The Morning Dispatch: Will Joe Biden Be the 2024 Democratic Nominee?

Happy Wednesday! A company called Meta is suing Meta (née Facebook) for renaming itself Meta. Which is all … pretty meta. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The House voted 267-157 on Tuesday—with support from 47 Republicans and all Democrats—to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and require all states to recognize same-sex marriages if the marriage was valid in the state in which it originally occurred. Democrats have argued the legislation is necessary after Justice Clarence Thomas signaled in his Dobbs concurrence last month a desire to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges—which required all states to recognize same-sex marriages—but Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh were adamant that “overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” It’s unclear whether  the Senate will take up the measure, and how many Republicans would support the legislation if it did.

• President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday directing various federal agencies to sanction officials involved in wrongful detainments or abductions of American citizens, add a new travel advisory warning Americans they’re at risk of detainment if they travel to hostile countries including China and Russia, and communicate more consistently with families of detainees, among other measures. The order is in part a response to the detention of WNBA star Brittney Griner and others in Russia.

• White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the Biden administration believes Russian officials are “reviewing detailed plans” to annex four regions of Ukraine—including territory the invading force doesn’t yet occupy. That would make a peace agreement still more difficult, since Russia would likely insist on keeping land it had annexed. According to U.S. intelligence, the Russian proxy governments established in occupied regions of Ukraine would hold fake referendums to approve the move, and those governments have already been mandating the use of the Russian ruble and issuing Russian passports to Ukrainians.

• Ranil Wickremesinghe, the former six-time prime minister of Sri Lanka, was elected president of the crisis-ridden country by the Sri Lankan parliament on Wednesday. Wickremesinghe had been named acting president by former President  Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country last week amid violent protests.

• The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday it has retained the Reagan-Udall Foundation—an FDA partner—and outside experts to review its food and tobacco regulatory and oversight processes. The move comes after the agency faced criticism for its role in shutting down a baby formula factory without a plan to deal with the supply crunch and for its regulation of electronic cigarettes. “The agency has confronted a series of challenges that have tested our regulatory frameworks and stressed the agency’s operations, prompting me to take a closer look at how we do business,” FDA head Robert Califf said in a statement.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday recommended Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in people age 18 and older, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before the shot’s widespread distribution in the U.S. Novavax’s two-dose vaccine relies on well-established vaccine technology, providing an alternative for people reluctant to take the newer mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. The U.S. has purchased 3.2 million doses of the Novavax shot.

• The Secret Service reportedly told the January 6 select committee on Tuesday that it cannot recover deleted text messages from the days surrounding the Capitol attack after all, and has no new messages to provide. The agency says the messages were lost as part of a technology upgrade. The National Archives has asked the Secret Service to report within 30 days on the “potential unauthorized deletion” of agency records, including what was lost and how.

• The U.S. “disrupted” North Korean state-sponsored hackers targeting U.S. medical facilities last year, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday. The FBI found China-based money launderers Monaco said were assisting the North Korean hackers and seized about $500,000 in ransom payments, including the money a Kansas hospital paid last year to regain access to data and equipment. The U.S. has begun procedures to return the payments to victims.

• Dan Cox, a Trump-backed state legislator, won Maryland’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, handily defeating former Kelly Schulz, Maryland’s former labor and commerce secretary, in the race to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Larry Hogan. In the Democratic primary, Army veteran and former nonprofit CEO Wes Moore leads former Labor Secretary and Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez by nearly 35,00 votes with 61.7 percent of the votes counted as of early Wednesday morning.

Is Biden Toast?

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on June 27, Vice President Kamala Harris left little room for interpretation about the Democratic Party’s 2024 plans. “Joe Biden is running for reelection, and I will be his ticketmate,” she said. “Full stop.”

But two days later, White House officials let reporters know Harris wanted to clarify her comments. “The president intends to run,” her updated line went, “and if he does, I will be his ticket mate. We will run together.”

The backtrack almost assuredly had more to do with avoiding the Federal Election Commission requirements that accompany a formal declaration of candidacy than it did evolving White House thinking, but it reeked of political weakness—and couldn’t have come at a less opportune time for Biden. 

Although he had notched earlier “wins” with pandemic stimulus, the bipartisan infrastructure package, and gun reform, Biden’s remaining legislative agenda was essentially stalled—and the progressive cause had just been dealt a series of setbacks at the Supreme Court. The average price of a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. surpassed $5 for the first time, baby formula remained in short supply, and runaway inflation—the worst in more than four decades—was showing no signs of slowing down. A new, more contagious Omicron subvariant was starting to drive COVID-19 case counts up again, and—despite heavy U.S. investment, both economic and symbolic—the tide had begun to turn in Russia’s favor in Ukraine. The Biden presidency was in freefall: A year-and-a-half into his term, his net approval rating was lower than that of any U.S. president since Harry Truman.

