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ANNOUNCING I
ITEM:
They are in!
Per the Washington Post:
President Biden will buy television ad time later this week to push his reelection message after announcing his campaign Tuesday morning in an online video, according to people familiar with the plans.
The president will also announce the senior ranks of his new campaign team Tuesday. Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a top aide at the White House and veteran of Vice President Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, will become his campaign manager, the people said….
Biden has also selected a suite of co-chairs for his campaign, including Reps. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), among others.
Biden will release his campaign announcement video early Tuesday morning, and in the afternoon he is scheduled to deliver remarks at the North America’s Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference….
The television ads are meant to demonstrate the aggressive footing of the coming Biden campaign. “We are coming to win,” said one person involved, who requested anonymity to describe the planning process.
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I’m with Donald Trump, Steve Forbes, and some of Mark Halperin’s sources close to Biden – he might be coming to win, but he won’t end up being the nominee.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: Two of the smartest center-right, Never Again Trump columnists have the exact same take on Biden ’24 – his barely-there presence and likely general election opponent are the keys to what makes him the overall frontrunner for November ’24, with his de facto campaign slogan, fittingly, a Biden oldie-but-goodie: Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.
The famously aged Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel at age 70. Ronald Reagan was elected president at 69. The long-serving French legend Charles de Gaulle retired permanently at 79….
To paraphrase Woody Allen, 90% of getting elected for Joe Biden is just showing up.
His campaign could be barely evident and still succeed.
*
I suspect that for all the diffidence and disquiet among Democrats, Mr. Biden is pretty secure. The main reason for concern among the rest of us is that, as things stand, he has a good shot—a shot he doesn’t deserve—at winning.
As his political handlers know, the president is the ideal figurehead for a party that has moved aggressively leftward in the last few years.
The Biden presidency has been a notable example of the power of false advertising. It’s a flag of convenience under which the coalition of economic and climate extremists of the Bernie Sanders wing and the cultural extremism of its critical-race and identitarian wing has been happy to sail, taking the country farther toward their progressive utopia, paid for by the rest of us in higher inflation, taxes and interest rates.
Enough Americans are still incredulous that Joe from Scranton could really be the vehicle for all this stuff, so that his claims to be the same old moderate he has always been somehow resonate. Expect a re-election campaign that insists it’s not the Democrats but the Republicans who are remaking the country.
That’s the second thing the president has going for him: his opposition. The other message we can expect to hear from the Biden re-election campaign is that a second term is the only way to save the country from another four years of Donald Trump.
Republican primary voters have the best chance to prove him wrong.
****
ANNOUNCING II
ITEM:
Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis will announce “charging decisions” this summer arising from her election-interference investigation into former President Donald Trump and his allies, according to a letter she sent to local law-enforcement agencies warning of the potential for violent reactions to that key milestone in her two-year probe.
In the letter addressed to Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat, Ms. Willis said she would be announcing charging decisions relating to the investigation sometime between July 11 and Sept. 1.
Ms. Willis said she wanted to give law-enforcement agencies sufficient time to prepare for the “significant public reaction” her announcement could trigger.
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I can only process these Trump legal circuses one case at a time, and/so now I’m focused on the rape trial starting in Gotham City today.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: To paraphrase the political philosopher Kelly Clarkson – or maybe it was Nietzsche – what doesn’t send Trump to prison makes him politically stronger for the nomination. The right betting is still that Jack Smith is the only prosecutor who can kill him.
****
WHIPPING
ITEM:
House GOP leaders are waving off calls from rank-and-file Republicans for changes to their debt-limit proposal. Instead, they’re plowing ahead toward a floor vote this week, daring detractors to vote against it.
At least, that’s what House Majority Whip Tom Emmer is asserting. Meanwhile, a handful of GOP members have told POLITICO they are still privately demanding changes to the bill and, without them, will lean toward voting “no” on the plan. And Republican leaders only have four votes to spare….
And Republican leadership has a warning they hope will keep the conference in line: Failing to unite behind a debt plan will only empower President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“Your choice is literally going to be, do you want to have a solution and avoid default? Or do you want to give Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer a blank check, with no fiscal reforms whatsoever?” Emmer said. “This is literally putting Republicans in charge of solving the debt ceiling.”
As for the GOP holdouts so far? Emmer argued that they would, ultimately, decide to back McCarthy’s goal of presenting a united front against Biden: “I think all those people understand this is a team effort.”
The list of possible GOP holdouts includes Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas), according to people familiar with their thinking and public statements.
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Wake me when it’s over. I’m assuming there is going to be some solution to avoid a debt ceiling crisis – even if I can’t tell you what it is.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: If Team McCarthy gets to 218, it is a huge development and/but it isn’t clear what happens next. If Team McCarthy doesn’t get to 218, it is a huge development and/but it isn’t clear what happens next. So/and/but we can’t game anything out until, yes, we see if they get to 218.
****
CONTROLLING
ITEM:
The single most important factor in determining success in presidential politics is who controls a candidate’s public image: the candidate himself/herself or that candidate’s political rival.
ITEM:
Here are two images of Ron DeSantis in Tokyo that Team Trump wants you to see:
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Surely, the governor of Florida has a version of Mike Deaver in his life who is not his spouse, right?
What you should say on your morning Zoom:. A big part of Team Trump’s efforts to kill the DeSantis campaign before it starts is to control the Sunshine State topper’s public image by defining him as “strange.” As Dr. Kissinger would say, this has the added advantage of being true. There is indeed something at least a bit off about this guy.
And the only players in this game who are more obsessed with optics than political reporters are donors.
So see the New York Times story about how Ken Griffin is sending signs of cold feet about being all in for DeSantis. The story also has this, which, again, shows you why Team Trump is going so hard after their chief (a/k/a “only”) rival right now:
In the first two weeks of May, Mr. DeSantis is set to host a series of small dinners with major donors and supporters from across the country at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, according to two people with knowledge of his plans….
In private conversations, Mr. DeSantis’s associates have indicated that they have $100 million in commitments to the super PAC, along with roughly $82 million in a Florida committee that will probably be transferred to Never Back Down.
****
ENDORSING
ITEM:
CNN:
Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, endorsed former President Donald Trump Monday night.
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Who cares? Trump gets Capitol Hill endorsements all the time these days.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: A key member of Mitch McConnell’s leadership team getting on board the Trump Train in April of ’23? Yes, Daines is a hunting buddy of Don, Jr., but the symbolism and substance of this is one of the clearest signs yet that the Establishment is either going to need a bigger boat to stop Trump – or to let Rich Lowry, Gerard Baker, and McConnell himself know they need to resign themselves to the renomination of the man the Democrats are rooting for.
****
FIRING
ITEM:
Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon are out.
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I love all the puns in the headlines about their names! Squeezing out Lemon!! Hilarious!!!!
What you should say on your morning Zoom: There are major implications for cable news networks, 2024, and our society from both of these personnel moves, to be sure. But attempts to find truly cosmic meaning in either ousting that will sustain past April just might be overkill. Sometimes an anchor change is just an anchor change.