Vox On The State Of The Campaign

The feature of this year's presidential campaign that I've found most remarkable is how early key events have been taking place vis-a-vis campaigns in the past that I think are similar. Nobody saw Reagan's landslide over Carter coming in 1980 -- at least nobody in legacy media. George H W Bush's come-from-behind victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988 came only after he called Dukakis a "liberal" at the Republican convention, and it was cemented only by mid-October when Dukakis rode on a tank.

Dubya's more predictable victory over John Kerry in 2004 nevertheless wasn't tacitly acknowledged in legacy media until the Bush campaign's windsurfing ad in late September, after which anonymous Democrats began leaking their complaints about the Kerry campaign. As I've been noting here, though, prominent Democrats have been complaining about the Biden campaign, both anonymously and for attribution, since late last year, and if anything, there have been more of them in recent weeks. I linked to just one such at Axios yesterday, Top Dems: Biden has losing strategy.

Yet again, this is over four months before the election, and even more significant, fully two months before the Democrat convention, to be held August 19-22. The complaints about prior losing campaigns, like Dukakis and Gore, didn't emerge until after the conventions, while Carter's and Hillary's defeats were never on the radar.

A second new, and I think even more perceptive, complaint came Wednesday from Eric Levitz at Vox:

President Joe Biden’s odds of reelection may be worse than they look. And they don’t look great.

. . . As of late May, the Biden campaign was airing $13.6 million worth of ads, while the Trump campaign had yet to spend a single penny on TV spots, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

This does not mean that there are no pro-Trump ads airing in the US. Outside groups supportive of the GOP candidate have bought $8 million in advertising. But even when you factor in such spending, pro-Biden ads have been outnumbering pro-Trump ads by slightly more than two-to-one.

The problem is, as Levitz points out, that even though the Biden campaign has massively outspent Republicans, all of this money hasn't moved the polls one iota. But Levitz makes an even more important point -- the campaign still has months to go:

Critically, there is little reason to think that Democrats can maintain such supremacy on the airwaves through November. Although Biden has enjoyed a fundraising advantage in the campaign’s first months, Trump and the Republican National Committee have closed the gap in recent weeks, not least because the GOP candidate’s criminal conviction triggered an avalanche of contributions to his campaign. The reason that Trump hasn’t spent any money on ads thus far isn’t because he can’t afford them. Rather, it seems that his team is choosing to hold its fire until the election grows closer.

Therefore, if current polls are accurate, Biden will need to increase his support even as his share of swing-state advertisements declines.

Levitz divines a potential change in Biden's thinking that may lead to a recalibration of his strategy -- he cites

the Biden campaign’s $50 million June ad buy includes a spot that declares, “In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud.”

On the other hand, Trump's fundraising is now outpacing Biden's for the final stretch:

President Joe Biden’s reelection effort and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $85 million in May, according to exclusive data provided to CNBC by the Biden campaign.

. . . Still, it trailed significantly behind the $141 million that former President Donald Trump’s political operation and the Republican National Committee claim to have raised the same month.

But Levitz misses what I think is a much bigger point: presidential campaigns traditionally started only after Labor Day, and as Nixon once pointed out, nobody paid much attention until after the World Series. This year, the Biden campaign has spent big money on ads all spring, but it will need to keep spending all summer, before the traditional campaign season starts at all. The big observation about Joe's Hollywood fundraiser last weekend was that it raised $30 million, but that will pay for only part of the campaign's new $50 million ad buy.

Except that the Hollywood fundraiser also provided the Trump campaign with the visual of Obama having almost to shove Joe off the stage after yet another freezing episode, which went viral with YouTubers effectively running Trump campaign ads that cost Trump's campaign nothing. How much was that vignette worth?

But this leads to another, but not the final, implication of the extended campaign: it's proving exhausting to Joe. We can see its effect in the video clip of his difficulty climbing into the presidential SUV in Delaware Tuesday night, as well as the stiffness and frailty apparent in his gait as he transferred from Air Force One to Marine One en route to Camp David yesterday. This continues to work in Trump's favor, especially since every recent public appearance by Biden contains some evidence of his increasing fatigue.

But the biggest problem for the Biden campaign is that Levitz, and nearly all his colleagues across the spectrum, are assuming that the polls are static, when even Frank Luntz, who is nothing if not obtuse, is noticing that it's incorrect to say Democrat ad buys aren't moving the needle. The needle is in fact moving, just not toward Biden:

Minnesota is a reliable democratic state and votes Democrat in every presidential campaign and poll after poll. I see Trump within two or three points in Minnesota. I don't think the media understands exactly what's going on right now.

