Bill Kristol: The Joe Biden Survival Plan

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Pod Save America is not approved by the FDA. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Monday, so I'm here with Bill Kristol.
But first, a little programming note. We've got a new show here on the Bulwark Network.
It's the Michael Steele Podcast, former chairman of the RNC, MSNBC analyst. I love Michael Steele.
I'm so excited to have the chairman here as part of the network. You can check out his first interview as part of our family with Rick Wilson from The Weeknd, where he gives a different take than you've heard here from a lot of us on the Biden saga and what to do if you're the Democrats in the tough situation right now.
So we're going to play a snippet from that on today's pod. But if you want to listen to the whole interview, go check out the Michael Steele podcast.
I highly recommend it. One other thing on that front, I've been getting some requests from viewers to hear that countervailing perspective on what the right thing to do is right now on why we should keep Biden and why circling the wagons might make sense.
I think I got the right guess for that tomorrow. I do want to say it's been a little challenging to find someone to do that who actually has campaign experience.
So I think that's important. Talking to influencers and debating them, I'm happy to do that.
Influencers, provide influencers play an important role. But it's nice to have somebody that has campaign experience really hash this out, number one.
But number two, more important than that is getting somebody that is saying what they really think. I think that there is a view among some, which I respect, I'm interested in, that the right thing to do is to just do happy talk publicly.
But then in private, when I talk to them, they're very sympathetic to a lot of the arguments that we've been making here at the Bulwark. This podcast, the ethos of this podcast is I say to you the same thing that I say on text with my buddies.
And so I want to make sure we have guests on to the extent possible that are also doing that. So I hear the argument that maybe there's something to be said for, you know, moderating your views or modulating them in public, but like that's just not what we're doing here at this podcast.
So anyway, we should have that guest up tomorrow. We're going to have more this week about SCOTUS, about Christian nationalism, about theo meetings and about the potential for kamala so it's going to be a good week stick around for all that now we turn to bill crystal how you doing i'm fine tim how are you i searched twitter just did a little twitter search to see if anybody had said the words bill crystal was right and i couldn't find anybody you know no you don't credit.
Nobody gets any credit these days. You had some wrong predictions in the past, I will say.
You maybe had some wrong takes at some point in your illustrious career. But when it comes to the matter of the last two fundamental inflection points in our politics, in the midterms, I think it's important to say this, in the midterms, among the bulw to say this in the midterms among the bulwark crowd you are i think the most bullish about the democrats chances democrats did lose the house but you are the most bullish about the democrats chances in the midterms and among the bulwark crowd you are the most vocal that it might run us into some problems in defeating donald trump if the standard bearer is 81 years old so i it feels like you were two for two on those.
I don't know. Do you want to do a quick victory lap before we get into the meat of the night? I appreciate that, Tim.
The check's in the mail. That was great.
We can end the podcast here and just say, you know. All right.
We'll see. Let's do this all again tomorrow.
Anyway, Bill Kristol had some points. I just think that's important to remember as we get into the details here.
Since we last spoke on Friday, the president did a lengthy interview with George Stephanopoulos. And then this morning with Morning Joe, he had some events in Pennsylvania over the weekend.
I'll get into the Morning Joe of it. But since you got a chance to watch George on Friday, it's had a couple of days to settle in.
What were your reactions? I wasn't reassured. I mean, in general, he was decent in some answers, a little incoherent in a couple of others, but his general stance was to deny the evidence that he might not be running very well against Donald Trump, to say at the end, it was probably the most famous quotation from the interview, that when Stephanopoulos had that George asked him a good question to close with, which is, well, what will you think if it doesn't work, if Trump wins? Well, I'll have done my best, he said.
I'll have done his good job I want to do. There's a debate of whether he said the goodest job he could do or as good a job as he could do.

We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on a mumble there, on as good a job as he could do. Right, exactly.

But doing as good a job as you can do, when he has said so many times that everything's on the line, it's just not enough.

I mean, it is honestly as if Lincoln tried to remove a general in the early years of the Civil War,

and the general said, well, I'm doing my best, and also I really am anti-slavery.

