President Joe Biden

**S Landreth** · 26-06-2024, 12:20 AM

Courts block part of Biden’s student loan repayment plan for millions

A pair of federal judges on Monday halted key parts of President Joe Biden’s new student loan repayment program, imperiling the administration’s plan to lower monthly payments and erase student debt for millions of Americans ahead of the November election.

The two court rulings, in response to lawsuits filed by Republican-led states, prohibit the Education Department from moving ahead with major provisions of Biden’s SAVE loan repayment program. The decisions prevent the Biden administration from further reducing the monthly payments of millions of borrowers as planned in July or canceling more debt under the program.

More than 8 million loan borrowers are enrolled in the SAVE plan, which the Biden administration launched last year, touting it as the most affordable option ever for federal student loan borrowers. The Education Department already invoked the loan forgiveness provisions of the plan to cancel $5.5 billion of debt for 414,000 borrowers, with more scheduled.

The SAVE program has been a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s efforts to provide student debt relief to borrowers even as the Covid-era payment pause expired last year and Biden’s bigger ambitions for mass loan forgiveness were blocked at the Supreme Court.

But Republicans have argued that the program is the latest in a string of Biden executive actions to ease or erase student debt that far exceed the administration’s legal authority. On Monday, a pair of Obama-appointed federal judges partially agreed with them, issuing separate preliminary injunctions against different parts of the SAVE program.

District Judge John A. Ross of the Eastern District of Missouri blocked the Education Department from carrying out “any further loan forgiveness for borrowers” under the SAVE program until he decides the full case.

Ross ruled that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and other GOP states who sued were likely to succeed on their claims that the Biden administration lacks the authority to forgive student debt under the SAVE program.

He agreed that the program’s loan forgiveness provisions would likely harm Missouri because it would reduce the fees that the Education Department pays to the Missouri Higher Education Assistance Agency. That’s the same state-created entity that was at the center of the Supreme Court case over Biden’s first mass student debt relief program.

Federal student loan borrowers typically must repay their debts for 20 or 25 years to have their remaining balances discharged under the Education Department’s income-driven repayment plans. But the SAVE plan had offered a new, shorter timeline for forgiveness, canceling debt after just 10 years for borrowers who initially took out less than $12,000.

Meanwhile in Kansas, District Judge Daniel Crabtree blocked the Education Department from implementing a part of the SAVE program that would further lower some borrowers’ monthly payments, in some cases cutting them in half.

The SAVE plan has already lowered monthly payments — or eliminated them entirely for low-income borrowers — for millions of borrowers. But a second phase of the program, which was set to take effect July 1, was supposed to recalculate borrowers’ monthly payments and cap them at 5 percent of their discretionary income, down from the current 10 percent.

Crabtree ruled that the Republican states were likely to succeed on their claims that the Education Department lacked clear authority from Congress to enact the SAVE plan.

But he declined to block the entirety of the program, citing concerns about the feasibility of unwinding the parts of the program that had already been implemented. He also wrote that the Republican states’ delay in filing the lawsuit months after the plan was announced undercut their arguments that there was an immediate need to block the entire program.

The Education Department did not immediately have a comment on the ruling.

The order from the Missouri-based judge blocking the loan forgiveness provisions takes effect immediately. The Kansas-based judge deferred his injunction blocking the lower monthly payments until June 30 to give the administration time to appeal the order.

Groups advocating for student debt relief slammed the ruling saying that borrowers are now in limbo.

Mike Pierce, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, blasted the courts for creating “chaos across the student loan system” and said the Biden administration should consider “shutting the student loan system down until borrowers have access to the rights they were promised under the law.”

**S Landreth** · 26-06-2024, 03:43 AM

Biden: International police force will provide ‘much needed relief’ to Haiti

President Biden announced Tuesday that an international police force led by Kenya has deployed to Haiti to fight armed gangs and that the troops will provide “much-needed relief” to the crime-stricken Caribbean island.

An initial wave of 400 Kenyan forces arrived Tuesday, the first phase of the eventual deployment of 1,000 troops.

The police force will now have to take on heavily armed gangs, who have taken almost complete control of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and have run amok since February, when gang members consolidated power and freed prisoners.

Biden said that “rampant gang violence” has killed or wounded thousands of Haitians, left more than half a million people displaced and has forced nearly 5 million to face severe food insecurity.

