Lawrence O’Donnell gave us a couple of reasons why dumping President Biden now would be a terrible mistake if we want to win the 2024 presidential election. First, Lawrence points out that President Biden is polling better against Donald Trump than any other democrat. The last poll that I saw which asked the question if President Biden were not the nominee, which of the following candidates would you prefer be the nominee of the Democratic Party gave the results with Vice President Kamala Harris at 27% and nobody else in double figures. The hypothetical questions mean nothing and any smart political reporter knows that. Any question that asks question based upon us living on Earth 2.0 instead of the real one cannot provide useful information about the real world. In an ideal world, would you prefer Democratic Party Jesus? Of course. In an ideal world, would you prefer that President Biden be younger? Of course. The question would you prefer that Joe Biden be the nominee or somebody else is again not a real world question. In the real world, one specific candidate must have more support than President Biden does to defeat President Biden in the Democratic Party Primary. Nobody has as much support as President Biden does. 75% of democrats approve of the job President Biden has done as president. Nobody else has that kind of support.
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Then Lawrence points out that none of these trolls has mentioned money and money is incredibly important in presidential campaigns. If the alternative candidate didn’t start running officially until the convention, then they would have zero money. So, they would have to start now. And how do you think that they would do now? And the basis? Because of a narrative that is not based upon reality. Age is a proxy for mental fitness. President Biden is mentally fit. He’s not trying out for the Olympics. Any honest evaluation of President Biden’s mental fitness and Donald Trump’s mental fitness would have to conclude that President Biden is in far better shape in terms of mental health. In any event, the campaign finance issue would be a death blow. So, that would force a person in single digits to run against President Biden. And then they would be trying to raise money. And that would be money that President Biden could not use and which might have otherwise gone to him. It would just be a mess.
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Finally, Lawrence warns us that there will likely be disruptive protestors there based off of I/P. That seems likely. I think that this would not serve anybody well. Helping Donald Trump isn’t going to help the Palestinians.
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In any event, I am embedding the video. It took a long time and a lot of effort to transcribe the video, but I am hopeful that it will help some people.
Lawrence: Well, tonight, the president is walking into a fundraiser in San Fransisco right about now where he will continue to build his big lead over Donald Trump in campaign fundraising. Before the president left for California yesterday, this was the single most childish question the White House press core delivered :
child: Mr. Presidnet, good afternoon, sir. You’re going to California, is this about coming up with a plan B for 2024? Does Gavin need to standby?
President Biden: Are you ready?
child: Yes sir.
President Biden: Well, I am looking at you. I am looking at you.
child 2: Sir Nikki Haley or Donald Trump?
President Biden: Woah, woah, woah, woah, puts hands up . What I came to tell you was, I told you that we would be announcing sanctions on Russia. We’ll have a major package announced on Friday. I’ll be happy to sit with you all doing that okay.
child 3: Who would you rather challenge in November: Nikki Haley or Donald Trump?
President Biden: Motions. Oh, I don’t care.
Lawrence: And they don’t care. They don’t care. That Joe Biden just described the serious work that he is doing in the Oval Office behind closed doors developing a new package of sanctions against Russia for Vladmir Putin’s assassination of Putin’s political opponent, Alexei Navalney. They don’t care. They are horserace reporters and the horserace is the presidential campaign itself and so you can rely on them to waste an opportunity to talk to the president of the United States about the actual work that he does and instead come up with wise guy questions like, “Does Gavin need to stand by? “ That’s, of course, a reference to California Governor Gavin Newsom who could not be more strongly supporting President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
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Those reporters and much of the punditry class and recreational commentators on presidential campaigns whose voices are heard on a variety of non political shows and podcasts don’t understand where we are in the presidential campaign. The short answer to where we are in the presidential campaign is that we are in the fourth quarter of the presidential campaign and the truth is that presidential campaigns are four years long. The news media doesn’t begin covering them until the third year of the campaign. We’re now in the fourth year of the campaign. When Donald Trump was inaugurated as the president of the United States, on January 20, 2017, the other thing he did that very day was file his candidacy papers for reelection. So, if you think of a presidential campaign as a long plane flight over, say the Atlantic Ocean, the plane is now somewhere over the North Atlantic approaching Ireland. It’s not the time for someone to decide that the pilot who has flown this plane before successfully should be pulled out of the cockpit because he’s too old and some passenger named Gavin who has never flown one of these planes should take over.
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Gavin Newsom has never been a presidential candidate in a presidential campaign. He has no idea what it’s like, but he understands enough of presidential campaigns and how they work to know that it is way too late for the democrats to change candidates . Bob Costas the brilliant sports analyst said recently that Joe Biden should drop out of the race and he added that he has been saying that for four years . Four years ago was the time to say it. Three years ago was the time to say it. But it has been too late for a long time. And if Joe Biden announced two or three years ago that he wasn’t going to run for reelection, he would have been the most pathetic lame duck president you’ve ever seen who would not have accomplished anything, nothing as president because Congress could have and would have completely ignored him.
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Everyone who says Joe Biden should drop out for the purposes of this discussion, I am only referring to the people who want the Democrats to win. Everyone of these people who say Joe Biden should drop out must now say exactly who the nominee should be and none of them do. None of them say that. Some of them suggest a long string of names of possibilities. That list always includes Gavin Newsom and so you would think that in their articles and in their comments on podcasts and on tv, they would show you all of those polls where Gavin Newsom polls better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump.
