Americana

1. Trump’s revenge
2. GOP platform ‘streamlined’
3. Democratic panic
4. She’s not running
5. I release you

Also: Biden’s surprise cameo in a squad member’s campaign.

Remember when “the dam” was breaking? That was what reporters were waiting for on Monday, when congressional Democrats, after sharing their (mostly private) concerns about President Joe Biden’s electability returned from the holiday recess and faced a wall of cameras and microphones. Whip-counters were ready to track which vulnerable governors, senators, and members of the House would call on Biden to leave the ticket. As of Tuesday afternoon, that number was stuck at seven: Most Democrats were either urging Biden to prove that he could win this election, or agreeing with Biden that one historically bad debate had not guaranteed a Trump win. The dam hadn’t broken, but no Democrat thought they were on track to win the election. And that put Republicans in a position none of them had lived through in decades — leading in the polls, against a panicked opposition.

Ready to rule

On Monday afternoon, a few blocks from the White House, conservative legal scholars discussed how to strike back against Donald Trump’s enemies. These subversives, they said, had waged “lawfare” against the Republican nominee, thrown out 2020 election challenges, and blocked scrutiny of a Biden administration that might be gone in six months. What could conservatives do about that, if they won back power?

“We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench,” said John Eastman, a California attorney who was disbarred last year over working with Trump to challenge the 2020 election.

“People who have used this tool against people like John or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop,” said Berkeley Law professor John Yoo.

“I don’t say that we should be the mafia,” said Will Chamberlain, a senior counsel at the Article III Project who’d formerly worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “But as a political party, if we aren’t willing to dish anything out, then we can just expect to keep taking it.”

The MAGA thinkers, policy entrepreneurs, and conservative activists who gathered at the National Conservatism conference were over the moon about Trump’s odds of victory and completely unbothered by Trump’s recent efforts to distance himself from their agenda. They expected to return to power soon, assume influential positions in the administration, and use the federal government to punish their political enemies as harshly as their interpretation of the law would allow.

Shaking the platform

The GOP’s platform committee quickly approved a “streamlined,” 16-page platform that tossed some pre-Trump priorities that the nominee didn’t want to run on. Out: Promises to reform Medicare and Social Security, shrink the national debt, and pass a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. In: Promises to “end left-wing gender insanity,” create a federal task force “on fighting anti-Christian bias,” enact new tariffs on foreign goods, and prevent any changes to Medicare and Social Security. Anti-abortion activists were split — some said they were satisfied with the shrunk-down language, while Family Research Council President Tony Perkins published a minority report that pined for the old pro-life planks. “In no season, under no rationale spurred by the exigencies of a political moment, can or should we abandon the high principles that have created and sustained this party,” he said.

Dems in disarray

House Democrats met on Tuesday to vent about President Biden’s shaky debate performance and sagging poll numbers. They broke without any real momentum to replace him on the ticket, even as some members continued to air concerns about his campaign. “Joe Biden is, will be and should be our nominee,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Semafor’s Kadia Goba and Joseph Zeballos-Roig after a closed-door, no-phones session at the Democratic National Committee. While Biden had held just a few events since the debate, plus two radio and two TV interviews, his letter to Democrats on Monday had stabilized his position — in part, by accusing the donors and activists who wanted to dump him of disrespecting democracy. “The voters — and the voters alone — decide the nominee of the Democratic Party,” he wrote. “How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?” By Tuesday afternoon, House Democratic leaders were criticizing reporters for focusing so much on Biden’s age. “Look at Donald Trump’s transcripts, and then let’s have a conversation about the crazy things Donald Trump says,” California Rep. Ted Lieu said at the weekly leadership press conference. “Why don’t you ever ask about that?”

Not making “Gretch” happen

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the AP that she would not run for president in 2024, knocking down hopes that a “blitz primary” or open convention could nominate a popular Midwest politician over Biden or Harris. “I don’t like seeing my name in articles like that because I’m totally focused on governing and campaigning for the ticket,” Whitmer said in one of the first promotional interviews for “True Gretch,” her new memoir. New, post-debate polling from Emerson College found Whitmer and other Democrats mentioned in the break-glass plans trailing Donald Trump, albeit with lower negative ratings than the president; fewer voters had an opinion about Whitmer or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. But polling for Welcome PAC, which works to elect centrist candidates in swing seats, found that 55% of Democrats were open to the idea of delegates picking a new nominee at the convention.