Several recent polls, in fact, have Trump narrowly ahead in Minnesota, like Hill/Emerson. The needle is in fact moving, but the unique factors in this year's campaign continue to favor Trump. I'm still trying to work out what the cause is for this, but at minimum for Trump, it's better to be lucky than good -- but I have a suspicion this gives too little credit to Trump.

How Does Joe Bring Off The Debate?

As of two weeks ago, and even up until this morning, plans for Joe's debate prep leadingup to the June 27 debate were vague. Here's a June 10 story from AP:

After back-to-back trips to Europe, President Joe Biden plans to head to Camp David next week to prepare for his first 2024 debate with former President Donald Trump, hunkering down at the woodsy Maryland hideaway that has hosted many similar cram sessions in the past.

.. . A person with knowledge of the president’s plans, who insisted on anonymity to more freely discuss them, suggested Biden could spend the better part of a week at Camp David getting ready for the first debate.

But others involved in the planning said Monday that details were still being worked out, including how many days Biden would devote to prep. They said exactly where he’d be doing it, at Camp David or elsewhere, had not been finalized.

But now we know! As of this morning, according to ABC News,

With a week to go until the first presidential debate, President Joe Biden heads to Camp David on Thursday to prepare for his critical matchup with former President Donald Trump.

. . . According to a campaign official, Ron Klain, Biden's former chief of staff, is leading the debate preparations. Other senior campaign aides and longtime advisers, including Cedric Richmond, a former White House aide and current campaign co-chair, will also be on hand.

This won't be Klain's first time in a leading role. In addition to assisting Biden in his 2020 debate prep, he led Hillary Clinton's preparation in 2016, Barack Obama's in 2008 and 2012 and John Kerry's in 2004.

In 2020, Biden said his debate prep strategy involved "going over what [Trump] has said and multiple lies he's told," in an interview with NBC News. This year, Biden's debate prep could look similar with his facing the same opponent.

This leaves two open questions, first whether the 2020 strategy will work, and then the bigger question of whether Joe can allay doubts about his cognitive abilities. As to the first, acccording to Axios,

Senior Democrats, including some of President Biden's aides, are increasingly dubious about his theory for victory in November, which relies on voter concerns about Jan. 6, political violence, democracy and Donald Trump's character.

. . . A Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign told Axios: "It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary."

. . . Longtime Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson, who worked for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 primary against Biden, told Axios: "If the election were today, we would lose. Can that change? Yes. Is it on the path to do so? I don't see that yet."

"The stakes for the debate" on June 27 between Biden and Trump "are sky high," he said.

The accounts we've seen suggest that debate prep for Joe will involve programming him with talking points that refer to prior Trump remarks ranging from the "fine people" at Charlottesville to injecting bleach to cure COVID to the "bloodbath" if he loses in 2024, as well as his status as a "convicted felon". A good example of this strategy was in the 2020 debate where Joe was able to pull out a rehearsed reference to the since-discredited letter from 51 former intelligence officials claiming Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation.

We might expect Joe to do something similar this year -- but I have my doubts, even if that's his handlers' intent. This brings up the bigger question that people will have about the debate, Joe's condition. As of last year, there were reports that Joe has adopted a reduced work schedule:

Days after the 80-year-old formally announced he would run for re-election in 2024, Axios reported Friday that aides say it’s tough to schedule “public or private events” with Biden at certain times of day — namely weekends, mornings, and evenings.

In fact, the report adds, most of Biden’s public events happen between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

. . . The report added that while Biden’s close advisers insist he’s mentally sharp and other officials say the president has great stamina “for his age,” some aides have compared Biden to an aging monarch protected by courtiers at all costs.

This will inevitably limit the time available for debate prep. In addition, the reports from unnamed diplomats at the G7 that Joe is unfocused at meetings suggest that the prep sessions may suffer from the same problem. In addition, the 90-minute debate format works against the handlers' strategy of limiting the time he has available in the public eye to make mistakes:

The approach also has the appearance of a strategy aimed at minimizing the potential for Biden to make mistakes in a razor-close election. Some of Biden’s verbal missteps have occurred when he’s talking at length, veers off the prepared text or answers a reporter’s question when that wasn’t part of the plan.

And there's still the problem that no matter how much prep Joe gets, his memory may still not follow through. Just the day before yesterday,

President Biden appeared to freeze up and temporarily forget the name of his Homeland Security Secretary during a White House event Tuesday.

. . . He thanked Congress and Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, but seemed to trail off when trying to remember Mayorkas’ name.

"I’m not sure I’m going to be able to introduce you all the way," Biden said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

There's the additional problem that Joe's handlers scheduled him for back-to-back trips to Europe, with the Juneteenth interlude, followed immediately by cross-country flights to the Hollywood fundraiser. Joe wound up with highly problematic visuals across all of them, when I suspect the handlers' intent instead was to set him up with a triumphal progress leading to the June 27 debate.

