Why Is So Much Happening, When The Polls Are So Stable?

An uncharacteristically insightful piece at Hot Air this morning leads in passing to an intriguing question:

First, Biden didn't really crater all that much from the debate. On June 27, the day of the debate, Biden's RCP average was 45.1, and it bottomed out on July 3 at 43.6. By the time Biden withdrew, though, he'd recovered most of that lost ground to have an RCP average of 44.8. Trump went from 46.6 on June 27 to 47.9 on July 21, but much of that gain came after the assassination attempt and then the GOP convention.

Second: Harris only negligibly improves on Biden, even in the honeymoon week. On June 27, before the debate, Biden was 1.3 points behind Trump in the RCP average. Trump had a 3.1-point lead on Sunday, when Biden withdrew. Now, at the end of what should be the friendliest news cycle Harris will ever get, Trump still leads by 1.7 points -- slightly better than his lead when the debate aired.

The writer thinks this is about Kamala, but I think the bigger question is the stability of the polls, not just since the debate, but since last fall. The fact is that statistical chatter has put Trump ahead in the meaningless Real Clear Politics national "average" between 1 and 3 points for the better part of a year. The June 27 debate didn't change the polls, and Joe dropping out of the race in favor of Kamala didn't change them, either.

Nevertheless, the story, at least for now, seems to be that the Lizard People decided that the June 27 debate was the factor that said it was time for Joe to go -- when, as I pointed out yestesrday, it was time for Joe to go at least a year ago, and the Lizard People missed it. Nevetheless, if the debate was what drove their decision over the past month, why did they discount the polls?

After all, right up to last Saturday night in Rehoboth when Joe is said to have met with his handlers who finally told told him it was over, Joe was insisting that the polls were stable in a margin-of-error race, and he was in fact correct. One answer might be that the RCP national "average" is in fact meaningless, but Trump was ahead in enough of the battleground states to put the race out of reach -- but even there, even if Joe consistently trailed Trump in each of them, it was often by margin-of-error amounts.

And in fact, respectable opinion had been stable since late last year that the race was a tossup. What put the Lizard People into such a panic after the debate? I think there are several explanations. One is almost certainly that the Lizard People don't take the polls seriously, especially the RCP "average". The polls underestimated Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections by around 3 points, so a 1-point margin for Trump in the polls is actually 4 points on election day.

The second issue isn't the movement in the national "average", but the increase in the actual number of battleground states. This is a trend that had begun before the debate. The week before, RCP expanded its list of of battlegrounds to include Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, and by the end of last week, Trump was leading in Virginia and behind by roughly 3 points in the other two, which allowing for poll bias against Trump was worrisome.

But now we have a puzzle: even though the polls have been stable since Kamala replaced Joe, and we night expect them to continue his way in the new battlegrounds as well, RCP has removed the new battlegrounds from its list and reverted to the old standbys of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. I noted on June 16,

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.

But this was never reflected in the RCP "average", which was still unchanged even when the Lizard People realized it was time to dump Joe. So there must be another factor, which I think is the fallacy behind the Hot Air piece at the top link. A bigger factor driving the Lizard People's decision, I think, was the failed assassination attempt in Butler on July 13. Back in June, before Butler, I mused on the subliminatl effect of two other unsuccessful assassinations:

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.

So the attempts against Ford somehow reinforced a subliminal context that Ford himself was bumbling and feckless. The attempt against Trump, on the other hand, was deadly, well-planned, and certain, enabled by the weaponized incompetence of a deep state agency. That this wasn't just a bumbling attempt like those against Ford was demonstrated by the death and wounding of bystanders. A credible explanation for Trump's near-brush with a Lee Harvey Oswald-style assassination was the intervention of the Almighty, not the incompetence of the assassin.

The powerful subliminal effect of this image was something Trump immediately and instinctively grasped after the shooting when he stood, pumped his fist, and uttered exclamations that might have been "Fight!" or maybe another F-word. This, I think, was the image the Lizard People grasped when, a week later, they finally impressed on Joe that it was time to go. It had nothing to do with the polls, or even the debate. It had everything to do with Trump's astonishing political instincts, which he'd been demonstrating repeatedly since last fall.

I'll have more to say about the subliminal aspect of the campaign.

How Did The Lizard People Get Themselves Into This Pickle?

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, MT, has become a regular at Real Clear Politics, which is an indication that whatever he writes is likely to be as cautiously conventional as you're likely to find. His piece today is Who Engineered the Political Coup Against Biden? The title suggests he's going to veer into the sort of Ferdinand Lundberg territory that I favor, the populist notion that a cabal of wealthy families controls US politics and media, but since this is RCP, there's no way that's going to happen.

