"Politicians’ constant compulsion to blame the gap between policy victories and political support simply on poor communications, or worse, poor 'messaging,' is a bit too pat..."

"... both self-serving and self-exonerating. If only they knew about all the great things I’ve done! But Biden — who, by late in his term, 'had become among the most inaccessible presidents in modern history,' Timothy Naftali of Columbia University writes — did himself few favors on that front. 'He did not just fail to tout his achievements; he seldom even tried,' Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown, complains.... In her memoir, Jill Biden reimagines her husband’s communications struggles as something between a mistake and a virtue. 'While Joe was in office, I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity and letting news cycles run their course,' she explains.... 'We were trying so hard to reassure everyone that we didn’t take the time to acknowledge that he looked very unwell in that debate, to say to the public: 'Yes. That was bad, no doubt.'"

Writes Carlos Lozada, in "The Verdict on Biden Is In" (NYT).

"Jill Biden is now out there finally admitting that she did NOT know what went wrong with Sleepy Joe during our spectacular, and highly rated, 2024 Presidential Debate..."

"... where Joe was not exactly performing to the highest level of debate standards. She said that she thought he was having a 'stroke,' and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do. The only thing she failed to mention was how well I was doing prior to his near total collapse. In other words, as many have asked, did my strong performance in that debate cause him to plain and simple 'choke,' leading to his ignominious defeat, or were other reasons the cause? Nobody else knows the answer to that, BUT I DO!!!"

Writes Trump, just now, on Truth Social.

I had to make a second post about Jill and her book because Trump's statement needs its own breathing space.

Especially Trumpy is "Nobody else knows the answer to that, BUT I DO!!!" 

"As the president walked off the stage, he whispered to his wife, 'I really f**ked up, didn’t I?' she writes. '"Yes, you did,'" I whispered back.'"

I'm reading "5 Revelations From Jill Biden’s Upcoming Memoir" (Intelligencer).

I don't believe any of it. She said that during the debate, as she watched it on TV, she thought he might be having a stroke and that he'd never acted like that before or since. Sorry. Not believed. I think the new book exists to be sold — to make money — and to try to escape responsibility for depriving the American people of the power to participate in the selection of the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential candidate.

"To this day, I still don’t know what happened. Why wasn’t he making any sense? It was inexplicable to me," she says elsewhere in the book. Maybe he had rehearsed too much? Maybe he had traveled too much that month? Or was he just ill? The president had seemed exhausted earlier in the day and had told her that he was not feeling too well. Later, after positing that he may have unwittingly taken codeine cough syrup or Ambien to fight off a cold or to help him sleep, Jill Biden seems to rhetorically throw her hands in the air: "I only wish I had the answer."

ChatGPT's astounding hallucination: "Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over. He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee. Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee."

I was reading the NYT article, "Concern Grows Over Republican Congressman’s Mysterious Absence/A spokesman for Representative Thomas Kean Jr. said an unspecified 'personal medical issue' has led the New Jersey Republican to miss House votes."

The last vote Mr. Kean cast was on March 5.... [A] campaign spokesman said that Mr. Kean was “dealing with a personal medical issue” and would be “back to a full schedule soon.”... “He’s going to be totally fine”...

I went to ChatGPT just to ask about what sort of medical issue it might be. He needed to keep it secret. It's "personal" (embarrassing somehow?). And we know he'll be "totally fine" "soon." On reflection, I suspect there's some dissembling in there. I prodded ChatGPT to consider that Kean is ultimately going to withdraw from his re-election race and that what's going on now is a matter of timing. The primaries in New Jersey will happen on June 2d, he'll win, then withdraw, and then the Republican Party will be free to slot in whomever they want. 

ChatGPT was dubious about my hypothesis, so I said: "Just look at the last presidential election. The Democratic Party avoided a crowded primary because they let the incumbent look like he was going to go forward. When it was too late and the primary season was over, Biden withdrew, and the party got to put Kamala Harris in. I assume that was coordinated and the timing of Biden‘s withdrawal was done to spare the party a contentious primary season."

