Democratic Leadership Conveys Fears About Biden’s Candidacy

Happy Thursday! Political winds come and go, but GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley’s corn updates from Iowa are eternal.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President Joe Biden said in an interview that aired Wednesday that he would consider dropping out of the presidential race if a medical complication prompted his doctors to re-evaluate their prognosis of his health. “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem,” Biden told BET News’ Ed Gordon if anything would cause him to drop out. Biden also stressed that his advanced age brings advanced wisdom. “I said I was going to be a transitional candidate, and I thought I would be able to move on from this to pass it on to somebody else,” Biden told Gordon. “But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided. And quite frankly, I think the only thing age brings is a little bit of wisdom.” He added, “There’s more to do, and I’m reluctant to walk away from that.”  
• Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, leading him to cancel a campaign event in Las Vegas addressing a Latino activist organization. He returned to Delaware, where he’ll self-isolate. “He is vaccinated and boosted and he is experiencing mild symptoms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
• Democratic National Committee (DNC) leaders said Wednesday they would not nominate Biden early in a virtual roll call vote until at least August 1. The DNC had previously considered moving forward with the vote as early as next week, but faced pushback from House Democrats who saw the move as an attempt to insulate Biden’s candidacy from any threat at the party’s convention next month. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries reportedly worked to push the virtual vote back.
• Rep. Adam Schiff—a California Democrat, current Democratic Senate nominee, and close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—called on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race on Wednesday. “While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said. “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.” Schiff’s statement comes just days after he reportedly told donors in a closed-door meeting that “if he is our nominee, I think we lose … and we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.” 
• Both local and federal law enforcement confirmed Wednesday that, prior to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, local police informed the Secret Service they lacked the ability to secure the building where a 20-year-old shooter would later take aim at the former president from the roof. The Secret Service “was informed that the local police department did not have man power to assist with securing that building,” said Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that account to the Washington Post.

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office posted a notice on Wednesday of a new investigation into the Secret Service’s security of Trump’s campaign rally on the day of his assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, issued a congressional subpoena on Wednesday for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear before the committee on Monday. “The assassination attempt of the former President and current Republican nominee for president represents a total failure of the agency’s core mission and demands Congressional oversight,” Comer wrote in a letter to Cheatle. The Secret Service is also expected to be investigated in an independent national security review, President Joe Biden said Sunday. A number of Republican lawmakers have called on Cheatle to resign, and those calls only seemed to grow louder after a Secret Service briefing to senators yesterday. “Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle hasn’t taken responsibility, instead trying to shift blame to local law enforcement or, even more absurd, the danger of a sloped roof,” Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted last night. “Ms. Cheatle should accept responsibility and resign immediately; if she doesn’t, President Biden should fire her.”
• Southern California’s Chino Valley Unified School District sued Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday, alleging that a new law banning school districts from notifying parents about their child’s gender identification changes violates parents’ constitutional rights. Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law, which aims to prevent school administrators from intervening in the parent-child relationship by divulging sensitive information, on Monday.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued warnings Wednesday to five companies for illegally selling delta-8 THC food products that imitate popular snack and candy brands, a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Delta-8 THC is a psychoactive cannabinoid derived from cannabis. “Inadequate or confusing labeling can result in children or unsuspecting adults consuming products with strong resemblance to popular snacks and candies that contain delta-8 THC without realizing it,” FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Namandjé Bumpus said in a statement. “As accidental ingestion and/or overconsumption of delta-8 THC-containing products could pose considerable health risks, the companies who sell these illegal products are demonstrating complete neglect for consumer safety.”
• Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and East Asia expert on the White House National Security Council (NSC), was indicted on Monday on federal charges for allegedly working as an agent of South Korea without registering as a foreign agent. Federal prosecutors alleged Terry advocated for policies held by the South Korean government, shared nonpublic government information with South Korean intelligence officials, and provided access to congressional staffers and U.S. officials. In exchange, according to the 31-page indictment, Terry received “luxury goods, high-priced dinners, and more than $37,000 in covert funding for a public policy program focusing on Korean affairs that Terry controlled.” 
• The Justice Department has begun dropping obstruction of official proceedings charges against January 6 defendants following a Supreme Court ruling that limited its ability to use that charge. The June 28 ruling in Fischer v. United States specified that the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding requires that a defendant destroy or otherwise damage documents relating to that proceeding. Prosecutors have also pushed back deadlines in related cases to reconsider their legal options. Meanwhile, former President Trump has vowed to end all such prosecutions and issue pardons to rioters currently incarcerated if he were to win the election in November.
• Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver won Tuesday’s Democratic special primary for New Jersey’s deep-blue 10th District—finishing more than 30 points above the second-place finisher in the 11-person race—and all but securing her bid to join Congress after her September special general election. McIver would fill the seat vacated by late Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr., who died in late April after going into cardiac arrest. Her term would last only until November, but she is also favored to win the full two-year term in November’s election.

