It was Joe Biden on the phone: long-time viewer, first-time caller.
The president’s surprise phone call to a morning television news show was an impromptu campaign to stay on the list.
He’s a regular viewer of the show in question, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and was compelling and forceful in a way that his recent television appearances haven’t been.
Your group might ask where Morning is. Joe Biden has been hiding; Joe, after dark, is what has brought him to the brink.
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The number of Democrats publicly lining up against their candidate had increased over the weekend, and was likely to increase further as elected representatives returned to the Capitol after the July 4 holiday.
It was an expectation shared by Biden; hence the television phone call and, simultaneously, a letter to congressional Democrats.
The president, always a political operator, invoked the democratic principle in his defense. Voters had backed him as a candidate, so how could they ignore democracy in his own party?
It is a powerful argument in a movement that is fighting in an election about democracy and its danger – as they would say – from Trump.
He also scripts Donald Trump (the punchline is that Democrats who attack Trump as the anti-democratic boogeyman are themselves anti-democracy), just ask their leader.
It’s Biden playing hardball, a survival strategy that further complicates the calculations of a Democratic movement contemplating change.
As things stand, getting rid of a defiant Biden would be a hostile process that would hurt the party.
Continuing with him would constitute an uncomfortable peace that would not be easy at all.
Consider the thoughts of a prominent Democrat I spoke to after Biden’s televised phone call.
They said their reaction was “frustration and concern.”
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Democrats had a message to say, they said, but Biden wasn’t the man to say it, and for all his claims that he was the man who beat Trump in 2020, it was an efficient Democratic machine that propelled Biden to the top. victory instead of the other way around.
On Biden’s argument about voting and democracy, they noted that the process that elevated Biden as a candidate also supported Kamala Harris, the vice president who is touted as a ready replacement.
The conversation with Biden has already reached “what comes next?”
How he performs his duties at a NATO summit and at a solo press conference will be an indicator for critics and supporters alike.
The passing grades will bolster support among his supporters and silence immediate calls for him to resign, but they will not completely silence doubts that this is simply a delayed decision.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