And it didn't. He raises a potentially interesting point:

[Joe] had the delegates, and he had the nomination unless he willingly surrendered it. But something happened. About the same time Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and raised his fist in defiance, Democrats seemed to have concluded that Biden could not win in November.

. . . [S]omeone needs to tell the truth about the 10 days that shook the nation, from the moment Trump took a would-be assassin’s bullet on July 13 to the afternoon Biden inexplicably dropped his reelection bid and Kamala Harris was coronated.

Yeah, OK, can we learn the gist of the phone calls among Laurene Powell Jobs, Alex Soros, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama when they decided Joe finally had to go? But Frank Miele being Frank Miele, this isn't what he wants to learn:

And the first question that needs to be answered, and which no one in the mainstream media is asking, is “Who convinced Joe Biden that debating Trump on June 27, nearly two months before the Democratic convention, was a good idea?”

But let's face it, that was just one blunder among maybe half a dozen big blunders that had Joe consistently behind in the polls since last fall. For instance, setting the June 27 debate was an efficient cause of the coup, but it wasn't a material cause, which lies in the bigger question of how Joe came to be surrounded by incompetent handlers, who variously brought about the failed "lawfare" strategy or prevented a 2024 Democrat primary process. If the June 27 debate didn't happen to cause Joe's candidacy to collapse, some other event would have. This is the point Miele misses, and he then proceeds to waste everyone's time for the rest of his essay.

The material cause of the coup, as far as I can see, was a Democrat strategy that began in 2016, which has been outlined by leaks from Biden family sources in recent days; viz, in 2016, Obama, presumably with the support of Laurene Powell Jobs, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, and others, who for convenience I'll identify as the Lizard People, determined that Hillary Clinton was a better presidential candidate than Joe Biden, and they apparently prevailed on Joe not to run. Trump's victory in that election was a complete surprise.

By 2020, their goal was to beat Trump. The leading candidate in the primaries that year was Bernie Sanders, whom the Lizard People determined could not win against Trump. But once Joe won South Carolina by promising Rep James Clyburn that he would choose an African-American woman as his running mate, the Lizard People grudgingly got behind Joe as the only credible alternative to Sanders. And Joe, helped considerably by his handlers and the media who were able to sustain a basement campaign that minimized his incapacity, beat Trump, but at the cost of making Kamala his vice president.

The leaks from the Biden family suggest that Joe's support from the Lizard People was never wholehearted, and in fact, they were insufficiently grateful to Joe for beating Trump in 2020. Part of the Lizard People's ambivalence may stem from an initial expectation that Joe wouldn't run for re-election in 2024. This may have been closer to the material, rather than the efficient, cause for their coup over the past week -- this was a job they always knew needed doing, and they should have attended to it a year ago.

In fact, if they'd dissuaded Joe from running last year, there would never have been the "lawfare" blunders that resuscitated Trump's career, and quite possibly someone like Lynne Cheney or Mitt Romney would have secured the Republican nomination and lost to -- well, whom? Probably a young, attractive white guy Democrat, a Beto O'Rourke, a Pete Buttigieg, or even a Mark Kelly.

This in fact brings us to what the Biden family version suggests is now Obama's preferred nominee, or was until he finally endorsed Kamala yesterday, Mark Kelly, although Kelly is 60 and looks it. The problem is that Kelly, unlike Kamala, has never even tried to fun for president, and once Joe announced he was running for re-election, Kelly didn 't have the option in 2024. For the Lizard People to insert him into the line of succession at this point, having never even tried to run for national office, is just a little too contrived.

And we're back to the dilemma of 2020: the Lizard People knew Sanders wouldn't win against Trump. and now they've been forced to accept a 2024 DEI candidate whose policy positions are to the left of Sanders. If Kelly runs for vice president with Kamala on the ticket, he's ending his political career even if he stays in the Senate after the election. They might prevail on him to take a bullet for the party, but Kamala's still going to lose -- the implicit reason for taking Joe off the ticket was to save the down ballot Democrats, but the presidency is already lost.

So as far as I can tell, the Lizard People were asleep at the switch while their media arm continued to cover for Joe's increasing disability over the past several years, until it became too late to do anything about it. Even if Joe's handlers hadn't scheduled the June 27 debate, it was plain that Joe wasn't in a condition to conduct a re-election campaign, and if it wasn't a bad debate, it would have been something else. We still don't really know what led Joe's handlers to rush him back to Delaware from Las Vegas last week, for example.

It may well be that Joe did outsmart the Lizard People by choosing Kamala in 2020; she was in fact his insurance policy. He fell just a few months short of getting away with it. But why did the Lizard People let this happen when they had three years to deal with it? That's the question about which RCP continues to be deliberately obtuse.