Well, that's very nice, but if you're not up to winning the war, you know,

I don't know. remove a general in the early years of the Civil War, and the general said, well, I'm doing my best, and also I really am anti-slavery.
Well, that's very nice, but if you're not up to winning the war, you know, you should step aside and Lincoln moved them aside. We're not quite in that situation.
He's a president, not a general. I take that point, but he should have the self-knowledge to step aside, maybe.
Yeah. And he doesn't, and that was very clear from the, he doesn't want to think about it.
There was no argument in the Stephanopoulos interview, as David Axelrod wrote the next day in a pretty tough column and pretty startling one from someone who knows Biden well. And obviously is, what would you say, the most currently respected Democratic strategist in the country, perhaps, saying, look, it's denial and delusion here.
I'm afraid that's the case. Yeah.
Joe Biden hates David Axelrod, which is a quick aside from the Morning Joe interview. They start listing the people that had called on himself aside.
When they get to David Axelrod, Biden lets out like a harumph, a guttural at having to even hear David Axelrod's name. I want to get into the Biden survival plan, to your point.
This sounds like a person that has dug in. But on the Georgia interview, everybody can go back and forth.
Does he sound old? Does he sound with it? It's all subjective. He still sounds like Biden.
He still sounds somewhat diminished. He didn't sound confused or like he had dementia or whatever, but he didn't sound strong.
So, you know, that's a little bit like figure skating, judging. To me, the frustrating part of that, the Stephanopoulos interview, and he tried to fix this a little bit, I'm learning Joe, but not that well, is that he still doesn't have like a proactive message about why he can beat Trump, why he is the one to beat Trump.
What is the main contrast? It's any time George gave him an opportunity to talk about that stuff, it's all this back looking. Look at what I did, NATO and the economy.
We talked about that a bunch on here. I don't begrudge him mentioning his record.
He should. But there's no message.
What is Joe Biden's message for why he is the person to beat donald trump and he doesn't enunciate it uh you know very clearly or at all really i mean don't didn't that kind of strike you as well just this lack of of the vision thing as they say yeah i mean very much no no forward- message at all, really, either in the interview or at all. It's a little overstated.
Not much of a forward-looking message and very little of one in that letter he released this morning. And as you say, it's an assertion.
He beat Trump in 2020, that he says, and that is correct. But otherwise, there's no argument.
You're supposed to take him on his word because he's the president and he beat Trump in 2020 and he won the democratic primaries against Dean Phillips. And, you know, that's it.
I mean, that really is what he sort of, what he said on Stephanopoulos, really what he says explicitly in the letter, which obviously is something they all worked on. So that can be taken as a more, you know, not, not a good night or a bad night, just an actual statement of what he believes.
And I don't know, I thought it was so important to be Donald Trump that we had to rethink things and put things aside, so to speak, and put self-interest aside, and really be serious about what's good for the country. Yeah.
So here's the Biden defense explicitly in the letter you referenced. And there's a good column this morning by Jonathan Martin, who we had on the day after the debate to kind of discuss what his path forward based on his reporting.
It's interesting on this podcast today, after I asked him, like, who do you think would be a Democrat that might speak out and call him to resign? And Jonathan pulls Susan Wild out of his ass, a congresswoman from Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. And there she was last night, Susan Wild, one of the nine democratic congresswomen who has called them to resign so some reliable reporting from jmart he says that the biden survival plan is decry elite critics and appeal to the base particularly black voters particularly union leaders in the letter there is a bit of that that puts a finer point on it here is biden's letter to democratic members of congress let's see the.
The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They've chosen me to be the nominee.
Do we now just say this process doesn't matter, that the voters don't have a say? I decline to do that. I feel a deep obligation to the faith and trust the voters of the Democratic Party have placed in me to run this year.
It was their decision to make, not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not Bill Kristol, not any select group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned. They didn't actually mention Bill Kristol.
And the voters alone decide the Democratic nominee. How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that.
I will not do that. I wonder what you think about that message.
I mean, he did win the primaries over Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, and others should have challenged him in my view, but they didn't. And anyway, it's hard to beat an incumbent president.
It doesn't mean you can't step aside. I mean, that really is a little, I think it's not relevant to the argument of whether he should step aside.
Congratulations to him for winning the primaries. It is, as you were saying at the beginning, in another way, a very backward looking argument and a sort of fake, let be honest, kind of fake appeal.
Oh, my God, it would be terrible if the person who won the primaries chose not to run. It's his choice.
Is he saying that, well, let me put it this way. What if he really had a terrible medical episode, which I very much hope he does not have? Would he still say this? Is there no circumstance in which it would be right for him to step aside? That's the implication of that letter.
Not the circumstances are not such that I should not step aside because you may think that I looked bad on the other night, but here's the argument for why it was an episode, not a condition, and I've seen a neurologist or whatever, or I don't have to see a neurologist, and here's why I can beat Trump, so I'm not stepping aside. That would be a legitimate argument.
I wouldn't be convinced by it, I don't think personally, but it would be an argument. This is just a kind of blanket assertion.
As I say, he doesn't really want to say that under no circumstances should any president not run for re-election if, God forbid, things were to get worse medically. So I think it's not responsive to the questions.
I mean, the core argument with respect to Joe Biden is he's very, very unlikely now to beat Trump. And real worries about whether he can serve four more years as president.
And those he hasn't addressed at all. Yeah.
He also said in the morning Joe interview, you know, the average voter out there wants Joe Biden. He said to the elected class, the same people he was just referencing in that letter, go ahead and challenge me at the convention if you think that the people are not with me i'm of two minds about this message on the one hand if he's gonna stay in which he seems by all intent all accounts like he looks like he is you know not at all persuaded by the reality on the ground um and that he plans to stay in if he's going to stay in like that's not a horrible thing to do to try to rally the troops right like at scranton joe average joe you know i'm with the people are with me and and the elites are out to get me to try to take back some of that populist mantle the guy on the trans am you know cleaning the trans am in the driveway like the old onion cartoon there's something to be said for that.
On the other hand, though, like, substantively, it's just not true, right? And, like, that is the thing that is frustrating to me, is I think that it's an effective political message that might be effective at silencing Democratic elites, shaming them into silence. But is it true? You know, like, are average Democratic voters really united behind him and and coming to his defense and like the answer is some like some but it's kind of it's split like you know the numbers just show that it's split like there are many rank-and-file democrats that would rather him step aside we've all heard from many of them there's some they're outra outraged at the notion that he might.
And so that is the part to me that is frustrating about it, is that it might be an effective message to silence doubters, but it's not an effective message at actually winning the people over they need to win over, which are the rank and file doubters, not the elite doubters. To say nothing of a few more actual independent voters who he needs to actually defeat Donald Trump.
I mean, no, I agree. We have a lot of polling.
It's about 50-50 among Democrats, whether Biden should stay in. It's way underwater among independents.
Maybe a little more. Maybe a little more.
50-50, but not much. Still extraordinarily low number, given that, as he says, he got 85% of the primaries, and he's the incumbent Democratic president.
You don't normally see only't normally see only half your own party wanting you to get out at this late date. Anyway, this is a tougher question to ask than it was a year ago when you could think, okay, he gets out now.
It's graceful. We have a nice contest.
Now, it is going to be tougher to do it all in a compressed time period. I think it's doable, but whatever.
I can see regular voters saying, oh, awfully daunting. Even so, almost half of them want him to get out.
But then for what about the, he does need to win the election, not just, for now he has to shut up the doubters and mobilize the base against them. I understand that.
But I mean, what's, you know, people on the Republican side who want Trump to win, which is not us, have been worried that he's not reaching out to the Nikki Haley voters. And one of the signs of Trump's narcissism and pettiness is that he says, forget it.
I don't want you, you know, I'm not interested in getting more voters than I had. Is that really what Biden's current attitude is? I guess he thinks he won in 2020.
He can just hold every single voter he had in 2020 with this kind of message, but he is four years older. He is the incumbent.
His job approval is 38, 40%, whatever.