Sweet release

Nikki Haley released her 97 delegates on Tuesday, freeing them up to support Trump, four months after ending her campaign for the presidency. “Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America,” Haley said in a statement, which “encourage[d]” her delegates to back Trump. “Nikki Haley is doing what’s best for Nikki Haley and her family,” said Robert Schwartz, the founder of Haley Voters for Biden. “Difficult to begrudge her. There are a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle looking out for themselves over the best interest of the country right now. Let’s see who Trump picks as his VP to see if he cares about winning over her voters.” Haley, who spoke in prime time at the last RNC, won’t attend this one.

Ads

• Ilhan for Congress, “Never Stop.” Joe Biden is the star of this ad, vouching for Rep. Ilhan Omar at a 2023 event in Minneapolis: “You make sure no child goes hungry.” It’s a pre-emptive strike on the groups, largely funded by AIPAC, trying to unseat Israel’s critics by portraying them as thorns in the president’s side, undermining his agenda — a line that badly hurt Rep. Jamaal Bowman last month. Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee used her support for Biden in paid messaging, to keep AIPAC out of her 2024 race, and Omar’s doing the same thing.
• One Nation, “Percent.” Biden’s problems have helped Republicans with what they were already doing: Duct-taping every vulnerable Democrat to the president. Mitch McConnell’s campaign nonprofit (it can conceal donor information, so long as its ads are “educational” and urge citizens to call their legislators) goes after Montana Sen. Jon Tester for supporting the American Rescue Plan, blaming him and it for inflation, with copious photos of the senator next to the president.
• Citizens for Scharf, “Return Fire.” Most Republican candidates this cycle are running as Donald Trump’s defenders. Only Will Scharf, running for Missouri attorney general, can say that he represented Donald Trump in his presidential immunity case. That’s the focus of this spot, in which Scharf torches a pile of documents from Trump criminal cases — he’s fought for Trump, fought Joe Biden, and “locked up hardened criminals.” Blowing things up is a new tradition in Missouri campaign ads; Secretary of State candidate Valentina Gomez burned LGBT books for kids in a spot this year, and former Gov. Eric Greitens shot a machine gun in 2016 to demonstrate how he’d fight “Obama’s Democrat machine.”

Polls

The Democrats’ bind had been obvious for years: President Biden wasn’t popular, and neither was his vice president. One post-debate poll, from CNN, found Harris running slightly better than Biden in a race with Trump. But Harris has no personal advantage over the president, other than age. Here, 22% of Black voters and 49% of women have an unfavorable view of the first Black female president. She runs no stronger than Biden with voters under 35 — 28% view her favorably, and 29% view Biden favorably. The bet on Harris, which many Democrats are publicly unwilling to make, is that despite her weaknesses, she can deliver the message that has been lost in Biden’s tangled syntax.

One of the first public state polls since the debate, conducted for AARP by pollsters for the Biden and Trump campaigns, finds a more intense version of what we’ve seen all year. Baldwin, the senator seeking a third term, runs 12 points ahead of Biden in a multi-candidate ballot test, and five points ahead if only Trump and Biden are on the ballot. Baldwin carries independents by 13 points, winning 52% of that total vote. Biden loses independents to Trump, carrying only 31% of them — as 24% of them go for Kennedy or other candidates. Democrats have fretted about the entire ticket going down with Biden if his position weakens, but there’s no sign of that yet.

Scooped!

The best story Dave wishes he wrote this week:

Politico’s Jonathan Martin has been a step ahead of the conventional wisdom on Biden, because he’s been walking and talking with the Democrats who matter. On Monday, based on his reporting on Essence Fest and conversations with Congressional Black Caucus members, he saw how Biden would defend himself: “The donor class may have their preference, but it’s older Black women in church pews who will decide the nominee, thank you very much.”

Next

• six days until the Republican National Convention
• 21 days until primaries in Arizona
• 28 days until primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Washington
• 35 days until primaries in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin
• 41 days until the Democratic National Convention
• 119 days until the 2024 presidential election

Seven years ago, Elle Reeve was embedded with the white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville for the “Unite the Right” rally. What started as reporting on an emboldened fringe movement ended in tragedy — but it didn’t end the movement. “Black Pill,” her deeply reported memoir of covering the new far-right, exposes the tactics that activists used to recruit lonely men, and gets inside their heads in ways no other investigation has.

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