Schrödinger's Ballot Box

July 8: Some Dems bail on Biden … Beryl hits Texas … Far-right losses in France, Iran … Arkansas abortion amendment …

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Pres. Joe Biden’s face, as it appeared during Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. (Screengrab / ABCNews.)

The campaign of Pres. Joe Biden is in a state of superposition this morning, simultaneously alive and not, its final status determined by what question the observer poses: “Is he still in the race?” or “Why is he still in the race?”

As of press time, it wasn’t immediately clear whether Biden’s political crisis actually embodies the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the observer effect, or some lazy-ass dorm-room level bullshit conflation of all three.

Nevertheless, Biden seems to have taken the whole freshman physics vibe to heart. Whether he’s got any energy, or just mass, seems to depend on whether the observer is supporters at his Wisconsin rally Friday, or ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

And now, eager to resume its horse-race coverage, the media has switched from beating the dead horse of why one almost-dead horse is still in the horse race to counting how many horses in other races want the almost-dead horse to drop out of his horse race.

Congress is returning to Capitol Hill today and, as of yesterday afternoon, at least nine House Democrats had called for Biden to drop out. Five publicly, four privately. Zeus knows how many secretly.

Some top House Democrats are publicly championing Biden’s campaign with vigor and energy, thereby undercutting Biden’s campaign by presenting a stark contrast to his lack of vigor and energy. Supporters include House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) and Congressional Black Caucus leaders Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Bobby Scott (D-VA).

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reportedly is meeting today with some House Democrats considered vulnerable in their own seats this year.

There was also talk of senators meeting today to sing backup on “Should He Stay or Should He Go.” But one report early this morning said they’ll hold off until they can sing it in person for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at tomorrow’s weekly Democratic lunch.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was pressed yesterday on whether he will keep supporting Biden. Sanders dodged the question, which is appropriate when the wrong question can kill cats, and pointed out that the question is which suite of policies will you support with your vote?

Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) also responded like a sane person, addressing Biden’s remark to Stephanopoulos that only “the Lord Almighty” could get him out of the race. “This isn’t a decision for Lord Almighty,” Welch said, sounding dangerously like his inner atheist was about to Hulk out. “This is a real-world decision for real-world people in politics who care about our country.”

Outside of Washington, a similar story played out among real people, the people who matter: Everyday Ameri Donors. While rich donors are freaking out, thanks to their failure to create a viable counterforce to Fox, small-dollar donors reportedly pushed congressional Democrats to back congressional Democrats as a firewall against a potential Represident Donald Trump.

Which, now that I think of it, is also a vote of no-confidence in Biden.

According to Politico, however, Biden’s best shot at salvation doesn’t lie with donors. Instead, his team is counting on what Politico describes as “older Black women in church pews who will decide the nominee, thank you very much.”

Yesterday, at the Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, Biden addressed the congregation, which responded by chanting “Four more years!”

Pastor Louis Felton said, “We love our president” and “there is no election we cannot win.”

In what amounted to a political campaign endorsement from the pulpit, in a church, Felton addressed separation of church and state, saying, “We are separated, but we are not divorced … And since we are not divorced, we still have visitation rights.”

In fact, thanks to church’s long record of abuse, there’s actually a substantial record of court orders that church keep its damn hands well the fuck away from state, stop calling it, not show up at work, and now that we’re talking about it, this would be a damn good time for church to start paying all that alimony and child support.

Biden offered no rebuke that I’m aware of. Nor did he mount a stirring defense of the reason church does not get visitation rights and can’t even see state on alternate weekends.

It’s this kind of Democratic winking at theocracy that continues to enable the white Christian nationalism now threatening our country, the same impulse that turned religion into a holy ghost in our official accounts of Jan. 6. It’s a leopard. It eats faces. Democrats keep feeding it.

The Democratic establishment, of course, would have been scandalized if Trump had countenanced such a shocking rejection of such a core American principle. But because the media don’t know how to deal with this kind of shit on the left, reporters duly noted it, but their bosses didn’t run with it.

