A Lie Is As Good As A Confession

Regarding what may or may not ail Joe, I'm not qualified to say, except that the media has suddenly taken a lot of interest in the question. What intrigues me is the evasiveness of the White House's attempts to answer the questions from the press. I know almost nothing about Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, but as a truie crime fan who reads and watches the insights of detectives about interrogation, I've learned a few things about lying -- and in particular, the truism that a lie is as good as a confession.

In other words, if you can catch someone in a definite lie, you're starting to get a road map to just what it is they're trying to cover up. It's hard to avoid thinking that Press Secretary Jean-Pierre is displaying signs of lying in her answers to a couple of the questions she was asked in her press briefing yesterday. The relevant sequence starts at about 38:00

Q: When you were here last Tuesday, you were asked if the president had had any medical examinations [unintelligible] including the time period after the debate, and you said flately, "no". A few days later, you admitted the president had had a short checkin thereafter. Those are two very different. . .

KJP: . . . To answeer your point, he did not have a medical exam, he did not have a physical, he did like a verbal checkin with his doctor a couple days after the debate, and it was very quick, it was a couple of words that were spoken to each other, and that's how we were able to give you that answer, he did not haver a medical exam, he did not have a physical. . . I did not mean to steer anybody wrong, I was still thinking about the physical, that's how I answered the question, . . . and that's when we went back and asked the medical doctor, and he said they had a verbal checkin.

Q: [Regarding the frequent visits of a Parkinson's specialist over the past several months,] Could you state very clearly, yes or no, was that expert here to participate in anything surrounding the care of the President of the United States?

KJP: So let me just say a couple things. We have had a comprehensive -- I just want to take another step back, a comprehensive physical examination, the president has had that, we've given a comprehensive report, we've shared that the past three years, every year that he has, every year that he has had this exam, he sees a neurologist, and, uh, just to give you a quote from that, the report most recently in February, an extremely detailed neurological exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which wokuld be consistgent with any cerebellar or central neurologicsl disorders such as a stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons's, ascending lateral sclerosis, end quote, so that came from, in February, that comprehensive report trhat was prepared by the president's doctor, that I shared with all of you, so anybody who is watching can certainly go to our website.

Several things pop out at me, and they're covered in typical "how to tell if someone is lying" sites, for instance this one:

Liars will often repeat themselves ad nauseam when telling a half-truth or a complete falsehood. This is done for three reasons. First, they will repeat a lie over and over in order to solidify the ‘facts’ in their mind, so they can stick to their story. Secondly, they’re trying to convince you that they’re telling the truth by solidifying their words in your mind. Lastly, they repeat themselves in order to buy time to come up with the next part of their story. If they were telling the truth, they’d be able to recall everything without thinking about it.

. . . When a person gives too much information when questioned, it’s because they have rehearsed in their head exactly what to say, and exactly how to say it. They also feel that if they’re able to give a full story, they’re more likely to be believed. However, this often just shows they’ve anticipated what the other person will say next, and jump right into answering subsequent questions before the questions have even been asked. If someone seems to immediately have every answer for all the questions you have for them, they’ve most likely constructed a huge lie in their head and are ready to stick to it no matter what.

This is a useful observation:

The research conducted at the University of Michigan found “speaking with more vocal fill” to be a common indicator of deception. Glass says that people tend to use these words more when they’re trying to buy time to figure out what they’re going to say next.

This is a big tell:

When someone is lying, they might avoid answering your question directly. Instead, they might try to change the subject or deflect the conversation away from themselves.

This is one of the tested and most common signs of lying. If you notice someone doing this, it’s a good sign that they’re not being truthful with you. They will slowly try to shift the conversation to another topic to take the focus off of themselves.

It’s just what most people call “red handed.” It’s not usual to see a person try so hard to avoid a certain topic, so if you sense this, then it’s a positive sight that they are lying.

In the press briefing, Ms Jean-Pierre was directly asked a yes-or-no question, which she promptly evaded by providing too much information and never answering yes or no. I have no idea what the truth is that she was trying to conceal, but the pattern of her answers suggests she's trying to conceal something.

