If President Biden is determined to brazen this out, and it appears that he is, then we need to see a lot more of Vice President Kamala Harris. Voters need to be reassured that she’s up to the job of succeeding him.
Tag: Joe Biden
Kudos to The Philly Inquirer for a brilliant piece of performance art
On Saturday afternoon, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial headlined “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race.” It was intended as a rebuke to The New York Times’ editorial board, which on Friday posted a piece using the same headline, the only difference being that it was aimed at President Biden rather than Trump.
The Inquirer’s editorial was brilliant and inspired. It’s attracted a lot of well-deserved attention, and I hope it results in an upsurge of subscriptions. It begins:
President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.
But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.
In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.
It reminded me of The Boston Globe’s fake front page from April 2016, imagining what a Trump residency would be like if he somehow were elected president, which of course we all knew would never happen. The page, dated a year into the future, led with the prescient headline “Deportations to Begin.”
Ultimately, though, the Inquirer’s editorial, like the Globe’s fake front, is performance art. Pro-Biden social media exploded in outrage at the Times’ editorial as well as the insistence of many pundits that Biden should step aside following his disastrous debate performance Thursday night. Why, critics asked, isn’t the Times demanding that Trump drop out given that he’s a lying, felonious insurrectionist?
The answer, of course, is that the Times wants Biden to end his campaign because they’re terrified that Trump will beat him — as am I. It’s ludicrous to believe that there’s anything anyone could do to persuade Trump to drop out. He needs to be defeated — and, while we’re at it, to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and imprisoned if found guilty of crimes that warrant such punishment.
The Inquirer’s editorial is a great thought experiment, and I’m glad it’s grabbed so much attention. The Times’ editorial, on the other hand, is a serious plea for Democrats to do whatever it takes to keep Trump from being elected to a second term and ushering in an era of right-wing authoritarianism. Apologists for Biden’s frighteningly awful debate performance should stop pretending otherwise.
The three national newspapers say that Biden should pull out or at least consider it
The editorial pages of the three national newspapers are calling on President Biden to end his re-election campaign or to strongly consider it. The most forthright of the three is the liberal New York Times, which argues that Biden’s disastrous debate performance on Thursday shows that he’s no longer the strongest candidate to stop the threat (free link) that Donald Trump poses to democracy should Trump win election this November:
As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.
The Times does say that it will endorse Biden if he persists with his candidacy: “If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick.”
The Washington Post, more centrist than the Times but just as anti-Trump, begins its editorial (free link):
If President Biden had weekend plans, he should cancel them in favor of some soul-searching. His calamitous debate performance on Thursday raises legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job. It’s incumbent on this incumbent to determine, in conversation with family and aides, whether continuing to seek reelection is in the best interests of the country.
Unlike the Times and the Post, the right-wing editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is more concerned that an enfeebled Biden might actually win (free link) and prove that he’s not up to a second term:
Well, that was painful — for the United States. President Biden’s halting, stumbling debate performance Thursday night showed all too clearly that he isn’t up to serving four more years in office. For the good of the country, more even than their party, Democrats have some hard thinking to do about whether they need to replace him at the top of their ticket.
Closer to home, The Boston Globe has not weighed in. But three of its columnists have. Adrian Walker, Scot Lehigh and Brian McGrory all write that the time has come for Biden to step aside in favor of a Democrat who might stand a better chance of beating Trump. Walker has the line of the day in describing the president’s excruciating debate performance: “Biden was not merely bad. He was bad in a way people running for president are never bad.”
Biden could have pulled out a year or two ago but chose not to. The argument in favor of his staying in the race is that the chaos that would be unleashed by throwing the nomination to an open Democratic convention would be a greater risk than keeping him at the head of the ticket. Now it seems likely that the greater risk is to stick with Biden, a good and decent man and a successful president who just may not be up to the task of stopping the authoritarian menace that looms this fall.
Dems in disarray — and this time it’s warranted as calls mount for Biden to drop out
For once, the pundit freakout is justified. Those of us who watched Thursday night’s debate between President Biden and Donald Trump saw an enfeebled, fumble-mouthed incumbent who was utterly unequipped to stand up to the blizzard of lies unleashed by his felonious, insurrection-inciting opponent.
Biden has been an excellent president in many ways, but he needs to announce as soon as possible that he’s ending his campaign for re-election. Ezra Klein laid out a path back in February, and at the time he was widely mocked for it. Now he looks prescient. The president should release his delegates and allow the Democratic National Convention to choose a candidate, who, in turn, will choose a running mate. I like the idea of a Gretchen Whitmer-Cory Booker ticket — or the reverse. But Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom and others would probably be in the mix as well.