I mean, those are just facts.

Yeah, it's funny.

The self-hating of the elites.

If our democracy wasn't at stake

and you could really kind of step back

and dispassionately look at this,

you could write a wonderful farcical

kind of novel about this,

like about Joe Biden,

lifelong elected official

going on to the preferred morning talk show of the coastal elites to decry the fact that it's only coastal elites that don't like him I mean like the whole thing is it's kind of absurd here's why I think that it's probably effective and why I think that he's digging in in such a way that it certainly looks more likely than not to me that he's going to stay.

Here's an example.

Don Beyer, friend of the pod.

And I do think that Congress people have different obligations than journalists or commentators.

So I do not mean this to be a dig at him.

But he's a congressman from Virginia, a Democrat.

Here he is on a private call.

Biden's clearly very, very fragile.

Fragile physically, although his handshake is very firm. Also, he really has trouble putting two sentences together.
My perfect world is Joe in deciding after talking to Leader Jeffries, Majority Leader Schumer, and others steps aside, lets Kamlo run as the incumbent, which I think makes her even stronger. With that, I'm a team player.
I'll do whatever the team wants. That was done by her in a private call.
In public, his team put out a statement that Buyer supports President Biden. Some of that is I think that these guys are strategically thinking that maybe they can convince him better in private.
But some of that is I think that they are being shamed by this message that regular people want Joe and so they shouldn't speak out or else they'll incur their wrath. Yeah, Don Don Breyer is my congressman, actually, and I rather like him and respect him.
And what he said in private is correct. It's kind of pathetic that they twist his arm or he feels like he's going to get his arm twisted or he'll be rebuked and he has to pretend he didn't say it in public.
I noticed the statement he put out and his press spokesman, who I actually know and is a competent guy, were very careful not to quite deny that he said those words. It was sort of like, this is a misrepresentation of what the congressman meant to, the point the congressman meant to make or something, one of these kind of double talk type things.
And saying, where have we heard this before about how at the end of the day I'm a team player and I'm on the team? I feel like I've heard that over the last seven, eight years from one of our two, excusing an awful lot of very bad decisions and actions and frankly, lack of courage from many, many people in one of our two major political parties. I think you may have written a book on sort of on this team spirit stuff.
Yeah, the echoes are alarming and triggering. Yeah, literally somebody sent me a message the other day and was like, you're just doing the same thing now that you decried in your book by criticizing Joe Biden.
And I'm like, did you read the book? It was a whole section on the corruptibility of putting on a team jersey and just arguing for your team no matter what. Obviously, there are some limits to the parallel.
You know, Joe Biden's weakness as a candidate is different than Donald Trump's manifest corruption and his bigotry, et cetera. But there are also some parallels.
One thing I want to listen to, because, you know, we're 15 minutes in here. People are going to be like, oh, I get that nobody wants to hear just moaning and bemoaning.
But the question is, okay, what do you guys want? How could this thing look better?