Beyond that, who knows?

Dark Brandon Is Coming Back

Voter: We need Dark Brandon back

President Biden: Dark Brandon is coming back

Voters: *burst into applause* pic.twitter.com/fBPL01ReeK

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024

So the latest we hear is that Joe has written a letter to congressional Democrats this morning saying it's time to end talk of his withdrawing. This comes as reports from last week indicate that his inner circle of advisers has shrunk to Hunter, Dr Jill, and the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal. Bernal, who as we've seen often represents himself to the rest of the White House staff as speaking for "the family", seems to be behind reports that the family blames staff for his poor performance in the June 27 debate.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that

A senior White House official who has worked with President Biden since his days as vice president reportedly joined the growing chorus of calls urging him against running for reelection.

That unnamed official, described as working with Biden, 81, throughout his vice presidency, 2020 campaign and presidency explained to the New York Times that observing him in private and during travels together made clear that the Democrat doesn’t have what it takes to defeat Donald Trump.

This sent me searching for possible names. Among those mentioned as helping with his debate prep, Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, come to mind, but both worked for Obama for only brief periods, and the same applies to their work in the Biden White House. A better candidate might be Mike Donilon. According to Wikipedia,

Between 2009 and 2013,he served as Counselor to Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. Before his White House appointment, Donilon worked with the vice-presidential candidate to help him prepare for the debates and as a traveling advisor.

Donilon became a Senior Advisor to the President at the start of Joe's term in January 2021. Another possibility could be Ron Klain, who was Joe's Chief of Staff as vice president from 2009 to 2011 and his Chief of Staff as president from 2021 to 2023. However, he didn't work with Joe "throughout his vice presidency" as Donilon did, and although he returned to help Biden prepare for the June 27 debate, he hasn't worked in the White House since he left last year. Nevertheless, this piece in Newsweek by Ladan Rafii outlines the overall problem for anyone who's advised Joe:

When it comes to Biden, the only close adviser I once knew is his former White House chief of staff and trusted confidant, Ron Klain.

You see, I attended Georgetown University with him many years ago, and we took the same course in U.S. politics. There weren't that many of us, so we were in a small classroom sitting in close proximity to one another.

. . . I was impressed (if not amazed) by his level of intellect. Time and time again, in every class we had, he revealed this to us—without any arrogance, but with a measure of confidence that made us all take note of him.

. . . Which is why I'm having such difficulty believing and processing what happened just a few nights ago.

I learned from a New York Times report that Ron left the White House last year to become chief legal officer of Airbnb. I wondered about that. Knowing how smart he was, I thought maybe he no longer wanted to be associated with what he perceived to be a sinking ship.

Anyone as clever as him would certainly know when he's on board one, and take the right measures to make sure he jumps off it when the first signs appear and the ship begins to teeter.

. . . Then in mid-May, there was an article stating that he was taking a break from his Airbnb job to return to the White House, and help prepare Biden for his debate with Trump.

Apparently, Ron is known in Washington, D.C. circles for being one of the best debate trainers in town. He's very sharp and astute with a depth of political knowledge and experience very few can match.

. . . [He said imn the article,] "We need to have debates where the candidates get equal time . . . where the American people can compare the two people who are the leading candidates for president."

Well, Ron, we certainly got to do that on Thursday. Maybe more than you would have ever wanted or known. As they say: In life, be careful what you wish for.

These days I often ask myself: What happened to the Ron Klain I once knew? He had all the answers back then, so where are his answers now? How could he have let such a calamity happen on live television in front of a global audience of tens of millions?

. . . Please give us the right answer, Mr. Klain.

It's beginning to sound as though some of Joe's long-term, highly capable advisers had begun to lose confidence long before the current campaign season. This retrospective by William A Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection aggregator lists some of the warnings everyone had been ignoring:

There has been a grand coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive problems by Democrats with a big assist from the media. There is now faux contrition beginning to come out from the media, but don’t believe them. Defeating Trump in 2020 squelched the story, and they tried it again in 2024.