What happened? I honestly thought Biden had put concerns about his age to rest at his State of the Union address. Reading a speech is one thing, but he was mixing it up with the Republicans, ad libbing, obviously enjoying himself. Could things have really changed that much in a few months? Or is he like many people in their 80s who can have a good night or a bad night? We learned that he had a cold, which explains why his voice was so raspy and soft. But that doesn’t explain why he had such trouble forming his thoughts, articulating obvious talking points about issues like abortion rights, and standing up to Trump’s lies with specifics. “We finally beat Medicare” was a line that will stand as one of the defining moments of the evening.
I thought CNN’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, were OK. They should have asked Trump right off the bat about democracy and his status as a convicted felon rather than waiting until later on, by which time many viewers had probably changed the channel. They’re taking a lot of grief on social media for not fact-checking Trump, but it’s been reported that the rules were set ahead of time. Of course, telling Trump that no one will be fact-checking him was an act of grotesque irresponsibility. Team Biden should have insisted otherwise, but no doubt they went along with it because Biden really, really wanted this debate.
Biden got stronger as the night wore on. His voice recovered to some degree and he landed a few blows. Rather than the vacant, slack-jawed stare he displayed during the split screen early in the debate, he started to appear more animated and smiled a few times. By then it was too late. And his closing statement, which should have been his easiest task of the night, devolved into complete incoherence.
And let’s pause for a moment and emphasize that Trump turned in the second-worst debate performance by any presidential candidate in the television age, exceeded only by his own COVID-spewing yellfest in the first 2020 debate. He was completely untethered from reality. But he made it work, acting very much like himself, seemingly unaffected by his own advanced age.
Finally, a word about the media, which has been obsessing over Biden’s age for many months. A lot of us have been critical, thinking it was both unwarranted and unfair given that Trump is only three years younger and appears to have plenty of cognitive issues of his own. Trump, though, is loud and talks fast, and in that respect doesn’t seem that much different from when he was running against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now it turns out that the scrutiny of Biden’s age was warranted, and perhaps we should have been paying more attention rather than dismissing it.
Sometime in the next few days, I hope, Democratic Party leaders, including former President Barack Obama, will pay Biden a visit and deliver an uncomfortable message: for the good of the party — for the good of the country — he has to step aside. All along, the calculation has been whether Trump could be more easily defeated by Biden or by someone else. Around 9:10 p.m. on Thursday, that calculation moved firmly to “someone else.”
Authoritarianism is on the march. A neo-fascist party seems likely to win the French election. Italy is ruled by an extreme right-wing government. Putin and Xi are becoming increasingly repressive. Modi has all but extinguished democracy in India. The U.S. can’t join them — and President Biden, a good and decent man, can’t let himself be used to pave the way for autocracy. It’s time for someone new.
Media notes: Will Lewis’ unethical ask, Biden is still old and Hub Blog is back
Once the mishegas over the shake-up at The Washington Post dies down, we are left with a question: Is publisher Will Lewis the right person to set a new direction for Jeff Bezos’ money-losing, reader-hemorrhaging newspaper? The New York Times has some disturbing news (free link) on that front.
According to Times reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson, executive editor Sally Buzbee clashed with Lewis over a story about new developments in the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal. Lewis had some involvement as an executive in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and he reportedly told Buzbee that he didn’t want the story to run. Buzbee ran it anyway. The Times reports that the exchange was a factor, though not the decisive one, in Buzbee’s decision to leave the Post rather than accept a reduced role under Lewis’ plan to reorganize the staff into three newsrooms.
And lest we forget, Max Tani of Semafor reported a couple of weeks ago that the Post’s director of newsletter strategy, Elana Zak, sent out a missive instructing staff members “don’t distribute this story” in its newsletters. At the time, Zak’s email was attributed to some sort of internal mix-up, but the Times story casts that in a new light.
Buzbee, at least, stood up to Lewis and his ethically inappropriate demand. The problem is that his handpicked new editors, Matt Murray and Robert Winnett, may prove to be more malleable.
A flawed WSJ story
The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy inquiry (free link) into President Biden’s mental acuity that has inflamed liberal critics. I read it with an open mind, but the story, by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, is based almost entirely on the observations of partisan Republicans like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who’s quoted on the record, and current Speaker Mike Johnson, who isn’t.
The article, we’re told, is based on interviews with 45 people — but apparently six of those interviews were devoted to what Johnson had told people about a meeting he had with Biden in February. The story also contradicts earlier reporting about McCarthy, who has privately praised Biden’s mental sharpness even while mocking him in public.