Then things got worse.

Due to sampling bias and other statistical randomness, polling averages generally provide more meaningful insights than any one individual survey. But sometimes one individual survey—if it pops in the news cycle just right—can take on outsized importance and reshape political reality. Such was the case with the poll released by the New York Times and Siena College last week.

Biden’s approval rating came in at a dismal 33 percent, but the topline takeaway—which, coming from the Times, dominated Beltway chatter and cable news punditry for days on end—was his slipping grip on the Democratic Party. More than six in 10 Democratic primary voters said they wanted to nominate a different candidate for president in 2024, including a whopping 94 percent of respondents under 30 and 47 percent of black respondents. Even more worrisome for Biden is that there’s seemingly little he can do to win them back: A narrow plurality of those who wanted to ditch him for a new leader cited his age—80 in November—as their rationale. Voters also expressed apprehension about his job performance, progressive bona fides, ability to win the general election, and mental acuity. 

Just 849 people were interviewed for the poll—and the sampling of Democratic primary voters was even smaller—but that’s almost beside the point. The data opened floodgates Biden’s team had so desperately been trying to keep shut, and kickstarted a self-fulfilling cycle from which it will be difficult for the president to recover.

Concerns about Biden’s age and mental sharpness have been ubiquitous in conservative media since he launched his third presidential campaign three years ago, but in recent weeks, they’ve seeped into the pages of the country’s preeminent mainstream and center-left media outlets as well. Reliably progressive columnist Michelle Goldberg labeled Biden “too old to be president again” in an op-ed last week. And here’s Peter Baker, the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent, earlier this month:

[Biden’s] energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.

Although White House officials insist they make no special accommodations the way Reagan’s team did, privately they try to guard Mr. Biden’s weekends in Delaware as much as possible. He is generally a five- or five-and-a-half-day-a-week president, although he is called at any hour regardless of the day as needed. He stays out of public view at night and has taken part in fewer than half as many news conferences or interviews as recent predecessors.

It’s not just his age: Many top Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated with what they perceive as a lack of urgency on the part of Biden and his administration. Although the president is hamstrung by a 50-50 Senate and ideologically incompatible Supreme Court, they want a more forceful response—at least rhetorically and symbolically—to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, climate change, and the most recent spate of mass shootings. And as is often the case with these things, the frustrations were first channeled through anonymous quotes to friendly reporters.

“‘Rudderless, aimless, and hopeless’ is how one [Democratic] member of Congress described the White House,” CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reported this month. “Two dozen leading Democratic politicians and operatives, as well as several within the West Wing, tell CNN they feel this goes deeper than questions of ideology and posture. Instead, they say, it gets to questions of basic management.”

That story, from a few weeks ago, relied primarily on unnamed sources, but Democratic officials across the ideological spectrum are growing increasingly comfortable acknowledging the situation on the record. Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wouldn’t explicitly pledge to support another Biden campaign. “I’m trying to get through 2022 at the moment,” he told The Dispatch’s Audrey Fahlberg, conceding that there is now open speculation among Democratic lawmakers surrounding whether he should run. “The conversation has started and people are participating in it.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made news last month when she pointedly and repeatedly refused to commit to backing Biden in 2024. Rep. Tim Ryan—the moderate Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio—opted not to appear with the president when he visited Cleveland a few weeks ago. Sen. Bernie Sanders—who has more or less played nice with Biden since their hard-fought primary battle in 2020—slammed the president over the weekend for his visit to Saudi Arabia. A new left-wing political organization plans to launch a six-figure #DontRunJoe campaign encouraging voters not to back any renomination efforts.

There’s been no shortage of speculation about contenders to replace Biden on the Democratic ticket should he decide not to run, from fellow 2020 candidates like Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, to potential newcomers to the national stage like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. That latter duo has done little to tamp down the chatter in recent weeks—Pritzker delivered a speech in New Hampshire, while Newsom bought airtime in Florida to promote himself and his state, and visited the White House last week while Biden was traveling in the Middle East. But both insist—as do the other would-be candidates—it’s all in the press’ head. 

Through it all, Biden—and his top aides—aren’t deviating one bit from their previous pronouncements. “To be clear, as the President has said repeatedly, he plans to run in 2024,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated after yet another round of speculation. When asked about the recent New York Times survey, the president appeared to grow frustrated with the reporter. “That poll showed that 92 percent of Democrats, if I ran, would vote for me,” he said, repeating a misleading talking point Jean-Pierre debuted a day earlier. “Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same.” The poll did show 92 percent of Democrats would vote for Biden if he was the nominee and if he was facing Donald Trump, but said nothing of the sort about an open primary.

