https://puck.news/biden-saturday-zoom-call-with-house-democrats-goes-off-the-rails
by Authors, puck.newsJuly 16, 2024 09:10 PM
Fresh reporting on the collective private mourning of top Democrats after the tragic “events”—as they are known in Washington-speak—of the weekend. Nevertheless, some cling to hope. “He also said he would drop if he saw data saying he can’t win,” said a campaign source. “He’s about to see a lot of it.”
When the bullet pierced Donald Trump’s ear on Saturday evening, Democrats in Washington sent up a collective cry to the heavens. After two weeks of savaging each other and their own candidate, Joe Biden, for bombing at the Atlanta debate, Trump had just been made into a living martyr—with iconic photos to boot. If it looked like he had been on the glide path to victory before Saturday, the shooter seemed to have made the election all but a formality. “It’s the worst thing that could have possibly happened,” a senior source in the Biden campaign told me on Saturday night.
And yet, all of this near tragedy may have been great news for Biden himself, politically speaking. Going into the weekend, all the talk in Washington had been about how the 81-year-old president simply had to step aside for the sake of the republic. Two Democratic members of Congress I spoke to were sure that Biden wasn’t seeing the polls they were, and that Biden’s closest advisors—Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, et al.—were protecting him from an overdue appointment with reality.
Right before the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a group of moderate Hill Democrats held a “tense” Zoom call with the White House to express their concern about Biden’s ability to win—and their ability to win, should he tank and take them down with him. “The call was even worse than the debate,” one of the participants told me. “He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say ‘whatever.’ He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him.” A second participant in the call confirmed this characterization. “The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy, and had a particularly troubling exchange with Jason Crow—saying to him, ‘Tell me something you’ve never done with your Bronze Star like my son,’” this member of Congress told me. “Had the assassination attempt not occurred an hour later, I imagine 50 people on that Zoom were ready to come out publicly against him.” (Biden ended the call on Saturday, just after 5 p.m., by saying his staff told him it was time for mass. The attempted assassination happened shortly after 6 p.m.) A third participant confirmed the descriptions of the president’s demeanor during the call to my partner Abby Livingston.
The Biden campaign pushed back strenuously on these members’ characterization of Biden as a rambling old man, sending me a half-dozen tweets from other call participants, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a fierce Biden loyalist, who said the president was “sharp, forceful.” “Just in the past week, the president has met with Democratic leaders in both chambers and numerous congressional groups to solicit their feedback and answer their questions,” a campaign official said in an email. “Engagement with House and Senate members is ongoing, and the campaign will continue to have candid and robust conversations with congressional offices.”
The campaign did not, however, dispute this next part, about Crow and his Bronze Star. In a video of the Zoom that I was able to view, you can hear Biden chastising Crow, who asked about the importance of national security to voters. “First of all, I think you’re dead wrong on national security,” the president says, the emotion at times garbling his words. “You saw what happened recently in terms of the meeting we had with NATO. I put NATO together. Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me! Tell me who the hell that is! Tell me who put NATO back together! Tell me who enlarged NATO, tell me who did the Pacific basin! Tell me who did something that you’ve never done with your Bronze Star like my son—and I’m proud of your leadership, but guess what, what’s happening, we’ve got Korea and Japan working together, I put Aukus together, anyway! … Things are in chaos, and I’m bringing some order to it. And again, find me a world leader who’s an ally of ours who doesn’t think I’m the most respected person they’ve ever—”
“It’s not breaking through, Mr. President,” said Crow, “to our voters.”
“You oughta talk about it!” Biden shot back, listing his accomplishments yet again. “On national security, nobody has been a better president than I’ve been. Name me one. Name me one! So I don’t want to hear that crap!”
“How is this tenable?” the campaign source had asked me on Friday. “We’re in a perfect shitstorm until he steps down or everyone gets back on board.” The Democrats are neither here nor there, neither all in nor all out, neither fully supporting their nominee nor ditching him, a situation perfectly summed up by a Russian _expression_: a turd stuck in an eddy.
But “the events” in Pennsylvania on Saturday—as they are known in Washington-speak—at least temporarily ended talk that Biden might step aside. “The Biden replacement talk? That’s over,” said a source close to the administration. “I think the assassination attempt took the pressure off for a critical 72 hours. Also, the Hill never got its act together—and death by 270 cuts doesn’t work.”
How long is four months, exactly? There are 111 days until the presidential election, but is that a lot of time or a little? Right now, Democrats are hoping it’s both enough time to unify the party and let Trump do some inevitable damage to his prospects. But—if Biden remains the nominee, as is most likely—not so much time that Biden could have another disastrous senior moment on par with the debate. “I’m not buying it, it’s still too early,” said one source close to Democratic leadership of the fatalism in Democratic circles that Biden’s loss is a foregone conclusion. “The debate, the attempted assassination, and the failed Democratic overthrow all happened within the past few weeks. We have four long months to go that promise to be even crazier.” The source pointed out that Biden is still neck and neck with Trump in a number of battleground states, and speculated that the attempted assassination “won’t move moderates and Bush Republicans, the people he actually needs. The right-wing crazies this ignites were going to vote for him anyway.”
Bidenites point out that four months is enough time for the contrast between the two men to become clearer to voters, who will be compelled to come out and vote for Biden—and against Trump. “The only hope is there is plenty of time for several more big and unexpected events to occur, and they almost certainly will,” said the campaign source.
It is a hope many Democrats are clinging to. In four months, Trump could self-destruct by doing or saying something completely bonkers, though he’s said and done more than enough over the last decade and it never seems to matter. And so they acknowledge that not all those big and unexpected events will cut in their favor. There is a definite possibility, the campaign source said, “that all of them will be bad for us.” Another faltering public performance, for instance, or a health incident could prove fatal to the campaign.
For now, though, the hand-wringing has died down, at least in public, and Biden seems to have emerged intact. “It feels that way for now, absent any public meltdowns,” said one Hill Democrat. “Until the actual delegate count is done, there will be the whispers, stories, etcetera. It’s muted now, but we have a few more weeks before it’s done done.”
Instead, the panic has been replaced by recriminations for the unsuccessful internal coup. “Pelosi and Schumer could have done it if they showed up with 50 folks in their pockets,” said the source close to the administration. “But Michael Bennetcan’t lead the charge.” So why didn’t they, I asked? “It’s hard to see the way time is ticking when you’re in the midst of it,” the source responded. “I also think there is still reasonable uncertainty about whether Kamala Harris is a better candidate.” Said the source close to Democratic leadership, “The Dems lack the stones to force him out, particularly the Dems in Congress.”
But it’s not over yet, and as the Hill source suggested, the whispers haven’t stopped, even if Biden has made clear he’s going to white-knuckle this out. “He also said he would drop if he saw data saying he can’t win,” said the campaign source. “He’s about to see a lot of it. The next round of polls will probably be apocalyptic.”