Is the Door Creaking Open?

Your TMDers have about had it with whoever’s writing the script for America 2024. As one of our colleagues put it yesterday, we’re starting to wonder if the screenwriters have been replaced by some malicious AI that has been trained to be a bit too on-the-nose.

Take, for instance, President Joe Biden’s interview with BET’s Ed Gordon that aired Wednesday night, in which he said he’d consider dropping out of the presidential race if a serious health issue popped up. “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem,” Biden said. That snippet of the interview was released early as a preview of the conversation—before news broke that the president had tested positive for COVID-19 and was canceling an event in Las Vegas to return home and self-isolate.

In the days before and after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the pendulum of Biden’s status as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party seemed to have swung back in the president’s favor as he tried to put his June debate performance in the rearview mirror. But Democrats’ efforts to push him out of the race haven’t stopped just because the news cycle has moved on, and reports suggest Biden could potentially be softening to the idea of exiting the race even as he continues to insist publicly that he’s running. 

A wave of 10 Democratic House lawmakers called for the president to drop out last Thursday and Friday (coinciding with Biden’s press conference to cap a NATO summit in Washington), bringing the total number of Democratic defectors to 20: 19 representatives and one senator. No additional lawmakers came forward over the next four days, signaling a lull in the pressure campaign. 

But that lull ended yesterday when Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California called on the president to step aside. “While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said in a statement. “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.” The public statement came after Schiff reportedly told donors in a private meeting over the weekend that Democrats could lose the White House, the Senate, and the House with Biden at the top of the ticket.  

A number of plugged-in political analysts noted Schiff’s statement should be read in light of his close relationship with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arguing that it could reflect behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the former speaker—a tactic she’s deployed before. Pelosi has backed the president publicly, but introduced some potential skepticism last week. As we wrote last Thursday:

Perhaps the surest sign of Democratic unease behind the scenes is that even those not explicitly calling for Biden to step aside are still treating it as an open question that needs to be answered, despite the president himself stating in no uncertain terms that he’s staying in. Asked if the president still has her support on Morning Joe on Wednesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred. “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run,” she said. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.” When reminded that Biden already has made that decision, Pelosi got cagey: “I want him to do whatever he decides to do.”

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey deployed a similar line Wednesday night. “He’s facing a real question of what is best for the country, and I think he’ll make the decision,” he told CNN. “A lot of us are doing everything we can behind the scenes to really talk openly and honestly with the president, with his team, about the best way forward.”

Reports surfaced yesterday that Pelosi spoke with Biden recently about polling showing that he can’t beat Trump in November and that it would tank Democratic chances of retaking the House. Completing the trifecta of senior Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries both met with Biden in the last week—Jeffries on Thursday at the White House and Schumer on Saturday in Delaware—to reportedly discuss what they believe to be Democrats’ shrinking chances of winning with Biden at the top of the ticket. According to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, Schumer directly made the case to Biden that “it would be best if [he] dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.”

Schumer and Jeffries also reportedly worked to squash the Democratic National Committee’s apparent move to lock down the nomination for Biden before the party’s convention—a potential sign that the two leaders want to preserve room for a change to the ticket.

An Associated Press-NORC poll released Wednesday found that 70 percent of Americans—and 65 percent of Democrats—think Biden should withdraw from the race so that his party can select a different candidate. Only 30 percent of Democrats in the poll had any confidence that Biden has the mental capability to serve effectively as president.

