If Biden steps down, it won't be because of the Times or his critics in the party or left Twitter or even the polls. It will be because he has lost the confidence of the top echelons of the Democratic Party.
Everything else is decoration.
I don’t trust that the top leaders of the party aren’t relying on vibes created by Times’ editorials - they don’t seem to have good instincts and no one seems in charge of anything
This would imply that the president has been walled off from the top leaders in his party enough that they weren’t able to quickly dismiss it. “Meh, bad night. I spoke with him yesterday and he was fine” would have been easy to say if it were true.
And if there’s truly been no reason to wall Biden off from the politicians in his party, then this is a failure of his campaign and senior White House staff. Because creating the vibe of secrecy is bad.
The apparent lack of advance knowledge or subsequent response to Hochul killing congestion pricing already convinced me that there’s absolutely no communication among any of those people but I attribute it to incompetence not bc they think Biden can’t make decisions
Meh, I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think any White House would get involved in day-to-day policy disputes at the state level. Unless you just mean if it’s an example of how an executive can be distanced from their party and fuck up.
My pet theory here — if Biden truly hasn’t declined much in the past few months — is that he’s been walled off to shield him from criticism over Israel/Gaza, and party leaders are interpreting this as being shielded because of his age.
Good point. For awhile there you could safely assume any open forum would have someone stand up and start yelling about genocide.
Not an excuse to keep staying away from those events if it’s going to hurt you more than getting yelled at about Gaza will though
I just think no one in the top echelons of Dem party is equipped for navigating this moment and institutionally the media isn’t either and this mess is the result