I've got to surmise that what they didn't factor in was the level of fatigue this would produce in an octogenarian. This must certainly have been a factor in his repeated gaffes and freezeups over the whole period. Even Byron York was forced to conclude,

One thing is certain: If the Juneteenth event showed some sort of problem with the president, it will happen again. The White House will not be able to say “This did not happen” whenever something does indeed happen.

Let's keep in mind that Joe's handlers were completely responsible for his exhausting schedule throughout this month. He probably needed at least a week to unwind between the D-Day trip snd the G7, which he didn't get -- but then they added extra events like Juneteenth, the fundraiser, the amnesty announcement Tuesday, followed by yet another fundraiser that hight, which culminated in problems getting into his SUV.

I dont think a week of enrforced rest alone at Camp David would be enough to perk Joe up -- but at least in theory, he's supposed to prepping for the debate. This takes me back to my days in tech, where the project team, which had been falling behind schedule for months and had a final deadline coming up on Monday, said they'd just work all weekend to get caught up. Right.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Joe Biden?

Ever since the G7 "cheap fake" vignettes, outlets across the board have been spitballing new strategies to replace Joe on the November ballot. Via the UK Daily Mail,

[I]t seems no matter how much cold water the Biden campaign or Democratic Party throw on this raging fire of speculation, Americans will not be put off the Great Joe Biden Replacement Theory.

It's the idea that somehow, some way the President will be swapped out as the Democratic Party's candidate ahead of the 2024 election.

But the obstacle is always Kamala, who is the other horn of the dilemma. The Daily Mail points this out:

[The substitute] would not be Vice President Kamala Harris, according to sources, who observed that Harris has already had to fend off a push to replace her on the ticket.

'It doesn't just become Kamala. Kamala only becomes the nominee if Biden dies,' one blunt consultant said.

Another Democratic political insider believes that Harris has failed so badly as vice president that she has made it nearly impossible for Biden to step aside – because the party would have to contend with progressive blowback over passing over the potential first black woman president.

The "only if Biden dies" scenario isn't completely accurate. If Biden is forced to resign as president before Inauguration Day 2025, or if the 25th Amendment is invoked, Kamala becomes president, for however short a time. My own feeling is that the likelihood of this is at least non-trivial, and it's the only realistic way Joe can be replaced on the ticket short of him dying.

How bad is Joe's condition, really? One indication is the White House's extreme unwillingness to release the tapes of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interview of Joe last October:

House Republicans are demanding the [Justice] department turn over audio recordings of the interview special counsel Hur conducted with Biden in October 2023, about Biden's handling of classified documents after leaving the Obama administration.

. . . At a hearing Thursday, Chairman Jordan of the Judiciary Committee asserted the recordings are necessary because "the transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president's memory."

The implication is that the written transcripts have been redacted to minimize evidence of Biden's deteriorating mental state, which could well be much more evident in the tapes, and the White House's subsequent efforts to discredit videos of Joe freezing at the Juneteenth event and the Hollywood fundraiser, as well as him wandering away from the group at the G7, indicate the extreme sensitivity with which it views the issue.

It's worth noting that Senate Minority Leader McConnell had two similar public episodes of freezing last year:

For the second time this summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze up while answering questions during a press conference. The Republican stared blankly for about 30 seconds Wednesday afternoon in Kentucky. There was a similar moment for the Senator on Capitol Hill last month.

McConnell announced his retirement as Republican leader this past February, sayiong at the time,

One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter, so I stand before you today, Mr. President and my colleagues, to say this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.

It was speculated that health concerns led to his decision:

Health issues for McConnell, 82, almost certainly played a role in his decision. Last March, he sustained a concussion and fractured a rib when he took a bad fall at a private dinner at a Washington hotel, sidelining him for six weeks.

Then in July, McConnell froze for 19 seconds at a news conference in the Capitol, worrying colleagues who said they had noticed a change in the longtime leader and they believed the fall had taken a toll. He appeared to freeze a second time at a Kentucky event the following month.

I continue to wonder how much the White House has been concealing the actual extent of Biden's decline, which has been hinted at in the foreign press more than here:

“Biden isn’t the man he used to be,” a June editorial story from The Independent, a U.K. newspaper, reads. “A failure to take the mounting evidence seriously risks not only a collapse of trust in the White House that will affect future presidents but the specter of real crises during a second Biden term.”

. . . International media outlets especially covered concerns surrounding Biden after Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report in February regarding Biden’s possible mishandling of classified documents. The report recommended not pursuing charges against Biden because he presented himself as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and a jury would likely find him not guilty.

Biden held a press conference the same day the report was released and criticized Hur’s report, but made a series of slip-ups during remarks and shouted at reporters, which some media outlets claimed highlighted Hur’s findings.