I was struck by Kamala Harris in my adopted hometown, New Orleans, this weekend at Essence Fest, which is a black cultural festival on stage, making the case against Donald Trump and making the case for the Biden-Harris ticket. But let's listen to Kamala Harris.
You know, we have said it every four years, but this here one is it. We are looking at an election that will take place in 122 days.
122. Where on one side, you have the former president who is running to become president and again, who has openly talked about his admiration of dictators and his intention to be a dictator on day one.

Who has openly talked about his intention to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies. Who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.

Thank you. enemies, who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.

And then last week, understand, sadly the press has not been covering it as much as

they should in proportion to the seriousness of what just happened, when the United States

Supreme Court essentially told this individual who has been convicted of 34 felonies,

Thank you. United States Supreme Court essentially told this individual who has been convicted of 34 felonies that he will be immune from essentially the activity he has told us he is prepared to engage in if he gets back into the White House.
understand what we all know. In 122 days, we each have the power to decide what kind of country we want to live in.
That's a pretty good message. That's a million times better than anything Joe Biden has said.
I could nitpick it a little bit. There's some things that you could do to sharpen that, but it was a minute and a half of a very coherent case against Donald Trump, about the threats to Donald Trump, about what unites us as Americans, about American values and freedoms that need to be defended.
That's pretty good. If we're going to have a Biden-Harris ticket, we could use more Kamala out there doing that.
But with Kamala at the top of the ticket, I don't know. I think that's much more compelling than anything we've heard from Joe Biden at the debate or since.
If the task is, which it is in large part, to make the case against Donald Trump, many Democrats can do that, including Vice President Harris. And I agree that that's a good clip.
And I think she's a prosecutor, was a prosecutor. And I have no reason to think she couldn't make that case consistently better than Joe Biden.
I also think, honestly, a bunch of governors can make that case and probably are making that case if we went and got their clips against Donald Trump as well. So the idea that Biden is uniquely qualified to make the anti-Trump case is just on its face kind of ridiculous.
They all can make the same case. It is not a mystery what the case is.
We all have the same clips of January. They'll all be the same ads about January 6th, et cetera, et cetera.
In terms of defending the administration, I think Vice President Harris is better at that than Joe Biden. One reason I'm queasy about her as the best nominee is she does have to defend the administration a little more than the governor, who would be more of a fresh start, let's say, might.
But you know what? That's why someone, I think at least it would be good to have a competition, which if she emerged from it, a mini primary, whatever, you know, she'd be stronger than merely being anointed by Biden. But I think that's even that secondary.
If they all want to anoint her, they'll anoint her. And I mean, people like me won't stop them, I suppose.
But the competition's healthier. It's actually more democratic to use what Biden was appealing to and let the delegates

choose.

But again, you're right.

I mean, I do think that it really, in a funny way, undercuts the it's only me message from

Biden, which again, though, brings home how really, I think, irresponsible he's being.

It can't only be him who can make this message.

And 2020 is a little different.

Trump was the incumbent.

We all worked, you know, did some work for Biden or for a moderate Democratic nominee instead of Sanders and Warren. I think we're very different situation four years later for many reasons, including that it's four years later.
He's the incumbent president with a low job approval. There are all these Democratic governors who were not governors or in their very first year or two in 2020, et cetera, et cetera.
But still, I mean, whichever way one cuts that, there was a case for Biden in 2020. It's a much, much weaker case today and a stronger case for other candidates.
And essentially, on Harris, her approval is almost identical to Biden. She's running in the polls slightly better than Biden, it looks like.
And I do think that there's a fair amount of upside for Vice President Harris. I work for Vice President.

It's a tough job.

And I think you might fail when you're put in the spotlight, but you also have a chance

to reintroduce yourself in a way to the American people.

I really don't.

I think Sarah disagrees with this, and she does a zillion focus groups.

And I don't listen to focus groups.

So I could be wrong about this.

I will stipulate.

But I don't know how deeply baked in the views about Kamala Harris are.

