Fault Lines Deepen in Democratic Party Over Biden’s Candidacy
From the Dispatch Politics on The Dispatch
Happy Friday! The Trump veepstakes are hotter than ever, and there’s been one big piece of news this morning that could really swing the race: J.D. Vance told a reporter the president with the best facial hair was Ulysses S. Grant.
Up to Speed
As the Dispatch Politics team prepares to travel to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, we’re hearing whispers that former President Donald Trump could name his running mate on Monday. To prepare yourself, be sure to read our Dispatch colleagues on two of the leading contenders. First, David M. Drucker wrote earlier this week about North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, while today on the site, John McCormack has a profile of Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.
House Republicans failed to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in “inherent contempt of Congress” on Thursday for defying a congressional subpoena to turn over recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden. The vote brought by GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida failed 204-210, with four Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the measure. If it had held Garland in inherent contempt, Congress could have fined the attorney general—who was found in contempt of Congress on related charges in June—$10,000 a day until he complied with the subpoena.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on Wednesday. Ocasio-Cortez claims the refusal of both justices to recuse themselves from cases despite alleged conflicts of interest and “failure to disclose” personal financial information merit their removal from office. While highly unlikely to succeed due to Republican control of the U.S. House, eight fellow progressive legislators co-sponsored the measures.
Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada’s reelection campaign claimed Wednesday that it raised $7.6 million in 2024’s second fundraising quarter, a strong sign in one of this election cycle’s most competitive Senate races. Rosen, first elected to the Senate in 2018, faces a strong challenge from Republican nominee and Army veteran Sam Brown as both major party presidential nominees battle over the Silver State. As polls show former President Donald Trump consistently leading Biden in Nevada, polling also shows Rosen currently ahead of Brown in the November matchup.
House Speaker Mike Johnson raised $23.5 million for House Republicans in the second quarter of 2024, his office announced Thursday. Of that amount, $17 million will go to his committees to help grow House Republicans’ majority, while $6.5 million will go to individual GOP members. His office stated that he has raised $50 million since assuming the position in the fall.
Johnson isn’t the only one raking in funds. The convention’s host committee, which puts on the GOP event next week, smashed its fundraising goals, bringing in a record $85 million in total fundraising, it announced in a release. “This is money that is going to be injected into our community to help throw this event,” said Reince Priebus, who chairs the host committee. “We’re excited to greet the tens of thousands of guests traveling here next week and show them what Milwaukee has to offer.”
Biden’s Press Conference Fails to Stop Defections
Whether President Joe Biden’s embattled reelection bid is hanging by a thread, or by a rope, seems dependent upon what hour, of which day, his fellow Democrats are asked the question.
After Biden delivered a competent but uneven news conference Thursday evening, the president’s campaign and staunchest supporters declared victory in the contest to save his 2024 candidacy. “With [yesterday’s] press conf and this new poll, it’s time to end the freak out and unite behind the Democratic nominee and the only person who has ever beaten Trump,” Biden confidant and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted this morning, citing a fresh national survey that shows the president slightly ahead of Donald Trump.
But Biden’s nationally televised performance wasn’t nearly good enough to stanch the bleeding of support from Democratic doubters that include veteran political operatives, wealthy campaign donors, and many of his allies in Congress. Immediately following the roughly hour-long news conference, held on the heels of the 75th NATO summit in Washington, still more Democratic lawmakers issued statements lauding Biden’s accomplishments but calling on him to withdraw from the race against Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee.
“The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forward the strongest possible candidate to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement released just after Biden’s press conference concluded. Notable: Himes does not represent a swing district. In 2020, his district would have voted for Biden over Trump by a whopping margin of 31 percentage points, had the seat’s current boundaries been in place.
According to the Washington Post, the whip count of Democrats in the House and Senate publicly calling for Biden’s head had reached 21. Asked during the news conference if he might heed their calls, at least should polling reveal that Vice President Kamala Harris is the stronger candidate versus Trump, Biden offered this curious response: “No—not unless they came back and said: ‘There’s no way you can win.’ Me. No one’s saying that.” (Perhaps the president needs to widen the circle of Democrats he talks to.)
This is how it’s gone for Biden in the two weeks since he tanked on the debate stage in Atlanta. On certain days—for instance, as recently as Tuesday of this week—it appeared that the president had calmed wavering Democrats and shored up the cracks in his coalition. Two days later, Biden was suffering more public defections, with some Democratic insiders telling Dispatch Politics the situation is only going to get worse for the president and that his campaign could implode.
“Democrats want him to bomb so that he gets out,” a dialed-in Democratic operative told us Thursday prior to the news conference. This Democrat expects more troubling revelations about Biden’s mental acuity to emerge; said the president’s previously robust, record-breaking fundraising has now slowed significantly; and is keeping an eye out for staff who vote with their feet by voluntarily departing the campaign.