Here's ChatGPT's amazing answer:

That interpretation doesn’t really line up with how the 2024 cycle actually unfolded—or with the incentives the party was facing.

First, some grounding: 

• Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over.
• He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee.
• Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee.

So the specific sequence you’re describing—“incumbent clears the field, then withdraws late so the party can install a successor”—didn’t actually happen in that case.

Thanks for the "grounding," Chat.

"There’s a silent minority of people out there who feel that Biden was taken advantage of, and most people don’t want to say it. Is that what you mean?"

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner asks Karine Jean-Pierre in an interview.

Jean-Pierre answers: "Let me just say, this is my experience that I’m speaking to, and what I saw. I just want to be very, very clear: on average. I just want to be clear: on average. Not from one interview, not from one debate. On average. I have heard from many, many people who were disappointed by the reaction of the Democratic Party. I have. I have. And these are citizens. These are people who vote."

Later in the interview, Chotiner says:

"When asked why he removed classified material on Afghanistan, Biden admitted 'I guess I wanted to hang on to it for posterity’s sake.' That is precisely..."

"... what critics on CNN and MSNBC accused Trump of doing: removing material as types of keepsakes or trophies. One president was indicted for that and one was sent along his way to a second term in office. The real indictment that comes out of these tapes is a type of political racketeering enterprise by the Washington establishment. It took a total team effort from Democratic politicians to the White House staff to the media to hide the fact that the President of the United States was mentally diminished. If there were a political RICO crime, half of Washington would be frog-marched to the nearest federal courthouse...."

Writes Jonathan Turley, in "'For Posterity’s Sake': Why the Biden-Hur Tapes is a Virtual Racketeering Indictment."

But there is no "political RICO crime," Turley assures us. It's a conspiracy to do politics. In short, politics. Do you agree?

Ironically, some of us would have empathized with Biden if we'd been allowed to hear this at the time.

It's the coverup that really hurts.

The scandal is MUCH worse than the Biden WH not releasing the tape. The so-called “independent” Merrick Garland crooked Justice Dept was SUBPOENAED by Congress to release it, he defied that subpoena after jailing Steve Bannon for defying one, then DOJ refused to jail Garland. https://t.co/TLzzdrosZf

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 16, 2025

Who's in the worst position to write a book about the coverup of Biden's cognitive decline?

Tapper then: It's a conspiracy theory to say Biden has cognitive decline. It's a stutter.

Tapper now: A book on the cover up pic.twitter.com/UjnQXgkzFF

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 26, 2025

Here's Jake Tapper incensed over Joe Biden's "stutter" and outraged over claims of Biden's cognitive decline.

Now he's cashing in on a book about Biden's cognitive decline and media cover up. There is no bottom for these people.
pic.twitter.com/rdNdqh4YKQ

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 26, 2025

Joe Rogan says the book — "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" — lied about how and why Kamala Harris missed appearing on his podcast.

Here's the video, cued to the right place, and I've got transcript underneath it, but if you want to read an article about it, with lots of quotes from the podcast, here's this, from the Hollywood Reporter: "Joe Rogan Says Harris Campaign Lied About Being Misled by Show: 'We Have the Receipts'/The podcaster details what he says really happened between his podcast team and the Harris campaign during their much-disputed booking effort: 'It's someone trying to cover their ass.'"

I recommend the original source, the video:

Transcript (from Podscribe, with my editing based on listening to the audio):

Truth is the most valuable thing. If you're speaking openly about something. If you're talking about something publicly, truth is the most important thing. As soon as you are willing to violate truth, to preserve something else... now I can't listen to you anymore... And obviously politics is the best example of that. I mean especially today. I guess it's probably a good time to talk about this. There was a thing that came out recently. There was a book, some book about the Kamala Harris campaign where they talked about her getting on this show, and they said a bunch of things that weren't true. They... supposedly talked to like 150 different people about... what happened with her coming on this show.... They didn't talk to us. Which is kind of crazy....

"During the Cold War, we classified entire areas of physics and took them out of the research community—entire branches of physics went dark..."