I suspect it's based on fragmentary evidence and that if she actually were the candidate, you know, she could reintroduce herself. I think she would, again, be much stronger if she were to win a competition or whoever would emerge from an actual competition among the Biden replacements.
Yeah. I think that you'd agree with the narrow point that you're making that it's kind of a shallow dislike of Kamala Harris.
I think she's worried kind of about the broad and shallow concerns that people have about Kamala. We did a, if you want to suffer through focus groups, post-debate, Sarah and I did a podcast about four of them, which we listened to and over on the focus group feed.
And I thought it was interesting. There were some concerns about Kamala for sure sure some of them are felt there were a few people that had pretty strong anti harris views most of them it was more just like i don't see her i don't know enough about her and i can't i just think that this list going back to that clip the prosecutor versus the criminal it's a pretty clear frame that that emerges you know um a pretty clear message that emerges.
It's a short campaign then at this point, I think that there would be a huge media bump for her, you know, and, and kind of a halo effect that you would get not on Fox, but in a lot of the other areas of the media, there'd be some excitement, a breath of fresh air. It is worth noting Bobby Scott in the Congressional Black Caucus, in the Jonathan Martin article referenced earlier, said essentially, like, no, you're not getting past Harris.
Like, if it is not Biden, like, it is going to be Harris. We're going to unite around her.
And he goes, I said, well, for three and a half years, her black job as vice president of the United States has been to be ready. A shot at Donald Trump's weird comment about black jobs during the debate.
So anyway, I don't know. We will see if we get to a place where the president looks on shake your ground.
Maybe on next week's Monday pod, we can talk through the various options, Wade DeHarris. To me, it's just like the main point I'm trying to get at is you can see from her, from that clip, what a aggressive, proactive campaign looks like.
And if campaigns actually mean anything, then it would be better to have somebody that can enunciate a strong contrast, in my point of view. Right.
And campaigns better mean something or else Trump's going to win because he's ahead. So, right.
I mean, think about it for a second. Other people have made this point, obviously.
Democrats need, what's the term I'm looking for? Motion, variance, you know, they need a dynamic situation going forward. If we are frozen in time, Democrats lose and Trump wins.
So not much question about that. So we need to unfreeze the situation.
The easiest way to do it, obviously, is a new candidate. It's got upside.
It's got some downside as well. But it's only just one last point.
And this, again, is not an anti-Harris point. It's not like Democrats haven't beat Trumpy candidates in swing states in very recent times, like 2022, which is kind of a bad year for Democrats.
I mean, I was less pessimistic than most. I guess I was right about that.
But it wasn't great. The Republicans still won the national vote by two points, Democrats.
And Gretchen Weber won Michigan by 10 and Shapiro won Pennsylvania by 15. Admittedly not against Trump, against inferior versions of Trump.
Mark Kelly won in Arizona for the Senate. But I mean, it's not like there's no evidence that any Democrat knows how to prosecute an argument against trumpism or trumpy like candidates

