And when?
Several stories appeared yesterday about where and when Joe Biden’s war chest would go should he drop out of the presidential race as the slavering press hopes.
Days ago, The Wall Street Journal alleged that Biden could not transfer the entirety of the nearly $100 million to Kamala Harris until after he is his party’s official nominee. The DNC still plans to hold a virtual roll call vote for that purpose sometime between July 21 and August 7. The move was originally planned to work around a rule in Ohio (since rescinded) that required a party’s candidate there to be formalized before August 7.
The New York Times seems to confirm the WSJ report that were Biden “to be officially nominated” Harris might receive the funds seamlessly since her name is already on the ticket. The Times and Forbes also run down options for where else the money might go.
But there is a lot of gray area, reports USA Today.
“It’s not crystal clear because I’m not sure if the people who drafted the Federal Election Campaign Act anticipated this situation,” said Dan Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections & Government Program.
A matter of timing
Should Biden exit, the most logical alternate candidate is Harris. But the timing problem means opposing voices both in the press and in his own party would have at a minimum another 10 days to beat the war drums calling for his exit and leaving his party weakened for any replacement. Not to mention that pundits and the “Biden must go” faction will keep hammering the party for sitting on its hands doing nothing when doing something before making Biden the official candidate would imperil funds meant for the replacement candidate they keep demanding.
Meantime, Newsweek reports:
Congressional Democratic and party donors may be pushing for President Joe Biden to leave the 2024 race, but polls and reports from battleground states suggest that American voters aren’t abandoning him amid his post-debate crisis.
[…]
A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released Monday found that 85 percent of Democrats would vote for Biden in the 2024 election were held today, a four-point increase from the 81 percent who said the same in March.
The president did see a slight drop in support from voters who backed him in the last election. Of those, 78 percent said they would vote for him in the July poll. In March, Biden saw 79 percent support among his 2020 voters.
On the GOP side, Tim Alberta writes at The Atlantic, Trump campaign spokesman Chris LaCivita is trash-talking Biden. He’s just the guy they want to run against:
One of the two principals tasked with returning Trump to the White House, LaCivita had long conceived of the 2024 race as a contest that would be “extraordinarily visual”—namely, a contrast of strength versus weakness. Trump, whatever his countless liabilities as a candidate, would be cast as the dauntless and forceful alpha, while Biden would be painted as the pitiable old heel, less a bad guy than the butt of a very bad joke, America’s lovable but lethargic uncle who needed, at long last, to be put to bed.
As the likelihood of a Trump-versus-Biden rematch set in, the public responded to the two candidates precisely as LaCivita and his campaign co-manager, Susie Wiles, had hoped. The percentage of voters who felt that Biden, at 81, was too old for another term rose throughout 2023, even as the electorate’s concerns about Trump’s age, 78, remained relatively static. By the end of the primaries, the public’s attitude toward the two nominees had begun to harden: One was a liar, a scoundrel, and a crook—but the other one, the old one, was unfit to be president.
Yikes is right.
President Bill Clinton understood the risks of Democrats’ second-guessing themselves over 20 years ago: ”When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” That’s the risk here. Further weakening Biden with talk of replacing him exposes Democrats’ soft underbellies and empowers Trump.
Democrats use their heads. Republicans know in their guts. In Colbert Report fashion, they plan to feel the election at you. What scares me is how many Americans will keep buying what they’re selling.
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