Americana

1. Biden’s debate disaster
2. Republicans weigh the alternative
3. Bowman goes down
4. Trump’s endorsement fumble
5. The year that broke America

Also: South Carolina’s anti-abortion sweep, and recommended vintage reading.

Welcome back to Americana — newly renovated, for the rest of the presidential campaign. We’ve moved some pieces around to get you more quickly to the point. Same coverage from across the country, just a little faster. And this morning, it’s about the debate in Atlanta, where I’m currently sitting on an airport runway as Democrats sift through the wreckage.

What was the low point? Some Republicans in Atlanta chose “we finally beat Medicare,” when President Biden mangled a simple point about COVID, hinting at the horrors to come. Some Democrats thought it was Trump’s acidic comeback — “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows either” — when Biden got lost in a point about border security. A reporter sitting behind me, who’d been working silently all night, moaned “Jesus Christ” when Biden and Trump both rambled about golf handicaps while discussing their health. That must have been his low point.

My nominee was the moment when Biden did exactly what candidates are drilled in not to do, changing the topic from a strength to a weakness. CNN’s Dana Bash asked Biden to follow a ragged Trump statement about abortion, the alley oop Democrats have waited two years for their president to dunk. Biden denounced Trump’s “terrible” role in ending Roe, then somehow wandered into an anecdote about a woman “murdered by an immigrant coming in,” a subject Trump has been eagerly turning to for months.

The moderators had not brought up immigration yet.

Panic over what happened here is still burning through the party, and sympathetic commentators — Harold Myerson, Nick Kristof, Tim Miller, Thomas Friedman, Matthew Yglesias (frankly it’s hard to keep up) — are trying to write an LBJ moment into existence. “The DNC delegates should do their job and pick the best nominee who can defeat Donald Trump in November,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang told me. The Biden campaign has been fighting back with data, saying that its private research showed Trump having a bad night, too. CNN’s own swing state focus group, which split down the middle on a winner, has helped them argue that Trump is largely discredited to voters, too. In this telling, Biden has joined Obama, Bush II, and Reagan in the fraternity of presidents who whiffed debate one but could come back.

But Biden has trailed down-ballot Democrats all year, and a very basic reason is that they can articulate the party’s popular agenda items and pivot away from the unpopular ones. On Thursday, he couldn’t. After the debate, he told reporters at a Waffle House that Trump had misled people onstage, and would pay for it: “The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times.” Trump had lied, even about small things (like claiming that Biden coined the term “superpredators”), but the president hadn’t seized on this in real time, or delivered the party’s most basic rebuttals.

It is a little like the Obama washout in Denver, which Democrats like to think about because their nominee bounced back (ironically, with help from a strong Biden debate). The difference: They all knew he could. Obama was 51, and able to bring the campaign back to his turf, portraying Mitt Romney as a vulture capitalist who’d cut rich peoples’ taxes. They’ve wanted all year to put the focus back on Trump, who’s unpopular, and the GOP positions that alienate gettable voters. They lost their first big chance to do it, and worry that with Biden, they’ll never get one.

Atlanta Burning

The panic described above began virtually as soon as Democrats heard Biden’s raspy voice. Shelby Talcott and I, along with the rest of the Semafor team, were soon fielding blind quotes that were unthinkable even hours earlier. Text threads lit up across Washington gauging the damage.

“It’s awful,” one veteran of two major Democratic campaigns said.

“It’s bad,” one Democrat close to the administration said.

“My non-political friends who just began tracking the election are concerned about Biden after watching this,” one senior Democratic aide said.

“If it gets Biden not to run, then it was very good,” one former Obama campaign aide darkly texted. “Otherwise it’s bad.”

Replacement Theory

Republicans and other Biden foes had speculated for years about the president being swapped out at the convention. On Thursday night, as that conversation broke the fourth wall and onto CNN’s live sets, they cautioned that this couldn’t happen, and couldn’t be allowed to.

“I figure every time Kamala Harris shakes Joe Biden’s hand, he’s gonna be checking his pulse, from now till the convention,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.

“Kamala Harris might be the only other politician in America who’s close to being as unpopular as Joe Biden,” said Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt. “I don’t think that really helps them. But I don’t think they can do that now. I think that Joe Biden is their nominee and he’s not going anywhere.”

Democrats planned to hold a virtual vote to nominate Biden shortly before the Democratic National Convention, as a way to get around Ohio’s ultra-early Aug. 7 ballot deadline. Secretary of State Frank LaRose mocked the party’s quandary on X: “How’s that virtual nominating convention coming along?” he asked. “Any second thoughts?” The Uncommitted campaign, which had been critical of the virtual vote and wanted its Gaza ceasefire delegates to get the loudest voice possible, posted that it was ready to serve: “We have 35 Uncommitted delegates in case anyone wants to contest the convention to save lives and our democracy.”

