On the menu today: President Joe Biden will address the country, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the U.S. Congress, Vice President Kamala Harris will address the issue of abortion over and over again, and after repeatedly insisting that she would not resign, the Secret Service director has resigned. Plus, wondering if “Ponytail Guy” was the canary in the coal mine of American political madness.
Biden Faces the Nation to Explain His Exit
Tonight, at 8 p.m. Eastern, President Biden will address the nation and give his first explanation of why he decided to stop pursuing a second term, less than a month after he adamantly insisted that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him that he couldn’t beat Donald Trump. Perhaps tonight we will be told about a religious experience.
Allegedly, the polling convinced him, although his head-to-head polls against Donald Trump had been bad since the debate, and even before the debate. Right before Biden’s Covid diagnosis, the president was insisting that between Trump and himself, it was “essentially a toss-up race.” Nothing changed in that seven-day span, other than maybe Biden’s blind denial.
White House sources have insisted to the likes of CNN that “Biden’s decision did not have to do with any medical issues, “ although there are rumors to the contrary. Nature, and the news cycle, abhor a vacuum. When there is no explanation, other explanations will rush in, whether they are accurate or not.
Biden’s shocking reversal arrived via Twitter Sunday afternoon, meaning about three and a half days have passed since the pronouncement. In that time, the country moved on to contemplating a Kamala Harris–Donald Trump matchup. Democrats are elated, Republicans are convinced Harris is eminently beatable, and nobody’s thinking much about the octogenarian in Delaware anymore.
At this hour, the address to the nation is the only public event listed on the president’s schedule for today.
The Democratic Middle Finger to Netanyahu and Israel
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington marks his first trip abroad since the October 7 attacks.
It’s not required that the president, vice president, or U.S. secretary of state greet a foreign head of state at the airport. But the fact that no U.S. official at all greeted Netanyahu upon his arrival was presumably meant to send the message that he’s not all that welcome. It also sent the message that within the executive branch, no one is home. Biden’s in Delaware prepping for his big speech, Harris is out on the campaign trail, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is off on a trip to Asia.
Democrats, as a whole, are doing their best to communicate a collective middle finger to Netanyahu. Vice President Harris will not preside over the chamber during Netanyahu’s address; she will be in Indianapolis, giving the “keynote speech at Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Grand Boulé.” She is scheduled to meet with Netanyahu at some point during his trip.
Many congressional Democrats will boycott Netanyahu’s speech, and others are expected to protest. Even past pro-Israel congressional Democrats like Jerrold Nadler of New York are tearing into the Israeli prime minister in over-the-top language:
Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago. . . .
There are still 120 Israeli hostages in Gaza, including 8 Americans, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has yet to secure an agreement that would return them to their families. Only two weeks ago an Israeli security official was quoted in the Israeli press as saying that “Netanyahu pretends that he wants a deal, but is working to torpedo it. He’s dragging out the process, trying to stretch time until his speech in Congress.”
Because Hamas is so legendarily conciliatory and reasonable. In Nadler’s version of events, Hamas is sensible and levelheaded, and it’s Netanyahu who’s being obstinate.
I will remind you that Hamas has either rejected ceasefire proposals or hostage-for-prisoner trades, walked away from the table, or refused to restart negotiations in the months of December, January, February, March, April, May, June, and July.
Hamas is a bunch of rabidly antisemitic homicidal maniacs. They’ve proven it time and time again. There’s not much of a deal to be reached with people who want you and everyone like you six feet under. The only way Hamas is ever going to put any serious offer on the table is if they’re feeling squeezed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Today’s bash-Netanyahu festival among Democrats is caused by middle-aged and older Democrats being terrified of telling younger Democrats the hard reality of the Middle East. The appalling conditions in Gaza are a direct result of Hamas refusing to change its mass-murdering ways, and the Palestinian people’s continued support of Hamas. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
Harris Rolls Out Her Abortion-Focused Campaign
One thing we know is that Kamala Harris is probably going to mention abortion — or the Democratic party’s preferred euphemisms, “reproductive health care’ and “women’s health care” — in just about every speech she gives from now until November.
And yet, abortion usually ranks second or third, and often a distant second or third, in voters’ minds when contemplating their choice in the 2024 presidential election. In a recent poll in Wisconsin:
IRG’s poll said 47 percent of voters said the economy is their top issue for the election. Another 8 percent said their personal finances. The poll shows that 17 percent of voters say the border is their top issue.
Overall, 71 percent of voters told pollsters their income has not kept pace with inflation.
[IRG vice president Chris] Reader said 24 percent of voters overall said abortion is their top issue this fall. Also, less than 10 percent of independent voters rank abortion as the most important question to them.
In a CNN poll at the beginning of the month, just 10 percent of respondents said abortion was the most important issue in their choice for president. The top issue was “the economy” at 36 percent, then “protecting democracy” at 22 percent, and “immigration” at 16 percent.
If Trump and J.D. Vance play their cards right, they can paint Harris and the Democrats as abortion obsessives who ignore the issues that are front and center in Americans’ minds — the economy, the cost of living, and the insecure border and waves of migrants she was supposed to address more than three years ago.
The Secretive Service
After repeatedly insisting that she would not resign, Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned. It was a necessary move, yes, but one that did nothing to preserve any sense of honor from Cheatle or any sense of accountability; she only resigned after turning in one of the worst appearances before a congressional committee ever. Time and again, Cheatle couldn’t answer the most basic questions — she couldn’t even tell her interlocutors who at the FBI would be the best person to ask about the status of the investigation into the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Cheatle only stepped down after she had effectively reaffirmed that no one, not even the most partisan Democrat, could continue to have faith in her ability to run the Secret Service.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Vice President Harris’s stepkids can call her whatever they like; what I’m mocking is Drew Barrymore asking the vice president to play the role of our national mom: “The president is not our national father or grandfather, and the vice president is not our national mother. They’re not there to give us hugs. We are not children, and we do not need or want our elected officials to think of themselves as our parents.”
I should have mentioned “Ponytail Guy,” the questioner in the second presidential debate of 1992:
PONYTAIL GUY: The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of the children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs?
Maybe Ponytail Guy was the canary in the coal mine, an early signal of the political madness and immaturity that has been prevalent in American culture for so much of my adult life.
We are not the farshtunken “symbolic children of the president.”
Also, there are a lot of fair gripes about Harris, but she’s got a more legitimate claim to the Democratic nomination than anyone else in her party. In the Democratic presidential primary this year, a vote for Biden was always a vote for Harris to take over at some future date.