Oh, sure, anyone can come up with an Ocean's Something meme for the besieged President after the devastating op-ed in the New York Times by actor and Democratic megadonor George Clooney. But a more appropriate movie comparison might well be the 2000 Coen Brothers' award-winning film retelling Homer's Odyssey, except this time set in the racist South of 1937.
The list of crises facing the Biden-Harris '24 campaign these days are so long and severe that it would actually be much simpler to list the few things that are going well.
Political watchers are experiencing a feeling of déjà vu today as the "big boy" press conference is scheduled to take place at 5:30pm. And by the way, when the perception of the president of the United States is cementing in that he's lost a ton of mental acuity, why would his own White House refer to this upcoming press conference as a "big boy" press conference? Was every other press conference given by Joe Biden before now the equivalent of the folding card table the kids eat at during Thanksgiving dinner?
Just a couple weeks ago, leading up to the Atlanta presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I thought that it was political malpractice for the President to go through with it after Trump called his bluff and agreed to his terms. There would no doubt be a political price to pay for chickening out and playing the "Dignity of the Office" card, but it was the least worst option for Team Biden. Instead, Biden spent 90 minutes taking a flamethrower to the web of lies the White House and regime media have spun for the better part of four years about his fitness for office. As a result, media are now scrambling to restore their credibility by declaring open season on every angle of the President's cognitive decline story and how long it's been going on.
With the proposition that tonight's press conference won't be scripted, questions won't be known in advance by the President, and that the reporters chosen aren't pre-selected and limited to two reporters out of dozens present, the chance that Joe Biden is going to suddenly revert back to 2009 Joe Biden is just fantasy. Dana Perino, former press secretary for George W. Bush, noted yesterday that another disaster is in the offing, and that the White House should just cut their losses and bail on the presser before pouring gas on the fire.
I’d cancel tomorrow’s press conference. Save the embarrassment of the questions he will get. Provide him dignified space to absorb what’s happening.
— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) July 10, 2024
You'd think that there's an element somewhere in the White House that agrees with this strategy. I'm sure they want to just hunker down, have the President talk to no one on the outside, refuse to talk to nervous Democrats on the Hill, and promise pain and retribution to any would-be Judas or Brutus types out there waiting to shiv him, and just ride it out as long as possible.
Instead, not only is it apparent that Joe Biden is going to take a dip into a pool full of hungry piranhas tonight, he's now agreed to a sit-down interview with Lester Holt of NBC News. Maybe, Team Biden believes, the President will be able to do a little better than he did with George Stephanopoulos on ABC last week.
Joe Biden's glaring cognitive decline is a five-alarm fire, but it's not the only part of the campaign that's in flames.
In 2020, Black Americans voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. The margin was 92-8%. That's not going to be the margin this time, and that alone may be fatal to Joe Biden's reelection chances.
Newsweek has analyzed data within two sets of polls over the last week - one from New York Times/Siena, and the other one from CBS/YouGov. Both are not pretty for the Democrats.
A nationwide New York Times/Siena College poll conducted between June 28 and July 2 found that 47 percent of Black voters think there should be a different Democratic nominee, while 43 percent think Biden should remain as the party's nominee.
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Meanwhile, a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted during the same period as the Times poll found that 42 percent of Black voters think Biden should not run for president, while 58 percent think he should. Overall, 69 percent of voters think Biden shouldn't run, but only 41 percent of Democrats said the same.
However, both polls found that a majority of Black voters would still vote for Biden over Trump: 73 percent told the Times survey they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, while 77 percent said they would cast their ballot for Biden in the CBS News poll.
Average out that number, and you're down from a high of 92% of the Black vote in 2020 for Joe Biden to 75% this time around. So what does that all mean?