One of the most fair-minded, nonpartisan media observers out there is Tom Jones of Poynter Online, so I was curious as to what he would have to say about it. Here’s his take:
Is it a fairly reported story on a pertinent topic? Or is it a pointed piece based pretty much on quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term?
I’d go with the latter — considering the money quote is from McCarthy, another key anecdote was reported by current Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other tales suggesting Biden’s decline are flimsy, at best. (For example, he sometimes talks quietly, he uses notes, and he relies on aides.)
That “money quote” from McCarthy, by the way, is this: “I used to meet with him [Biden] when he was vice president. I’d go to his house. He’s not the same person.”
Despite Murdoch’s ownership, the Journal’s news coverage is generally superb. It was the Journal’s reporting, after all, that led to Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions last week. You have to wonder how a slanted piece like this passed muster.
Fairly or not, the Journal has raised the stakes for Biden’s June 27 debate with Trump, who, it should be said much more often than it is, is nearly as old as Biden and whose own problems with age-related mental slips tend to play out in public rather than (allegedly) behind closed doors.
Jay Fitzgerald returns
Veteran journalist Jay Fitzgerald, one of the original Boston bloggers, has revived Hub Blog (via Contrarian Boston). It looks like Jay is mainly writing an old-fashioned link blog with a few longer posts on the turmoil at The Washington Post.
I started writing an early version of this blog in 2002, shortly after Hub Blog launched. I was actually doing it by hand — I had no idea there was this thing called blogging software that automated the process of date-stamping, archiving older posts, adding permalinks and the like until Jay asked me, “What are you using.” He led me to Blogspot, though I’ve been using WordPress since 2005.
Anyway, it’s good to have Jay back in harness.
Broadcast nets highlight Trump’s latest Nazi dalliance while newspapers fall short
Whenever Donald Trump erupts with rhetoric that is disturbing and offensive, questions are raised as to whether the media should amplify it. My own view: Yes, usually, although it shouldn’t be repeated over and over to the point at which it drowns out all other news. President Biden is struggling to get his own message out, and surely one of the reasons is that Trump is dominating just about every news cycle — not in a good way, of course, but that hardly seems to matter.
Yet how can we ignore the reality that, on Monday, his campaign promoted Nazi rhetoric on Trump’s own Truth Social platform? Among other things, the 30-second video that was posted refers to “the creation of a unified Reich” and says that Trump will reject “globalists,” code for Jews among the far right. The Trump campaign responded with the usual drivel. According to The New York Times (free link), the response was that the video was shared by a campaign staffer who didn’t notice the Nazi content and that Biden, naturally, is “the real extremist.” The post was reportedly left up for many hours, though it was taken down Tuesday morning. Trump himself has not addressed the matter.
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What’s interesting is that, far from giving the story too much attention, our major mainstream newspapers have actually paid little attention to it. Our three national papers, the Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, all published stories about it online. But only the Times saw fit to include it in its print edition, relegating it to page A17 of today’s paper, with no tease on the front. By contrast, there’s nothing on page one or inside the print editions of the Post or the Journal, either today or Tuesday.
Locally, The Boston Globe actually has two stories in its print edition today, as it’s the lead item in its political roundup and the subject of a metro-front story on Biden’s speech in Boston. Neither, though, is on page one.
It seems like a classic case of being caught between news cycles — too late for Tuesday print, too old for Wednesday print. The Nazi story certainly dominated the political conversation on Tuesday, but for casual news consumers who aren’t constantly plugged into social media and cable news, that’s scant consolation. Print still matters, if only as a way for editors to communicate what they think are the most important stories of the day.
The Big Three national evening newscasts actually did better on Tuesday. I downloaded the audio and plugged the files into Otter, which uses artificial intelligence to produce reasonably good transcripts. I also watched a few minutes to fill in the gaps. Here’s what I found:
- ABC’s “World News Tonight” had a story about 12 minutes into its newscast and stuck with it for almost a minute and a half. It included both the “N”-word (Nazi) and the “H”-word (Hitler) and incorporated Biden’s outraged response. There’s also this straightforward assertion by reporter Mary Bruce: “The Trump campaign is adamant this was not a campaign video, that it was reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word while the President was in court. But that video that included three instances of the word Reich remained on Trump’s page for more than 18 hours.”
- The “NBC Nightly News” actually mentioned the Nazi story three times. Anchor Lester Holt teased it in his opening, and reporter Laura Jarrett referred to it at about the 10-minute mark in beginning her roundup of that day’s Trump-related news before offering a 30-second story at about 11:30. Again, the word “Nazi” is used several times.
