it in place, in limbo, for more than a week now. But before doing that I thought it was important to share some general thoughts on where we are with all of this. First I must say that I can’t think of many other or perhaps any political situation I’ve written about at TPM over decades that was more difficult for me to make sense of, either as a matter of what is happening or will happen, or what should happen. I’ve been mainly focused on the first question.
For the second half of last week I was basically certain that Joe Biden would be forced to end his candidacy and that it was simply a matter of time before he did so. Then, starting Saturday, things seemed to shift. These things work in waves. For any politician the best way to avoid being forced to resign (and here I’ll use “resign” as a proxy for Biden ending his candidacy, not actually resigning the presidency) is simply not to resign. It’s one of those truisms that contains more depth and nuance than one at first realizes.
One of the reasons for that shift was simply that Biden was still there. He’s still running and still the nominee. We’re in the midst of a level of feeding frenzy I’ve only seen twice as a political observer — the first week of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and the one that ended Al Franken’s career in the Senate in 2018. The Washington press corps and national political press overwhelmingly and vociferously want to force Biden out of the race. I don’t say that in the sense of bias, per se — it’s not even necessarily at the level of intentionality. It’s more at the level of crowd behavior. It’s just how these feeding frenzies work. What do foxes think they’re doing when they rip through a hen house? For the DC press, this is all mixed in with ego and a sense of vindication. But again, it’s just how feeding frenzies work. But at a certain point, the feeding frenzy has been churning for days and Biden’s still running and there’s some element of a wave cresting. Like, hey we’ve been telling you all the reasons why Biden has to withdraw from the race for days but he’s still running and okay, well, maybe not — or, like, we can’t keep up this 100 yard dash forever. It’s just a cresting pattern.
emphasis added Read the whole thing.
Marshall goes on to address a real issue. The press is making a big deal of Democrats calling for Biden to step aside. There’s a lot of ‘un-named’ sources supposedly making the call, but Marshall talks about the Big Kahunas who have been silent so far in a short piece titled Pelosi.
...Democrats are now in this weird and sometimes jaw-dropping standoff in which major elected Democrats make statements criticizing their current de facto nominee in the hope he’ll stop being the nominee and make way for a better nominee even though they’re not really clear who that nominee will be.
….We’ve noted a few times that there are half a dozen or so Democratic party stakeholders with the clout and standing to force this issue. But among those Pelosi is at least the first among equals. There’s Schumer, Jeffries, Clyburn, maybe Obama. Large groups of officeholders would obviously speak with a force of their own. But I think this really comes down to her. She’s been very quiet over the last few days.
emphasis added
Pelosi certainly knows what it’s like to be demonized — and the target of stochastic terrorism. Whatever her opinions may be, give her credit for not publicly joining a circular firing squad. She of all people knows exactly how dangerous Trump and the Republican Party have become. Why contribute to the press feeding frenzy?
Is the tide turning?
Today Josh Marshall reports on something that makes him think the wave may be cresting, with AOC & CBC, taking a stand.
Yesterday evening I saw the first thing that made me think Joe Biden will weather this storm and remain the Democrats’ candidate for President. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared outside the Capitol stating clearly and categorically that Biden’s in the race and she supports him. Period. Interestingly she referred to having spoken to him “extensively” over the weekend. By my subjective impression, she didn’t say this, as I’ve seen some Democrats say things over the last week, in a way that struck me as a holding pattern remark. AOC obviously carries a lot of weight in the progressive wing of the party. But beyond that she has exceptionally good political instincts, both as to the general election as well as the mood within the congressional party. When I saw the video of her comments it was the first card I’d seen on the table in ten days which made me think this whole drama would go in President’s direction...
...The Congressional Black Caucus came out squarely in favor of the President. This fits a historical pattern. The CBC remained steadfast for Bill Clinton in his most beleaguered days. But it also lines up with what I’d heard anecdotally about reactions to the last week among many African-American voters.