Ultimately, the decision to step aside rests with Biden, whose circle of close advisers has reportedly shrunk to just a few allies and his family following last month’s debate performance and the subsequent chorus of calls for his exit. In an NBC News interview with Lester Holt on Monday, Biden suggested the circle was even smaller than that already pared-down group when discussing his candidacy. “Who do you listen to on deeply personal issues like the decisions whether to stay in the race or not,” Holt asked Biden. The president replied with one word: “Me.”

But there are some indications that meetings with Democratic leadership have begun to crack Biden’s insistence on staying the course—or at least his resistance to considering a different path. Unconfirmed reports from Democrats briefed on the president’s conversations suggest that, while Biden has not changed his mind about the race, he’s become more open to discussing increasingly dismal polling data and Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of winning if he stepped aside.

Biden acknowledged in the BET interview that he ran in 2020 as a “transitional candidate,” saying, “I thought I would be able to move on from this to pass it on to somebody else.” But, he said, he changed his mind in light of how divided the country has become: “There’s more to do, and I’m reluctant to walk away from that.” 

When pressed on his age, Biden said it’s understandable that people would have concerns, as it’s “a legitimate thing to raise.” But he insisted he’s confident in his capacity “as long as I can demonstrate that it’s not affecting my ability to compete, my ability to get things done.”

‘Never in My Wildest Imagination’

MILWAUKEE—For the first time since they nominated him on Monday, delegates at the Republican National Convention heard from their selection for vice president: J.D. Vance. His Wednesday night address introduced the U.S. senator from Ohio as both a native son of working-class America and a younger, more cerebral spokesman for conservative populism.

“Never in my wildest imagination would I have believed that I would be standing here tonight,” the 39-year-old Vance told the RNC crowd and the nation. “I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts. But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

As Vance touted his biography, criticized Joe Biden, and called on the country to reelect Donald Trump, the former president looked on from the stands of the Fiserv Forum, surrounded by other members of the Trump family and elected Republicans. 

“President Trump represents America’s last, best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be found again,” Vance said. “A country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.”

It was unclear how Trump himself felt about his new running mate’s debut on the big stage, though at times the Republican nominee appeared subdued as he listened—to both Vance and the audience. Vance’s invocation of Trump and a few readymade applause lines about bringing back manufacturing jobs received a raucous response. He attempted a few jokes as well, including a notable moment when the Ohio delegation broke into a rendition of “O-H-I-O,” the chant of his alma mater, Ohio State University. 

“You guys, we’ve got to chill with the Ohio love, we’ve got to win Michigan too, here,” Vance ad-libbed. When a similar such chant broke out later in the speech, he interjected again: “Come on, come on. We’ve had enough political violence.”

But much of Vance’s address was what Trump of 2016 might have dubbed “low energy”—it had a discursiveness that left some of the delegates shifting in their seats or looking down at their phones. A handful were spotted dozing off at various times, and one particularly long digression about America being not just an idea but a nation seemed to lose the interest of the crowd.

There were also signs of Vance’s relative lack of experience in elective politics. He at times looked uncomfortable deviating from his teleprompter, and frequently allowed applause breaks and chants from the audience to linger too long. When at one point Vance praised the cheering delegates by calling them a “good crowd,” a chant of “yes we are!” broke out.

But regardless of these struggles, many the delegates in the hall judged Vance’s performance a home run. Allison Largeman, a Georgia delegate, told Dispatch Politics that she “totally fell in love” with Vance after the speech, adding with a laugh: “If I wasn’t married …”

