Author: A.T.

The V.P.

Not Speaking Truth To Power: our leaders owe it to their leader — and the country — to tell him what they think.

If not Joe, who?  According to this ranked-choice poll, Kamala.

Passed over for VP:

> Gov. Doug Burgum, who said he wouldn’t do business with Trump.

> Marco Rubio, who called Trump a con artist.

Chosen:

> J.D. Vance, a never-Trumper who compared Trump to Hitler.

(In fairness, what Republican hasn’t said unflattering things about Trump? Two minutes worth sharing.)

And much more — read the oppo research memo Steve Schmidt shared yesterday.

Now Vance says he got it wrong; having seen the results Trump got as president, he’s become a big fan.

In fact, the economy Trump was handed was much better than the economy he handed off.

Trump will blame that on the pandemic — and who could have predicted a pandemic?

Trump slashed CDC staff inside China prior to COVID.  The program in China specifically charged with spotting new infectious diseases went from having four American staff in 2017 to none by 2019.

Even without those cuts, it’s not clear COVID could have been averted the way Obama averted Ebola.  But the contrast between competence and bluster seems clear.  Same with providing affordable health care.  And bringing manufacturing jobs home.  And revitalizing our infrastructure.  And working out a truly bipartisan solution to the border crisis that “he alone” prevented from becoming law.  Read the bill.  It would have ended the crisis.  Trump insisted the crisis continue.

But I digress.

THE SHOOTER

In 2021, he sent $15 to a progressive group, but he later registered as a Republican — so maybe he was just a hopeless loner . . . bullied every day in school . . . obsessed with guns, rejected by the rifle team, who wanted to prove he was a good shot after all.  Too early to know.

Kristina M.: “Whether or not it was politically motivated, ‘mass’ shootings happen on average more than once a day in the U.S.  This one is shocking only because the venue was so highly secured.  Either all mass shootings are tragedies that demand we do something to prevent them; or, as Republicans repeatedly tell us, they are ‘the price of freedom’ and we just have to live with them.”

 

The Shooting

Any political violence — let alone something as egregious and tragic as Saturday in Pennsylvania — is completely unacceptable.

Like everyone else, I condemn it.

I found this perspective worth the 8 minutes.

He might have added that while a mob was chanting “hang Mike Pence,” hunting for Nancy Pelosi, storming the Capitol, and beating police . . . the man who had incited them to “fight like hell” (knowing that many were armed) watched for more than 3 hours as they did so, brushing aside pleas from all sides to call them off.

 

 

NATO Aggression

Trump’s son-in-law is going to build “a memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression.”

General Wesley Clark calls it “a betrayal of the United States, its policies, and the brave diplomats and airmen who did what they could to stop Serb ethnic cleansing.”

Putin loves Trump.  Trump loves Putin — and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and strongmen across the board.  He aspires to be the strongest of them all.  Democracy is not his thing — authoritarianism is.  And hey, he’s entitled to favor any form of government he wants.  “It’s a free country.”  At least for now.

But we get a say, too, November 5.

(Not, needless to say, by violence.)

The GOP Platform Perfectly Reflects the Lunacy of Trump’s Party.  “It’s an unconditional surrender to the cult of Trump, and its plan to reduce inflation* is laughable,” writes Timothy Noah in the New Republic:

“Republicans,” the 2024 platform says, “will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” If that rings a bell, it’s because this is slight reworking of what Trump said last Veteran’s Day in Claremont, New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” It did not go unnoticed back then that “vermin” echoed Hitler (“Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”), so the offending word was scrubbed from the platform version.

Maureen Dowd: For Biden, a Race Against Time.

Chris Matthews: He’s Our Guy.

David Frum: “Biden has been an astonishingly successful president“ . . .

With a wafer-thin majority in the House and Senate in his first two years (and despite losing the House for his second), Biden enacted more major liberal legislation than any other president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He organized the successful defense of Ukraine against Russian invasion, expanded and invigorated NATO, and faced down internal opposition in his own party to stand by Israel in its hour of need.