“The people of Haiti deserve to feel safe in their homes, build better lives for their families, and enjoy democratic freedoms,” he said in a statement. “Haiti’s future depends on the return to democratic governance. While these goals may not be accomplished overnight, this mission provides the best chance of achieving them.”

The Kenyan-led force will work with the Haitian National Police fighting against the gangs, but who have been overwhelmed by the strength and numbers of the criminal groups.

While the police force is led by Kenya, several countries are contributing to the mission: Benin, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Spain.

The U.S. is not deploying forces but has committed more than $300 million for the mission, along with another $60 million for equipment.

**S Landreth** · 26-06-2024, 08:53 PM

GOP former Rep. Adam Kinzinger endorses Biden, whose campaign wants to flip anti-Trump Republicans

Republican former congressman Adam Kinzinger endorsed President Joe Biden on Wednesday, giving the Democrat a prominent new ally in his high-stakes campaign to win over moderate Republicans and independents this fall.

Kinzinger, a military pilot who emerged as a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump after the U.S. Capitol was attacked by Trump’s supporters, described Trump as “a direct threat to every fundamental American value” in a video announcing the Biden endorsement.

“While I certainly don’t agree with President Biden on everything, and I never thought I’d be endorsing a Democrat for president, I know that he will always protect the very thing that makes America the best country in the world: our democracy,” said Kinzinger, who voted for Trump in 2020.

The former Illinois congressman also issued an ominous warning. Trump, he said, will “hurt anyone or anything in pursuit of power.”

Kinzinger becomes the highest-profile Republican official formally backing Biden, whose campaign earlier in the month tapped Kinzinger’s former chief of staff Austin Weatherford to serve as its national Republican outreach director. Republican former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan also endorsed Biden last month.

Ultimately, a number of prominent Republicans are expected to join Biden’s campaign, with more influential names likely to be announced closer to the November election.

Shortly after Kinzinger announced his decision, Biden shared the endorsement video on social media and said he was grateful for the Republican’s support.

“This is what putting your country before your party looks like,” Biden wrote on X.

_________

Joe Biden - This is what putting your country before your party looks like.

I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam.: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1805922814362366457

Adam Kinzinger - As a proud conservative, I’ve always put America’s Democracy and our Constitution above all else.

And today, as a proud conservative, I am endorsing @JoeBiden for reelection!: https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/st...15590525096089

**S Landreth** · 27-06-2024, 02:59 AM

Biden pardons veterans. convicted under military's ban on gay sex

President Biden on Wednesday pardoned veterans who were convicted and forced out of the military because of a former law that banned gay sex, including between consenting adults.

Why it matters: Biden's clemency will extend to thousands of former military service members who were convicted of the former Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 125 while it was in effect from the 1950s to 2013.

What they're saying: "Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves," Biden said in a statement.

"Despite their courage and great sacrifice, thousands of LGBTQI+ service members were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity," he said.
"This is about dignity, decency, and ensuring the culture of our Armed Forces reflect the values that make us an exceptional nation."

Zoom out: The clemency action won't automatically change the recipients' criminal record.

It will instead allow them to apply for a pardon that will help them receive benefits that were withheld from them due to their other than honorable discharge status.
It will also not apply to people convicted of non-consensual acts, like rape.

Context: The law specifically stated that those who engage in "unnatural carnal copulation" are guilty of "sodomy," meaning it technically also outlawed other forms of heterosexual intercourse.

The ban was repealed by Congress and former President Obama as part of the fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill. In its place, a new law made sodomy by force subject to a court martial.

The big picture: The move is separate from the Department of Defense's (DOD) ongoing review of LGBTQ+ veterans who may have been forced out of the service under its "don't ask, don't tell" policy (DADT).

The initiative could allow thousands of veterans receive retroactive honorable discharges, giving them access to the full amount of benefits for their service.

By the numbers: At least 32,837 LGBTQ service members between 1980 and 2011 were forced out of the military under DADT and other policies that prevented them from serving, according to DOD data.

Over 14,000 of those service members received general, other than honorable, uncharacterized or unknown discharge or separation characterizations throughout those decades.