The Obama Leakers Are Back

Per the new York Post,

Former President Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed Kamala Harris’ presidential bid because he doesn’t think she can beat Donald Trump, according to a source close to the Biden family.

Following President Biden’s shocking exit from the race on Sunday, and his immediate endorsement of the vice president, most of the Democratic elite have been quick to rally behind Harris — but Obama is a notable exception.

“Obama’s very upset because he knows she can’t win,” the Biden family source told The Post.

But notice this comes from "a source close to the Biden family", when previous leaks from the Obama camp have come in the form of attributed attacks from David Axelrod and George Clooney that had Obama's tacit approval. The Biden family is leaking this now, because Joe seems still to believe he could have pulled out the November election, while Kamala can't. The story continhues,

“Wait until the debate . . . She can’t debate. She’s going to put her foot in her mouth about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine. She’s going to say something really stupid,” the source said.

. . . According to the source, Obama’s hope was to get Biden out of the way, and an op-ed written by George Clooney in the New York Times asking him to step aside was a part of that plan.

However, the higher-ups in the Democratic Party didn’t count on Biden endorsing Harris right away and “Obama was shocked” when the president endorsed her, according to the insider.

After Biden’s ouster, Obama — who did not return a request for comment Wednesday — wanted Arizona Sen. and former astronaut Mark Kelly “at the top of the ticket” when the Democratic National Convention is held next month, the source said.

Obama is “furious” that things haven’t gone his way, “which is why he is not joining in the Democratic Party’s support of Harris,” the Biden source added.

So in this reading, Joe's final revenge is to thwart the Democrats' plan to swap him out for a younger white guy who might have won, when now they're stuck with Kamala. The Biden camp may have a point, but this isn't the conventional wisdom -- for that, we go to one of the paradigmatic dullards of our time, Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics:

[I]rrespective of [Harris's] abilities as a politician, the 2024 presidential race has probably returned to a toss-up. Perhaps Trump has an edge, but it is not an overwhelming one.

. . . Even if Harris has limitations on the stump, this isn’t your typical campaign. There are roughly 100 days until Election Day, and about five weeks until early voting starts. Her public appearances are likely limited until the convention, which will be well-scripted. Presumably, she’ll deliver a well-received acceptance speech in Chicago. From there, she heads into a post-convention tour, basking in what both sides assume will be with doting media coverage.

. . . Democrats were understandably concerned that Biden wouldn’t be able to stay out of his own way while pressing the case against Trump. Instead, his rallies, press conferences, and interviews would inevitably focus on his gaffes, misstatements, and memory lapses. In short, Biden’s debate performance transformed the election irrevocably into a pure referendum on his presidency. Presumably, Harris will be more effective at focusing undecided voters’ minds on Trump’s shortcomings and creating more of a choice narrative.

. . . What’s changed is that Harris has an upside that post-debate Biden no longer possessed. This was a close race, even with a diminished Biden running, and it will likely finish up even closer.

Harris's "upside" is that she isn't 81, but that's about it, even in Trende's calculation. Yes, if Harris is able to stay in a bubble and avoid unscripted encounters with the press, she might be able to turn the race into a tossup, but that was the hope all along with Biden, and even he had to face problems with inappropriate behavior, with the press nevertheless kept many yards away. But Kamala has exactly Joe's same problem with gaffes, misstatements, and memory lapses -- she's a poor study; by accounts, she resists staff briefing, and she's a poor public speaker.

The YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande, who has posted at various times on many political figures, gives some insight into Kamala's pattern of speech in a recent post:

At 3:47, he starts,

A major concern with Kamala Harris, at least for those who value clear communication, is her tendency to use "word salad". Over the years, she has made many statements that are nonsensical, disjointed, and incoherent. Her opponents have latched onto these statements as evidence that Kamala is disrespectful, disorganized, and lazy. Her supporters have argued that Kamala's critics are simply functioning as the grammar police. Let's take a look at 12 examples of "word salad" statements made by Kamala Harris.

When talking about COVID, Kamala said, "it is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day." In a talk about banking, she stated, "We invested an additional $12 billion into community banks, because we know community banks are in the community and understand the needs and desires of that community, as well as the talent and capacity of community." On another occasion, Kamala mentioned the word "community" when she said, "When we talk about the children of the community, they are the children of the community."

When referring to a Supreme Court decision, Kamala said, "I think of this moment as a moment that is great momentum." Offering words of wisdom about high speed internet, she stated, "The governor and I, we were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs, and there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children."