I’m so old, I remember when Biden’s cognitive problems were an issue in 2020, raised by Democrats in the primaries. We knew then. A lot of people knew then.

We covered it. We even started a Tag Biden Cognitive. I wrote about it. Stacey wrote about it. Mike wrote about it.

He starts a long list with this tweet from Jake Tapper from as long ago as 2019:

We’re starting to hear more Democrats publicly expressing doubts like this one about Biden. He’s been gaffe-prone for much of his career so presumably they think this is something else. https://t.co/jXXThBEryu

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 9, 2019

So it's starting to sound like even some of Joe's longest and most loyal retainers had begun to lose confidence in him, like apparently Ron Klain as of early last year, and according to the UK Daily Mail,

A simmering rift between Joe Biden's family and staff has finally boiled over after his disastrous debate performance last week.

. . . Fallout from the debate gave Biden's family, including his disgraced son Hunter, ammunition to settle old scores with his staff and be more involved.

They blame his staff for failing to adequately prepare him for the debate and more broadly for not putting him in a position to show his strengths.

'I believe the family has witnessed blunder after blunder by key staff personnel and the debate is likely the straw that broke the camel's back,' one of 13 sources close to the president told NBC.

. . . 'The debate fiasco has opened up a lane for the family to surpass staff and start helping out their father and brother who they love dearly,' another insider said.

So it looks like the upshot's going to be the return of Dark Brandon. It seems to me that it's hard to underestimate the counterproductive effect of the combined advice Joe's been given by both his staff and his family over the past several years -- consider the whole "lawfare" campaign that's done nothing but drive Trump's poll numbers up from the start of the indictments last year. More recently we've seen the utterly calamitous effect of scheduling the early debate soon after Joe's two trips to Europe, which themselves simply set up the questions about his health that the debate only exacerbated.

Well, we're hearing rumbles that there will be resignations by Biden staff over the coming week. The most we can conclude is that the crazies are fully in control, and they're unleashing Dark Brandon again.

Where's Kamala?

Biden: “If Trump wins in November, I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and did the goodest job I know I could do.”

“The goodest job” 😂
pic.twitter.com/zQuGYUdI0F

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 6, 2024

It's a holiday weekend, Congress is out of session, and it seems to have taken longer than usual for any sort of consensus to build over Joe's Friday interview with George Stephanopoulos. But the standout point that nobody seems to want to mention is Joe's remark that he "did the goodest job I know I could do". Let's face it, this is how a toddler talks. For me, it matches Joe's forehead bump with Pope Francis at the G7, which I characterized at the time as "acting like a toddler".

It' s significant that even David Axelrod in a generally clear-eyed piece at CNN had to redact Joe's actual words into "did as good a job as I know I can do", when even the ABC transcript says "I did the goodest job as I know I can do". In other words, this sort of thing is such a delicate matter that even people who want to have an adult-level talk about it must avoid calling it what it is. Nobody wants to mention that the President of the US at key moments functions at the level of a toddler.

All we know for now is that some Democrat representatives are going to have a zoom chat with Leader Jeffries this afternoon, and some Democrat senators are going to meet with Virginia Sen Warner tomorrow. Others have commented that if David Axelrod is going public with the comments he made at the link -- "he will eventually do what duty and love of country requires, and step aside" -- it must be with Obama's knowledge and tacit approval.

Of course, the idea that Joe should "step aside" is conveniently vague. Does it mean simply withdraw as a candidate for the November election but remain in office until January, or resign as president now in favor of Vice President Harris? Well, isn't this the sort of issue that leadership in Congress and the vice presidency should maybe start to work through? It's hard to avoid thinking that there's going to have to be a delegation that will visit Joe sooner rather than later, and it will have to present him with a specific agenda that covers those alternatives.

That in turn means there needs to be a game plan, and that game plan needs to encompass the contingency that Joe will refuse to step aside, where "step aside" means resign the presidency. In that case, the vice president will need to line up a majority of the cabinet to sign a letter to the House Speaker and the president pro tem of the Senate that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, at which point congressional leadership will have to be ready to line up two-thirds of both houses to support that conclusion -- and any delegation to the Oval Office will need to have this in their pockets when they walk in.

