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Notes -
(https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/03/biden-tells-governors-he-got-a-medical-check-up-00166579)
Over a dozen democratic governors have convinced Joe Biden to take a medical test (undoubtedly a cognitive test) to see if he can continue as a candidate. This would seem to me to be a pretty strong signal that they are pretty much pushing the Big Guy overboard. Especially since it’s now public that Joe is seen by his own party as in need of a cognitive test. They would not allow this to be public unless they were pretty sure they wanted him out because, again it’s almost impossible to walk back “your own governors don’t think you can do it,” and the really huge doubts it raises about not only candidate Biden but President Biden. He cannot get away from those questions.
My questions are 1) do you think they’ll wait for the convention, and 2) are we looking at a 25th amendment situation here?
Why is the debate about dropping out of the campaign and not about stepping down as president? A man unfit to campaign is a man unfit to hold the nuclear codes. His cabinet should be the ones asking for a medical test in preparation for invoking the 25th Amendment.
The 25th amendment is not obligatory. There is no requirement to invoke the amendment if the president is incapacitated, only a pathway to do so. That Kamala and the cabinet have not done so thus far is bad for the nation, but good politics. You don't want to be the one to point out that Brezhnev isn't all there anymore.
The 25th has to be invoked voluntarily by Joe Biden, or by Kamala Harris and a majority of the Cabinet. As long as Biden is physically able to sign documents and read prepared speeches off a teleprompter, Cabinet secretaries' jobs are more fun with no boss than working for Harris.
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From Kamala Harris's perspective, the Brezhnev -> Andropov route is the most realistic path for her, though she'd hope to live longer than Androppedoff.
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It’s really funny to me that the only reason that the 25th amendment is even in the popular discourse is because the left wouldn’t stop talking about using it to remove Trump.
The current situation with Biden is exactly why this exists. He seems incapable of doing the job.
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I take the exact opposite message from it: after the debate a strong party would not be taking anything on Biden's word. A strong party wouldn't be waiting for some hail Mary interview or strategy change.
A strong party would simply defenestrate him because it's quite clear what the problem is. It has been clear in polling for months now - the public has made it clear this is a huge issue for them. It's been clear in the reporting since the debate. This is not the "break glass" moment. This is past that.
What is the point of elites if they can't just make the decision?
All of this seems like a weak party moving from the denial to the bargaining stage. Now it's clear they've gone too far and it's just too gosh-darned hard to remove Biden (especially with Kamala on maneuvers, making it clear they're not jumping her) they're listening and hoping something happens, someone else does it, when they should be telling Biden.
Of course, they don't have the time to get to acceptance. So Biden likely runs out the clock.
The problem they have is enough of them have spoken out that Biden seems like a dead man walking. Let’s say Biden hangs on — the Fourth of July almost certainly helps stem the story a bit.
Now what? Now the republicans get to run ads showing many democrats calling the president mentally incompetent.
Trump had been strangely silent. A video just leaked with him talking some shit re Biden. I think Trump is playing 3D chess here. He let the Dems attack Biden and bloody him up. Now Trump is trying to goad Biden into staying in.
The longer they wait, the more the Democrats are going to run into problems if they want to swap Biden. There are states with ballot deadlines, fundraising concerns (ie: current funds could not be redirected to anyone but Kamala), and Biden's state is not likely to get better. Not to mention that some voters would likely feel cheated by a last minute switcharoo (an earlier one for anyone but Kamala is still a betrayal of democratic principles, but at least they'd have some time to come to terms with it). In all cases, sitting back and waiting is the right move for Trump. Once they swap Biden and he knows who he'll be facing, or enough deadlines have passed that swapping Biden would be devastating, then he will resume his regularly scheduled shitposting. If he pounces now and deliver a killing blow to Joe's chances they'll swap him out early rather than later (or not at all).
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Why would Trump want to risk a better candidate? He’s smart to stay out of it for now.
My point is Trump wants to keep Biden in the race. The current trajectory seems to be Biden drops out. Trump needs to goad Biden into staying and he can’t do that while being silent right now. So the strategic thing (even if tactically unwise) is for Trump to induce a muted rally around the Biden effect to end the bleeding. Leave the horse dead but stop beating it basically.
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It would absolutely be a feckless, stupid move to sleepwalk into a disastrous Biden campaign, I don't disagree. But that's exactly what they've been doing?
I doubt their capacity to draw a line, not see the issue. Maybe Biden absolutely shits the bed in the upcoming interview and Obama flies out there. But the fact that it even theoretically needs to get to that stage is damning. And they don't have a lot of time to gather their courage.
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I don't think it was a cognitive test, as per your link anyway:
I also don't think your framing that the governors pressured Biden into it is correct:
The general optics of the meeting, at least as per the Politico article, read much less like governors getting together to influence Biden and much more like Biden summoning a group of governors to influence them and assess/reinforce their loyalty.
I've said it before: the most likely outcome is like when the GOP came home after any one of Trump's innumerable gaffes and problems. They can buck as much as they like. But, unless they're willing to go nuclear on Biden, he can simply refuse to bend and they will.
Ted Cruz had more to lose against Donald Trump because his donors had more to lose.
Unlike Biden and his handlers, they'll actually still be in politics in a couple of years. If Trump wins, he wins. If Trump wins because they tackled their own candidate...
After reading more leaks, I'm now drastically less confident he lasts the course.
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Maybe they did but the article doesn't seem to say that.
It sounds like he had a medical test anyway and then told the governors about it after the fact. I don't see anything indicating that the governors told him to do it.