. . . A few patterns are evident in the speaking style of Kamala Harris. She appears to have a fascination with the words "time", "moment", "community", "work", and "together"; she rarely answers the original question or makes any type of point. Kamala is frequently repetitive, but delivers her speeches as if she is saying something profound. Maybe she believes that by being the vice president, anything that she says is automatically amazing -- people should be dazzled by her statements, like there is no actual work necessary.

Other politicians throughout history who have delivered memorable quotes must have done so simply because they were politicians. Kamala doesn't understand how thought leads to coherent statements. Thinking is actually important and, one could argue, necessary. Even though many of her statements are nonsensical, simplistic, and confusing, Kamala has never apologized. She appears to have a lack of insight.

. . . The problem with Kamala's speaking style is significant. It's not like her critics are pointing out something common, like dysfluencies or occasinally losing a train of thought. Kamala is speaking in circles and then expecting people to understand what she is saying.

In other words, Kamala lacks insight, but she thinks she's entitled to the job despite glaring defects in her public performance, which means we're simply back to Joe, who still lacks insight and still feels he should have had the job despite glaring defects in his public performance. But his assessment of Kamala is correct: she's going to have to do interviews sooner rather than later, and she's ultimately going to have to debate.

More Sick Joe

PROOF OF LIFE? Biden shuffles out of his motorcade, mumbles incoherently at reporters, and ascends the stairs of the smaller AF1.

It's Biden's first public appearance since the coup to force him off the ballot. pic.twitter.com/lPUGnF0C5e

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 23, 2024

Although there was more apparent confirmation on various alt platforms yesterday that something hinky took place with Joe in Las Vegas last week, polite opinion hasn't yet mentioned it. About as close as it's come has been Newsweek, which debunked what was basically a straw man claim:

Right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk has posted a rumor that President Joe Biden had a medical emergency in Las Vegas last week and may be in hospice care, claims which have been debunked. The post contradicted the official account of the president's COVID-19 diagnosis and has sparked widespread speculation, but what are the facts?

. . . He wrote: "Got a weird lead on a story that people should look into. I got a call from a source close to Las Vegas Metro. The official story was that Joe Biden's trip was cut short last week due to COVID.

"However, according to this source, US Secret Service informed LV Metro that there was an emergency situation involving Joe Biden and to close necessary streets so that POTUS could be transported immediately to University Medical.

"Then, mysteriously, there was a stand down order and the USSS informed local Vegas PD that they were going to 'medevac' POTUS to Johns Hopkins. Apparently the rumor mill in the police department was that Joe Biden was dying or possibly already dead."

. . . A Twitter account named Global Press Corp also promoted the hospice theory, claiming, "A verified [anonymous] source has informed the Global Press team that Joe Biden is currently in hospice care and is unlikely to survive the night."

It seems as if Newsweek is combining two separate stories into one. The first, the notice to police to close certain streets to allow Joe to be taken to the hospital, followed by a stand-down order and a sudden flight back to Delaware, seems verified and was reported on Las Vegas local news last week. The second, a rumor that Joe is in hospice, is much dodgier, and the Newsweek story quotes Kirk himwself:

In his post, Kirk added: "I didn't think too much about this lead, seemed too wild to be true" and appealed for more information in an attempt to substantiate the unsavory rumor. "I want to hear if there is more to the official story than what they're telling us," he added.

Nevertheless, Newsweek concludes,

In an official report released on Monday, Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor, stated: "President Biden completed his tenth dose of Paxlovid this morning. His symptoms have almost resolved completely.

"His pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature remain absolutely normal. His oxygen saturation continues to be excellent on room air. His lungs remain clear. The President continues to perform all of his presidential duties."

The White House has not provided any indication that Biden's condition is more serious than reported.

But hasn't the problem been, at least since early June and Joe's trips to Europe, that Joe's condition has consistently seemed much more serious than legacy media has reported? Isn't that the whole subtext of the reaction to Joe's putative "bad debate night", that the problem was that Joe's actual condition was being covered up? And isn't Joe's withdrawal from the campaign pretty good confirmation that this impression was correct?

So far, the most complete and credible report on the Las Vegas episode is from Jennifer Van Laar at Red State. She links to this detailed account of what took place last Wednesday afternoon:

Officers working the president’s detail describe that Wednesday as chaotic from the very start. President Biden was already way behind schedule before the incident. Several sources said things really went haywire after he had been present at a famed local Mexican restaurant called Lindo Michoacan, where he was doing the rounds shaking hands and greeting donors.

Then suddenly, when he was supposed to be scheduled to deliver the UnidosUS speech, all hell broke loose.

Several law enforcement officers on duty that day were informed over the radio that the president was dealing with an unspecified medical emergency. Far from a case of the sniffles, this was sent out on encrypted police airwaves as if something akin to a five-alarm fire had broken out.