you know so i actually think there are plenty of them yeah here's my best case for mine i was talking with my husband about this over the weekend it's like well katie hobbs also didn't have a message and was not a very compelling speaker i know presidential races are different in governor's races but like the best available current case is that trump can be disqualified in the way that kerry lake was disqualified with enough people that you really can beat them with just anybody now that's not a case for not removing by it and trying to find a better person but that that's maybe the case for why staying the course could eventually work. Again, I go back to the problem with that being, all right, then in that case, at least we could use some compelling messaging to disqualify Trump.
And we're not getting that. I'm getting from people messages like, why aren't you focused more on this and that and the other thing? And I'm like, this is what we've been focused on for eight years here.
Biden needs to do that too. Like, let's do that.
Like the Morning Joe thing was good in some ways where he starts talking about offensive messaging, but yeah, let's do it. Like let's, where was Biden's compelling message against Project 2025, you know, against, you know, the, the, all the various threats that, that Donald Trump offers on, on tariffs on, you know, camps on, you camps.
We can go down the list. That is then the missing element to it.
And Katie Hobbs, you covered that race. I just saw from a farm.
It was a generic non-incumbent Democrat who didn't offend anyone and barely beat Carrie Lake. Running way behind Mark Kelly...
Yeah, ran way behind Mark Kelly, and that's a good... Yeah, as Biden is running behind these Democratic senators and set of candidates even, not just the incumbents.
And again, Biden, fairly or unfairly, has baggage from being an incumbent for four years and is 81 years old and didn't look great on top of things at the debate. So I think there's a lot more...
I mean, honestly, I don't think Trump is unbeatable. I think a generic Democrat, competent, generic next generation, which can be up to 60 years old, 65, as far as I'm concerned, Democrat can beat Trump, probably does beat Trump, actually.
That's why Biden is a burden on that. I mean, it's just evident from all the data.
Biden is running below, what do they say? What is it in sports? The replacement value? The Mendoza line? Oh, yeah. Wins above replacement? Yes.
He is at a win below replacement candidate. Yeah.
Yeah. A replacement value player would improve upon it.
I think it's hard to argue with that at this point. I want to listen to the contrary view.
As I mentioned in the intro, we've brought the Michael Steele podcast into the Bulwark family, which is awesome. We love Michael Steele.
I hope to have another countervailing view tomorrow on the podcast. But just for Bill Kristol's edification, let's listen to Michael Steele and Rick Wilson talking over the weekend on the new edition to the Bulwark podcast family.
The pro-democracy Republicans who have been very clear in stating, all right, Democrats, stop pissing in your own soup, get your act together, get your head out of your ass and understand the moment you're now confronting. That's right.
You've now come to realize the dirty secret's out. Everybody knows Joe Biden is old now.
All right. So help us help you fix this and move this thing forward.
Yep. And it's been frustrating listening to Democrat after Democrat whine.
Oh, he's got to get out. Well, get out of the race and replace him with who at this stage? Who are you going to do it with? Nobody know, you tell me nobody with Kamala, where are you going to go? I talked with a very senior Democrat the other day who said to me, okay, play this out with me.
Here's what happens. Joe Biden says, I'm out.
Then we scramble around for a month and a half until the convention. On the first night of the convention, and this person said to me, all the lunatics come out.
And they're like, we're going to put Jamal Bowman or Bernie Sanders or whoever on the ticket. of the convention and this person said to me all the lunatics come out and they're like we're gonna put jamal bowman or bernie sanders or whoever on the ticket all the crazies roll their crazy out in front of america the second night it's an even worse cat fight the third night it comes down to gavin and and kamala and gavin wins and every african american member walks out of the goddamn auditorium and the election goes into the fucking gutter.
And this is a person who you would not think is a moderate Democrat. This is a fairly liberal Democrat who's like, our own people are fucking us.
Okay. Now they were directing mostly their messaging to the Donvires of the world, to the Democrats and saying, guys, like we are what we are.
There is another option. Circle the wagons.
Let's man the battleships. Let's go into fight.
There's an argument for that. Is there an argument for that? What do you think? I mean, there's an argument, of course.
And I know people who, in a kind of different way, I'd say, make the argument for the risks of Biden stepping aside are not nothing. And maybe he doesn't have another bad night, as he puts it, from the debate.
And incumbency maybe is a plus, not a minus. I'm doubtful about that, but it's possible.
Of course, it could be. And maybe he's pretty good at getting better at getting under Trump's skin than he was in that first debate that we've now seen, one of the two debates between the two of them.
So maybe there are reasons to have better hopes for Biden. You need to explain them.
You need to articulate them. It can't just be we shouldn't be criticizing each other or something because it's going to matter.
At the end of the day, none of what we say here, if Biden stays in, Biden will perhaps prove me wrong. I'd be very pleased if he does, if he stays in.
But a much better judgment, I think, to step aside. Richie Torres was on the pod a couple weeks ago, who we both like a lot, made a different version of this case.
Regardless of where one stands on the question of Biden's political future, the inter-party mixed messaging strikes me as deeply self-destructive. Those publicly calling on Biden to withdraw should ask themselves a simple question.
What if the president becomes democratic nominee? The drip, drip, drip of public statements of no confidence only served to weaken a president who has been weakened, not only by the debate, but also by the debate about the debate. I totally disagree with that.
I'll just say, I mean, I was there in 08 when all the Fox people, including Karlo, as the Obama-Clinton slugfest went on, and it went on forever, right? It went to the last primary, and Clinton won a lot of the later ones in big states. And finally, she conceded a little bit after the last primary.
And every week, there'd be a primary. Clinton would win, or Clinton would get 48% of the vote against Obama.
And people would say, oh, this, this. And they'd have a poll that showed 40% of the Clinton voters wouldn't vote for Obama or vice versa.
And it was like, this is going to be great for the Republicans.

Ooh, are they hurting themselves? Oh, those are actual presidential candidates slugging it out. Me and you saying maybe he should withdraw a few congressmen, saying it, politely saying it, saying it with tribute to the fact that he's been a good president.
We're not hurting Joe Biden. I just I literally don't believe there's a single voter out there who cares, you know, who's thinking now, you know what?

I hadn't occurred to me before that debate wasn't good. But now that people are talking about it 10 days later, I'm more worried.
I mean, I suppose there are a couple of voters. I can't prove this, but I think it's, I like Richie Torres, but I don't think that's a very serious argument.
So three points there. The 2008 anecdote, I just want to put a finer point on, such a great comparison.
Right? Like, such a great comparison. This notion that Obama was hurt by that primary being extended as long as it was.
Many people were telling Clinton she should step aside, right? Because he's going to win. And then she's like, makes this comeback later.
But Obama's losing these primaries at that point a lot of potential weaknesses again you know from now looking back on it's like well come on obama was always going to beat mccain but you think about it from the time and it's like the guy's middle name is hussein he had only been in the senate for two years right like this whole note i like it was it seemed silly kind of that obama could win in a landslide. Or we can elect our first black president.