Over his four years in office, one social indicator after another has turned positive after trending the wrong way under even the pre-pandemic Donald Trump: Crime is down, marriages are up; opioid deaths are down, the number of American births is up. Not all of this was his personal work, but it happened on his watch—and the opposite happened on the previous watch.

. . . but, Frum says, the President should pass the torch.

If he doesn’t, we just have to hunker down and make sure he wins — and we will — because in his second term, he and Kamala and their team of 4,000 appointees will do a terrific job for average Americans and for the world at large.  And because — more to the point — the alternative is the end of the American experiment.  A Trump/Putin victory; monuments to NATO aggression, and all.

All that matters is that we win.  Which means all that matters is that we select whichever slate gives us the best chance.

*Inflation, which Trump would have his followers believe is raging out of control, came in at one-tenth of one percent in June, or 1.2% annualized.  So when they say inflation was 3%, it means prices are 3% higher than they were a year ago, which includes not just the most recent month’s rise, but the prior 11 as well.

I’m not suggesting a month’s inflation can be measured with precision; or that next month might not be worse.  But it seems pretty clear inflation is not raging; prices are rising slower than wages; and the current rate, whether 1.2% annualized or 3%, is not far from the Fed’s 2% target.  (You might think the target should be zero — if inflation is bad, why have any of it?  But, among other things, a little inflation greases the psychological wheels.)

 

We Win Either Way

George Clooney says . . .

I love Joe Biden.  But we need a new nominee.

I’m guessing you’ve already read that one.

Tom Friedman says . . . 

Both men running for president right now are unfit for the job: One is a good man in obvious cognitive and physical decline, and the other is a bad man who lies as he breathes, whose main platform is revenge . . . .

It’s worth reading in full, but that’s the nub of it:  Which would we rather have?  A good man who’s slowing down; or a bad man with enormous energy to do terrible things?

Consider:

If Biden says “Putin” when he means Zelensky or “Trump” when he means Harris (and then quickly corrects himself), no damage is done.  He’s not going to slip and accidentally veto a bill that revitalizes the nation’s infrastructure (a bill Trump never managed to get passed); or accidentally side with Putin against the FBI and against Ukraine. 

But when Trump carries out Project 2025 — and becomes the world’s strongest strongman — terrible damage will be done, with more to come in his third and fourth terms.  (Do you think he would ever willingly give up power, except, perhaps, to his son?)

Consider, too, the difference between the two parties:

As Friedman notes, “only one party in America’s two-party system is ready to defend our constitutional order anymore.”  The other “is ready to renominate Trump even though many of those who worked most intimately with him in his first term — including his vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, chief of staff, national security adviser, press secretary, communications director and attorney general — have warned that Trump is erratic, immoral and someone who must never be let near the White House again.”

Whom would you rather have: a good man in a wheelchair with serious health problems who might not live out his fourth term, or a fascist with a mustache who holds legendary rallies?  Or, to move it forward 80 years: an aging but experienced, principled leader like Biden; or someone with more energy like Putin/Le Pen/Trump?  (I lump them together because Le Pen recently did.)

Consider this anecdote from 1962: When Presidents Played By the Rules.  (And read books.  And tried to set a good example for the nation’s kids.)

Democratic Presidents still do.

I titled this post Either Way, We Win because, whatever happens, we must and, I think, will.

There’s no question that Joe and his team of 4,000 highly competent appointees — who will need no transition or learning curve to keep moving the country forward — would be a thousand times – a million times – better than Trump and the team he would assemble once he released some of them from prison.  If Joe is our nominee, I feel sure we can persuade enough voters of that to win.

It will be tough — but so was Georgia in 2022, when we had to elect that state’s first Black and first Jewish senator.  No one thought we could – but we had to, and we did.

That said . . . and as clear as yesterday’s press conference made it that, though old, Joe Biden really knows his stuff and has invaluable relationships with leaders around the world . . . I’m in the camp that believes our odds are better if Joe takes the win, passes the torch, and gives us the energizing excitement of a mini-primary, and/or a fresh story.

However the next few days and weeks play out, though, we have to win — and absolutely can.

Have a great weekend.

 

Once Elected, Can Tyrants Be Dislodged?