Third party candidates, who’d been building their campaigns around a contest between the two oldest nominees in major party history, were also thinking about a Democratic leadership crisis not seen since the Vietnam War.

“He may have convinced some people to not vote for Donald Trump, but I don’t think he convinced anyone new to vote for Joe Biden,” said Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee. “And I think he might have lost some Democrats who are now maybe thinking about replacing him.”

Bowman Down

Progressives were already bracing for New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman to lose on Tuesday. The scale of that loss, a 17-point landslide for Westchester County Executive George Latimer, fed days of recrimination and anger, mostly directed at AIPAC — a group that Bowman accused of working to “brainwash” his district, spending nearly $15 million against him. “It is an outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded super PACs to buy elections,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a statement; New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that the party needed to have “a real conversation about AIPAC,” and how “a largely Republican-financed organization” was making it “much harder for us to coalition-build.” On Wednesday, 14 progressive groups sent a letter to House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urging him to reject the pro-Israel group’s “endorsement and donations” after its “destructive actions in your own backyard.” Jeffries responded at his weekly press conference: “I think that pro-Israel groups are going to support pro-Israel members of Congress.”

Bowman was the first member of the “Squad,” non-white progressives recruited by the group Justice Democrats, to lose a re-nomination fight. Sanders attributed that to Bowman doing “poorly in the suburbs of Westchester [County],” where he’d always been weakest; he beat Rep. Eliot Engel in the 2020 version of the district’s split between the suburbs and the Bronx, but two waves of redistricting gave most of the Bronx to other Democrats. Bowman won just 52% of Westchester County votes in the 2022 primary, a clue to AIPAC and other opponents that he was beatable. On Tuesday, his vote collapsed to 37%, and Latimer crushed him in majority-Jewish neighborhoods where there were overlapping efforts to turn out pro-Israel votes.

Hot off the debate stage, and into the podcast studio, Ben, Nayeema, and Max dig into who gets to decide who “won” the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Joining them, statistician Nate Silver, founder and former editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, discusses election predictions and why people are so skeptical of polls these days. On Wednesday, Silver released his Silver Bulletin Election Model showing Trump with a 66% chance of heading back to the White House. Plus, Nayeema calls out Americans’ blindspots by taking us on a quick tour of elections around the world.

Catch up with the latest episode of Mixed Signals.

When Trump Fails

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert won her gamble on a new congressional district on Tuesday, helped by an endorsement from Donald Trump. But the GOP nominee’s picks faltered in three other, high-profile races. In South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, Pastor Mark Burns lost a House runoff to veteran Sheri Biggs by just 2 points; she had the support of Gov. Henry McMaster, and closed out the race by attacking Burns’s 2008/2012 votes for Barack Obama, before his MAGA conversion. In Colorado’s 5th District, Trump-backed state GOP chair Dave Williams lost to conservative activist Jeff Crank in a landslide. Both Biggs and Crank benefitted from PACs (America Leads Action, the super PAC funded by allies of Kevin McCarthy to keep MAGA candidates out of the House, played in both races.) Trump’s endorsees struggled in Utah, too, where Rep. John Curtis won the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney. Trent Staggs, a conservative mayor in the Salt Lake City suburbs, built his campaign around Trump’s support. He lost by 18 points, and Gov. Spencer Cox won by 12, over a challenger who Trump pardoned for his role in a public lands protest — and who endorsed Trump, after Cox warned that the party shouldn’t nominate him again. On Truth Social, Trump skipped commentary on the endorsees who lost, and celebrated Republicans who supported in primaries that often drew no challengers.

Q&A

America couldn’t go on like this. At the end of 1991, their faith in the federal government had collapsed; the president told them that the recession would be over soon, and they didn’t believe it. A nationwide movement drafted Ross Perot into the presidential race, and for a while, he led it. John Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, and some law-abiding people wanted him sprung.

“When the Clock Broke,” the New York Times-bestselling history by John Ganz, pinpoints 1992 as the breakthrough year for right-wing reaction — politics that the Republican Party first resisted, then absorbed. He talked about his findings and theories with Americana, and this is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Americana: Why was 1992 the year that the clock broke?

John Ganz: Basically, at the end of the 1980s, you had a hangover from the bust of the Reagan boom. The effects of that were not so great for the working class and the middle class in America. This created a lot of discontent about the American political system. And that didn’t express itself as a pendulum swing back to the left. What happened was an explosion of right-wing populist anger at the system.