She then links to anotbher version behind a paywall in The New York Times:

Mr. Biden seemed much more frail as he stepped into a dining room at a Mexican restaurant, the Original Lindo Michoacán Desert Inn. Walking more slowly and looking pale, Mr. Biden took group selfies and squeezed next to patrons in a booth as an upbeat Latin song playing over the restaurant speakers.

. . . He then disappeared from public view for nearly two hours while reporters waited outside the restaurant in extreme heat, pacing along the president’s motorcade and knocking on the car windows to ask staff members for an update.

And then a link from the BBC:

We waited. And waited. In the searing Nevada heat we spent more than 90 minutes in the press vans with the entire motorcade stalled. It was by now obvious that something was wrong. Suddenly, an email dropped from a BBC colleague to say the host of his next speech venue had announced, on stage, that Mr Biden had just tested positive for Covid.

As I tried to approach a White House staffer to find out what was going on, I was abruptly ordered to get back in my van, and told that we were leaving. The motorcade began rolling and we were speeding our way through the suburbs of Las Vegas, destination unknown. The campaign was changing course. Suddenly, amid the flashing lights and police outriders, the airport came into view. The president was going home to Delaware to recover from Covid, the campaign trip was over.

So the story, even from sources as respectable as the New York Times and the BBC, is that last Wednesday afternoon, Joe looked frail and pale, he disappeared from public view for about two hours, and then it was announced that he had COVID. But whatever he did have, as I discussed in yesterdays post, it was serious enough that there was a question over whether he should go to a Level 1 trauma center, which was then resolved in favor of flying him back to Delaware -- except that possibly taking him to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore was apparently in the mix then as well.

All anyone can think is that four years into COVID, which is now regarded as pretty much the same as the flu, this isn't how people normally react to it. What compounds the problem is the increasing number of troubling incidents over the past couple of months followed by Joe disappearing that are nevertheless discounted as Joe being simply tired, overworked, or having a bad night -- except that they keep happening, and each time he returns, he seems to be a little worse.

It's hard to avoid thinking the White House is covering things up, and this part of the story simply isn't over. The only thing that would end it for sure would be for Joe to announce his resignation in tonight's TV address, but I think that's still farther down the road. After all, they're behind him 100%.

Joe's Health And The Metastasizing Crisis

Last night, as I sometimes do, I woke up with a start and asked a question that had been developing in my mind all the prior day: why were Obama and Pelosi so anxious to replace Joe with Kamala, who at best is no better a presidential candidate than Joe, and is potentially worse?

MSDNC: Kamala doesn't fare any better against President Trump than Crooked Joe did — and Democrats' hope to the contrary is "based more on hope than it is on numbers right now."

Brutal! pic.twitter.com/EBZftusTAv

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 22, 2024

The received versions of how Joe came to withdraw from the race differ. Yesterday I cited a CNN version that has Joe meeting with key advisers who simply told him he no longer had a path to 270 electoral votes. A competing version outlines a sense of increasing urgency from Democrat leaders in the weeks following the June 27 debate:

Pelosi, a Dem California rep and former House Speaker, had tried a different tactic before Biden finally bowed out of the race Sunday.

. . . She ended up all but threatenng to rake Biden over the coals if he didn’t drop his campaign, the source said.

“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a source told Politico. “It was about to be the hard way.”

The one thing we know absolutely, positively, for sure without the slightest doubt, is that the decision had nothing, no, nothing at all to do with Joe's health.

Joe Biden’s brother, Frank Biden, told CBS News that Biden’s declining health played a considerable role in his decision to drop out.

. . . There was a ‘funeral-like’ feeling to Frank Biden’s statement to CBS News.

He suggested Joe Biden is terminal.

Frank Biden told CBS News that he wants Biden back to “enjoy whatever time we have left.”

. . . They threw Frank Biden under the bus after he said the quiet part out loud.

“Frank Biden suffers from alcoholism and hasn’t spoken to his brother in weeks. What he said. . . is completely untrue,” a source ‘close to the Biden family’ (probably Nurse Jill) told CBS News.

But as of yesterday, rumors were swirling among the less fully housebroken of the right-wing aggregators:

KSNV-TV reported last Wednesday that a Las Vegas hospital was put on standby to treat Joe Biden for a medical issue. Biden cut short a campaign trip to Nevada after reportedly being diagnosed with COVID and returned to Delaware. . . . A pool reporter reported Air Force One flew back so fast “the plane shook.”

The story links to the report:

Law enforcement and medical teams gathered outside the University Medical Center trauma room entrance on Wellness Way in case the President of the United States arrived after he canceled an appearance at the Unidos US Convention in Las Vegas due to testing positive for COVID-19.