Worth Your Time

• More than two years into a war against Ukraine, how does Russian President Vladimir Putin justify the Russian casualties in a conflict that he started? “Lies, damned lies, and statistics,” Francis Dearnley wrote in The Telegraph. “If anyone knows how to falsify figures to bolster weak causes, it is the Kremlin. … Putin points at Russia’s 144 million citizens and argues, through his propaganda mouthpieces, that it is ‘impossible’ for Kyiv to win his war, given Ukraine’s population is a paltry 37 million. … ‘Russia can always find more men’, one hears people say, justifying Western inaction. Except it can’t,” Dearnley explained. “For one, while Putin has conducted several large-scale mobilizations, he remains cautious both in terms of the numbers of men he recruits and where they come from, prioritizing conscripting in poorer communities far away from the power centers of Moscow and St Petersburg; often marginalized ethnic minorities. Already, some of these communities have given all they can, with reports of entire generations of men being wiped out in some towns and villages, triggering widespread, if localized (for now), protests.”
• James Davison Hunter, the sociologist who coined the term “culture war,” joined The Russell Moore Show podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on the social challenges to democracy. “When politics trumps theology, we are seeing politics sacralized, made sacred, in ways that are more important than, more influential than, the convictions of faith,” he said. “We do now live in a moment in which our identities, our sense of purpose in life, our need for recognition—both sociologically and psychologically—are rooted in our politics. And we see this in the ways in which all identity groups that are claiming to be marginalized, victimized, are seeking the recognition, not just of others, but of the state itself. This is why most of the battles of the culture war are adjudicated through the law, it’s through litigation. The first act is not an attempt to solve our problems as neighbors, but rather through litigation.”  

Presented Without Comment 

President Joe Biden, in an interview with BET News on why he’s losing the support of black voters: 

I think that—and one thing does change, it’s not an excuse it’s an explanation. I would ordinarily be going through black neighborhoods, on ground, on the foot, walking through the neighborhoods. I have a tradition, I close every campaign—no matter what campaign—going into the projects and going down to east side and, “Hey Joe, how ya’ doin!” Well, just because they’re my friends, let ‘em know I’m still there. We can’t do that now. Not because of the black community, because it’s too dangerous for me to be out walking unaccompanied. So, what I’m doing though, is trying to keep in touch with as many of my black constituents and letting people know that I’m available, I’m available.

Also Presented Without Comment

CBS News: NYC Council Member Allegedly Bites NYPD Official At Brooklyn Protest

Also Also Presented Without Comment

ABC News: Paris Olympics In Limbo About Whether Seine Will Be Safe Enough For Swimming Events

75-year-old Joel Stratte-McClure bravely tested the waters of the Seine on the Fourth of July, showcasing his determination and personal risk.

“I’m very impressed with everything the French have done to try to clean up this river, which is filthy, and want to celebrate it,” Stratte-McClure said. “If things go really bad and I don’t survive the swim, it will at least give an alert to the American and other swimmers in the triathlon that maybe they shouldn’t do it.”

In the Zeitgeist

When you think of a 14-year-old soccer player, you may picture a kid on his freshman high school team, or possibly someone playing a casual game with friends. But for 14-year-old Cavan Sullivan, he’s now a professional. On Wednesday, Sullivan was named to the Philadelphia Union roster of Major League Soccer (MLS), and he made history yesterday as the youngest-ever player to appear in an MLS match.

Toeing the Company Line

• There will be an extra special episode of Dispatch Live tonight following Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, featuring a number of our reporters on the ground in Milwaukee. We can’t say for sure when the show will start—the former president is pretty verbose—but members should keep an eye out for an email later today with more details.
• In the newsletters: Matthew Lee Anderson argued in Dispatch Faith that pro-lifers—particularly religious pro-lifers—should refocus on the two key virtues of forbearance and patience, the Dispatch Politics team covered Nikki Haley’s RNC speech making the case for her supporters to vote for Trump, Scott exposed the (🔒) downsides of corporate tax increases, and Nick argued that Democrats are effectively forfeiting the 2024 election by keeping Biden on the ticket.
• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined on The Remnant by Bulwark contributor Damon Linker to discuss the great Republican schism and the fallout of the Trump assassination attempt, Sarah and David answer listener emails on Advisory Opinions, and Sarah and Steve check in on their High Steaks bet—with a guest appearance from Jonah.
• On the site: Steve interviews Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah about his conversion from Trump critic to Trump supporter, Charlotte highlights the significance of Israel’s strike on the leader of Hamas’ military wing and provides an update on the state of ceasefire proposals, Charles reports from the RNC on the growing conservative conservationist movement, and Cole explains voter ID laws and how they vary by state.

Let Us Know 

What do you think the odds are that Joe Biden will be the Democratic presidential nominee in November?