Why Is He Hearing This On The Tarmac?

One of yesterday's stories caught my eye, but not for the reason it was reported.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday was caught on a hot mic saying Democrats are “going downhill” in Georgia.

Schumer was speaking in a huddle with President Biden on the tarmac about the midterm elections ahead of the president’s trip to New York.

“The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia,” Schumer told Biden. “It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.”

Republican commentators found this delicious, since it's an indication of where the November elections are headed. But the whole vignette raises a different question for me. We must assume Sen Schumer is referring to internal Democrat polling, which is generally thought to be more reliable, in part because it's paid for and thus more expensive than the free stuff you get from the media. But information has value. Valuable information is protected the same way we protect valuable merchandise or money itself.

It's just common sense to recognize that if a candidate's internal polling says he's behind, he keeps it quiet. He may use the information to tweak his campaign strategy in ways his opponent may not expect, and he certainly won't just release the information willy-nilly, because his opponent will simply take advantage of it. Thus we would normally expect this information to be kept confidential on a need-to-know basis, discussed only in closed-door meetings and carried around in designated folders.

So of course, the Senate majority leader conveys information at this level of value to the president in an open-air meeting on airport tarmac over an open mic so that media can pick it up. Of course. What else would you expect? I don't know who the other figures in this huddle are; the younger guy looking away in back is likely Secret Service, but there are two ladies in the group as well who must be high level aides of some sort. The postures of both Schumer and President Brandon indicate that this is a transfer of closely-held, up-to-the-minute information, as far as I can read this.

On an airport tarmac over an open mic. Nobody in the tableau seems the least bit uncomfortable that this isn't an appropriate place for the discussion.

• Apparently both Schumer and President Brandon are speaking as though this information is new. Has there been no other way this information could have been transmitted to the president earlier, other than via the Senate majority leader on an airport tarmac?
• The polls favoring Republicans have been in the news for some days. Is this the first President Brandon has learned of them?
• Wouldn't this information, readily available well before now, have normally already been the subject of strategy meetings involving the president and his closest aides?
• What does this say about the level of urgency in the White House over the upcoming elections?

Biden's performance at a Pennsylvania fundraiser last night is an indication of how seriously he's taking things:

Biden spoke at the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s annual Independence Dinner. He was there with Kamala Harris.

Biden tried to argue that they had made “progress” but then his “progress” was just a big fat lie. He claimed that they’d brought gas prices down since he came into office — just demonstrably false. Gas is much higher than it was since he came into office and everyone knows it.

. . . He can’t seem to stop calling Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), “Mary Kay.”

. . . He also got Paul Pelosi’s name wrong.

. . . Biden spoke about going to all the “54 states” in 2018.

. . . At the end of his remarks, Biden went to the end of the stage and made a motion as though to jump off the stage. . . . Even after he doesn’t jump, you can still see [Vice President Harris] concerned he might, or that he might fall off the stage, as she reaches out to him. She seems to indicate to him to get away from the edge of the stage.

Yet again, I don't think the issue is dementia. He's aware of who he is, where he is, and generally what he's doing. There's no question he's aware he's a politician at a fundraiser; the issue is that he doesn't feel he should have to work hard enough even to read a few names correctly off a teleprompter. Indeed, I really think the business of pretending to jump off the stage was a little dig at his staff and his wife, who we must assume have scolded him about that sort of thing -- a private joke, funny to him, totally inappropriate for the circumstances.

Yet once more, this is not a medical issue. I think the short form is that he doesn't care, and neither, really, does Schumer at this stage.