You saw the good outcomes in Europe.  Progressives won in Britain.  In France, Trump-like nationalists finished third.

(Watch what Le Pen says about being allied with Trump/Putin — 40 seconds.)

Normal, free and fair democratic elections.

But of course that’s not how it works in Putin’s Russia or Kim’s North Korea — or lots of other places around the world.

A friend writes to say:

We must not forget about the upcoming presidential “election” in Venezuela on the 28th.

It would be following the now typical Nicaraguan model of democratic pretense, except that down here, we are all learning a lesson in charismatic leadership. Lo and behold, Maria Corina Machado (MCM) is spearheading the democratic opposition to the current authoritarian and quasi-brutal regime. They disqualify her, threaten her, put innumerable obstacles in her way, and she responds brilliantly and her movement only grows. Everyone now knows that in an even vaguely equitable election, she (or since they disqualified her, her surrogate candidate Edmundo González) would win in a landslide. All of a sudden, this stolid, dense authoritarian regime has an unanticipated and non-trivial problem on its hands.

Chavismo wants to pretend to have a democratic election, but they have no intention (ZERO) of giving up power except in a few carefully negotiated instances for appearance’s sake. (Where would they go, if not to jail?)  So they have long been training in the techniques of the heavy-handed regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua, which have demonstrated real success at staying in power at whatever cost. But now they find that they have MCM all over them, and it is increasingly unclear how they can fake it. This is the stuff of Nelson Mandela on a local, Latina scale.

So keep an eye on what is coming in Venezuela and pray for the best.

(If you should want to say anything publicly to call attention to this, please keep me completely anonymous. The heat is on down here.)

For more on this, watch Thor Halvorssen’s conversation with the bravest woman in South America.

Whether it’s Joe or someone else, we have to win or else Trump (and then his son) will never leave.

And then what?

The Lincoln Project: “For those who can’t imagine the death of American democracy, we imagined it for you” (4 minutes).

 

Taking The Win

I’ve long said Joe’s been a great president who’ll always put the country first.

Millions of his fans now believe he should do the selfish thing: take the win and pass the torch.

I say “the selfish thing” because he would:

> Go down in history as one of our greatest presidents.

> Avoid the frighteningly real risk of being remembered, instead, for extinguishing the torch.

(Sure — like Russia and China, we’ll have elections.  We’ll have courts.  We’ll have a legislature.  Even North Korean has those things.  But — like those countries, the ranks of whose leaders Trump hopes to join — we’d have a strongman bent on total control, very possibly for more than two terms, with a son in the wings ready to extend his rule.  The Statue of Liberty weeps at the thought.  The Founders roll in their graves.)

> Get to relax.  God knows he’s earned it.

Because the President is known more for his resilience, modesty, empathy, love of family, and love of country than for his selfishness — the man took Amtrak for decades, and have I ever told you my grilled cheese story? — doing the selfish thing, if he does it, will be hard.

And one more reason to admire him.

Because the only metric that matters here is who has the best chance of winning.  If it’s Biden/Harris, that should be our team.  If it’s Harris/Shapiro or Harris/Coons, that should be our team.  If a Whitmer/Warnock or a Whitmer/Wes Moore team emerges from a mini-primary, that should be our team.

No matter who our team is, I’m all in.

Maureen Dowd’s take, in case you missed it.

The Escalation Trap POTUS needs to avoid.

OKAY, IF YOU INSIST

Picture it: Vice President Biden is headlining our annual LGBT dinner, this one in D.C.  I ask one of his long-time aides if there’s anything he wouldn’t expect us to know that we could surprise him with. 

“Believe it or not, he likes those little miniature grilled cheese sandwich hors d’oeuvres.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Perfect.”

I call the hotel and ask that they prepare a plate of these things for the photo line portion of the evening.

“Oh.  Let me see whether we can do that,” he says.

“Whether your chef can make a grilled cheese sandwich?” 

“No, I’m sure he can do that.  But it’s more complicated than that.”

It turns out that any time the Vice President is going to eat something prepared outside his or her normal routine, a high-ranking naval officer needs to be in the kitchen for the 24 hours before.  An admiral, I think.  My memory has gone a little hazy on this.  Maybe not a full admiral, and maybe not a full 24 hours.  But something like that.