In any case, older Black church women won’t be deciding the nominee, thank you very much, because the nominee’s already been decided, you’re quite welcome. The issue is that he doesn’t always seem to show up.

Another issue is whether the same party apparatus that made Biden the nominee by shielding him from the forces of democracy is now crumbling. Which may not look like democracy in action, but is arguably a lot more democratic than a gamed primary.

Despite calls for Biden to do as many events as possible to show that he’s not the guy voters saw on TV, Biden is stuck hosting this week’s NATO summit. A live, solo news conference — his first since November 2022 — is expected Thursday, after the summit’s over, that could put the debate to rest once and for all. Or not.

One upside for Biden: The roiling debate bolsters his claim that he’s a defender of democracy. The turmoil and conflict are democracy at work. Arguably, they represent the release of pressure that the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee sought to bottle up during the primaries that mostly didn’t happen.

There were no primary debates. Biden hasn’t made himself available to the media. In medical terms, to flip analogies yet again, he didn’t get his regular check-ups and failed to inoculate himself. And now he’s fighting off something with a compromised immune system.

Okay, back to physics! The proper analogy for Biden’s campaign may be not quantum physics but Newtonian physics. Biden created a bubble around himself and failed to ensure he was subject to sufficient external pressure. The bubble expanded, attenuated, weakened. Now it’s maybepopping.

The Biden campaign and his White House comms team should have understood the dangers of the bubble and the potential of it popping.

Both parties have succumbed to and sought to wield the power of myth, and TV’s ability to craft it. TV first won the presidency, narrowly, in 1960. The Republican Party learned the lesson. A later nominee played cowboy in the movies. Another played a non-rapist, non-racist businessman on TV. Next in line, if we extrapolate, will be Andrew Tate.

What’s the Democratic casualty count for the media up to now? You could ask Jimmy Carter if he weren’t hiding from the media.¹ Or Mike Dukakis. Al Gore. John Kerry — he windsurfed! and got Purple Hearts like a loser! — and, yes, haters, Hillary Rodham Kissinger Clinton.

The media inevitably, relentlessly devour their favorite Democratic foible or alleged foible from the vast menus that Republicans serve up. Because it’s interesting in a way that subsidized housing can never hope to be to people whose luxury housing is subsidized by advertisers. Two Democratic presidents² have experienced multiple media cycles regarding the colors of their suits.

And this, too, is Newtonian. Democrats helped or stood by as government guardrails were removed from the media, allowing the Fairness Doctrine to get cut out like a cancer while Rupert Murdoch metastasized like a Murdoch.

Where’s the progressive alternative to Fox? Why didn’t the Clinton administration bring to the internet’s baby shower a robust, online, government resource for knowing what’s true and what’s not?

Nothing is karma, or magic, or even justice. In this case, we’re seeing the genius of the Newtonian political physics built into the engine of American democracy.

And that allows a certain level of sanguine detachment (if you can resist the impulse to panic). If Democratic failure to provide an equal and opposite force to Fox/corporate media means that Biden can’t stave off a growing rebellion within his own ranks, it’s fair to see that as evidence that he wouldn’t be able to muster a victory against Trump in the next debate, let alone in November.

And it might have nothing to do with age and everything to do with Democratic failures to ensure a democratic process and the existence of a robust, substantive media.

And if Biden is able either to win back voter confidence, or suppress Democratic rebellion, that will be evidence he is capable of victory in November. And there’s lots of new evidence, thanks to other news, that things don’t always turn out as polls and pundits predict, as you’d surely hear Biden say if you leaned in reeeally close.

Beryl Hits State It Was Forecast Not to Hit

As your reliable, trusty TFN told you Wednesday, Hurricane Beryl was expected to miss Texas. Which this morning is precisely what it did not. 

Beryl hit Texas early this morning as a Category 1 hurricane, with sustained wind strength at 80 miles an hour. For this record-breaking early storm, landfall was an emotional return to its ancestral homeland, just 85 miles southeast of Houston, where Beryl’s forefathers spawned generations of climate disasters with nothing more than a dream of oil wealth, decades of deceit, and billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

Expected to weaken soon to a tropical storm, Beryl will make its way north, as surely as it won’t hit Texas early this morning.