. . . Due to the hospital being the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Nevada, that's where the president will go during a medical emergency.

[Hospital CEO Mason] Van Houweling said the hospital was alerted around 2:15 p.m. about a possible medical issue with the president.

. . . He said the hospital team immediately took action while working with local and state law enforcement to secure the perimeter and also protect patients inside the building along with the president, in case he was brought to the medical center.

. . . Van Houweling said the hospital remained in communication with President Biden's security team about the evolving incident. Law enforcement and staff did not start to clear the area outside trauma and inside the hospital until after Air Force One departed Las Vegas.

Initial reports that Joe had some sort of medical episode on the flight have been throughly fact-checked out of existence:

Holy Shit.

According to Charlie Kirk and his sources, when Biden was in Vegas last week - he suffered a medical emergency.

USSS personnel informed LV Metro to shut down roads to move POTUS to University Medical Hospital.

Then there was a stand down order mysteriously given to…

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) July 22, 2024

Once he returned to Delaware, he canceled nine trips he was to make this week:

President Biden has canceled nine trips that were scheduled for the next two weeks after suddenly dropping out of the 2024 race, The Post can reveal.

Biden was scheduled to leave Monday for the West Coast, where he was to make stops in California, Denver, Houston and Austin — but all those trips have been canceled, a White House source told The Post.

Biden, who has been isolating with COVID-19, was set to leave his home in Rehoboth, Del., on Monday, but extended his stay until Wednesday after announcing the end of his campaign the night before.

In addition, he canceled a scheduled meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming meeting with President Joe Biden has been canceled as the president continues to focus on recovering from COVID-19, according to multiple reports.

The Israeli leader was slated to meet with Biden, 81, on Tuesday to discuss the future of the war in Gaza, but officials in Netanyahu’s office said the meeting has been called off, The Times of Israel and other outlets report.

The decision comes after Biden has remained out of the public eye after testing positive for COVID-19 while traveling in Las Vegas last Wednesday.

As of yesterday, the report was:

President Joe Biden’s “symptoms have almost resolved completely” from COVID-19, according to his physician, as the president on Monday remained out of public view for the fifth straight day.

. . . The White House says Biden plans to return to the White House on Tuesday afternoon.

The president's daily schedule does have him returning from Rehoboth this afternoon. Whether Joe will in fact meet with Netanyahu after all is still uncertain:

As he is recovering from COVID, Biden announced Monday in his first public remarks since last week that he will be “out of people’s hair for the next three-four days,” ruling out what a source in Netanyahu’s entourage said was a tentatively scheduled meeting for Tuesday.

However, the White House later updated Biden’s schedule to show he would return Tuesday afternoon to Washington from Delaware, where he has been quarantining, and a US official told The Times of Israel that the administration “expects” he will host Netanyahu for a meeting on Thursday. Netanyahu is currently slated to return to Israel on Thursday evening after giving his speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday afternoon.

The White House's record on transparency and the constantly changing narrative over this week's schedule suggest that Laura Loomer's interpretation of events can't be completely discounted:

🚨🚨🚨

If Biden does return by Wednesday, the press won’t be allowed to get too close to him. Biden’s staff have been keeping him isolated because he suffered a Transient ischemic attack (TIA) on top of his existing deteriorating condition and dementia and previous medical… https://t.co/ndKjKpJKto

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 23, 2024

Because I have some background in the crisis management field, I keep returning to each day's news from a crisis management perspective. The Biden-Harris administration's current problem is that up until Sunday, there had been no visible crisis manager, in considerable measure because it had been ignoring the crisis. For reasons that still aren't clear, Joe has been forced to withdraw his November candidacy.

If this were anything like a normal crisis response, we'd see a crisis manager spokesman appointed corresponding to James Kallstrom's role with TWA 800. We could at least envision someone like John Kirby performing that function, giving for instance full details of Joe's COVID diagnosis and treatment, along with full details of the staff meetings that led to his withdrawal as a candidate, or perhaps full details of when the tentative meeting with Netanyahu will take place.

The problem is that these are precisely the things the administration doesn't want discussed, and that leads to the suspicion that Joe's health is a bigger problem than they're letting on. So the de facto crisis manager is, of all people, Kamala. Well, she has the biggest interest in continuing the coverups -- a new face like, say, Gavin Newsom, might do things like fire Secret Service Director Cheatle in an effort to restore credibility and salvage his candidacy.

That would make him a loose cannon, as would pretty much any outsider inevitably become.

It Isn't Over By A Long Shot

On succeeding to the presidency following Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford said in part.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.