Roughly 158 million Americans voted for someone to be president in the 2020 Election. Blacks made up 12% of that turnout, or 18.96 million. Joe Biden was the recipient of 92% of those votes, or 17,443,200. Compare that to Donald Trump's 8% share of 1,516,800. That's a spread of 15,926,400 net votes for Joe Biden with this one voting bloc. Keep in mind that Biden's total popular vote total over Donald Trump in 2020 was 8 million votes.
Now in a universe where Biden only gets 75% of that near-19 million Black voters, and Donald Trump bumps up to 15%, and the others go to RFK, Jr. or just sit the top line out, you're now talking about a spread of 11.75 million versus almost 16 million four years ago. You've just cut the popular vote margin over half with one demographic group, and that doesn't count gains Trump is making with Latinos, young voters, and independents.
But that's just the popular vote. It doesn't matter, because we go by the Electoral College. The margin of victory for Biden over Trump in the Electoral College was 44,000 votes between Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Take those extra four and a quarter million Black votes Donald Trump is going to get this time, and spread it around Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, New Jersey, as well as the other three from 2020, and it's not hard to see how this election could quickly go sideways for Joe Biden on Election Night, and that's without the mental acuity problem causing the floor to collapse.
With that much hemorrhaging of Black voters, you'd think that Biden-Harris would be turning on the charm offensive, right? Well, they've turned on the offensive part, at least. The President appeared on a Philadelphia radio outlet that programs to a largely-Black audience. Instead of trusting him to answer questions that potential Black voters want to hear asked, the White House gave Andrea Lawful-Sanders a menu of 8 questions from which she was allowed to select. She asked four of the eight, got approval from the White House, talked about how weird the process was publicly afterwards, and was promptly released from her contract for embarrassing the station by allowing herself to be used by the Biden camp as propaganda. Chalk up another job loss of a Black woman on Joe Biden's watch.
How's the backup plan doing to shore up this voting bloc? About as well as you might imagine. Here's Kamala Harris and BET Awards host Taraji P. Henson from a week ago.
The streets I just saw in Los Angeles sure don't look like the streets from which the Veep is FaceTiming. I'm not seeing any graffiti, drug use, or defecation on the floor. All pandering aside, however, the question remains whether the Black voter restoration project by the top of the Democratic ticket is working or not. Believe it or not, The Comedy Channel's Daily Show may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine here.
This Daily Show focus group of Black New York voters did not go as planned. Half of the focus group (3 out of 6) said they would vote for Trump:
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) July 11, 2024
"We're an even split. I didn't see that coming."
"I think there's going to be a big shift. I've always been a Democrat. For the most… pic.twitter.com/VmoDyka5ta
If polling isn't picking up the full extent of the shift underway in the Black community this cycle, which I'm strongly suspicious is the case, Biden's margin of victory of Donald Trump in 2020 evaporates in this cycle just with this one demographic group.
We'll see if Joe Biden can recover any of his mojo in the press conference tonight, or with Lester Holt next week. For his sake, let's hope that he treats Lester a little better than he did to this young woman, about whom you'll probably be able to discern exactly the moment Joe Biden lost her vote at a rally last week.
Black woman who is smitten by Biden’s presence has the ultimate look of disappointment when he completely ignores her in order to take a selfie with the old white lady next to her pic.twitter.com/ZLSbQKjZCO
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) July 6, 2024
I hear that since the op-ed in the Times, Joe Biden's X account has unfollowed George Clooney. According to sources of CNN's Kayla Tausche, officials close to Biden are petty enough to try to claim Clooney doesn't have Biden's stamina.
Notice the smirk on Jake Tapper's face at how lame of a response that is from what was supposedly a serious political campaign just a few weeks ago.
As for me, I'm sorry to see the Biden-Clooney breakup happen so suddenly, so publicly. It's truly heartbreaking to see one Soggy Bottom Boy in such open disunion with another, er, Soggy Bottom boy.
Joe Biden is the first “president” to sh*t his pants every day while in office.
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) June 25, 2024
Notice Jill walk away in disgust when Joe stops to drop a standing dookie.pic.twitter.com/1uUnVFTXVm
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