And so it made a lot of sense in the pundit class for people to be like, oh, this is going to help Republicans for this fight to continue in public. And that fight did continue in public into June.
I guess we're in July now, but into June. So there's no evidence that that hurt Obama, number one.
Uh, number two, again, the people that we are worried about here, the people that are

the biggest threat to not vote for Joe Biden are soft Democrats who don't pay that close of attention. What are they getting? What information are they getting? Their news consumption is mediated through random influencers.
The Crooked Guys over on The Wilderness, Jon Favreau, had a great podcast with Kristen Soltis-Anderson and John Del Volpe talking about young voters and why Biden is soft with young voters. And Kristen makes this point about how a lot of these young voters aren't paying attention to news and they're getting this, it's kind of trickling down to them through memes and through like the sports influencer that they mentioned just makes a passing comment about Joe Biden being old and unable to talk, right? And like, they're not getting their information from daytime MSNBC arguments or from niche political podcasts or political obsessives, right? They're getting them from the actual clips of Joe Biden.
And like, that is the thing that is frustrating to me. It's like, oh, people are like, oh, we're going to, if we talk this out, that's going to hurt Biden.
The damage is already done. Okay.
If you can make the arguments to me that despite the damage being already done, Joe Biden can still win because of X, Y, and Z. Donald Trump is terrible.
We're going to make this contrast. He's going to turn it around.
Awesome. But this notion that like, oh, he's being harmed more by the chattering class is silly the actual clips of joe biden talking are going to be the things that are in the ads in the fall not you know some aside by some pundit that the that that the normal voters that are going to decide this election haven't heard of i mean just two points you made this last point just in passing i just want to on that, that people talk, yeah, we can get past the debate.
Really? You know, there's this thing called like paid media and there, you know, there's another campaign that's going to take those clips from that debate. We're not getting past that debate.
Maybe if there's a second debate, he corrects the impression of the first debate. Maybe if he's out there on the stump, he corrects it a little bit, but that is a fact.
It is not a fact that can be overcome or wished away, I would say. And secondly, just to bring up a campaign, I don't like to remember too well the 2016 Republican campaign.
Trump was attacked by Republicans who called on him to withdraw as late as what was the day of the Billy Bush tape? October 7th, I think. He won.
He still won. The idea that, you know the billy bush uh the tape to october 7th i think you know he's like like he won he still won the idea that you know and i don't know what lesson exactly but he should you know but it's only people it's like paul ryan didn't go campaign with him yeah he was like the speaker his own speaker of the house wasn't campaigning with him one more lesson from this.

You began the newsletter Morning Chats today with some positive news.

So let's talk about it.

It's all overseas.

But there's one of the pieces of overseas news I think is in particular relevant to what is happening here.

And that was the French elections.

For folks that didn't pay that close attention to it, it was the second round of French elections.

There was concern about the Marine Le Pen, that party, that Marine Le Pen's party, would win a majority. As it turned out, kind of an alliance between the center party, Macron's party, and the left party, which has some problems of its own, I should say, protected, you know, ended up preventing, rather.
The Le Pen far-right party from taking the majority, they ended up in third place. Here is Bill Kristol.
Here's you talking about those French politicians from center and left parties got it together in a few days to form a common front and defeat Le Pen. But we're told Democrats couldn't possibly organize the sort of mini primary in a few weeks to produce a reasonable candidate against Trump.
Tommy Vitor over Pod Save the World. People realize Macron's coalition lost 100 seats, right? He called election early, lost 100 seats.
But the far left and the center wisely came together to encourage candidates to strategically drop out of races to defeat the far right. There are some limits to this parallel, of course, but maybe worth chewing over a little bit.
Yeah. I mean, individual candidates in these

districts had to pull out and say, don't vote for me, vote for the second place candidate,

even if he's way to the left of me or way to the center of me for the lefties. And they did pull

out and they did it in a pretty impressive, pretty universal way almost without anyone having a whip,

so a party whip, right? They were urged to do so by the leaders of their parties, but it wasn't, you know, they did the right thing mostly for the right reasons, as far as one can tell. And the voters saw it happening.
And I think we're impressed by it because in fact, the actual vote for Le Pen's party is sort of less than one might've expected that it might be in the second round. So it's sort of like, okay, you know what, they're coming together.
Maybe there's something to be worried about. That's why, again, having a big unity message and ticket would be helpful, not sort of desperately hanging on to the same company.
I will say, I originally had this and I cut it out because it was too long from the newsletter. It wasn't a bad week for liberal democracy around the world.
Labour won a massive victory in Britain on Thursday with a new, very centrist Labour candidate who's now the prime minister, having dumped their radical, truly radical and terrible, you know, lefty candidate from last time, Jeremy Corbyn. Yes.
So going to the center turned out to work politically, and they now have a responsible centrist, pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, et cetera, not too left-wing on economics government, much better than the conservative government that it's replacing. And Iran, and I don't want to put too much weight on this, because those elections are a little

different, of course. The reformist presidential candidate defeated the hardliner.
And one doesn't

know how much to make of that, but it probably means something that all is not totally well