. . . “The numerous references in the report to Joe Biden’s failing memory. . . give unprecedented force to questions about his physical and mental capacity to stand again,” a news story from French outlet Le Monde wrote about the Hur report. “The worrying episodes are increasing.”

To some extent, the references to Joe's ability to run for re-election are polite. The November election is still over four months away, but Joe's campaign is clearly faltering long before traditional presidential campaigns even start. On one hand, the possibility of some new crisis demanding the president's full attention can't be ruled out, while on the other, Joe can't stand an infinite number of new episodes that call his condition into question.

It's likely that Sen McConnell's resignation as Republican leader was prompted by behind-the-scenes pressure, as well as Trump's statement, only a week before the senator's announcement, that he "wasn't sure" if he could work with McConnell. Right now, we don't know what sort of pressure may be happening for Joe behind the scenes already. Nevertheless, as of 2024, Trump is displaying far greater political strength out of office, for instance in his ability to force McConnell's retirement, than he had during his actual term.

For Kamala to succeed to the presidency between now and Inauguration Day presents a problem for national leadership in both parties, and even its potential represents a constitutional crisis. I suspect a few people close to Trump are gaming this out, and I think the likelihood of something like this happening is greater than anyone expects. I think the current situation is neither stable nor sustainable for long.

The Low-Bar Problem

YIKES: Watch Joe Biden incoherently babble at his Hollywood fundraiser as Obama looks on in SHOCK.

This is so bad…

pic.twitter.com/W7WsF74zvM

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 17, 2024

The conventional wisdom, even before the 2024 presidential debate dates were set, has been that Joe's handlers will be able to prep him well enough for the first debate, now a little over a week away, that he'll surpass a low-bar standard and "win" the debate against Trump simply by avoiding major embarrassments. For instance,

Biden’s performance at his State of the Union address — which went over largely well and led to many public reconsiderations of whether he was too diminished to run for a second term — is very much on the minds of some Trump aides. They expect that Biden’s team will get him into similar shape ahead of the debate.

As of now, even though I'm a contrarian in any case, I have serious doubts about this. The CNN story at the link was written last month, and it uses the history of both Biden's and Trump's past debate preps to try to predict the future. The piece continues,

People who have been in previous debate preps sessions with [Biden] said they can be exhausting and, for long stretches, not productive. He prefers sitting around a table covered in policy binders, trying to explain himself in long answers in ways that he feels like he hasn’t gotten to do and asking whoever he can make eye contact with, “How would you do it?”

Much of the work goes into focusing him, these people who have been in prep with him said, pulling him back to the key point or narrative that aides have identified.

And that was Joe in 2020. There seems to be a consensus that he's not like that in 2024, he has good days and bad; he checks in, and he checks out.

But multiple prominent Democrats said they worry Biden can’t come off as robust next to Trump. They live a daily nightmare imagining some kind of trip up, literal or verbal, that becomes the one Biden can’t come back from, and they think the debate stage seems like the obvious place where this could happen.

On the other hand, there's an expectation in some quarters that Trump won't be able to control himself. Here's a think piece at Real Clear Politics yesterday:

Every question from pro-Democrat moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and every taunting response from President Biden about threats to democracy will be an opportunity for Trump to lose his temper or to alienate moderate voters with intemperate replies.

. . . Remember, this debate and another one in early September were proposed by Biden at a time when he was trending badly behind Trump in the polls, especially in battleground states. Presumably, the Biden campaign believed the early debates would shore up his support and hurdle him over the much indicted, and now convicted, former president.

Is this guy trying to imply that something has changed since then, that Joe's doing much better in the polls? If anything, the polls in the artificially designated "battleground" states have remained the same, while Trump is starting to pull ahead in other states like Minnesota and Virginia. It's also starting to look like Biden's staff had expected his trips to Europe for the D-Day commemoration and G7 would make him look presidential going into the debate, when the visuals turned out to be disastrous. But the guy continues,

If Trump remembers to act presidential, and not like an attack dog, there is every reason to believe he will attract voters eager for a change.

This repeats the idea that Trump is basically out of control, a perpetual adolescent who's his own worst enemy. This isn't the Trump we're seeing. He's been pretty clearly following the advice of his counsel, although some part of his legal strategy is also what Alan Dershowitz has recognized is the Chicago Seven defense, deliberately baiting some of the judges and prosecutors into making errors -- and in fact, this has been remarkably effective over the past year. As his indictments have mounted up and verdicts have gone against him, he's just risen in the polls.

This isn't someone who's out of control. He's also very good ex tempore, and he has a standup comic's sense of timing -- but that leaves aside that he simply has a sense of humor, which Biden completely lacks.