This places a major responsibility on the vice president to step up and begin to exercise real leadership. Even if the wise heads get together and decide all that's needful is for Joe to withdraw as a candidate for the election but continue in office until January, the vice president will need to portray herself as a calm and stable figure who under the circumstances is doubly ready to succeed to the presidency. But even then, the assumption we've been hearing is that if Joe withdraws as a candidate but stays until Inauguration Day, Kamala will be the one to pick up the mantle and campaign for November.

But this brings up at least a couple of obvious questions: if the open border is one of the main issues for November, Kamala is the one who had nominal resonsibility for solving the problem throughout Joe's term, and she did nothing about it. But now we'll have an even more pressing question: under the 25th Amendment, it's the vice president's responsibility to exercise the leadership needed to start the process of declaring the president unfit. So far, she's done nothing in that direction, either.

But there's a question beyond that: the reports we've been hearing are that Joe's comdition has grown noticeably worse in recent months -- in the Stephanopoulos transcript, he even asks, "Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?" As far as we know, Kamala theoretically has lunch with Joe once a week, although other reports say this happens only "occasionally". But one of Kamala's implicit responsibilities, in addition to being border czar, is to keep tabs on Joe's health -- or at least, that's what we might surmise.

An entirely reasonable question that might come up for Kamala, either from the press or in a debate, would be whether she herself noticed any change in Joe's condition, since others have been pointing it out, and what she may have done, given her responsibilities under the 25th Amendment, to plan for contingencies and make others aware of them. What is her role, if any, in the discussions that are said to be taking place among Democrat congressional leadership?

What discussions -- entirely prudent and reasonable under the circumstances -- has she initiated with Speaker Johnson and Leader Schumer, or among Joe's cabinet? Is she prepared even to make non-committal but reassuring statements to the press regarding her current role?

Given the speed at which events are likely to develop, these are questions that all of these leadership figures need to be ready to address. In fact, I suspect there's steadily growing pressure from down-ballot politicians and major Democrat donors to address such questions sooner rather than later. The one figure in current leadership who seems by far least able to address them is Kamala Harris, but she's the one who's going to be most likely to have to deal with them within a fairly short timeframe.

Try to imagine what interviews and press statements she'll have to give when the contingency arises, whether it's either Joe withdrawing just as the November candidate or resigning the presidency entirely -- and she'll have to make them on almost no notice. And this just leads to a whole additional set of new contingencies, because let's face it, Kamala's job up to now has been to be a useful idiot, and I don't see her suddenly rising to her new role.

The only thing that's at least partly reassuring is that if nobody else, Trump and Speaker Johnson have almost certainly been thinking them through. Leader McConnell, though -- not so much.

Who's Running The Country?

According to the UK Daily Mail,

While the president has said he has no plans to step aside, he is known be talking to vast numbers of people, but only listening to views of a very tight circle, including those of his wife.

And Jill is said to have taken a dim view of those wishing to kick her husband off the ticket, as it's claimed she's the driving force between his insistence on staying in the race. The claim was made by ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz moments after Biden's make or break interview with the network Friday night.

The 'inner circle' of voices that include a select circle of advisers – including son, Hunter, are telling Biden, 81, that he can win and that he needs to keep going with his re-election bid.

So who are the rest of the inner circle? According to the New York Post,

President Biden’s inner circle has gotten smaller following his disastrous debate last week — with his wife’s top aide Anthony Bernal emerging as one of the 81-year-old’s key advisers alongside longtime confidante Mike Donilon, four sources close to or inside the White House tell The Post.

Bernal, 51, is a divisive figure for allegedly bullying and sexually harassing colleagues — and his influence was likened by three sources to that held by the mystic Grigori Rasputin over the family and court of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.

First lady Jill Biden considers Bernal her “work husband” and he’s also close to scandal-plagued first son Hunter, whom Bernal greeted with a hug June 11 after his felony gun conviction.