In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

In that case, Nixon had resigned, a final and unambiguous act, and the electorate was at least tentatively willing to believe that the problem was specific to Nixon, and it culd be solved simply by replacing Nixon with Ford. But if one thing is plain from Joe's withdrawal as a candidate for the November election, the nightmare isn't ending, and Joe's mere withdrawal as a candidate is neither final nor unambiguous.

Trump, whose instincts over the past year have been remarkable, edges closer to the real issue here: Joe is out of the race, but nothing has changed, tomorrow's going to be same lies, different day. Joe -- or at least his puppetmasters -- are still running the country, and for now, we've simply got his surrogate Kamala. The Republicans, including Speaker Johnson and vice president nominee J D Vance, are taking the line that if Joe isn't fit to run for president, he isn't fit to serve as president, and other ommentators are beginning to agree.

The problem for Kamala, at least as long as Joe remains president but she runs as the presumptive nominee, is that while she has to defend Joe's policies, she can't do anything to change them. For instance, she's powerless to tell Secretary Mayorkas to make any change at all at the border, even if she's forced to acknowledge the Biden policies are deeply flawed. But if she were to make any change, it could begin to establish her as a serious candidate and potentially increase her slim electoral prospects. That option remains out of reach as long as Joe is president.

The second immediate problem will be the ongoing investigation into the Butler assassination attempt, linked with Secret Service Director Cheatle's refusal, at least so far, to resign. If Joe as continuing president continues to back her, this severely limits Kamala's own ability to seem decisive and independent, because firing Cheatle is a no-brainer. If any daylight begins to show between Kamala and Joe on this and other positions, it could benefit Kamala but prove unacceptable to Joe.

The third problem is the underlying circumstance of this year's front-loaded presidential campaign. The reality is that the campaign actually began last fall with Trump's New York civil trials, continued through the Atlanta debacle, culminated in Joe's disastrous June 27 debate performance, and was put out of reach with the failed Butler assassination attempt followed immediately by the Republican convention. Reports are that Joe dropped out of the campaign Sunday when it became clear that he no longer had any potential route to 270 electoral votes.

When Biden huddled with his two closest advisers Saturday, the information they provided on polling and where top Democratic officials stood underscored that a path to victory was “basically nonexistent,” according to another person familiar with the matter.

There wasn’t any single poll number, wavering Democratic official or fundraiser presented in the meeting with longtime aides Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti that pushed Biden toward his decision, the person said.

Instead, the information highlighted that the path back to a viable campaign had been severely damaged by declining national and swing-state poll numbers, along with party defections that were likely to rapidly accelerate. The information included polling and details gathered from outreach outside Biden’s inner circle.

This is another way of saying that the election was lost months before November. In large part, this was Joe's own doing, by initiating politically driven court cases that began to come to trial last year, reinforced by his own choice of an unprecedentedly early first debate. The problem was Trump's instinctive ability to turn each legal setback for the Democrats into a personal political victory, followed by Joe's clear defeat in the June 27 debate, which had the predicted effect of giving the Democrats plenty of time to dump Joe before the August convention. But dumping Joe won't fix anything, because Kamala.

As a result, we have a continuing constitutional crisis that's begun to morph from the fairly simple question of whether a president is fit for office, into the problem that the November election has been decided months in advance, with the question of who's running the country up in the air until January 20, when every indication is that the opposition party will take over then, but the country will drift in the meantime with uncertain leadership.

One solution, as I've already suggested, is for Joe to resign as president,be succeeded briefly by Kamala, who would also resign, to be succeeded in the constitutional line by Speaker Johnson, a Republican, who could serve as a Trump standin until January.

Given the unprecedented events we've had up to now, I don't think this can be ruled out.

There's Neither A Plan A Nor A Plan B

The problem nobody wants to face is twofold: first, JD Vance as Trump's running mate is stepping right into the role Nixon played for Eisenhower and Agnew played for Nixon, the low-road campaigner, and he's asking the important question:

If Joe Biden doesn't have the cognitive function to run for re-election, then he certainly doesn't have the cognitive function to remain as Commander-In-Chief.

How can any Dem pushing him to drop out of the presidential race, argue in good faith that he should stay on as POTUS?

— JD Vance (@JDVance1) July 19, 2024

But the second horn of the dilemma is Kamala:

We reported on Friday that Kamala Harris was going to have a conference call with big Democrat donors. The meeting was put together on short notice. However, at the time of the report, it was not clear what message she was going to deliver to them.

. . . We now have details about the call.

According to the New York Times, the call included roughly 300 donors, and "several listeners said they found the meeting overall to be of little value and even, at times, condescending, believing that the message ignored donors’ legitimate concerns about the Biden-led ticket."

