Biden campaign’s reset after disastrous debate looks a lot like business as usual

 

He's moving on. As a practical matter I think that is wise.

On Monday night, Biden will speak on the Supreme Court’s decision to grant broad immunity to Trump and other presidents from prosecution, the White House announced Monday afternoon. The president’s schedule later this week includes a briefing on extreme weather, a campaign reception, a Medal of Honor ceremony and the traditional July 4th White House barbecue. Then he’s off for a weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Nothing out of the ordinary, it all telegraphed.

As a political matter the SCOTUS decision is gold for President Biden.

... “if we put aside the style points, there was a clear contrast,” she [Veep Harris] argued, going on to call out Trump as “a threat to our democracy” and “a liar.”

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... most in his orbit are waiting on more substantial polling to come back in order to assess how bad the damage was before altering course in any substantial way. That’s according to four Biden advisers who were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. 

 Biden’s team may not alter anything at all. Many think — or hope — the fraught moment will pass...

Isn't this all baked in? Trump, Biden: people know these two guys so well they are literally sick of them. Hasn't everything Trump has ever done been weighed and evaluated? He will get his 46% of the vote if he goes out and shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. Biden beat him in 2020. His age was an issue then, it is now. I am not downplaying it or reversing position that Biden is unfit to be president for four more years. Nor that Trump is infinitely more unfit. This is the practical point. Biden is running, he is not getting out unless a month's worth of polls show him in Mondale territory. I think as a practical political matter this moment will pass. I know it has to do more than pass and leave the status quo, though! He is behind a smidge (as he always has been this cycle) in the national polls. More significantly, he is behind in all or almost all the battleground state polls.

“I think his age was baked in, to a large degree, and I know he can do better than he did on Thursday night. I expected to see better. I’m not sure other voters did,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a White House communications director during the Obama administration and a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. 

That is a key point. I asked rhetorically here after the debate: How many committed Biden voters at 8 pm ET last Thursday were committed Trump voters at 11 pm? Show me one. I want a name. If (s)he exists (s)he's a unicorn. Show me one presidential debate that turned a loser into a winner or vice versa. You can point to one, the very first in the television era, in 1960.

More on an ancillary to this in the next post.

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 Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said he thought voters were more concerned with the issues at stake, anyway. “I’ve been at this a while, and I know his work,” Casey said.