Bernal in particular seems to be closest to the center:

A White House source told The Post that many of the president’s old guard of longtime aides are believed to be left out of the loop of discussions “about what’s next” — saying Bernal, who frequently vacations with the first family, “seriously” has a Rasputin-like pull over the first family.

Another source said they agreed with the Rasputin analogy — describing Bernal’s influence and immunity from consequences for alleged personal misconduct as perplexing to fellow aides.

“He’s like a tick who has just latched himself on for the last 15 years,” this source said.

According to another Daily Mail story,

At public events, in meetings, and even on family holidays, Bernal is a permanent fixture in the Biden furniture. Nothing, it seems, passes without his approval.

'He has an unmatched ability to influence things in the president's team,' one former co-worker told the New York Post in March.

In March, the New York Post reported on sexual harassment allegations against Bernal:

A top Biden White House official has bullied and verbally sexually harassed colleagues over more than a decade, The Post has learned — but is considered “untouchable” because first lady Jill Biden regards him as her “work husband.”

Anthony Bernal, whose status as the first lady’s top aide grants him enormous clout in both White House operations and Democratic politics, has repeatedly speculated in the workplace about the penis size of colleagues, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge.

. . . “I have heard him say inappropriate things about people’s sexuality or pry inappropriately into people’s personal lives,” one former co-worker recalled of Bernal, who is openly gay.

“I heard him ask if people are gay all the time.”

. . . In total, five sources described to The Post instances of bullying, claiming that Bernal frequently is so demeaning in conversation that he reduces colleagues to tears, mendaciously giving last-minute input on projects, and grilling people on whether they are loyal.

“He says, ‘Dr. Biden would have a problem with that’ or ‘Dr. Biden wouldn’t like that.’ And nobody knows what she really wants. Half the time, you don’t know if he talked to her or not,” said a former colleague. Another source who has worked with Bernal said, “I could think of more than one instance where he pontificated on whether someone was gay or not or said, ‘They are definitely gay.’”

Ingrid Jacques reviewed the Biden family situation in USA Today:

Biden’s wife must know better than anyone how her husband has declined in recent years. Yet, she and other close aides have gone out of their way to make sure the president interacts with as few people in the White House as possible, recent reporting by Axios confirms.

The answer is pretty simple. For Exhibit A, look no further than the first lady’s landing on the cover of Vogue just days after her husband’s flop of a debate performance.

. . . It’s not a stretch to say that the first lady is pulling a lot of the strings that her husband can no longer pull. And she doesn’t want to give up that power.

That’s led to comparisons with another first lady: Edith Wilson, who took over most presidential duties during the last few years of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency after he suffered a stroke in 1919. The public was kept largely in the dark.

But Jill Biden isn't Edith Wilson -- someone is actually pulling Dr Jill's strings as well. It looks like that's Anthony Bernal. The parallel isn't to Edith Wilson, the parallel is to her contemporary Rasputin.

How Fast Are Events Moving?

If you want an indication of how fast events are moving, it was just two weeks ago that Real Clear Politics updated its list of "battleground" states by adding Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia, but then, incongruouously, also added Ohio, Florida, and Colorado -- but by now, with new polls sugesting New Jersey, New Mexico, Maine, and even Colorado are in play, they're going to have to update their list again.

As of today, the White House appears to be expecting an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos to reestablish an impression that Joe is competent and focused, but after a series of July 4 gaffes, it's hard to imagine that he can do this. In an intervieew broadcast yesterday, he appeared to misspeak when he characterized himself as a “Black woman” on a Philadelphia-based radio station.

“By the way I’m proud to be, as I said the first vice president, the first Black woman served with a Black president,” Biden said. “Proud of the first Black woman, the Supreme Court. There’s just so much that we can do because together we, there’s nothing. Look, this is the United States, America.”

According to the New York Post, this wasn't the only gaffe in the interview:

At one point, he made the bizarre claim that he was the “first president that got elected statewide in the state of Delaware, when I was a kid.”

