Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
Philadelphia Inquirer editorial:
The lingering focus on Biden’s shaky debate obscures Trump’s major verbal miscues
The president must now convince voters he has the mental acuity to do the toughest job in the world. The same bar does not exist for Trump, who loses no points for incoherence or incompetence.
The country is not electing the next debate champion. Biden is a decent and honorable man with a substantive record of accomplishment. But to make his case, Biden should hold more unscripted events, including town halls, press conferences, and interviews.
E.J. Dionne/Washington Post:
The words about Joe Biden I never wanted to write
It’s hard to acknowledge that those who worried about Biden’s age may have been right all along.
Until now, Team Biden has been able to dig in because most of those in the world of commentary who have been calling on him to withdraw were those who had already done so so long ago. Seen from Biden’s perspective, they are just using a “bad night,” the president’s unfortunate term to Stephanopoulos, to trash him yet again.
His challenge, however, is not with critics who always underestimated him but with those who have long respected him, liked him — and continue to appreciate the large achievements of his presidency. We bought into the rationale for his reelection campaign: That despite his age and its effects, he was still his party’s best option. Given that a battle for the succession could have torn the party apart (and it could still be messy if he drops out), Biden was the one politician who could hold the party’s often fractious coalition together.
No one knows nothing. But we do know Congress is back Monday, and there are some very unhappy Congress critters. The Senate has been relatively silent, so we will see what the senior statesmen— Virginia’s Mark Warner and the others—do.
I expect this to be resolved one way or the other by week’s end, and then the troops rally.
Joe Biden came to Madison, Wisconsin, to shore up his presidential campaign. Here’s what voters had to say.
Biden needs liberal Dane County voters now more than ever. But interviews with the Journal Sentinel before and following his rally showed a divided Democratic electorate in Madison, with voters in disagreement over Biden’s abilities and electability….
The message landed for James Tinjum, who had doubts about Biden’s debate performance but attended Biden’s rally Friday.
“He admitted he’s not a good debater. It doesn’t matter,” Tinjum told the Journal Sentinel. “Say what you want, but President Biden has gotten things done, not only when he was vice president, but he gets things done now as president.”
But beyond the venue of invited Biden supporters, Madison Democrats weren’t so sure. Some expressed stark concern about the president’s age and cognitive abilities.
“After the debate, a lot of people don’t want him in general, so I think a new candidate is probably necessary,” Lauren Calvetti said in an interview at James Madison Park.
Supreme Court ethics remain at center stage after hard-right rulings
Much of the public sees the Supreme Court as political, not impartial, even as the court’s defenders say its critics simply oppose the conservative majority.
“They’ve got a potential legitimacy problem,” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and expert on judicial ethics. “The traditional notion that we will accept the results of the court whether we agree with it or not … is decreasingly the case. A lot of the ethics problems the court confronts fuel the perception that it is an organization more political than legal.”
That’s because it’s not a conservative Supreme Court, it’s a Republican Supreme Court.
That tweet is as long as a column:
We have enough polling now to know Biden is at a solid disadvantage v Trump. The White House apparently cannot (or will not?) confront the reality of his unpopularity and age concerns. Given the current trajectory of the race and rhetoric from Biden/the campaign (“I don’t believe that’s my approval rating”), fundamentally, Biden’s team is betting on polls being biased against them to win. Because of polarization and an improving economy, Biden does do better in non-polling forecasts, but those tend to be less accurate (and are overwhelmed by polls in our models by Sept).
We have less data on Harris, but the polls seem to indicate a marginal improvement in the national vote but a worse Electoral College bias. That’s bad, all else equal, but not all is equal (esp given Biden’s quickly sinking numbers). However the bigger factor in the math is that fewer polls means greater uncertainty, which in turn means a bigger downside AND upside for Dems. (See sticky note chart.)
David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:
It’s Time to Get Used to the Idea of President Kamala Harris
If Kamala Harris runs, she has a very good chance of winning, given Donald Trump’s grotesque defects—and her strengths.
While the debate over Joe Biden’s future has raised many questions, it has made one thing much clearer. It is time for Americans to get used to the idea of President Kamala Harris.
Democrats who believe that their party should stay the course with Biden as candidate frequently make the argument that if it became impossible for him to continue with the campaign or as president, Harris would be ready to assume the reins of power…
For those who think it is time to move on from Biden, once again, Harris is the leading answer. A recent CNN poll suggested that a substantial majority of Americans believe Democrats would have a better chance of beating Trump without Biden, while Harris performed slightly better than Biden in a hypothetical matchup with Trump. Other polls have shown similar results.
The column argues not that Harris should replace Biden but that whatever Harris’ role, she makes Democrats stronger, including Biden.
Susanne Mundschenk/The Spectator:
The end of Macronism
This whole week has been devoted to thwarting Marine Le Pen’s party from coming to power. With some success: there are now 409 two-way, 89 three-way, and two four-way elections. But none of the parties seem to be bothered about the voters. About 10 million voters chose the RN in the first round, many of them voting for the first time. Have any of the parties addressed those voters?
It’s far from clear where votes from the eliminated parties will go. What will Les Républicains voters do? There has been no recommendation from the party to its supporters of how to vote. Would they not be compelled to vote RN, if the alternative was a candidate from the left? What is a centrist voter to do after Macron’s zigzag course of neither denying support to the LFI nor engaging them in government? Are they to forget LFI’s violent language against their government during the pension – or the immigration reform – and now vote for an LFI candidate to prevent the RN from getting that seat? Or do they just stay at home?
All of these backroom deals and electoral pacts may prove to be too clever by half. There is no clear line: just an alliance of circumstances with only one goal – to stop RN winning a majority. This may succeed. But Emmanuel Macron’s movement has already ended up the loser.
Starmer’s arrival at Number 10 will bring a reset in Anglo-Irish relations
Reverberations after a remarkable week politics will be felt for years to come
It was a week dominated by elections. French voters are preparing to cast their ballots today in the second round of a parliamentary election that could result in the far-right forming a government. “Let’s jump off the bridge to see if there is water in the river.” That’s how the French humorist Sophia Aram described president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call the snap election – a decision that looks likely to backfire, as Lara Marlowe suggests in her pre-election primer.
And in the US, where the presidential election is still four months away, the fate of US president Joe Biden is the only topic of conversation in the corridors of power. The Democrat’s performance in his first campaign debate with Donald Trump raised doubts about whether he possesses the mental and physical acuity and stamina to lead his party into the election. On Monday, neuropsychologist Ian Robertson gave his verdict on what went wrong for the president. As Fintan O’Toole argued the following day, the stakes are high: “It’s not fine – the United States is in imminent danger of being handed back to a Trump who is vastly more malign than he was in 2016: more deranged, more vengeful, more openly willing to use Nazi rhetoric, more contemptuous of all constitutional restraints, more assured than ever that there is nothing at all he cannot get away with.”