- On the “CBS Evening News,” anchor Norah O’Donnell teased the story about six minutes into the newscast, straightforwardly asserting that the term “Reich” is associated with Nazi Germany. Reporter Robert Costa then offered up some Trump news that provides the most thorough overview of the three networks, pivoting from the post and Biden’s reaction to this: “It’s not the first time Trump has used rhetoric prompting outrage for its echoes of hateful extremists.” That’s followed by some of Trump’s worst comments over the years, from saying that immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country” to “radical left thugs that live like vermin.”
All of this matters because the three evening network newscasts are the closest thing we have left to a mass medium, with a combined audience of nearly 20 million. By contrast, Fox News, which attracts by far the largest audience of the three cable news stations, has an average of about 2 million viewers in prime time, generally defined as 8 to 11 p.m.
I harbor no illusions that Trump’s latest dalliance with Nazi and antisemitic rhetoric is going to have a lasting effect. It all played out in a manner that we’ve seen over and over: assert, deny and project — and then quietly remove the offending message after it’s accomplished its purpose of assuring the far right that he’s one of them. Stand back and stand by, everyone. It’s going to get a lot worse.
Hur lied
I’m not sure how else we can characterize what happened. Special counsel Robert Hur all but called President Biden senile recently in describing him as “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur declined to recommend charges against Biden for keeping classified information in his possession, essentially arguing that it would be cruel to do that to an 81-year-old man in the early stages of dementia. And, of course, the media fell for it.
Now we know that Hur’s report grossly mischaracterized the reality, revealed in the transcripts of Biden’s deposition with prosectors. CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy has a good roundup of the media mea culpas, writing:
The acknowledgement from some, but not all, news outlets on Tuesday about the true nature of Biden’s deposition marked another embarrassing moment for the national press, which has floundered at pivotal moments in the lead up to the crucial 2024 presidential election.
The deposition transcripts not only indicated that Biden appeared fairly sharp during his testimony, joking with investigators and retelling stories with granular detail, but that Hur was misleading in how he presented some of the information included in his report.
It’s like a rerun in reverse from 2019, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr put out a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties that falsely declared Donald Trump had not obstructed justice. It became clear that’s not what Mueller was saying once his full report came out, but truth, boots, etc.
I especially enjoyed this account of Biden’s deposition, from Charlie Savage’s report Tuesday in The New York Times:
“I don’t remember how a beat-up box got in the garage,” he [Biden] said, speculating that someone packing up must have just tossed stuff into it. He added that he had “no goddamn idea” what was in a tranche of files shipped to his house and “didn’t even bother to go through them.”
Who among us?
Now, it has to be said that it was Attorney General Merrick Garland who named Hur, a one-time Trump appointee, as the special counsel. Given Hur’s predictably mendacious performance, I’d say that chances of Garland’s serving in a second Biden administration, should there be one, are nil. And they should be.
A passionate President Biden delivers the best SOTU address I can remember
President Biden delivered what I thought was the best State of the Union address I can remember. He was energized, passionate, funny and focused. He mixed it up with Republicans on issues ranging from Ukraine to reproductive rights and, aside from unfortunately adopting Marjorie Taylor Greene’s slur while answering back at her (he referred to undocumented immigrants as “illegals”), he escaped unscathed.
For those of us who look back to Barack Obama as the gold standard, well, the SOTU doesn’t often produce a memorable speech. Obama’s two for the ages are his address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and his eulogy at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015. No one remembers his SOTU speeches.
We were also treated an an exceedingly weird performance by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sat there looking miserable, trying to be impassive, but reflexively nodding from time to time as though he agreed with Biden. I don’t know how to describe Vice President Kamala Harris except to say that she was resplendent and may have improved her political standing through body language alone.
I caught a little bit of the commentary by the “PBS NewsHour” folks afterwards, and the theme they seemed to be settling into was that Biden’s speech was overly political. Good grief. These are the times we live in. Jonathan Capehart put it well, though, calling it “an epic speech” and that Democrats “will be energized by the cranky grandpa.”
Yes, they will. The polling for Biden has been awful lately as the media, and especially The New York Times, have obsessed over the president’s age. Maybe the SOTU will be a turning point.
How President Biden can overcome the age issue
I talked with the German media outlet DW News about President Biden, the age issue, and how he can overcome it. My answer: Get out there and show the critics that they’re wrong.
Joe Biden’s news diet
This Washington Post piece (free link) about President Biden’s news and information diet is fascinating — a combination of traditional media, conversations with family and friends, and encounters with ordinary people.