Still, even this omits the new inflection of the campaign. The line up to now has been that Biden's "age" is a major campaign issue. But that's putting it politely. The visuals from G7 and the Hollywood fundraiser raise an entirely different question, to which Piers Morgan gave voice yesterday:

I watched the viral clip of Barack Obama taking a frozen Joe Biden by the arm and leading him off stage at their star-studded $30 million LA fundraiser, and posted on X what I suspect everyone who watched it was thinking: “So embarrassing. The Democrats can’t let this go on, surely?”

Within a few hours, a staggering 7.5 million people had viewed my post and many thousands of those had liked, reposted or commented on it.

As I thought, the vast majority shared my honestly held opinion that President Biden is no longer fit for the highest office in America.

The question really is no longer, "Will Joe be able to make it through another four years?" That's been overtaken by events. The question has become, "He really shouldn't be president now, should he?" This has an urgency that in some ways overrides the election. It's an issue that he likely can't be removed from office before next January, and he almost certainly will lose the November election. What can we do to feel comfortable in the meantime?

Piers Morgan continues with the real question:

Biden is supposed to be America’s commander-in-chief but, at what is a very dangerous time for the world, I wouldn’t trust him now to order a restaurant meal let alone a military strike.

So why is he still running?

What I've been seeing, especially since the G7, is that Biden is capable of losing situational awareness at any time and either behaving completely inappropriately, as he did with the Pope Francis headbump, or simply freezing. That suggests to me that as of now, even more than in 2020, any attempt at debate prep is likely to be a futile endeavor. But there's also now absolutely no assurance that he won't simply lose situational awareness during the debate itself. That, of course, raises questions beyond just the debate.

I don't think the low bar scenario is remotely applicable as things now stand. I've been saying for a while that events are going to move more rapidly than people think.

"I Don't Think Mozart's Going To Help At All"

Biden freezes before Obama grabs his arm and leads him off stage. Yikes! 😳 pic.twitter.com/nCgAGitoQ6

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 16, 2024

I wasn't going to post on Joe's freezeup at the Hollywood fundraiser on Saturday -- I was convinced the headbump with Pope Francis was as bad as things could get, and having Barack Obama forced to lead him off the stage was just a weak aftershow.

But I sat up in bed early this morning thinking about the scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo where Midge, John "Scottie" Ferguson's ex-fiancee, visits him in a psychiatric ward where he's recovering after losing his obsessive love Madeleine Elster in her phony suicide.

Scottie is sitting dazed and unresponsive with Mozart playing on a record player. Midge says,

It's Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus. I had a long talk with that lady in musical therapy, Johnny, and she says that Mozart's the boy for you. The broom that sweeps the cobwebs away. Well, that's what the lady said.

But Midge quickly realizes this isn't the cure. She tells the doctor,

You want to know something? I don't think Mozart's going to help at all.

Looking at Obama essentially giving Joe the bum's rush off the stage at the Hollywood gala, I've got to say whatever Joe's handlers might try to do that's an equivalent to Mozart for Scottie Ferguson, I don't think it's going to help at all.

Here's what nobody has mentioned. Normally when a president -- even a B-minus president like Dubya -- attended a G7 or G8, it was in the context of showcasing his accomplishments. It showed him posing triumphantly with other world leaders, among whom he was pre-eminent. For instance, here's a White House summary of Dubya at the G8 in 2007,

Fact Sheet: The President's Achievements at the G-8 Summit, Heiligendamm, Germany:

The President, In Collaboration With Other Leaders From The G-8 Nations, Took Action To Address A Broad Range Of Global Issues, Including:

• Launching a new global framework to address climate change, energy security, economic growth and sustainable development;
• Committing to partnering with African countries to foster development, especially by enabling the private sector and combating disease;

and blah blah blah. It goes without saying this is officious bombast, presidential fuss and feathers like Hail to the Chief that everyone tunes out, but even in the case of a mediocrity like Dubya, it isn't incongruous. Nobody looked at Dubya at Heiligendamm and wondered why he was there and what awful blunder he would pull next.

Many years ago, I read someone suggesting that Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election simply because he was the subject of failed assassination attempts by two women ( Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in Sacramento September 5, 1975; and Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco on September 22, 1975).

Of all the other possible reasons for Ford's loss -- especially his pardon of Nixon -- this one immediately struck me as most persuasive. On one hand, that the attempts would be unsuccessful goes to the stereotype of the incompetent woman. On the other, that bumbling women would target Ford canceled his standing as an alpha male.

Fast forward to the G7 in Italy -- Joe wanders away from the other G7 leaders. We can grant that he may even have wandered away for a reason -- perhaps he in fact wanted to congratulate the other parachutists -- but from accounts, this wasn't the script for the events that the leaders agreed. They were all going to shake hands with one guy, not any of the others, to keep the schedule short.