That was embodied in David Duke, running for governor of Louisiana, then by Pat Buchanan, running in the Republican presidential primary against George H.W. Bush, then by Ross Perot. He tried to portray himself as neither right nor left, but I think any honest assessment of his policies and his style would identify him as a right-wing or reactionary figure. When I started looking into this time period, it was so suggestive of Trump and our own period that I kept going.

State of Play

One year after they filibustered a strict state abortion ban, all three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate lost their primaries. Two “sister senators” were ousted on June 11 by candidates who ran against their role in that debate; the third, Lexington Sen. Katrina Shealy, lost to challenger Carlisle Kennedy by 24 points, after he ran ads attacking her vote “against saving unborn babies.” Like the other victorious primary challengers, Kennedy lambasted the senators for accepting the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award after the filibuster.

“The recent Republicans who have gotten that award are Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney,” Kennedy told the Lexington City Chronicle. “That’s the company she chooses to be in. She went up to Boston to party and celebrate that.” The failed abortion ban vote left the state’s six-week ban in place, and on June 11, GOP Rep. William Timmons narrowly defeated a challenger by attacking his support for the total ban, appealing to some Democrats and independents in the open primary. Those voters couldn’t rescue the state senators. “The abortion industry has the money, but the pro-life movement has the people,” said Holly Gatling, the executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life, after Shealy conceded. “We will take the people over the money any time.”

Ads

• Biden for President, “Fighting for You.” Before Thursday’s debate, both major presidential campaigns put out 30-second spots to reboot their basic messages. “He capped the cost of insulin, lowered health care costs and made big corporations pay their fair share,” says the new spot’s narrator, a Goofus-and-Gallant contrast with Trump, who’s “focused on revenge and he has no plan to help the middle class.
• Donald J. Trump for President 2024, “Promises.” Trump’s campaign actually rolled out two spots – a buzzy one implying that Biden can’t survive a second term, and this one, pressing the GOP’s “Trumpnesia” advantage with a rundown of what’s gotten worse since 2020. “Are you and your family safer since he became president?” it asks, with the footage of a scuffle between police and illegal migrants in New York that Republicans made famous during this year’s special House election on Long Island.
• Rick Scott for Florida, “Grandpa.” Democrats keep contradicting themselves in public about whether Florida’s in play this year, at any level. Rick Scott’s wealth helped him win three previous, narrow races; the state has shifted significantly toward the GOP since then. He’s still taking precautions, like this spot about how “IVF must be protected for every family,” like his: One of Scott’s daughters is undergoing fertility treatment right now.

Polls

• Before either man walked onstage Thursday, their partisans were worried about them. For most of Biden’s doubters, it wasn’t personal, and it wasn’t related to any decision he’d made in office. Half of 2020 Biden voters wanted a different nominee, a panic about the president’s age, which wasn’t enough to pull well-known Democrats into the primary. Black Democrats were the most satisfied; white Democrats were the least satisfied. The panic didn’t dissipate after the primary was over. There really has never been a campaign like this, with one candidate’s base deeply worried that he wasn’t the right guy, gritting teeth and trying to get past it.

• Eleven days ago, the surgeon general called for a warning on social media platforms, stating that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” Ten days earlier, New York moved to create a ban on “addictive” media for teens. Both got skeptical reactions from reporters who cover social media, and both are popular out of the gate. White men, who are least likely to support President Biden, favor the warning label by a 40-point margin. Previous Democratic campaigns have seized on non-ideological regulatory ideas to reach new voters, and the Biden administration may have found one.

Scooped!

The best story Dave wishes he wrote this week:

Katy Waldman’s analysis of how Trump and Biden mangle their words used the available texts (transcripts of recent interviews, the last set of debate) to predict the future. Both men suffer from “tip of the tongue phenomenon,” which you could see on Thursday; “Biden has a much harder job than Trump does.” This was true.

Next

• 17 days until the Republican National Convention
• 32 days until primaries in Arizona
• 39 days until primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington
• 52 days until the Democratic National Convention
• 130 days until the 2024 presidential election

Paul Fussell’s “Wartime” was first published 35 years ago, when most World War II veterans — like him — were still alive. But it is far-sighted about how memory can fade, or be blurred out by nostalgia and pop culture sensitivities.

• Raphael Warnock says Trump’s bet on Black voters is a bust.
• Why the Trump-Biden matchup was the debate Democrats feared.
• Trump said he supports abortion pill access.