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July 14, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- It's been 282 days since October 7, 2023, when, on Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered 1,200 people (including 44 Americans). More Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust. Hamas wounded 3,300 and took 240 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and unspeakable, undeniable sexual violence; 120 hostages, 43 confirmed dead (but certainly more), some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza today.
- The 120 remaining hostages comprise five religions and 25 nationalities, including eight Americans, five probably alive: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. Freeing every hostage must remain a top priority.
- President Biden announced on Friday that Israel and Hamas agreed to his comprehensive framework for achieving a ceasefire and hostage release.
- The press finally gave Biden a gift: They asked the tough questions at his post-NATO Summit press conference on Thursday and Biden proved during those 60 minutes that he is in full command of the issues and that we were right to be surprised by this debate performance--it was an aberration. What was not an aberration were the lies Trump told throughout the debate, but after telling over 30,000 lies during his presidency, perhaps another 30 more is not newsworthy.
- Several recent polls show no evidence that Biden lost support after the debate.
- President Biden is, will be, and should be the Democratic nominee. He will lose in November only if Democrats and donors stop feeding the Republican narrative and start emphasizing Biden's accomplishments, Trump's record, and the 2024 Republican Platform a/k/a the dumbed-down version of Trump's Project 2025.
- President Biden and Vice President Harris condemned the shooting at yesterday's Trump rally. Political violence is unacceptable. Period.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and an event on Wednesday to learn about Project 2025.
You're welcome to read for free, but if you get something out of this newsletter, you can give something back by credit card or PayPal, by Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479), or by check. Thank you.
Hi Steve,
President Biden is the Democratic nominee. He will win in November if we stop whining and start working to make sure that he defeats Donald Trump.
Yes, Biden is getting older. Using a technique known as "math," we could have predicted in 2008, when Obama selected him as Vice President, exactly how old he would be today. He will always be three years older than Trump. Biden has had many great days on the campaign trail, one bad debate, and a press conference on Thursday evening that proved he is in full command of policy issues. Can you imagine Donald Trump answering complex questions like that? Of course not. He can't.
The choice is not between Joe Biden and a candidate with the down-to-earthiness of Harry Truman, the charisma of JFK, the cunning of LBJ, the vision of Jimmy Carter, the political acumen of Bill Clinton, and the intelligence of Barack Obama. Sorry, Democrats. That candidate does not exist. The choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and I'll take Biden on a bad day over Trump on any day.
Maybe all of Biden's accomplishments in his first term happened on good days. Maybe all of Biden's actions in support of Israel and opposition to antisemitism happened on good days. Maybe we got lucky on April 13 when Iran attacked Israel, President Biden coordinated an international defense and, for the first time in history, committed U.S. troops to directly defend Israel from attack, preventing a catastrophe that would have been far worse than October 7.
Or maybe we overreacted to a bad 90-minute debate and ignored Biden's record, which includes assembling the team that implemented the policies that led to these accomplishments. Maybe we are ignoring Biden's documented physical exams, which included neurological testing. I'm not crazy about Chris Cuomo either but he's right.
A poll can ask anyone anything but what matters is how they will vote. It's not enough to ask voters whether they think Biden lost the debate or whether they think Biden should step down. The key question is whether those voters still plan to vote for Biden even if they think he lost the debate or even if they'd prefer that he step down. It is entirely rational for someone who thinks Biden lost the debate and should step down to nevertheless, when faced with a choice, choose Biden over Trump.
We've got that polling. A new ABC News poll released July 11 shows that "Biden continues to run evenly with Donald Trump, with no meaningful post-debate change in vote preferences."
Similarly, a new report from Northeastern University shows "that the debate had little if any impact on people’s voting preference ... Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate. For Trump, 86% of people who said they would support him before the debate said they would do so after the debate."
A new national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on July 12 showed no change following the debate. The survey also found that by a 2-to-1 margin, 68% to 32%, people said it’s more concerning to have a president who doesn’t tell the truth than one who might be too old to serve.
I know, I know, polls are far from perfect, especially four months before an election. But these results should not surprise us. Ask yourself, Steve: Did you change your mind after the debate about whether you'd vote for Biden? Or are imagining what some hypothetical low-information undecided voters (who nevertheless somehow closely followed the debate) might be thinking in battleground states?
What should surprise us is that some Democrats have embarked on a quixotic quest to replace the Democratic nominee (the same nominee who voters chose over nearly every possible replacement in 2020) after the primaries, a month before the Convention. Enough already. The media doesn't get to decide. The donor class doesn't get to decide, as brilliant as some of them think they are.
The people decide, not the press, the pundits, or the donors. The people chose Biden. Now, as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said, "the only one who makes this decision is President Joe Biden ... some are playing fantasy football and want to just pick a couple of random leaders that they like across the country and design a ticket--that's just not how this works."