“Seriously???” I said on the second or third phone call when I was told, sorry, this four-star hotel could not prepare a little plate of grilled cheese squares for the V.P.

 “Yes, I’m very sorry.”

So now it’s the night of the dinner and Charles and I have purposely hung back to be the last ones in the photo line, to have a moment alone.

“I’m so sorry!  I had hoped to have a plate of little grilled cheese sandwiches for you.”

“Oh, I love those things — how did you know?”

So I tell him the story.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he laughs, rolling his eyes.  “Like someone’s really going to try to assassinate the Vice President.”

 

The Court, The Election, and Plan B

THE COURT

Rachel on the Court’s immunity ruling (90 seconds).

The rule of law in this country means that the law is not used as the instrument of the ruler; the rule of law is supposed to constrain the ruler.  And the Supreme Court just undid that.  And the only way out of this is to put someone in the White House from here on out who will not abuse the absolutely tyrannical power they have just been granted.

So how do we do that?

THE ELECTION

Most of us agree there’s only one valid consideration: we should do whatever gives us the best chance of winning.

And most of us agree Joe Biden and his team have done a terrific job: restoring decency and dignity to the Office, competence and honesty to the Administration; reversing the decades-long decay of our infrastructure; bringing inflation and unemployment down, manufacturing jobs home; restoring our alliances, standing up to Russian aggression, appointing progressive judges, confronting climate change . . . and more.

On Joe ‘s watch, wages are now rising faster than inflation, the stock market’s at record highs, we’re the largest energy-producing country in the world, and crime rates have fallen.

Not bad for an old guy.

So . . . stick with Joe?  open convention?  something else?

Conversations are in overdrive.

Tom Friedman’s column yesterday likely made sense to a lot of people.

You should probably stop here and read it.

I’ve heard from really smart people on all sides.

That the Biden team has not seized on “the antihistamine theory” suggests Thursday’s debate performance was not the result of a cold pill after all — and the President is too honest to pretend that it was.  Which leaves us with the Gish gallop theory — that someone as bright as you or me can be flummoxed by a tsunami of outlandish claims.  (See: Donald Trump’s Shocking Box Score: 602 Lies in Just 40 Minutes.)

For the President to bounce back, most people believe he needs to do extended interviews like this one with Stephanopoulos scheduled for Friday.

He can come right out and say —

Look. I’m an old guy with a lifelong stutter who has trouble confronting a fire hose of lies with 50 million people watching me.

But my job isn’t to be a debater, it’s to assemble and lead a terrific team to make life better for the American people.

So I’m here to answer anything you want to know about inflation and immigration and health care and all the other things that matter to folks.

But first let me just say: only 4 of the top 44 people in his administration have endorsed him. The people he appointed who worked most closely with him won’t endorse him.  Some have written books begging folks not to support him. Think about that!  What does that tell you?  I may be boring and old, but I’m effective.  I know right from wrong. I tell the truth.  And when I misspeak, as I often have all my life, I correct my mistakes. I don’t insist on “alternate facts.”

Our infrastructure is being revitalized and our country is getting stronger every day. And if Trump hadn’t killed the bipartisan border bill, we would have ended that crisis by now. TRUMP killed it because he needs the crisis to continue so has an issue to run on.  He needs it to stay out of jail.  The immigration crisis is HIS crisis now.  It’s Trump who has kept it from being fixed, for his own selfish reasons.

Okay!  Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest.  Now fire away, George.

And then, in a calm, relaxed way, they would discuss each issue in depth.

If he can’t shine in that format brightly enough t0 shake the images from Thursday, we go to plan B, as Friedman argues we must.

WHAT IS PLAN B?

Part #1 would be simply for Joe to take the win.  Pass the baton; go down in history as having been one of our greatest presidents ever; avoid the possibility of going down in history as the guy who lost democracy.

And then?

Some dream of Michelle Obama magically grabbing the baton — one poll has her beating Trump by 11 points.

More likely combos might be Kamala Harris & Chris Coons or Gretchen Whitmer & Raphael Warnock.