Also yesterday,

President Joe Biden’s team faced another embarrassing episode when the President appeared on live television during Independence Day celebrations with a noticeable stain on his suit. The stain, which many speculated to be either poop or food, quickly became the focal point of the broadcast, overshadowing the patriotic festivities.

The stain is illustrated in the photo at the top of this post. But then there was the main event of the day:

“One last thing, and I used to think when I was a senator, there were always congestion on the highways. There’s no congestion anymore. We go on the highway, there’s no congestion,” Biden said.

“And so what? The way they get me to stop talking, they’ll say, ‘We just shut down all the roads, Mr. President, you’re gonna lose all the votes if you don’t get in. But anyway, I’ll be back out,” he nonsensically added.

And then there's yesterday's story by Olivia Nuzzi at New York Magazine. Speaking of Washington insiders she'd chatted with since the beginning of this year, she writes,

Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”

. . . Saying hello to one Democratic mega donor and family friend at the White House recently, the president stared blankly and nodded his head. The First Lady intervened to whisper in her husband’s ear, telling him to say hello to the donor by name and to thank them for their recent generosity. The president repeated the words his wife had fed him. “It hasn’t been good for a long time but it’s gotten so, so much worse,” a witness to the exchange told me. “So much worse!”

I don't think the outlook for the Stephanopoulos interview is good. There's an emerging consensus that if Joe isn't fit to be a candidate in November, he really isn't fit to be in office at all, which increases the likelihood that we'll see President Harris -- but this leaves open the question of how much Kamala knew about Joe's condition and how much she enabled or participated in the cover-up. I have a feeling events are going to move quickly.

There's Gonna Be A Two-Shoe Drop

Back in 1973, when Spiro Agnew resigned as vice president in the midst of the growing Watergate crisis, I read a commentator who predicted Angew's resignation would be "the first shoe of a two-shoe drop". I think we're looking at a similar situation now.

We're beginning to see congressional Democrats calling for Biden to be replaced as the party's presidential candidate in November, but little is being said about what that means -- except that, as one panelist said on Fox he other day, "We all know what it means to recognize we have to take grandpa's car keys away. But what if grandpa is the commander in chief?"

The New York Post gets closer to the point when it says, "There’s no way to restore the illusion that Biden is fit for the presidency", but it never quite follows up with the next step, and it never says directly that he needs to resign. Jamie Barnett, an Obama liberal, goes there in an op-ed at The Hill:

President Joe Biden should not just leave the presidential race. He should resign the presidency. Now.

But this brings up the obvious question -- what do we do with Kamala as his successor? Barnett basically says embrace the suck:

He will create the first female president, the first African American female, the first multi-racial female president in history. In one fell swoop, he will have enlivened many of the constituencies that the media have claimed are disaffected. Kamala Harris will have the first first gentleman in history, one who is Jewish. She will be able to unite the party with a strong running mate.

The Wall Street Journal looks at the problem with a level of good sense I haven't seen from them since the Reagan years:

Our colleagues in the Journal news department headlined the post-Biden prospects this way on Tuesday: “Why Kamala Harris Would Be Biden’s Likeliest Replacement.” The story quoted the chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus as saying, “I would be angry if you try to leapfrog over a vice president.” Talk about a scare tactic.

Who would have thought Mr. Biden chose a Vice President who would be so unpopular that she would be used as insurance against Mr. Biden being forced out of a second term?

. . . The odds are high that at some point in his second term he’d resign as President, turning the White House over to Vice President Harris.

In that scenario she’d get the job by default, rather than having to earn it herself with the respect that comes from having beaten competitors for the job. That’s what she’d have to do now if Mr. Biden announced he won’t seek re-election. It’s a more honorable way to proceed than trying to scare Democrats that it’s the Biden way or the Harris highway.

But while even the Wall Street Journal is at least implicitly acknowledging that Kamala is no more fit for the presidency than Joe -- and couldn't be elected in a regular campaign -- it isn't looking very clearly at where we wind up if Joe simply resigns as president, and this is as big a scare tactic as the threat to withdraw as a candidate.