The way it works is that President Biden is the nominee, and if you don't like the sound of "President Trump," then get to work reelecting President Biden. If you've already called for Biden to step aside, use this handy Joe Biden Apology Form.
We cannot risk four years of Donald Trump. We should be enthusiastic about four more years of Biden-Harris not simply because of what they accomplished thus far and will accomplish if we reelect them and give them comfortable Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, but because the alternative, Donald Trump, would destroy everything we care about. The New York Times explained in detail why Donald Trump is unfit to lead. The Los Angeles Times feels the same way.
Trump has hidden from the spotlight since the debate but he reemerged in Florida on Tuesday to deliver "a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US 'most of their prisoners'; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000."
If it's not news when Trump delivers an incoherent, rambling speech packed with lies after lying throughout a 90-minute debate but it's news when Biden makes an error, maybe the take-away is that Trump, not Biden, is the candidate we should be concerned about.
In fairness, Trump says so many incomprehensible things that it's difficult to track. The only question is which is worse: that Trump is in cognitive decline or this is just who he is. In neither case should we want Trump anywhere near the Oval Office, much less the situation room.
The Republican Party's agenda is the Trump agenda in form and substance. Have you read the 2024 Republican Platform? At least scroll through it. This is not the work of a major political party worthy of our respect. It might as well have been written in crayon or by Donald Trump himself at 3:00 am on Truth Social--the Randomly Capitalized Words, the ALL CAPS and exclamation points throughout the document!--it reads as if, says Rick Wilson, someone asked ChatGPT to translate Trump's Project 2025 into moron.
Have you noticed that no matter what Democrats say about Israel, our right-wing friends always ask why they didn't say more? The Republican Platform mentions Israel a grand total of once: "We will stand with Israel, and seek peace in the Middle East." That's it. Feel better? The GOP platform is only 16 pages long so you can read it quickly if you want to, but be forewarned that, as Christopher David notes, "the entire GOP platform was written by middle schoolers, to be read by people who never finished high school."
Trump's Project 2025 is the real Trump/GOP platform. If you don't know about Trump's Project 2025, read Jay Michaelson's explainer on why Project 2025 would be very bad for Jewish Americans. Democracy Docket created a good general explainer about Project 2025. The bottom line is that Trump's Project 2025 is a blueprint for criminalizing abortion, gutting our system of checks and balances, and imposing an extreme right-wing agenda by presidential fiat.
If you'd rather watch a short video on Project 2025, watch this. If you prefer charts, here you go.
It would take an entire newsletter to summarize a 900-page document but the Michaelson and Democracy Docket pieces are not long and are worth your time, especially if you question or don't understand the threat Trump poses to our democracy, safety, and way of life. You can learn more about Project 2025 here.
Project 2025 is 900 pages long. It reflects the work of dozens of former Trump employees, including six former Cabinet secretaries. Scroll down the list until you've seen enough. Yes, Trump knows about it. Listen to Trump in 2022. Vice presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) lauded it.
But if all this is true (it is), then why didn't Trump do this during his first term? Patrick Chovanec has three answers to this question.
The Philadelphia Inquirer assessed both candidates' flaws, and concluded that there is no debate: We must reelect President Biden. If that's not enough for you, read this from Rebecca Solnit. Then stop playing fantasy politics, get behind Biden, help him defeat Donald Trump, and work to elect whoever the heck you want in 2028.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. No one pointed out any errors in last week's newsletter, so I guess it was perfect.
Upcoming Events. To learn more about Project 2025, join JDCA's free virtual event with Rep. Jamie Raskin (M-MD) and Brian Tyler Cohen on Wednesday, July 17, at noon ET. RSVP here to get the link.
In Case You Missed It:
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President Biden announced on Friday that Israel and Hamas agreed to his comprehensive framework for achieving a ceasefire and hostage release. More work to be done and more details to come.
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The U.S. will deliver 500-pound bombs to Israel. The administration's main concern remains the 2,000-pound bombs, which can cause significant damage in densely populated areas, but the 500-pound bombs were held up because they were part of the same delivery as the 2,000-pound bombs. The 500-pound bombs were released now because Israel's security needs have changed given renewed hostilities along the border with Lebanon. Those bombs could in theory be used in Gaza but a major operation in Rafah, which was imminent when the 2,000-pound bombs were withheld, is now less likely.
- We should not fault members of Congress who attend Netanyahu's July 24 speech; he is the Prime Minister of one of our closest allies. But neither should we fault members of Congress who heed Hadar Susskind's advice not to attend.
Tweets of the Week. Stuart Stevens, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), and Alex Cole.
Twitter Thread of the Week. David Roberts.
Biden Press Conference Clip of the Week. "Control guns, not girls."
Video Clip of the Week. How today's media would have covered a debate in 1932 between German President Paul Von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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