for the theocratic rulers of Iran. So it's not as if the good news is authoritarianism,

extremism, authoritarianism, that isn't so popular in many countries when there's kind of a united democratic front against it. And I do think you want to make sure that democratic front, how should I put it, isn't carrying any burdens or any baggage that it doesn't have to.
And that doesn't mean that every single decision you make should be purely tactical and you throw this person overboard because he has one unpopular position or something like that. But I think in this case, there's such an accumulation of evidence to get back to the U.S.
that it's hard to make the case that maybe Biden can hang in there and you get the French type result. Everyone comes together at the end.
Feels like it's easier with a fresh candidate. But anyway, these people did step aside, which aside which is impressive in France yeah I think that you know probably the center of the post-Trump Christolian worldview is that like that decisions matter like history is contingent right like we're not on some inexorable path that cannot be stopped right it's something I've heard you say many times and I think that there is this tendency to want to you know paint with this broad

broad stopped right um it's something i've heard you say many times and and i think that there is this tendency to want to you know paint with this broad brunch that there that there are these global trends that are unpenetrable right and and it is true that there was that there has been a global trend towards you know right-wing nationalist authoritarianism that is very alarming and scary they've've had some successes. They've had some setbacks, right? So people that are arguing for it, you know, argue that it is inevitable, right? That the globalists have been rejected and that their time is coming.
The people that the anti-authoritarians after a weekend like this argue that, ah, let's see, you can see these far-right nationalists are not that popular and you can just look at what happened in england and france and and you can see that america will will reject them just like brazil did and just like england and france has and and like the reality is it's kind of like no i in a lot of these cases it could have gone either way right in a lot of these cases things could have you know fallen on one side of the other based on decisions that leaders made that parties made and those of us that that want to fight these dangerous forces should think about that and do our best to encourage responsible decisions i mean like that that's to me that the takeaway from all this i don't know do you think that that's too pessim No, I think it's very well said, and I totally agree with it. Okay.
Any other final thoughts from us? I guess one other thing that Sarah mentioned this weekend that I do think it's worth talking about that I kind of alluded to earlier. I think President Biden has been pretty poor himself at injecting Project 2025 into the debate.
But I think that the apparatus around him has really used Trump's ham-handed attempt to distance himself from it and kind of the desperate need to talk about something else besides Biden's debate to effectively inject it into the bloodstream. And I think that there's some evidence that people are becoming more and more aware of Trump's plans.
And I do think that, you know, it's something obviously we've been talking about here for a while. We did a whole episode or two with Amanda Carpenter, who left the bulwark to focus on this over at Protect Democracy.
But is there a, you know, potential nub of a strategy for digging out here in highlighting this kind of really unpopular, dangerous agenda that Trump stumbled into, which he didn't really need to, you know, given, I think, the much more astute strategy of not having a platform that they had in the past. I don't know.
Do you have any final little glimmer of optimism around the increased attention on Project 2025? Yeah. I mean, he stumbled into it in a way, but of course, the reason it resonates is that it is what he wants to do.
He is an authoritarian. His second term, he has said out loud in his way, retribution, this, lock this person up, persecute, prosecute Liz Cheney.
I'm going to retweet, you know, she's a traitor. So he doesn't say it the way the Heritage Foundation people do in hundreds of pages of how they're going to change all the civil service rules.
But it does amount to a very radical and extreme authoritarian agenda. And I think, again, this is where focusing on Trump, what he would do in the second term is important, which Kamala Harris did, I believe, in that clip, and which candidates need to do much more of.
And I don't think it's crazy to say, not to beat a dead horse here, but that, you know, it makes a difference, therefore, how well the Democratic candidate can explain how dangerous Trump would be in a second term. All right.
Tomorrow, we'll maybe have a dissenting view. We're working on that.
But, you know That's good. We should debate it.
Yeah, it's good. We should be ashing this out.
I guess here's my final thought before we go. Because I feel quite strongly about the weak position that we're in and how it would benefit from having something shake things up.
And obviously, a new candidate is the easiest way to do that. There is a sense that we are wagging our finger at people and saying, he must do this.
There is no better option. He will lose if not.
Well, that is not really the view. I think that the view that I have that I think that you share and that many of us at the

blog share is we are in a very rocky situation. And staying the course provides some very obvious known risks that we can see, not the least of which the video clips of Joe Biden that are already out there.
In addition to that, the ones that we don't know are coming based on his potential performance in the future.

The other offers risks, right?

And, you know, it's... In addition to that, the ones that we don't know are coming based on his potential performance in the future.

The other offers risks, right?

And it's a question and it is worth discussing

the right way to mitigate the risks.

The right way to do this is to talk about it,

not to silence people.

And I think that's the one thing

I feel the most strongly about.

I know we agree on.

So thank you, Bill Kristol.

You'll be back here next Monday.

We'll do it all over again. Everybody else, we'll see chagrin.

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