Marshall is not making any predictions, but he notes these are big deals. We know the elite political press has decided Biden must go — but we’re not hearing how actual voters are responding. As Marshall noted in the newsletter linked above,
...This was captured for me by a couple interviews with Rep. Debbie Dingell (D) of Michigan. At the beginning of the week she appeared on TV demanding Biden solve the situation or move on, appear on camera with various feats of cognitive strength, etc. We’re running out of time, etc. Then, a couple days later, she described spending time back in her district and getting approached by ordinary voters saying, Debbie, what are you talking about? We had a primary and we voted for Biden. What’s going on here? It wasn’t so much a dead-end defense of Biden as a reality check that what was happening in DC was pretty different from what was happening at home. And, again, not absolute resistance, as she seemed to put it, more just, “hold on a second, what are we talking about here?” After that she’s shifted to a more equivocal stance, mainly saying we need to find a way to get back to bashing Donald Trump.
It’s not over till it’s over.
Since the press won’t do it, we need to keep pushing the focus back to Trump, Project 2025, and the Extreme Court. Polling is still inconclusive — you can find good news or bad news depending on where you look. If and when Trump announces his VP pick that will draw media attention back to him — and what he plans to do if he gets back in the White House. The feeding frenzy in the press may simmer down from exhaustion, unless some other incident occurs. We still have months to go. It’s up to President Biden and his people to decide what is the right thing to do — not the elite political press and the pundits.
We should take a lesson from the French. Their Left fought off a bid by the extreme right wing to take power and did it by agreeing to cooperate in a united front. There are a number of individuals and groups who might be thinking of a contested nomination as an opportunity to advance their own particular agendas. It would be political suicide for the Left if they did so.
The saying is “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.” We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the perfect suitor. This is not a question of voting for the lesser of two evils. There’s only one truly evil candidate in this race.
However this shakes out (and it’s still shaking out), eyes on the prize, forward momentum, never give up, and never surrender.
BONUS
David Kurtz Morning Memo has an excellent commentary on how the political press operates with:
To extract some snippets, Kurtz describes attending a D.C. book party full of elite journalists, where the talk was all about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The groupthink was this was “a crisis for the Obama Administration.”
...These were sophisticated people, old Washington hands, folks who’d been around the block more than once. But they were all atwitter about the spill and the Obama White House’s response to it. They were incredulous that this crisis was not yet in hand, flustered that more wasn’t being done about it, and adamant about the political price the Obama administration was paying for it.
As I do, I gently played devil’s advocate about the available options, the tough choices, and the challenges (and wisdom) of operating at the edge of our technological limits. But no one was much interested in that line of inquiry. They didn’t know the oil and gas industry, or the seafood industry, or the delicate fringe of wetland along the Louisiana coast that had been under siege for decades. What they knew and understood was politics.
Finally, in exasperation, the best-known journalist in attendance, someone you would recognize, exclaimed: “Well, they have to do SOMETHING!”
Kurtz acknowledges that the current feeding frenzy by the press is because Biden did so badly in the debate and it’s up to him to deal with it. That being said, here’s a few more snippets.
...much of political journalism is divorced from policy and the substance of politics. It’s the horserace coverage, the who’s up and who’s down, the who’s in and who’s out. And no matter how complex the topic, or carefully balanced the various competing public interests are on a given issue, or how long the history of tackling the issue in a substantive way, once it enters the realm of political journalism it goes through a reductive process that distills it to whether it’s good or bad politically. Does it help or does it hurt? And if it hurts, what are you going to do about it?…
...If all you know is politics, everything gets reduced to a craven political calculation. Actually, it’s worse than that. If all you know is political journalism, then it gets reduced to the political journalist’s projection of what politics is, what winning looks like, and who’s losing under that particular contrived set of calculations...
If you can’t see the whole thing, you can subscribe to get Morning Memo sent to your mailbox. If you’re ready to dump your subscription to the mainstream media, sending your money to TPM would not be a bad choice.