"... and didn’t proceed. If we decide we need to, we’re going to do the same thing to the math underneath AI."

Said Marc Andreessen, on the podcast "Honestly with Bari Weiss."

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says he attended “absolutely horrifying” meetings where Biden’s government vowed to take “complete control” over AI technology:

“They basically said AI is going to be a game of 2 or 3 big companies working closely with the government… We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/REjkfgJkyV

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

Here's a transcript of the entire podcast. Excerpt, giving context to the quote above:

"Pardon your son. Let the Republicans howl. Who cares?"

That's the top-rated comment at the Washington Post's article "Hunter Biden’s team issues a fiery defense ahead of sentencing, possible pardon/Judges are scheduled to sentence the president’s son for gun and tax offenses in December."

President Biden, we're told, "repeatedly said that he will not pardon or commute the sentences of his son." But, yeah, who cares? He was running for office, and he didn't even win on that promise. He didn't even lose. He got ousted by fellow Democrats who thought he couldn't win and then they lost. Worst loss ever. Ignominious. And he's still got to drag his ancient body through 7 more weeks of this "presidency" nobody thinks he can do anymore. Surely, he can do one thing — that thing maybe he can't even remember promising he wouldn't do — and pardon his only living son, the scoundrel Hunter. Who believes promises these days? Everyone promises anything and everything to get elected. Is he supposed to drag himself through his last days on Earth — his post-presidency days — with his son in prison? Is he supposed to satisfy himself instead with the hollow, icy honor of posing as a weirdly scrupulous man who kept a promise not to pardon his son? Promise? Was there really a promise? Love. Family love. That's the greater thing. No joke.

UPDATE, later the same day: Biden pardoned Hunter. 

"In the wake of Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the gender and sexuality scholar Asa Seresin picked up on a feeling in the air..."

"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."

Writes Marie Solis, in "Men? Maybe Not. The election made clear that America’s gender divide is stark. What’s a heterosexual woman to do?" (NYT).

That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:

I watched Elon Musk's appearance at Saturday's Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but I couldn't remember what he said about what I want to know.

What I'd remembered was a lot of repetitious get-out-the-vote talk that anyone could say. What I wanted to know was why Elon Musk in particular supports Trump. Of course, I remember the grown-man-jumping-around-like-a-child business and the "dark MAGA" hat. But why is he for Trump? That might have some special persuasive power.

So I rewatched. Here's video of his appearance and a rough transcript. I've edited the transcript to fit it to the audio and to cut it down to the parts that might answer my question. 

First:

[T]he true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire....

So, one answer is that Musk was impressed by the way Trump behaved during and immediately after the assassination attempt.

Next:

The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms... they want to take away your right to vote effectively.... California... just just passed a law banning voter ID....

"Well, she’s — I’m in constant contact with her. She’s aware of where — we all — we’re singing from the same song sheet."

"We — she helped pass the l- — all the laws that are being employed now. She was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of legislation, which we were told we could never pass. And so, she’s been — and her — her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing."

Said President Biden, at the end of his press conference today, when he was asked what role Kamala Harris has played working on the "crises" of the last few days.

It almost seems designed to hurt her, but perhaps we can credit him with being so out of touch that he thought this was helpful. Has he not noticed that she's been trying to appear unattached to the Biden administration?

"You've had two Democratic candidates who've not been able to give unscripted interviews, which is extraordinary."

"I mean my father and uncle were so proud of... the United States — our capacity to engage in debate, to defend who we were in the world, to defend a vision of our country, to articulate it to be the rest of the world, to be the leaders of the Free World, and... have a command of the facts and of knowledge, and to be eloquent. And how can you be a leader in the world? What does the rest of the world think of us right now? I mean what could they possibly think? We have two Democratic party candidates who were not able to explain themselves in an interview.... If you want to if you want the job of handling the nuclear codes, you've got to do an interview first. And... how can you go 39 days without talking to the press, without being able to defend your record, to explain who you are to the American people? And if you talk to Democrats about this, and you can get past the anger and past the vitriol — this kind of wall of of tribal resistance to any new knowledge coming in... or any contrary fact — what they'll say is, well, we're not really voting for Kamala, we're voting for the apparatus. Then you ask the next question: Has that apparatus served you? You know, has the open border served you? Has the $35 trillion debt served you? Has all the endless war served you? Has the destruction the American middle class — highest inflation rate in a generation — has any of that — that apparatus — produced something for the United States that you're so proud of that you want to blindly vote without knowing who you're voting for?"