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There must be so many of those polls, but there aren’t any. The most recent poll substituting other Democratic names for Biden against Donald Trump included only Vice President Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom. It’s an Emerson poll that is now ten days old. Donald Trump is polling at 45% against Joe Biden at 44%. Substituting Kamala Harris as the candidate produces the result to be Donald Trump at 46% and Vice President Harris at 43%. Substituting Gavin Newsom’s name produces an even worse result with Trump polling at 46% and Gavin Newsom polling at 36%, thirty six. Gavin Newsom might not know how to run a president campaign but he knows how to read polls. You would think with the way the media obsessed over every poll it can find that they would have noticed these polls and how does today’s poll from Quinnipiac fit in the ‘Dump Biden’ strategy. National polling from Quinnipiac shows Joe Biden at 49% and Donald Trump at 45%.
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Now I mention the polls not because I have great faith in polls at this stage of the campaign, but just to point out the challenge you have if you want to argue that the Democratic nominee for president should not be Joe Biden. There is no substitute candidate who polls better than Joe Biden. Now, assuming you still believe in Gavin Newson even though he is polling ten points behind Donald Trump, you must then explain how your choice of nominee gets the nomination.
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The more thoughtful ‘Dump Biden’ proponents have actually recently tried to work their way through the maze of how someone other than Joe Biden can be nominated for the president in the Democratic Party. They all rely on Joe Biden, releasing all of his delegates at the convention on Monday, August 19th and they all assume that the delegates who have showed up for the convention, at least 90% of whom will be Biden delegates, maybe more will then easily agree on Gavin Newsom. You certainly get the feeling that most people who want to dump Joe Biden also want to dump Kamala Harris from the ticket. They don’t seem to fear what would happen among the key voting demographic who delivered the presidency to Joe Biden and the Vice Presidency to Kamala Harris, Black women voters.
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One thoughtful essay about this process reminded us. But this is the way Abraham Lincoln was chosen at the Republican convention in 1860. It took 3 long ballots to nominate Abraham Lincoln. You can expect the balloting at the Democratic Convention in August to take at least 3 ballots, maybe more. And you can imagine what the press would say about the Democrats struggling to nominate a candidate and how much disarray they would figure into their reporting. You can hope that it’s not a rerun of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York City when it took 103 ballots to nominate John Davis who went on to lose to Calvin Coolidge. That Democratic Convention lasted from June 24th to July 9th, 2 weeks to get him money, nominee who would lose. The last time the Democrats nominate a presidential candidate that way he lost to Republican Richard Nixon. This is what that convention looked like in 1968 in Chicago where there was violence in that convention hall and days of violence outside the convention hall which was later described as a riot by the Chicago police against peaceful protestors by a commission that investigated the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention which ended up nominating Vice President Hubert Humphrey who then went on to lose because that’s what happens after violent conventions like that. The Democratic Convention in Chicago is in Chicago again this year. And as it happens, the magic number of delegates for winning the presidential nomination is 1,968, one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight.
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There are going to be protestors. There always are. Usually they are not filed this year there will definitely be protestors supporting Israel and there will definitely be protestors supporting Palestinians. The television cameras will be trained on those protestors more than on delegates. The longer the convention goes on trying to find a nominee, the messier it could get in Chicago. The modern orderly convention that. It’s really, really our television shows produced by the party last four days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Thursday night in primetime is always the triumphant speech by the nominee. But at a contested convention, we have no idea what Thursday night might bring.
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Politically throwing the nomination open in a contested is a step into the unknown. One thoughtful essay that has worked through this scenario suggested it would be very exciting TV for the first time at a political convention. That means for the first time since 1968 when you could watch the rioting live on TV during the convention sometimes and split screens that showed the protestors being beaten in the streets by the Chicago police on the Chicago political machines. Henchmen were beating up reporters in the convention hall. Exciting as one word you could use for that kind of TV. It’s also horrify the Republican nominee for President Richard Nixon was watching the Democratic Convention on TV and that is when he knew he was going to win in November.
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I mentioned that Joe Biden’s out at a fundraiser tonight where he is crushing Donald Trump in the fundraising competition. The latest campaign finance reports show that the Biden Harris reelection campaign has $56 million dollars on hand at the end of January while the Trump campaign had only $30 million on hand. President Biden’s also raising money with and for the Democratic National Committee which has $24 million on hand. At the end of January, the Republican National Committee has $8 million at the end of January in the month of January along the Trump campaign raised $8.8 million and spent $11.4 million . Donald Trump has spent a total of $50 million on lawyers during the campaign and will spend much more. Other Pacs and fundraising committees support the Biden Harris ticket had a combined $117 million at the beginning of this year.
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And here’s the part right here. Here’s the part of the story that no one who has said that Joe Biden should drop out or has written that Joe Biden should drop out , has ever mentioned that every other Democrat whose name shows up in these articles as a substitute for Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee has raised exactly 0 money for a presidential campaign. No one has told you about the money. That means none of them has told you about the money. That means none of them have thought for a second about the money. Every serious observer of presidential campaigns is supposed to know how important campaign money is and not one of these people who are telling you it’s time to get rid of Joe Biden seem to have given a thought to the money.
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So here’s what they haven’t told you or simply do not know. Not one penny Gavin Newsom has in his campaign treasury in California is usable in a presidential campaign. Money raised for statewide elections of governors in California and other states is raised under different laws than the laws governing federal campaign money. So Gavin Newsom has 0 to spend on a presidential campaign as of tonight and Gavin Newsom knows that. And Gavin Newsom if he can get the nomination would then leave the convention with no ability to even fly his way home.