**S Landreth** · 27-06-2024, 11:12 PM

SCOTUS didn’t just rule for Biden — it ruled against conspiracy theories

The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a win yesterday, ruling that conservative activists and two red states that claimed federal government officials had “censored” their social media posts lacked standing to sue.

The plaintiffs, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, could not show that they likely faced future harm based on the past conduct of Biden administration officials and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (now X).

But there was more to the ruling than that. Barrett went out of her way to emphasize that the legal attack on the Biden administration was based on a conspiracy theory about collusion between liberal political operatives and sympathetic platform employees, not on facts that established that government representatives had coerced the platforms to remove or down-rank conservative content or accounts.

The conspiracy theory that Barrett punctured supports a much broader and equally false right-wing contention that liberals in Washington have collaborated with Silicon Valley and ivory tower academics to silence conservatives.

Barrett said the right-wing contention is simply untrue. In this case, known as Murthy v. Missouri, “the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment,” she wrote.

Moreover, she added, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, “by attributing every platform decision at least in part to the defendants, glossed over the complexities in the evidence.”

Barrett, in other words, demanded that we look at the actual facts — in all of their complexity — rather than buy into the falsehoods pushed by former President Donald Trump, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and others on the right who believe a vast left-wing conspiracy has marginalized Republicans.

**S Landreth** · 28-06-2024, 02:49 AM

Biden arrives in Georgia for debate with Trump

US President Joe Biden arrived in Georgia on Thursday for his first debate of the 2024 election cycle with his predecessor Donald Trump -- a high-stakes event for both candidates.

Air Force One touched down at a military base about an hour’s drive from the capital Atlanta, where the debate will take place at CNN’s headquarters beginning at 9:00 pm (0100 GMT Friday).

**S Landreth** · 28-06-2024, 04:53 AM

WATCH LIVE: Biden and Trump debate — PBS News simulcast of CNN’s 2024 Presidential Debate

The first debate of 2024 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will be held Thursday in Atlanta, moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

The debate will begin at 9 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 27.

PBS News special coverage will start with the 7 p.m. EDT News Hour broadcast, followed by digital special coverage at 8 p.m. After the debate ends, anchors Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett will host on-air special analysis.

**pickel** · 28-06-2024, 11:48 AM

So, how'd it go?

**S Landreth** · 28-06-2024, 04:16 PM

I listened to some clips and read some opinions.

I will be voting for Biden in November.

**harrybarracuda** · 28-06-2024, 05:32 PM

Originally Posted by pickel

So, how'd it go?

A fucking disaster was how it went.

**S Landreth** · 29-06-2024, 12:12 AM

Defiant Biden resists call to drop out as campaign surrogates maintain support

A defiant Joe Biden resisted calls to abandon his re-election effort and step aside for a younger candidate after his calamitous showing in Thursday’s presidential debate with Donald Trump.

As Democrats panicked and openly talked about replacing the president with another nominee, the Biden campaign unequivocally ruled out that possibility.

“Of course he’s not dropping out,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said on Friday.

Her statement followed Biden’s own resolute comments to downcast supporters shortly after leaving the debate stage in Atlanta. “Let’s keep going,” he told them.

_________

Here's why it would be tough for Democrats to replace Joe Biden on the presidential ticket

There is no evidence Biden is willing to end his campaign. And it would be nearly impossible for Democrats to replace him unless he chooses to step aside.

Here's why:

Every state has already held its presidential primary. Democratic rules mandate that the delegates Biden won remain obligated to support him at the party's upcoming national convention unless he tells them he’s leaving the race.

Biden indicated that he had no plans to do that, telling supporters in Atlanta shortly after he left the debate stage, “Let's keep going.” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt was even clearer, saying Friday: “Of course he's not dropping out.”

**S Landreth** · 29-06-2024, 04:49 AM

Biden addresses poor debate performance, attacks Trump at Raleigh rally

President Joe Biden on Friday addressed his poor performance in Thursday's presidential debate, just hours after he faltered on stage in his matchup against former President Donald Trump.

A senior campaign aide told ABC News that the president is "absolutely" not considering dropping out of the race after stumbling with answers and is committed to a second debate. During the rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, a more energetic-appearing Biden acknowledged that he's not a young man, but contended that his morals and history prove that he's still fit for the job.

**helge** · 29-06-2024, 05:05 AM

Biden and Landreath carries on as if nothing happened.