Said Bobby Kennedy.

Recorded before the Harris/Walz interview with Dana Bash.

Donald Trump, the fiction writer.

"What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!"

Written by Donald Trump, at Truth Social.

He's pretty creative.

I like the locution "What are the chances." Start like that, and you can say anything. And it's good — not because the chances are zero — because it's got an element of truth in that guess about Biden's feelings. I would have thought no one cares anymore about Joe Biden's feelings. But Trump took the time to think about Biden's feelings and to spin out a story where the man who got knocked so far down, got back up:

Are The Washington Post and The New York Times treating the rise of Kamala Harris quite differently?

Kamala Harris is at the top of the Washington Post home page:

The Washington Post headline expresses bold pride in her takeover of the Democratic Party, ousting the unnamed man (Biden) who had won the primaries and who is still (remember?!) President of the United States. And the next headline down casts doubt on the election in Venezuela. Why not admiration for Maduro, how he "took control"? Because he did it via election?

Over at The New York Times, the top headline is "Venezuela's Autocrat Is Declared Winner of Tainted Election." Then, there is a series of headlines — inflation in Japan, the attack in Israel from Lebanon, Biden's plan for the Supreme Court — before we get to something about Kamala Harris, and it's not cheering for her:

 

She's underneath Biden, who's holding up an I'm-still-here finger, and she's walking downward, and, we're told, her "Honeymoon Phase" is "wind[ing] down." She's isolated and her head is bowed: How will she "Maintain Momentum"?

"But if it turns out that her short general election campaign doesn't go well, and if she doesn't beat Trump, how much of the blame will belong directly to Joe Biden..."

"... for putting the party and Harris in this situation by discouraging anyone else from running against him by snuffing out any whiff of competition. I mean, he changed the primary calendar to favor him and him alone. He ditched Iowa and started the primaries in South Carolina, a state he knew he would win. I mean, how much of this is gonna be on him if Harris loses?"

Asks Michael Barbaro, in today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Coronation of Kamala Harris."

NYT reporter Reid J. Epstein answers:

"My baseline view of politics... is that political parties engage in something roughly resembling game-theory optimal behavior..."

"... and undertake reasonably rational strategies in an effort to win elections and fulfill their other objectives.... As compared to Republicans’ decision about what to do about Trump, I thought Democrats had more agency about Biden following his disastrous debate. Unlike Republicans in 2016, Democrats hadn’t even bothered to hold a competitive primary — if they had, Biden’s flaws might have been even evident earlier — so the will-of-the-voters argument was weak. And unlike Trump in October 2016 following the release of the 'Access Hollywood' tape — after which some Republicans called on him to drop out — Biden wasn’t even the Democratic nominee yet since the party convention hadn’t been held. And Biden has always been a loyal Democrat who got a huge boost from the party establishment in wrapping up the nomination in 2020 — not someone who gave his party the middle finger...."

Writes Nate Silver, noting his failure to predict that Trump would win in 2016 and his early prediction that Biden would withdraw, in "Biden and Democrats make the rational choice/They're probably still underdogs against Trump, but Biden dropping out improves their odds."

"Look at the heat I'm getting because I, I named a, uh, the, uh, Secretary of Defense — the black man."

BIDEN: "Look at the heat I'm getting because I, I named a, uh, the, uh, secretary of defense — the black man" 🥴 pic.twitter.com/PJYzDznpIV

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 18, 2024

ADDED: That video clip comes from Biden's interview yesterday with BET’s Ed Gordon. Details here (at The Hill).