So even if Joe didn't just wander away like grandpa, someone had to get him back with the program, and there we had the inescapable visual. The President of France, that is, the leader of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, noticed Joe was off script and prompted the Prime Minister of Italy, a short woman in a pink pants suit, to pull Joe back in line.

No amount of after-the-fact spin, no insistence that the visual was a cheap fake, is going to counter the impression that the leader of the free world, the alpha male of alpha males, must be fetched back like an errant toddler by a French guy and an Italian woman.

Heck, we're back to Midge in the Vertigo psychiatric ward murmuring to Scottie, "Mother's here".

If, as I was, you're impressed by a theory that certain events of state can have an outsize effect when a woman shows up in the wrong context, you can at least entertain the thought that this episode alone will cost Joe the election, and not by a narrow margin.

But beyond that, nobody has mentioned that having the president performing on the world stage at all is normally a positive. I've got to think that the White House, planning out the campaign leading into summer, thought having Joe travel to France for the D-Day commemoration and then to the G7 a week later, would give him a natural bump in the polls going into the June 27 debate with Trump.

Instead, they're having to insist yet again that Joe didn't poop his pants, he was just changing his mind about sitting down, and the business of the short Italian lady pulling him back with the group was fiendishly manipulated to be other than it was.

But how does Saturday night's scene of Barack Obama ushering Joe off the Hollywood stage play into this? Several people have observed that Joe's freeze at the end of the show was a lot like his freeze on Juneteenth -- in both cases, he stood still, face expressionless, arms slack at his side, not moving at all for an uncomfortable interval. Far fewer have noted that Dr Jill wasn't with him either time.

My sense of things is that Dr Jill is the only handler who knows Joe well enough to sense instinctively when something like this is coming, and she knows proactively what move to make to forestall it. She can be next to him and already holding his hand and pull him along or prompt him to give some sign that he's in focus. What we saw at both Juneteenth and the Hollywood fundraiser was that neither Barack Obama nor Kamala Harris can function proactively as a handler.

Kamala, even though it seems to have been assumed she'd serve as a handler without Jill there, was jivin' and looking the other way when Joe froze. Barack saw what was happening only after several awkward moments, and when he realized it, he had to use both hands to get Joe going and manhandle him offstage.

This says to me that Joe's condition is such that, at least for some significant part of the time, he needs constant attention when he's in public from someone who can anticipate his various moves and freezes. That's probably only Dr Jill at this point, and to put him in the public eye without her present is a risky proposition.

You want to know something? I don't think Mozart's going to help at all.

Is The Overton Window Half Open Or Half Shut?

I've lately begun to gauge the extent of the Overton window, the range of opinions that can be expressed in public without seeming extreme, by looking at each day's Real Clear Politics menu, along with their aggregate poll listings. There are maybe 20 titles on a typical day, and their sources range from the New York Post on the right to The American Prospect and The Nation on the left, which skews things leftward in my view -- but of course, the poll aggregates do the same, and I'll get to that.

The big thing I've noticed since Joe went to Italy is that RCP hasn't published a single headline that says anything major about Joe's cognitive struggles there. There's been absolutely nothing about Friday's forehead bump with Pope Francis, although the only thing that can reasonably be concluded about it is that Joe completely lost situational awareness and forgot that he was in a diplomatic forum with world leaders, expected to follow closely cicumscribed standards of etiquette, and widely published photos of the forehead bump from several angles leave little room for other interpretations.

As of this morning, the only reference to G7 I've been able to find at all in the RCP menus is Michael Goodwin's Joe Biden is Mired in a Losing Streak at the New York Post. This is a very broad discussion that begins with Hunter's conviction in Delaware, continues through Hunter's looming tax trial, and only then moves to the G7:

It was his second trip to Europe in 10 days and the wear and tear on the 81-year old president was obvious.

Without First Lady Jill Biden by his side to direct him, he looked more confused than usual and at one point had to be herded back to the group by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whom Biden weirdly saluted when they met.

Coming just after the White House Juneteenth celebration, where Biden’s hands and body stood frozen as people around him clapped and swayed to music, the behavior stoked concern among his peers.

G-7 insiders talked of him “losing focus” during discussions, with one saying Biden’s condition is “the worst he has ever been,” according to media reports.

Goodwin doesn't mention the head bump with Francis at all, which is odd, because Joe's defenders have been able to argue that the vignette of him wandering away from the others at the skydiving demonstration was out of context, he was congratulating someone out of camera range, blah blah. But as I said above, the forehead bump leaves far less room for spin. And Goodwin doesn't mention it -- so far, that's been the only discussion of the G7 at RCP.

I've mentioned the commentators who've said, correctly, that the Wall Street Journal story early this month on Joe's real condition behind the scenes was just a "permission slip" that opened the subject up for polite discussion -- but clearly the discussion must remain polite. The G7 business is just one of several campaign hurdles Joe must surmount, not a much more significant indicator that he's not fit for office, and this situation has been concealed from the public for many months -- that's still not a polite thing to say.