Some people would like to see the President come out into the Rose Garden flanked by everyone from the Clintons and Obamas to Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kerry Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, James Clyburn, Al Gore, Joe Manchin, A.O.C. . . . you get the idea . . . and basically “anoint” whatever team he and his advisors believe would give us the best chance of November 5.

Another approach comes from a friend who writes:

I would much prefer an open 6-week process with at least 3 candidates (say, Harris, Whitmer, Newsom) with Joe not choosing but pre-endorsing whichever wins.

They’d do maybe 3 debates (that respect Reagan’s 11th commandment of not criticizing a member of their own party), driving Trump out of the news, showing off how good they are, driving resurgent-optimism/enthusiasm money to the DNC and culminating in a real, “woo-hoo for democracy” convention that has some actual excitement to it and huge viewership and culminates in the formerly-Biden delegates actually choosing whoever the hell they choose, and then busting out into Sept-Oct to beat the pants off Trump, with a fresh, virile (of either gender) media- and convention-legitimized winner of a candidate who makes Trump look like the pasty old gasbag he is, and Joe active in the campaign.

That — disorder, excitement, suspense, validation — to me is a way better scenario than some backroom deal in which Joe bows out for a pre-determined successor. BTW, it would also leave Kennedy with only otherwise-Trump voters.

Each debate (maybe each stump speech) begins “All three of us are a vastly better, positive choice than Trump, and I will enthusiastically support and campaign for either of my friendly rivals if I am not the nominee. That’s why I’m not going to say a negative word about either of them, just try to tell and show you about me and how I would fulfill the office if elected, and hope that gains the delegates’ support.” It’s actually a FUN 6 weeks!!

Whatever happens, it seems now to be happening fast.  And I go back to what I posted right after the shock of the debate:

All I’m going to say for now is that Joe Biden has been a great, great president — his record is terrific; his decency, exemplary — and will do, I believe, whatever gives us the best chance of defeating Trump.

 

The Antihistamine Theory and What The Campaign Itself Is Saying

In some ways, the “open convention” position — of which, after the horrible debate, I was sure was the right course — is safest for people like you and me, who follow this stuff closely and care passionately:

> If we’re ignored and Joe wins, we’re thrilled.  We won!  (And can still feel sure we would have won by even more with someone else.)

> If we’re ignored and he loses, we’re in despair — but at least can tell ourselves (perhaps rightly), “if only they had listened to us!”

> If Joe steps aside and we win, we’re thrilled.  We won!  And can tell ourselves we wouldn’t have, had we not pushed for a new nominee.

> If he steps aside and we lose, we can tell ourselves, again, perhaps rightly, we would have lost even worse with Joe.

So in a sense there’s no downside to taking this position (as I did for the first hours after the debate).

Except that it may be the wrong position.

Here are two reasons I’m not nearly as certain as I was initially that we should do anything other than keep our heads down and return this great president to office for four more successful years:

What I call THE ANTIHISTAMINE THEORY and WHAT THE CAMPAIGN ITSELF IS SAYING.

I’m going to start with the latter.

It’s long, but so worth reading.

WHAT THE CAMPAIGN IS SAYING

To: Interested Parties
From: Jen O’Malley Dillon
Subject: The View From The Battlegrounds
Date: June 29, 2024

It’s a familiar story: Following Thursday night’s debate, the beltway class is counting Joe Biden out. The data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story. On every metric that matters, data shows it did nothing to change the American people’s perception, our supporters are more fired up than ever, and Donald Trump only reminded voters of why they fired him four years ago and failed to expand his appeal beyond his MAGA base.

Here’s what else the voters saw immediately following the debate: President Biden met with grassroots supporters in Atlanta, dipped into Waffle House for some late night food and some selfies, then touched down in North Carolina where he shook every hand on the tarmac before a rally the next day with fired-up voters that highlighted the stark contrast at the center of this race. At the same time, Vice President Harris was campaigning in battleground Nevada. And our surrogates and tens of thousands of volunteers spent the week organizing and mobilizing Americans – because that is the work winning campaigns do. Every single day matters in reaching the voters who will decide this election. But for all the hand-wringing coming out of Thursday, here’s the truth: this election was incredibly close before Thursday, and by every metric we’ve seen since, it remains just as close.