Kamala Harris reportedly spoke for just over five minutes via video, focused on criticizing Donald Trump for his convention speech, and tried to link him to Project 2025. She only briefly mentioned Joe Biden but did not take questions.

. . . after Harris finished speaking, one participant, who was accidentally unmuted, described the call as “ludicrous.”

So on one hand, there's a genuine constitutional crisis, with the president suffering from severe cognitive issues, while his shallow and entitled wife, his crackhead son, and his wife's chief of staff, the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal, appear to be running the country on his behalf. On the other, if he steps down or is removed due to incapacity, his successor is Kamala, who is probably worse -- but she's almost certainly incapable of organizing a majority of the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, much less marshaling two-thirds of both houses of Congress to sustain it, which only she can constitutionally do.

So if the 25th Amendment is ruled out, which as a practical matter it must surely be, the only other option is for Joe himself to "step aside", "pass the torch", or however it can be delicately put, but again, if he resigns the presidency at any time before Inauguration Day 2025, Kamala is president, and we're in the same pickle. So for the Democrats, the only conceivable option is for Joe to withdraw his candidacy but remain in office, while the August Democrat convention somehow replaces Kamala as the candidate. But even then, we're faced with Sen Vance's point, Joe's still president until January.

And so far, Joe is showing no sign he's going to "step aside" or "pass the torch".

The White House and the Biden campaign have denied that he is about to drop out. “Absolutely, the president is in this race,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, one of the president’s favorite shows and a regular venue for Democrats speaking to other Democrats. “You’ve heard him say that time and time again.”

But at the same link,

“We have to cauterize this wound right now, and the sooner we can do it, the better,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., who has not publicly called for the president to step aside.

Er, cauterize it how? Per Norman Ornstein, a PBS News Hour regular, at the LA Times,

For many members of Congress and others sophisticated about politics, a wide-open nominating convention in Chicago in four weeks is the best way to come up with a dream ticket — Whitmer-Warnock seems to be the one mentioned most. At minimum, they want to have a contest, an open process that yields the nominee. To some, if Kamala Harris prevails in that setting, directly vanquishing other rivals, it would bolster her candidacy. And the excitement of a wide-open convention would give the Democratic ticket the jump start it needs.

But that still relies on Joe "passing the torch". and the longer he takes to make up his mind to pass it, the less the time available to rig the "open convention", which of course is just a polite way of saying finesse Kamala out of the running. And that is the only tine Ornstein mentions the K-word at all in an essaay that brings up figures from Adlai Stevenson to Barry Goldwater. Nor does he have any sort of concrete path for doing this -- all he can suggest is Whitmer-Warnock, but according to the New York Times, Whitmer herself is not on board:

She said no. The speculation is “a distraction more than anything,” she said. “I don't like seeing my name in articles like that because I'm totally focused on governing and campaigning” for the existing ticket of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Oddly, Ornstein mentions election cycles from 1952 to 1964 to 1968 to 1976 to 1980, but the one he leaves out is 1972, which I've long said is the one that most closely resembles this year. An "open convention" would likely be much like that year's Democrat convention, with the nominee, McGovern, consistently behind in the polls and his running mate forced to withdraw due to questions about his mental capacity:

The convention nominated Senator George McGovern of South Dakota for president and Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri for vice president. Eagleton withdrew from the race just 19 days later after it was disclosed that he had previously undergone mental health treatment, including electroshock therapy, and he was replaced on the ballot by Sargent Shriver of Maryland, a Kennedy in-law.

The convention, which has been described as "a disastrous start to the general election campaign", was one of the most unusual—perhaps the most contentious in the history of the Democratic Party since 1924—with sessions beginning in the early evening and lasting until sunrise the next morning. Previously excluded political activists gained influence at the expense of elected officials and traditional core Democratic constituencies such as organized labor. A protracted vice presidential nominating process delayed McGovern's acceptance speech (which he considered "the best speech of his life") until 2:48 a.m.—after most television viewers had gone to bed.

The fact is that if Joe "steps aside" in whichever way, Harris is the likely nominee, which opens the same contentious question that dominated the 1972 convention: McGovern was a certain loser, and no Democrat with a political future wanted to end his career as McGovern's running mate, least of all Ted Kennedy. But a long list of other choices also declined, and Eagleton was a last expedient of desperatiom. Very few commentators so far have mentioned this problem if Kamala becomes the nominee: no other Democrat with a political future is going to sign on as the sacrificial lamb on that ticket, either.

Ornstein concludes,

There is no sugarcoating the mess Democrats find themselves in right now. But they need to keep it from getting even messier, and soon.

Yes, but how? There's neither a plan A, nor a Plan B, nor. . .