But what we're hearing on backgound, first from the Wall Street Journal and now from G7 diplomatic circles, is that Joe has good days and bad ones, he checks in and out. This in itself is probably a polite and diplomatic way of putting things. In the context of the upcoming June 27 debate, it throws into question the basic assumption expressed by Trump himself and many others, that Joe's handlers can somehow program set-piece responses to certain questions and keep him pumped up with energy drinks or whatever that will let him exceed low expectations and "win" the debate.

The informed subtext more recently is that that may have been possible in 2020, but this is now, and Joe has gotten considerably worse in recent months. It's even within the Overton window to say he checks in and out, and this is simply visible to everyone in recent appearances. I don't think at this point, though, that his good days or focused moods can be predicted or managed any more, and the debate is going to be a real crap shoot.

But let's move to RCP and the polls, where the Overton window is clearly being manipulated. The conventional wisdom even before Trump began to rise in the polls last fall was that 2024 was going to be a close election. Nobody disputed that. The conventional wisdom established that it would be won via a narrow electoral college victory in certain "battleground" states. RCP has been a major factor in establishing this paradigm. But two things are falling out: the first is that certain states even on the RCP list, like North Carolina, have never really been in play for Biden.

So why does RCP retain North Carolina as a "battleground"? I suspect one reason is that taking North Carolina off the list would be a first acknowledgement that the consensus paradigm is off, so they can't do it. But the other "battlegrounds" have also broken into two groups, although Trump consistently leads in the aggregates for all of them. One group, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, shows Trump ahead by 4 or 5 points, and those are looking more like North Carolina, no longer really "battlegrounds". The second group, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, shows Trump ahead by slimmer margins, although he's still ahead. Those in the second group are more credibly "battlegrounds".

But now, although still outside the window of polite discussion, people have begun to mention states like Minnesota and Virginia as "in play". For instance,

Polling outfit Decision Desk HQ released some stunning numbers Friday, showing Donald Trump ever so slightly ahead in two blue states that went for Biden in the last election, which could spell doom for the president’s reelection if they turn on him in November. The survey showed Trump up an ever-so-teeny 0.2 percent in Virginia and an absolutely eye-opening 1.6 percent in Minnesota.

It seems to me that the "close election" paradigm hinging on the "battleground" states of 2016 and 2020 is beginning to fail. As of right now, it seems likely that Joe can at best carry only two or three of those "battlegrounds", which makes his chances of a narrow Electoral College victory slimmer and slimmer. But with polling data coming in that Minnesota and Virginia are already in play, this puts a potential wider Trump Electoral College victory within the realm of possibility, which renders the whole "battleground" model inoperative.

I briefly thought of suggesting to RCP that, for instance, they revise the list of "battlegrounds" and take at minimum, say, North Carolina and Nevada off the list, since Trump is ahead by over 5 points in both, start running aggregates for Minnesota and Virginia, and place them on the "battleground" list instead. That would give a list that would show the real tipping-point states. Might not that provide more of a horse race?

But then I realized that a horse race is not what RCP wants to show. As Rush Limbaugh said, the polls aren't meant to report the news, they're meant to shape it. RCP wants the election to be close. One of today's headlines on today's menu there is another Biden Could Lose the Popular Vote and Still Win, which pooh-poohs

a whole industry out there engaged in spinning polls and shifting expectations to show that Donald Trump is going to win by a massive landslide, sweeping godless woke liberalism out of power in Washington and instituting his long-promised era of vengeance and vindication.

But he falls back for his support on the Sean Trende piece I discussed Wednesday, in which Trende wants to assume there are massive polling errors in favor of Trump in Trende's own "battleground" aggregates that overestimate Biden's losses among youth, blacks, and Latins, allowing Biden ultimately to squeak by 270-268 in the Electoral College.

The problem is, of course, that the writer here is still forced to acknowledge the other possibility:

Obviously if Trump actually wins Virginia it would be a big deal, putting 13 precious electoral votes he’s never won before into his column.

But if RCP can keep the Overton window half shut, nobody needs to worry too much. At least for now.

the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

They're Getting Tired Of The Charade

It's worth pointing out that the "meanderer in chief" episode in Italy took place on Thursday, while Joe's bizarre forehead bump with Pope Francis took place yesterday.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the established protocol for meeting a pontiff. According to wikiHow, the rules are in part, especially for Catholics like Joe,

Genuflect as the Pope approaches. If the Pope approaches you directly, you should kneel with your right knee bent to the floor. . . . Genuflection is a sign of high respect.