**S Landreth** · 29-06-2024, 04:12 PM

Obama backs Biden after rough debate performance

Former President Obama urged voters Friday to back President Biden in November despite a poor showing by the president in the previous night’s debate.

“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Obama posted on the social platform X. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.

“Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November,” he added, linking to Biden’s campaign website.

**bsnub** · 29-06-2024, 04:54 PM

When I reached the longtime Democratic strategist James Carville via text near the end of last night’s presidential debate, his despair virtually radiated through my phone.

“I tried, man, I tried,” Carville wrote to me.

A few minutes later, when the debate was over, we talked by phone. Carville has been one of the loudest and most persistent Democrats arguing that President Joe Biden was too old to run again. Carville, who managed Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and is still, at 79, an influential political analyst, had tempered that criticism lately—though more out of resignation than conviction. His apprehension about Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump had never really diminished in my previous conversations with him, but he’d seemed to accept as inevitable that the party would not reject a president who wanted to seek a second term.

But last night, Carville, like other Democrats I spoke with, sounded almost shell-shocked, as he searched for words to describe Biden’s scattered, disoriented, and disjointed debate performance.

“What is there to fucking say?” Carville told me. “How could somebody not see this coming? I’m just flummoxed.”

What do you think will happen next? I asked. “I have become aware of the limits of my own power,” Carville responded. He thought that Biden running again “was a terrible idea. I said it publicly. I failed … I understand that. But how could you not see this coming?”

I had one last question. What do you think should happen next—should Biden step aside? “I don’t know,” he said, in a leaden tone. “The Democratic Party is at a come-to-Jesus moment. That’s where we are.”

Carville was far from the only Democrat reconsidering a scenario that had seemingly passed into political fantasy: whether Biden could be persuaded, or pushed, not to run again. Another prominent Democratic strategist, who is considered one of Biden’s staunchest defenders in the party and did not want to be named for this report, told me his view last night that “there’s a very high likelihood that he’s not going to be the candidate.” Even so, the strategist added, “I don’t know how that happens.”

If Biden insists on staying in the race, the odds remain high that Democrats will in fact nominate him at their convention in August; dislodging an incumbent president is a huge task. But more Democrats in the next few days are likely to crack open the party-nomination rules. And those rules actually provide a straightforward road map to replace Biden at the convention if he voluntarily withdraws—and even, if he doesn’t, a pathway to challenge him.

Trump was hardly a colossus in the debate. Though less belligerent than in his first 2020 debate with Biden, and far more vigorous than Biden last night, Trump continued to display all of his familiar negative traits: He lied almost obsessively, defended the January 6 rioters, bragged about his role in overturning the constitutional right to abortion, and repeated his discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Nothing in Trump’s performance convinced Democrats that he could not be beaten in November. But Trump’s evident vulnerabilities will probably compound the concern about Biden, because they showed that Democrats might still stop him if they had a candidate who was not laboring under so many painfully apparent vulnerabilities of his own.

For Democrats fearful that Biden can’t win, the president’s showing last night was so bad that it might have been good—in the sense that it put the idea of replacing him as the nominee, which the White House had almost completely banished from conversation, back on the table. The pro-Biden strategist last night flatly predicted, “I do think that somebody is going to declare and challenge him.”

Some top party strategists said last night that they considered the widespread panic over Biden’s performance a hysterical overreaction. “Missed opportunity, but the idea that it is a game changer is totally wrong,” Geoff Garin, the experienced Democratic pollster, told me.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, a co-founder of Way to Win, a liberal group that focuses on electing candidates of color, offered no praise for Biden’s performance but also did not view it as an insurmountable obstacle to beating Trump. “This election has always been bigger than these two candidates and their performances,” she told me. “The choice and contrast between the two different futures they represent is clear and will become more stark as we get closer to Election Day.”

But these voices were very much the exceptions in the communal cry of despair that erupted from prominent Democrats last night. “Unmitigated disaster” was the summary of one, who is a senior strategist for an elected Democrat considered a possible Biden replacement and who asked to remain anonymous. “I think there was a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate, how his voice sounded; he seemed a little disoriented,” David Axelrod, the chief political strategist for Barack Obama, said on CNN immediately after the debate. “He did get stronger as the debate went on, but by that time, I think the panic had set in.”