What we would have with a President Harris coming into office in the next few weeks would be an executive carrying out the same disastrous policies, with the same cabinet members in place, but with an electorate still just as nervous and impatient to have the regime replaced.

Jamie Barnett in the link at The Hill raises another set of problems:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would be second in line to the presidency, and the minority-controlled Senate would be unlikely to confirm a new vice president before the election.

But that's a problem only if, like Barnett, you're an Obama liberal who wants the Biden years to continue. For Republicans, and probably not a few who are in the middle, that's not a bug, it's a feature. The problem for now is that the closest election precedent we have is 1972 -- but McGovern, the sure loser, wan't even the clear candidate until the Democrat convention in mid-July, and the Eagleton fiasco that put the election away was even later that month. And Nixon, whose policies were widely supported, was the incumbent.

Right now, what we're starting to see is the whole second tier of swing states from New Jersey to New Mexico trending for Trump even before either party's convention, with the likelihood of either the hugely unpopular Harris or the clearly incompetent Biden remaining in the presidency for another seven months. Like it or not, the voters' preference for having either of them gone will be clear well before next January.

A Biden resignation alone won't fix this, since we'll just get Harris. Not only that, but the best guess now is that Biden won't go voluntarily, and it's doubtful if Harris or the cabinet would cooperate with removing him via the 25th amendment -- and if Joe weren't on board, you'd have a dubious battle in Congress even if Harris and the cabinet were able to start the process.

How could you bring about the two-shoe drop? My guess is that there could be a combinaion of carrots and sticks. This could include a threat from Trump to investigate and prosecute Biden and Garland for actions in the lawfare campaign outside the core of presidential duties as outlined in the latest Supreme Court decision, combined with a promise not to do this and to pardon Hunter on top of it if Joe resigns.

On the Harris side, my instinct says the Secret Service, the FBI, the DC police, and whoever else know, for instance, whose baggie of coke was in the cubby outside the White House Sit Room last summer, and it wasn't Hunter's. Frankly, Kamala's speech is just a little too nasal for it not to have been hers. I would guess the deep state is sitting on quite a bit that could be used as leverage to get her to resign within days of Joe's own resignation.

If needful, I also assume money could be found to soothe both of their hurt feelings and ease their transitions to private life without the threat of prosecutions. At that point, Speaker Johnson becomes president until next January 20, and as Ludwig Wittgenstein would put it, the solution to the problem is seen in the disappearance of the problem.

I strongly suspect there are discussions more or less to this effect going on behind the scenes now.

Still Working Toward Acceptance

Two big items turned up in yesterday's news that tell me last week's debate wasn't all that much of a game changer for the election. The first was Politico's report of a call from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to Jen O'Malley Dixon, Joe's campaign chair:

She used the call to reiterate her commitment and willingness to help the president but also voiced her concern about how much more difficult the campaign would be now for Biden, I’m told by a person familiar with the call.

Even more revealing is how word of the call reached me: from someone close to a potential 2028 Whitmer rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. This person said Whitmer had phoned O’Malley Dillon with more of an unambiguous SOS: to relay that Michigan, in the wake of the debate, was no longer winnable for Biden.

Whitmer herself has walked back the SOS attributed to her that Michigan is no longer in play, but it rings true to me. First, she says she won't be a candidate to replace Joe if he withdraws, because this is actually a realistic view, a little like Ted Kennedy turning down George McGovern's offer to be his 1972 running mate. Kennedy saw there was no route for that ticket to win that election, and it would lose badly and brand him as a loser for any future run.

By the same token, Whitmer understands that by trying to push Joe out, she'll simply be on the top of a losing ticket while burning a lot of bridges in the party with people whom she might need in a future run. And she knows it's a losing ticket, because she's just told Joe's campaign chair he isn't going to carry Michigan.

Let's put this in context: last week, the day before the debate, Nate Silver said:

[I]f Biden loses Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — and he trails badly in each — he’ll need to win all three of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and not just one of them.