Flash polls from CNN, 538, SurveyUSA, Morning Consult, and Data for Progress show what we expected: The debate did not change the horse race. This mirrors what the campaign’s internal post-debate polling showed: The president maintained his support among his 2020 voters and voters’ opinions were not changed.

  • CNN: “An 81% majority of registered voters who watched the debate say it had no effect on their choice for president, with another 14% saying that it made them reconsider but didn’t change their mind. Just 5% say it changed their minds about whom to vote for.”
  • 538: “The face-off doesn’t seem to have caused many people to reconsider their vote.”
  • SurveyUSA: Continues to show a tight race between President Biden and Donald Trump, consistent with public polling averages pre-debate.
  • Morning Consult: A new large-sample, independent poll has President Biden gaining 1 point post-debate, now leading 45-44.
  • Data for Progress: Vote choice between Trump and Biden remains largely unchanged, and Biden continues to run ahead of other Democrats in a Trump matchup.
  • Geoff Garin of Hart Research: “I am finishing my second battleground state poll post-debate and both surveys show the same thing: the debate had no effect on the vote choice. The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.”

Following the debate, our internal dials showed President Biden led Trump on key measures of being presidential, speaking to the issues that matter, and being likable by more than 20 points. Dials showed that independent voters were turned off by Trump’s personal attacks, and had deep negative feelings when Trump talked about January 6, his support for Putin, and refusing to lay out his vision for America. Our internal poll confirmed the dials: Trump’s performance left independent voters feeling less confident about his position on reproductive rights and abortion, respect for the Constitution and rule of law, and truthfulness.

Debate dials conducted by outside groups in Phoenix, Arizona largely confirm what we saw from internal dials. A few key takeaways:

  • “Overall, voters say that the debate for the most part didn’t change their overall outlook of either candidate.”
  • “Trump’s refusal to answer questions in a straightforward manner and his exaggerated boasting fed into perceptions that he cares more about himself than solving peoples’ issues.”
  • “Biden’s strongest moments were on matters of policy substance, and voters thought he better addressed their concerns on the issues than did Trump.”

In focus groups of voters who watched the debate, President Biden won on substance:

  • As one undecided voter in Warren, Michigan told CNN: “When it comes to a strong leader and what we’re looking for in a leader, I’m looking for somebody that I trust to be able to uphold policies that will protect me, and are more concerned for the general well being of everybody in the United States, which I got more from Biden considering he did a lot more talking about policies, and what he’s done and what he plans to do. Whereas on the other side from Trump, all I really heard was ‘I’ve done this and it was the best ever,’ but I never heard what it was…”
  • This was reinforced in a focus group too from Univision in Arizona showing undecided Latino voters that moved toward Biden following the debate

Across the battlegrounds, our state campaigns have received an influx of volunteer enthusiasm and support, which we are channeling into voter outreach:

  • More than three times as many people applied to work on the campaign in the 24 hours following the debate than apply on an average day.
  • Post-debate, across the battlegrounds, our rate of volunteer signups was more than three times as much as an average day.
  • In North Carolina, we had our largest event of the campaign on Friday, with thousands of people turning out to hear the president give strong and forceful remarks.

This weekend, Team Biden-Harris launched a massive mobilization blitz to engage thousands of volunteers and supporters at over 1,500 events across battleground states.

That same enthusiasm is showing up in the campaign’s fundraising: In the wake of the debate, Team Biden-Harris raised more than $27 million between debate day and Friday evening. Debate night saw three record-breaking hours for grassroots fundraising – including the hour following the debate which was the best one hour of grassroots fundraising since launch.

If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls. In 2012, we saw media coverage of President Obama’s first debate performance drive a large, but temporary, drop in his polling – driven almost entirely by fewer Democrats answering polls in the days after the debate, rather than true changes in support.