The key mechanism in the party rules that allows for replacing the nominee resulted from a change approved decades ago after the bitter 1980 primary fight, when Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts challenged a weakened President Jimmy Carter for the nomination. After a convention battle, which Carter won, Democrats agreed to eliminate the so-called robot rule, which required convention delegates to vote on the first ballot, at least, for the candidate they were chosen to support, says Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, who played a central role in the change.

Instead, she told me last night, the rules now say that delegates to the convention “shall ‘in all good conscience’ vote for the person they were elected to represent.” This means, she added, that “there is a presumption you will vote for Biden, but the ‘all good conscience’ could cover a lot of things.”

If Biden voluntarily withdrew, the party would employ a process to replace him that harks back to the era when presidential nominees were selected mainly not through primaries but by party leaders at the convention itself. “If he does it himself, there are many, many ways to replace him,” Kamarck told me. “About 4,000 people have already been elected to the convention. If Biden stepped aside tomorrow, several people would get into the race, no doubt, and the race would consist of calling these people and trying to convince them.

“It would be an old-fashioned convention,” she went on. “All 4,000 delegates pledged to Biden would suddenly be uncommitted, and you’d have a miniature campaign.” Under changes approved after the Hillary Clinton–Bernie Sanders 2016 race, the so-called superdelegates—about 750 elected officials and other party insiders—would become eligible to vote only if no candidate won a majority on the first ballot and the race went to a second round at the convention.

If Biden remains in the race, another candidate could still make a case to the convention delegates for replacing him. Even after last night’s performance, though, Kamarck doubts that a serious party leader would try this. “I don’t think anybody will challenge him, frankly,” she told me. “I think the depth of feeling for him in the party is very strong.”

But the staunchly pro-Biden strategist who expects a challenge thinks the operation could play out in a way similar to the two-step process that helped persuade Lyndon B. Johnson, the previous Democratic president not to seek reelection, to step aside in 1968. Johnson that year initially faced an anti–Vietnam War challenge from Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. After McCarthy—a relatively peripheral figure in the party—showed Johnson’s weakness in the New Hampshire primary vote, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, a much more formidable opponent, jumped in. Fifteen days later, Johnson announced his withdrawal from the race.

If a challenge to Biden develops before the August convention, the strategist predicted, it would unfold in a similar way. First out of the box will be a secondary figure unlikely to win the nomination, the strategist said. But if that person demonstrated a sufficient groundswell of desire for an alternative candidate, more heavyweight contenders—such as Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California—might quickly follow, the strategist predicted.

Talk of replacing Biden may conceivably dissipate once the initial shock of last night’s debate fades. Most Democrats who want to replace Biden also remain extremely dubious that his incumbent running mate, Kamala Harris, could beat Trump—but if she sought the nomination, then denying that prize to the first woman of color who has served as vice president could tear apart the party. The fear that such a fight could practically ensure defeat in November is one reason Democrats who are uneasy about renominating Biden have held their tongue for so long.

Still, the prospect of the party simply marching forward with Biden as if nothing happened last night seems difficult to imagine. Even before his disastrous performance, Democratic anxiety was rising with the release of a flurry of unsettling polls for Biden in the 48 hours before the CNN debate. National Quinnipiac University and New York Times/Siena College polls released Wednesday each gave Trump a four-percentage-point lead over the president, the challenger’s best showing in weeks. Yesterday, Gallup released a withering national poll that showed the share of Americans with a favorable view of Trump rising, while Biden’s number was falling—with more respondents saying that Trump, rather than Biden, had the personal and leadership qualities a president should have.

Tellingly, three-quarters of those whom Gallup polled said they were concerned that Biden “is too old to be president,” exactly double the share that registered the same concern about Trump. Like the Times/Siena and Quinnipiac polls, Gallup also found that Biden’s job-approval rating remained marooned below 40 percent—a level that, as Gallup pointedly noted, is much closer to the historical results at this point in the race for the recent incumbents who lost their reelection bids (Carter in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1992, and Trump in 2020) than those who won a second term.