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3- How much danger are we in that if the 25A's not invoked by October, Xi Jinping sees an opportunity to invade Taiwan? He (or rather his intelligence apparatus) watches the US news too, after all. And yes, the 25A would almost certainly be invoked if that happened (section 4, if Biden refused to enact section 3), but every hour counts in the opening stages of that.
I don't think the PLAN can pull off a straight crossing without months of notice. It will be obvious well ahead of time that troops are building up, planes are moving to stage off of bases nearer to Taiwan, generals are getting reshuffled, ships are moving towards the buildup on China's southeast coast, ultra-long range artillery is stockpiling, etc. The impending Taiwan invasion will be at least as obvious as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yeah, obviously the Five Eyes would know that the PRC was at least intending on having the option available (certainty that it will happen is harder; you can do all that preparation and then call "no-go" a couple of days in advance, after all). I think they do know.
Are you saying that the Dems would pre-emptively invoke 25A section 4? I'd hope so, but given the political fallout of doing so I'd be concerned that they might succumb to hopium.
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Russia and China have already been exploiting Bidens mental and political state (related to each other) for the last 3 years. Trump is right that Putin almost certainly wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if he had still been in office.
If Xi wants to do it, this is going yo be one of his best shots at it for a while. Not only because the leader of our military goes into sundown at 4:00pm, but because he has lost the support of his people.
I think Trump is almost certainly wrong here. Trump is more isolationist than Biden and I think support for Ukraine is lesser under Trump and Putin almost certainly knows this. Whether Trump or Biden probably wouldn't have made much difference at all, as the internal and geopolitical considerations are much more important than who is US President. But if you are going to bet as to who would support Ukraine more, I think it's unlikely you pick Trump.
You're right regarding the median case, but the Trump card is that he's a madman and thus high-variance; a 100% likelihood of supplying weapons to Ukraine is less relevant than a 10% chance (potentially even a 1% chance) of "NUKE MOSCOW LOL".
The 2017 Korea crisis ended very positively mostly because of everyone being shit-scared of Trump, for instance. Of course, if Kim hadn't blinked then we could have wound up with a small nuclear exchange, but that's the tradeoff of being a madman.
Does North Korea have the capacity to actually hurt us? I thought they could hit SK and maybe Japan, but not the USA.
The answer to that is a bit complicated.
At the time of the crisis, NK had just unveiled Hwasong-14 ICBMs capable of reaching part of the 'States, but not all of it - that's part of what triggered the crisis in the first place.
Now, they have Hwasong-15s, Hwasong-17s and Hwasong-18s, which as you can see can hit anywhere in the USA. (They might not be able to get Argentina, but it's unclear why they'd want to.)
On the other hand, they may or may not have enough of them to actually get nukes through ABM. They certainly don't have enough nukes to fully destroy the US after accounting for shootdowns and misses, hence why I called the worst possible outcome a "small nuclear exchange" (assuming the PRC didn't come in).
Also, I should probably point out to you that I live in Australia, not the US.
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Yeah, I think we know he isn't and wasn't but since the media were loudly claiming he was it was still necessary to assign a legit percentage probability to the idea that maybe the media wasn't crazy (and Trump was), achieving the same effect.
What I'm less sure is that the same effect isn't in play for a litteral dementia case; what's to stop Biden to have an episode and decide that he needs to resist the Soviets by sending American troops to Ukraine?
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Wait for the convention to do what? Take the cognitive test? Move to replace Biden as the nominee?
If Biden wins, he will probably select the most loyal cabinet possible, as Trump attempted to do when he was in office.
What I think Biden should do, if he really wants to set the record straight, is address the nation directly from the White House about his health, being completely transparent about whatever is going on with him. I don't think we have the full picture of the situation, and everything we hear about it is either in a news article, an opinionated tweet or a one-line quote. We need to hear about what's going on, no holds barres, direct from the source.
Would anyone really believe him if he took a test and said “I’m fine” in a televised speech? He’s still officially running for the position. And an address from the White House which doesn’t allow for any questions is not going to be nearly as reassuring as people think it would. A speech can be recorded when Biden is at his most able to be replayed in the evening. It can be heavily edited to hide speech flubs, pauses, and word salads. Hell, the only reason we detected the problem in the debate is because it was an unscripted event that happened after 4pm where he couldn’t simply memorize and deliver a speech to a camera with the option of cutting anything that doesn’t sound right. Anything short of that wouldn’t convince most people.
If he’s really okay, I would expect a press conference with live Q&A held in prime time for at least half an hour. It would prove to people that he can actually think on his feet, answer questions, and understand the questions asked. Holding such an event after 4 would show that he’s not sundowning as has been reported. If he can’t do that (and keep in mind he hasn’t done a lot of press conferences thus far in his presidency) then there’s no reason to believe that he’s capable no matter what spin they put on it.
And as I said before, I think the fact that the Democratic Party is breaking ranks on Biden’s cognitive decline is very telling as they would not be doing this if they expect him to be able to continue. They’re basically own-goaling with every such rumor and statement. If he does continue, these attacks will be front and center in Trump’s campaign. In fact, these rumors are so damaging that basically if the republicans are smart, they’ll just campaign by playing these messages and doing nothing else.
Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to take a feckless middle stance that's the worst of all worlds.
Publicly asking if your candidate is capable of running when the public already has questions about his age isn’t feckless middle of the road stuff. It’s making it impossible for Biden to even consider continuing even if he’s mentally fine because his own side is publishing story after story in the press asking if he has dementia.
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I wouldn't be so sure about that. Biden has made it a point to release his physical check results each year, but does not include a cognitive exam in those results. If he agreed to a test, it's probably just another one where the report will be "is in good physical health for a man of his age," and is silent on mental acuity.
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I didn’t see that in the link. Am I just groggy this morning or is it the wrong link?
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