“No one thinks he can do anything to change the direction,” said the Democratic operative, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “The things he would need to do are things zero people think he can do.”
Support for Biden from grassroots liberals has not collapsed, neither has backing from so-called elite Democratic powerbrokers. But many of the party’s biggest financiers and most experienced political professionals say the president has been irreparably damaged. Yes, voters are concerned about key elements of Trump’s proposed domestic and foreign policy agenda, not to mention his provocative behavior and history of ethical lapses. But on balance, the data reveal more voter anxiety post-debate about the incumbent president’s age as it relates to his perceived mental and physical infirmities.
Heading into the June 27 debate, Trump maintained a durable, albeit narrow, lead over Biden of 1.5 points in national polling. As of this morning, the former president’s advantage stood at 2.7 points, and that was only after the new Marist poll conducted for NPR and PBS, publicized Friday, handed Biden his first lead in a national survey in two weeks. In the key battleground states, Trump’s lead has climbed from 3.2 percent on the day of the debate to 4.1 percent today.
Still, some Democrats are not interested in pulling the plug on the president. These Biden backers are convinced he has, No. 1, earned the party’s nomination and, No. 2, remains their most formidable candidate to run against his Republican challenger. And if the polling were to make plain, as other Democrats believe, that the post-debate data portends a landslide Trump victory and possible down-ballot, GOP sweep?
“It would not impact my decision. I don’t rely on polls,” Donna West, a Nevada delegate to the Democratic nominating convention in Chicago, told Dispatch Politics in a telephone interview. “I want him to stay in.”
“He had a really bad night at the debate, there are reasons for that. He has come back strong after that,” added West, who is knocking on doors for Biden in greater Las Vegas almost daily. “People like George Clooney don’t have a say and need to stay out of it. I’m solidly supporting the president and so are my friends, and we’re heartsick at the piling on.”
Republicans Double Down on Pro-Life Commitment Amid Platform Change
After delegates this week advanced the GOP’s draft platform that softened the party’s position on abortion, Republicans in Congress are attempting to reassure dismayed anti-abortion voters by asserting their party’s commitment to the pro-life cause or emphasizing Democrats’ radicalism on the issue.
“The best thing you can do is support President Trump and Republicans because if Democrats win, there’ll be no pro-life laws in any state,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Dispatch Politics, describing his message to voters.
Graham, who unlike Trump has endorsed federal abortion restrictions, added that he was “good” with the platform language and said that it did not water down the Republican position but rather “simplified” it. “We’re the pro-life party,” he said.
The document approved by the Republican National Convention’s platform committee on Monday—the first since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022—omits past declarations about the “fundamental individual right to life” of unborn children and a commitment to federal protections for the unborn in favor of an ambiguous section that centered the issue on state legislation, putting the platform language in line with Trump’s own view. While some pro-life leaders signed a letter in support of it, others were less enthusiastic.
“It is a devastating indictment of our national values that neither of the national political parties’ platforms will support federal protections for preborn children targeted for death by the abortion industry,” prominent pro-life activist Lila Rose tweeted on Tuesday.
But Republicans on Capitol Hill still expressed to Dispatch Politics their belief that theirs is the pro-life party.
“I would say to them that they should not be dismayed,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said when asked about pro-life voters upset with the platform’s language. “There’s only one major party in the United States of America that values life in all forms, and that’s the Republican Party. And it’s one of the reasons I’m a Republican.”
Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey serves as a co-chair of the bipartisan pro-life caucus in the House and has long endorsed pro-life legislation during his 22 terms in Congress. He said that there was still room within the draft platform’s framework for restricting abortion at the federal level.
“No platform limits,” he told Dispatch Politics. “A platform is a sense of the Congress’ resolution. It expresses some thoughts. We are the pro-life party, I’m happy to say. Our leadership is unalterably committed to defending the unborn child and their mothers—have been for decades, since I came here in 1980.” He added that he believed Trump “in his heart of hearts is very pro-life.”
But other Republicans did not share Smith’s opinion about the federal government’s role, among them Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who chairs the Republican Policy Committee.
“That is up to the states,” she said. “We’ve relied on the Supreme Court to reverse Roe. It is now up to the states, and what we want to do is continue to encourage the states to move in a pro-life direction.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who said she had not read the abortion section but understood that it “protects states’ rights,” echoed Ernst’s comments.
“I’m opposed to the federal government legislating on this subject,” she said. “I want the states to have the final say, and they’re gonna vary from state to state, but I have confidence in our state governments.”
And what’s her message to pro-life voters who want to see a more explicit federal role?
“I think that they need to take their case to the various states and work the issue to the best of their ability,” Lummis said.
Notable and Quotable
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.”
—President Joe Biden at an event launching the Ukraine Compact, before realizing his mistake and correcting himself, July 11, 2024.
“I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she’s not qualified to be president.”
—President Joe Biden at his press conference, July 11, 2024.