Not all the polling on the debate’s eve was as glum for Biden. But the overall picture suggested that whatever polling boost Biden had received from Trump’s criminal conviction in the New York hush-money case a month ago has evaporated. Instead, polls are showing that the former president has regained a narrow but persistent advantage, both nationally and in the decisive battleground states.
All the usual caveats to ironclad conclusions from last night’s set piece apply, even if it was a debacle for Biden. Presidential races are marathons, with unpredictable twists. Many Democrats still believe that Biden is a decent man who has been an effective president. The resistance to Trump remains deep and durable among large swaths of the American electorate.

But the viability of Bidenas the candidate who can overcome Trump’s lead looked much more doubtful within moments of the president taking the stage last night. Biden’s performance justified every fear of the cadre of longtime party strategists, such as Carville and Axelrod, who have openly voiced the concerns about renominating him that plenty of others have shared only privately.
Carville, though, was feeling no “told you so” joy last night. His parting words to me: “I hate being right.”

The Biden-Replacement Operation - The Atlantic

**harrybarracuda** · 29-06-2024, 06:18 PM

Bill Maher has been touting for a replacement by the convention for a long time now.
Be interesting to listen to his show later.

**cyrille** · 29-06-2024, 06:21 PM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Be interesting to listen to his show later.

If so, it'll be a first.

**S Landreth** · 30-06-2024, 01:46 AM

Don’t panic, Democrats. Biden must dust himself off and get angry

Neither candidate performed well in Thursday’s not-so-great presidential debate. The problem is that Americans hold President Biden to a higher standard than Donald Trump, allowing the former president to win a race to the bottom.

CNN broke new ground by airing commercials for the first time during a general election presidential debate. But the broadcast was not an effective ad for American democracy.

Both candidates failed to address their biggest weaknesses. Biden wasn’t able to reassure voters who might have concerns about his age. Trump failed to convince Americans that he has the moral fiber and credibility to be an honest and trustworthy leader.

On X, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann accurately described Trump’s performance as a “firehose of lies.” President Biden was tentative and failed to capitalize on his opponent’s serial lies.

CNN’s decision to mute mics was wise, but the network’s failure to instantaneously fact check the candidates was an abrogation of its obligation to be a source of reliable news. The network’s faulty decision allowed Trump to ride roughshod over the truth.

If the news network had silenced the microphones when a candidate told a lie, viewers wouldn’t have heard Trump at all. But they still would have known he was lying because his lips were moving. The absence of accountability for Trump is like gifting your passwords to a serial hacker.

The president is taking heat from his own party for his faulty performance. There’s unrealistic talk about replacing him at the Democratic National Convention. Democrats clearly have higher standards since there’s little or no talk among GOP insiders about replacing the convicted felon at their confab.

The face off was not the end of the world as Democrats know it. There are still four months left in the campaign, so there’s no need to panic.

The Biden campaign needs to get the president on the road in the battleground states among enthusiastic supporters who will buck him up. He should use the road show as an opportunity to do the job that CNN failed to do — call out Trump’s lies.

On the flip side, Trump’s debate performance demonstrates that he effectively channels the anger most voters feel about the direction of the nation. He used the term “failing nation” more than once in his presentation. Many troubled Americans gravitate to Trump because he’ll shoot first and ask questions later.

In presidential politics, attitude matters as much as issues. Trump’s quarrelsome personality and angry body language mirrors the public mood better than Biden’s calm demeanor.

The president had a bad night, but he must rub some dirt on his wound, get off the floor and shake off the injury. He should get angry and be more aggressive to reflect the nasty pessimism that afflicts the body politic. He must call Trump out for his cascade of lies to destroy the Republican’s credibility by the time voters become more attentive after Labor Day.

All good political narratives need heroes and villains.

Trump exhibited his capacity to create enemies by demonizing immigrants all through the evening. He even accused his successor of making the U.S. into a “third world country,” which was a devious way of re-enforcing his attacks on immigrants.

The president should deflect attacks on his economic record by attacking the bad actors in corporate America whose price gouging creates record profits for a favored few and financial misery for millions of hard-working American families.

The next big date in the accelerated campaign calendar is Trump’s sentencing on his conviction for felony fraud in the hush money case. Biden may be 81, but the number that should matter is the 34 felonies.

The president is taking a beating now, but the worm may turn on July 11 when Judge Juan Merchan has his say. Stay tuned for the next episode of Law and Order: Campaign 2024.

**helge** · 30-06-2024, 02:18 AM