If you are Catholic and if the Pope offers you his hand, that would be an appropriate time to plant a quick yet respectful kiss on the Piscatory ring, also known as the Ring of the Fisherman, traditionally worn by the Pope. . . . By kissing it, you show both respect and sincere affection for the man who holds that office.

. . . Speak respectfully, clearly, and concisely. Plan what to say beforehand so that you do not stumble too much over your words, and maintain a tone that is both clear and respectful the entire time. . . . The Pope will guide the conversation, and you should let him do so. Keep your answers direct and brief, and speak in a clear, loud voice so that the Pope can hear you.

But those rules apply mainly to Catholics. On the other hand, both Joe and the Holy Father are, diplomatically speaking, also heads of state. The normal rules for such a meeting, according to Quora, are:

The meetings tend to be very carefully scripted. A full agenda is prepared and people tend to stick too it. Both parties will actually know to a great degree of certainty what the other will say.

. . . You would be well advised to inquire in advance about expected protocols . . . . Bear in mind that you will be seen as representing America. Do so respectfully. Don't be Donald Trump! [sic]

Well, when Joe ran into Pope Francis, he definitely wasn't Donald Trump -- he was infinitely more gauche. Every indication from accounts of the forehead-bump encounter is that Francis was surprised and somewhat taken aback, the sort of thing that absolutely does not happen in a normal diplomatic context. But even accounts of ordinary people who met Christ in the gospels show Him treated with high respect, for instance in His encounter with the Canaanite woman im Matthew 15: 22-28:

22 And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” 24 He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” 28 Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith!* Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The only conclusion I can come to here is that Joe completely lost situational awareness -- he didn't act as a Catholic should, conveying great respect via his body language, and he didn't act anything like a head of state in a diplomatic context, surrounded by other heads of state and recognizing his official role in representing the US. Even gentiles who met Christ, whose vicar Francis currently is, treated Him with respect, even in their worst moments -- nobody bumped His forehead when they met Him.

By contrast, even hostile accounts of Donald Trump's meeting with Pope Francis indicate that Trump behaved according to appropriate protocol for both a non-Catholic and a head of state, and indeed, although Francis began the meeting with a stonefaced expression,

Francis' mood lightened considerably during their gift exchange and the two men shook hands before parting.

"Thank you. Thank you. I won't forget what you said," Trump told the pope after their private meeting.

Actually, I gave quite a bit of thought to what sort of behavioral pattern Joe displayed during the forehead-bump encounter, and I could only conclude that he was acting like a toddler. There's no question that if an actual toddler climbed onto Francis's lap, he or she might go one step farther and bump his forehead, and Francis in the spirit of Matthew 19:14 would presumably welcome the gesture -- but what we had here was an adult head of state in a business suit who's expected to act in a highly circumscribed manner, but he's completely forgotten where he is.

Let's ask the next question: why did this happen when it did? The answer is clear: Dr Jill or another handler is normally with him. Somehow, he was let loose in the general G7 gathering with Pope Francis, and Dr Jill wasn't there to keep him on the usual short leash:

First lady Dr. Jill Biden is hitting the campaign trail on a double mission this week, courting older voters to support her husband’s reelection bid while also tackling voters’ concerns about his age.

. . . “Joe Biden is a healthy, wise 81-year-old ready and willing to work for you every day to make our future better,” she added. “Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it.”

Her remarks came at her first stop of a three-day campaign swing through Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Nevada and Arizona.

Let's keep in mind that in France the previous week, Dr Jill appears to have been with him almost constantly in his public appearances, holding his hand, one would suspect, not just as a gesture of affection, but to hold him steady and even more important, to restrain him. Remember that on Thursday in Italy, without Dr Jill, not only did Joe offer the diplomatic kiss on both cheeks to Prime Minister Meloni, but he went on to sniff her hair. I assume Dr Jill would have been able to forestall this if she'd been present.

I can only conclude that we haven't seen as much of Joe completely losing situational awareness as he repeatedly did in Italy because Dr Jill or other handlers have been able to shield him or restrain him in public environments, and his encounters have been more carefully controlled. If Dr Jill steps away, we get these episodes -- we had something similar at the Juneteenth event on Monday, where Vice President Harris was assigned to stand next to him and presumably keep him focused. But she got caught up in jivin' with the rest of the front row and didn't notice Joe wasn't jivin'.

George Floyd's brother Philonise finally stepped in and did what Kamala should have done and "suddenly wrapped his arm around the president, footage of the moment shows". Well, if you were Kamala, would you want to wrap your arm around Joe? Give Philonese a medal.

You know what? I think even Dr Jill is sick of minding Joe 24/7, and Kamala sure doesn't want to do it. Heck, Dr Jill decided to do a campaign swing to California while Joe was in Italy, putting herself even farther from the guy than usual. That's why we're beginning to see so much more of what we're seeing. Everyone's getting tired of the charade. Even Dr Jill.