In other words, if we assume Whitmer is a halfway savvy politician, she knows that if the ticket, any Democrat ticket in 2024 including one with her on it, loses Michigan alone, it's probably all over, and the orange man is going to call her a loser. In fact, he'll call her a loser months before the election, he'll turn out to be right, and that will end her career. This morning's Real Clear Politics aggregate for Michigan has Trump up 1.2, and that probably understates things by maybe 3%.

As David Strom wrote this morning at Red State,

Now Whitmer is walking back, or rather outright denying, the claim that Michigan is lost to Democrats if Biden remains on the ballot.

. . . The problem with Whitmer's denial is that it is transparently false. There is zero doubt that she would have called the White House to reassure the campaign that she wasn't lobbying for the job because openly doing so is political death.

But there's a whole 'nother cloud on the horizon, which I pointed out the morning before the debate: the movement in the polls was already away from any augury this is going to be a close election. Nate Silver pointed out last week,

Biden also has to hold on to states like New Hampshire and Virginia (and New Mexico and Minnesota and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District) in the Blue Wall-saves-the-day scenario, and that’s not quite a sure thing given Biden’s mediocre polling elsewhere in the Northeast.

Even before the debate, the conventional wisdom, like the states considered to be "battlegrounds", had already begun to acknolwedge that Minnesota and Virginia are in play, making even the least optimistic estimate, that Biden might still barely win an Electoral College vote of 270-268 by holding onto Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, less and less likely. Adding to the list of states in play as of late last week is New Jersey:

A new poll released on Thursday conducted by co/Efficient shows Trump leading Biden in New Jersey with 41 percent versus Biden's 40 percent, with 13 percent undecided and 7 percent supporting independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another third party candidate. The poll, with a sample of 810 likely general election voters in New Jersey, was conducted from June 26 to 27 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.42 percent.

And as of yesterday, New Hampshire:

A new poll shows President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump among New Hampshire registered voters by two points.

The Saint Anselm College Survey Center polled more than 1,700 registered voters in the first two days after the recent presidential debate.

In the poll, 44% said they support Trump, compared to 42% who said Biden was their choice. Another 4% said they planned to vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

There have been few campaigns in the modern era of polling where the eventual loser was so consistently behind in the polls. The 1972 election seems at this point to be the closest parallel, when George McGovern didn't have the delegates to secure his nomination before the Democrat convention, leading to extensive floor battles, which he eventually won -- but this left the vice presidential nomination still open:

Most polls showed McGovern running well behind incumbent President Richard Nixon, except when McGovern was paired with Ted Kennedy. McGovern and his campaign brain trust lobbied Senator Kennedy heavily to accept the bid to be McGovern's running mate. Much to their surprise, he continually refused their advances[.]

. . . Thereafter, a number of high-profile Democrats, including Kennedy, Senator Walter Mondale, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Edmund Muskie, Senator Abe Ribicoff and Senator Birch Bayh turned down offers to run on the ticket.

It's plain that the political instincts of all these figures, from Kennedy on down, told them to avoid the slightest association with McGovern, who was marked as a loser from the start. This makes me skeptical of current estimates that potential replacements for Joe like Governors Whitmer and Newsom are actually all that anxious to step up -- like the prominent Democrats who turned McGovern down, they don't want to turn themselves into sure losers.

Whitmer's dilemma on one hand was that she didn't want to become a loser, but on the other, she now doesn't want to have the imputation that she doesn't want to be a loser. She can't win for losing.

But again, McGovern hadn't even secured the delegates for his nomination by the time of the convention, July 10–13, 1972, and it took more than two weeks for the Eagleton debacle to work itself through, culminating in his withdrawal on August 1. This slow-motion train wreck, however, took place in the current scheme of things over a month after this Biden debacle, which is taking place in the context of a very early first presidential debate and almost two months prior to the Democrat convention.

Nevertheless, it involves a very similar controversy centered on a candidate's medical fitness in the middle of the party's bleak prospects for the November election. And not since 1972 have Democrat prospects been so bad so early in the game -- but that this is all playing out so early creates its own set of extra problems.