The Good Ship Democrat has been springing enough leaks this week that some of the passengers are probably starting to congregate near the lifeboats. The latest comes to us from the office of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Reporters have revealed that Pelosi recently had a private conversation with President Joe Biden, attempting to explain to him that reliable polling shows that he can't defeat Donald Trump in November and he could endanger many down-ballot Democrats in the process. Biden reportedly pushed back defiantly yet again, telling her that all the polls he's been shown (that's a key phrase) indicate that he can still win. Ever since Biden's disastrous debate performance, Pelosi's support of him remaining in the race has been tepid on the best of days - when she's shown any at all - but it sounds as if she can see the clock running out and feels moved toward more direct action. (NY Post)

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told President Biden in a private conversation that polling indicates he can’t beat Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to a report.

Pelosi also conveyed to Biden, 81, that his continued presidential re-election campaign could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November, four sources told CNN.

The California congresswoman referred to several polls showing that Trump would beat the incumbent during their private conversation, the report said.

As noted above, Biden reportedly pushed back, telling Pelosi that all the polling he’s seen has pointed to a successful re-election bid. None of the major polling outlets we follow agree, so the question arises as to precisely what polls Biden is looking at and who is showing them to him. We can't pin the answer down to a specific name, though it's probably Ron Klain. It's certainly possible that if you dig deeply enough, you could find a couple of polls paid for by Democrats showing the race much closer than the rest of them, potentially even giving Biden a slight lead.

Biden's handlers in his inner circle clearly don't want Joe Biden to step aside as the candidate. If Joe is on the way out, so are they, and they would have to start over from scratch looking for another Golden Goose. Biden's presumed replacement would arrive with their own staffers. If Trump manages to beat Biden and the GOP holds both legislative chambers, Joe's handlers could be packing their bags and leaving the Beltway entirely for a while, forced to find work in the private sector. (A nightmarish thought, no doubt.) So that crew - and particularly Hunter Biden - have a tremendous incentive to continue feeding the boss good news and trying to keep him in the race. 

What makes this story even more interesting is the fact that we're hearing about it at all. This was reportedly a private meeting between Pelosi and the President without any aides or anyone else in the room. At the highest levels of the swamp, meetings like that take place regularly, but they don't leak such things out and even if word of it does see the light of day, most of the legacy media dutifully ignores it.

So why are we hearing about this conversation? The leak obviously came from Pelosi herself. When she couldn't make any headway with Biden in private, she sent out a couple of little birds to go whisper in the ears of their contacts at CNN. This gave them permission to break cover and spread a bit more gasoline on the fire. Then, almost on cue, Biden suddenly comes down with COVID for the fourth or fifth time despite having taken every vaccination dose available. Perhaps that's only a coincidence, but it's a fairly large one if so.

Meanwhile, it's not just Nancy Pelosi having "private meetings" with Joe Biden and warning him of ominous portents. One of Biden's bigger donors and bundlers privately told Biden yet again that his campaign donations are "drying up." Joe's handlers are assuring him that donations are always lower in July and August before ramping back up in September. Historically, that's been true to a certain extent, but not at the levels being reported by his campaign. The big, dark money donors are the ones that keep the campaign machine greased up and running. It's conceivable that Biden may listen to them more closely than Pelosi or even Ron Klain. We should know soon enough. The Democrats are preparing to finalize the Biden/Harris ticket formally in August unless something changes radically before then.