This drop in polling led to highly reactionary headlines that didn’t reflect swing voters’ true opinions:

Bottom line: Our team knows a thing or two about putting our heads down and doing the work to win hard races. This will be a very close election. It was always going to be. It will be won by breaking through and talking to voters every single day, making our case to them about just how high the stakes are and who is fighting for them. That’s what our campaign has been planning for. It’s the relentless work we’re doing on the ground to get our winning message out that makes us confident President Biden will win this race and beat Donald Trump.

THE ANTIHISTAMINE THEORY

Basically, it’s that a cold pill the President took Thursday produced the horrible result.

This would explain how he got stronger and clearer as the debate went on and the drug had begun to wear off (by which time so many had switched it off in despair), and how — once the drug had worn off completely — he completely bounded back, as I described yesterday.

I will admit that when I first read that theory in Newsweek (also run, with less distracting advertising, here), I thought it was ridiculous.  I preferred my “Gish gallop” theory, based on my own experience.

But here’s how the co-author of the theory, Jeff Sonnenfeld, has responded to skepticism like mine:

Roughly a million board certified physicians received yesterday’s Newsweek piece I coauthored with Yale’s renowned Dr. Harlan Krumholtz via Med Page Today, the country’s #1 medical newsletter, resulting in widespread concurrence with our theory from thousands including pharmacologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and internal medicine experts.

I have no idea how effective the current presidential physician is, but you can make your own judgment before you endorse chaos. Perhaps he was not on top of his game either.

This is not about Biden suffering the sniffles, but rather how a harmless common cold was probably treated. Whenever you go before large audiences, suffering from congestion and sore throat, you likely take some over-the-counter medication.  For normal, healthy, cognitively functional older people, this can be dangerous.

First-generation antihistamines such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) unlike pseudoephedrine (by contrast a stimulant) which are in most cold tablets, frequently cause many side effects in older adults, such as confusion, dizziness, drowsiness, reduced executive function, blurred vision, and sedation.

If you think you know better than thousands of expert physicians, read the non-controversial massive research on this demonstrated risk and then reflect on Biden’s remarkable immediate resilience, perfectly in-line with the half-life from when the medication would have worn off.

I still like my theory.  But the two are certainly not mutually exclusive.

Either way, I believe the president is fit to continue his remarkable record of success, heading up a team of 4,000 appointees who are doing a great job.

And though the first of Lawrence O’Donnell’s arguments was his weakest — that viewership was low — there is a counter argument to be made.  Yes, in this era of social media, everyone saw excruciating clips.  But the opposition already had more than a few excruciating clips (many of them doctored) to run endlessly between now and the election.

Everybody already knows Joe’s old and not always strong of voice.  And at least some know he refused to wear a boot after he fell off that bike and hurt his ankle, which has affected his gait.  Yet he has accomplished more for the country, walking and talking like an old man, than perhaps any president since FDR.  Which may be why the debate may not have changed many minds.

And if what I call the antihistamine theory does wind up explaining the awful debate, then the fear so many have — that he’s suddenly gone into rapid decline — evaporates.

One last thing:

A lot of you have written concerned that Joe won’t be able to make it to the end of his second term, or, at the very least, continue to age.  The former is actuarially unlikely.  But if he does die, the White House will stay in progressive, democratic — small D, as opposed to autocratic — hands.  So I don’t care.  (Well, of course, I do care; but you know what I mean.)  And though he will unquestionably age, I refer you again to the fortune you would have left on the table had you abandoned Berkshire Hathaway stock when Warren Buffett was 82.  Or 86.  Or 90.  Or 93.

SO I DON’T KNOW FOR SURE WHAT SHOULD BE DONE . . . SMARTER PEOPLE AT MUCH HIGHER LEVELS OF THE DEMOCRATIC ECOSPHERE THAN ME TOTALLY KNOW THE STAKES AND ARE THINKING ALL THIS THROUGH . . . BUT RIGHT NOW IT LOOKS TO ME AS THOUGH JOE’S THE MAN . . . JOE WILL WIN* . . . AND JOE WILL CONTINUE TO REVITALIZE OUR INFRASTRUCTURE, LOWER OUR DRUG COSTS, FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, MAINTAIN OUR ALLIANCES, STAND UP AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM AND INTOLERANCE, STAND UP FOR THE RULE OF LAW, UPHOLD HIS OATH OF OFFICE, AND CONTINUE TO EXEMPLIFY THE DIGNITY AND DECENCY OF THE PRESIDENCY.