What Biden can cling to is that, despite his political vulnerability, most polls—including the Times’—show him beating Trump, if the former president secures the Republican nomination. And according to Matt Viser of the Washington Post, Biden is “far more likely” to seek reelection if Trump also runs, as the current president sees himself as the Democrats’ best chance of keeping his predecessor from returning to the White House. “I’m not predicting,” Biden said recently when asked about the potential for a rematch against his 2020 opponent. “But I would not be disappointed.”

Worth Your Time

• There are plenty of factors contributing to the surge in violent crime that came with the pandemic, but Alec MacGillis reports in The Atlantic that court shutdowns played a key role—weakening consequences, making convictions more difficult to obtain, and delaying the substance abuse treatment and other services that can help prevent repeat crimes. And locked up individuals had to wait longer for court dates. “Above all, experts say, the shutdowns undermined the promise that crimes would be promptly punished,” MacGillis writes. “In some cases, people were left to seek street justice in the absence of institutional justice. As Reygan Cunningham, a senior partner at the California Partnership for Safe Communities, put it, closing courts sent ‘a message that there are no consequences, and there is no help.’ … Many courts around the country still aren’t operating at full capacity, and law-and-order types aren’t the only ones concerned. Defense attorneys and members of the progressive prosecutor movement are worried too. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants a speedy trial, but many have been sitting in jail for months on end. ‘A lot of the Constitution has been kind of glossed over,’ Doug Wilber, a public defender in Albuquerque, told me.”

• When Doug Mastriano—Pennsylvania state senator and Stop the Steal adherent—won the Republican primary for Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, most everyone figured the race was over. An extreme candidate without the backing of the party establishment, he would almost certainly lose to Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee. Shapiro’s campaign was so confident of its odds in a faceoff with Mastriano that it spent money boosting him in the primary. But the two candidates’ polling numbers have pulled closer together, and the mood is changing, Holly Otterbein reports for Politico. “‘The higher the gas prices go, the more electable Mastriano is,’” the chair of a Republican county committee told Otterbein. “‘Honestly, I feel this is Mastriano’s campaign to lose.’”

• Whoops! “Security vulnerabilities in a popular Chinese-built GPS vehicle tracker can be easily exploited to track and remotely cut the engines of at least a million vehicles around the world,” Zack Whittaker reports in TechCrunch. “Worse, the company that makes the GPS trackers has made no effort to fix them.” A cybersecurity startup has found several security vulnerabilities in a hardwired GPS tracker used in fleets of vehicles including some owned by law enforcement and governments. “The security flaws can be easily and remotely exploited to track any vehicle in real time, access past routes and cut the engines of vehicles in motion,” Whittaker writes.

Presented Without Comment

Also Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• In Tuesday’s edition of The Sweep (🔒), Sarah and Andrew preview Trump’s increasingly likely 2024 campaign announcement and the possible fundraising woes beneath the surface of Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign in Georgia. Plus: Why an influential blue thinktanker is joining the American Enterprise Institute, and an excerpt from Audrey’s writeup of Colorado’s Senate race.

• And in yesterday’s Uphill, Haley previewed the House’s imminent vote on the Respect for Marriage Act. “Some Republicans on the committee hinted they may be open to negotiating with Democrats about legal protections for gay marriages,” she noted. Ultimately, 47 GOP representatives voted for the bill.

• Is “peak woke” behind us? Maybe, David argues in the latest French Press (🔒). The canceled aren’t staying canceled, key institutions have invited in a few dissenting voices, and there seems to be more space in our cultural conversation for different perspectives on fraught topics.

• Declan and Andrew teamed up for a youngling edition of Dispatch Live last night to talk GOP Senate primaries, 2024 presidential punditry, and life as an OG Dispatcher. Plus a little hometown baseball debate—St. Louis or Chicago?

• David Bernstein, professor at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, joins Jonah on The Remnant to discuss his new book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. Bernstein argues that racial classifications are becoming increasingly arbitrary and incoherent, and he makes the case for “separation of race and state.” 

• On the site today, Blaise Misztal and Johnathon Ruhe of the  Jewish Institute for National Security of America argue that President Biden should be pushing for Iran’s compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty rather than trying to jumpstart a new JCPOA. And James Capretta looks at Colorado’s experiment with a public option for health insurance. The plan will lower premiums for consumers, but the health sector is worried about its low payments to doctors and hospitals. 

Let Us Know

Do you think Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2024?