BONUS

The Philadelphia Inquirer: To serve his country, Trump should leave the race.

He won’t of course, because he’s afraid he’d go to prison.

Because he hopes to be the strongest strongman in the world.

And because he isn’t quite finished:

 

I Overacted. You, Too?

I stand by what I said yesterday, after Thursday night’s horrible debate.

But privately, like almost all my friends and donors and the press, I was ready to pull the emergency cord.  Open convention!  Open convention!

But, boy, did Lawrence O’Donnell last night provide the perspective we all need.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to watch or to listen (wherever you get podcasts).

And to share with everyone you know.

Two personal notes.

First: I was at the 25th annual LGBT fundraiser we started back when President Clinton came to a small dinner . . . and got to watch the President in action.  He was terrific.  But let me put it in perspective.

In my case, knowing I would have to meet and greet lots of donors and then speak for four minutes, I didn’t get out of bed until 11, took it easy all day, suited up around 5, armed myself with an Advil and some Hall’s menthol eucalyptus lozenges, took the subway down to the Hammerstein ballroom and, after an hour of pre-event reception, glad-handing new and old friends over fairly loud background music, had lost my voice.  And had that weird thing where one of my ear drums had gone into a hard-to-describe “echo” mode.  (Has that ever happened to you?)  So I stopped talking (“yes!” I hear those of you who know me best cry) and eventually the 400 or so of us at that reception went downstairs to the main event.

I knew I was the last speaker on the program and, one way or another, would make it through my little remarks and welcome Alan Cumming back on the stage to close the night out.  (If you don’t know Alan Cumming, look him up.  He is as charming and cheeky and talented as anyone on the planet.)  And I did get through my four minutes.  My voice had returned and my eardrum had righted itself.  But that was my day.  For a four-minute talk.

In the President’s case, he got up after however much sleep he had after that debate (I’m guessing not all that much?), flew to a rally in Raleigh where he was strong and terrific (watch or listen for clips), shaking hands and interacting with dozens of people, flew to New York for a rally with Elton John and loads of dignitaries at the Stonewall Inn, shaking hands and personally connecting with dozens more people, and then arrived at the Hammerstein ballroom, met individually for photos with each of more than 50 couples, interacting with each, then spoke to 900 of us SO well and SO forcefully that one of the attendees — who is no billionaire, by the way — came over to me afterward and gave another half million dollars.

See the difference?

And even I, with the bandwidth to do just one event moderately well, would be a vastly better president than Trump. (Hold that thought.)

But in a debate?

And that brings me to my second personal note.

A long time ago I wrote a book about the insurance industry.  And back then, I used to get paid tons of money to “speak” — typically, 45 minutes followed by Q&A followed by book signing.

The book made it onto the Times best-seller list for 10 weeks because the publisher got me onto a few national TV shows and every local radio show in the world.

The speeches were easy.  I was usually pretty good.  The occasional standing ovation, even.  Only bombed three times (seared deeply into my memory).

But the TV and radio appearances — which had always been a breeze with prior books — were a nightmare.  Because the insurance industry had somehow obtained my schedule and gotten the stations always to book one of their people “for balance.”  And I was terrible, even after the first few times, because I could do little more than sputter.  They were saying so many things that were simply untrue or misleading or designed to keep me from finishing my point.  It was combat, and I’m not good at combat; or at keeping my cool when someone lies and I know I should keep my cool, but . . . it was awful.  I was awful.

And yet I really was the one telling the truth.  And the subtitle of the book (“Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted you to Know”) was true — there was a lot they didn’t want you to know . . . and were really good at keeping people from knowing it.  And making my head explode.  I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had had, in addition, a lifelong stutter to overcome.

And still I’m telling you:

  1. I would be a vastly better president than Donald Trump.
  2. Joe Biden is a vastly better president than I could ever be.
  3. Please, please, please watch or listen to that Lawrence O’Donnell.

Have a great weekend.

One way or another, we’re gonna win!