France and Iran See Electoral Surprises

Voters in France and Iran went lefter than expected over the long Fourth of July weekend that neither of them celebrate.

The victories/dodging of predicted disasters were widely seen (in the U.S.) in the context of recent political developments (in the U.S.). In fact, the electoral setbacks of the French right wing and the Iranian really right wing may have little relevance for U.S. politics, despite America’s solipsistic outlook, other than as a reminder of the persistent capacity of prognosticators to be wrong.

One key difference: Unlike in the U.S., the candidates reportedly had eyes that reliably focus on things and mouths that make appropriate syllables on command.

Jason Sattler (aka LOLGOP) aggregates a good thread on how the French left, center-left, and center did it. Spoiler: As the French say in Latin, E pluribus unum.

Instead of each faction attacking others as really wanting the party of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to win, they worked together. Here in the U.S., of course, when the left and liberals and Democrats and progressives disagree about tactics, they assume it’s because everyone they disagree with is bad and/or a traitor.

The coalition of lefties and non-fascists called itself the New Popular Front, which won a plurality of seats in yesterday’s vote tallies. The coalition won at least 181 seats. The centrists of President Emmanuel Macron took more than 160 seats.

And Le Pen’s far-right National Rally came in third with 143 seats…after having led in the first round of voting and scaring the shit out of everyone who didn’t vote in the first round of voting.

The lack of a clear majority means that to form a government there’s gonna be lots of arguing and in-fighting about what a majority coalition looks like. Which is good, because that means arguing and in-fighting are still allowed!

IRAN The far right lost on Friday, too, as Iran’s voters apparently got to vote for real in their presidential elections. Legislator Masoud Pezeshkian won the presidential runoff with 16.3 million votes, a landslide compared to the 13.5 million for his hard-line rival, Saeed Jalili, whose name won’t be on the test.

Last week, Pezeshkian said during a televised debate that Iran’s politicians are losing popular support “because of our behavior, high prices, our treatment of girls, and because we censor the internet.”

The election of a reformer to the presidency isn’t exactly the power upheaval that it would be in America. In Iran, the supreme leader is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whereas in America the supreme leader is Jesus.

Kyiv Children’s Hospital Bombed

Russia this morning launched a massive missile barrage against targets in at least five different Ukrainian cities.

Because it’s notoriously difficult to grow a mustache suitable for twirling, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin instead settled for bombing a children’s hospital in Kyiv. A newly reconstructed ward of the hospital was virtually destroyed, with at least seven deaths reported this morning. At least 25 people were said to be injured.

The U.S. has recently okayed Ukrainian strikes, within limits, against military targets inside Russia’s borders. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a statement that “There will be an answer” for this morning’s attack.

Three Quickies

• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is destroying fragile migratory bird habits, the New York Times reports, because that’s what cartoon villains do. Launches from the Texas facility of SpaceX — which I assume used to be called SpaceTwitter?!? — have destroyed surrounding wildlife habitats because who told them to habitate where Musk wanted to play with rockets? 

• Paramount and Skydance yesterday agreed to merge, in a historic marriage of two storied titans with legendary histories and a legacy of shaping America’s culture, except for Skydance, which is none of those things. Instead, Skydance is the plaything of billionaire nepo baby David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The merger isn’t exactly a marriage of equals, as Skydance had the money and Ellison the Younger will be running things, because tech bros are geniuses.

• Abortion-rights advocates filed enough signatures to satisfy even Arkansas’s Byzantine requirements for a ballot initiative on Friday. The Arkansas Abortion Amendment would revise the state Constitution to legalize abortion for up to 18 weeks after conception. It’s not clear yet whether the amendment will appear on the ballot in November, as foes of reproductive rights have said they’ll challenge the initiative’s legal shortcomings, once they figure out what to claim they are.

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids. And don’t let the chaos of democracy get you down; it’s proof we’ve still got one!

1. I know he’s not hiding; I’m modeling how media might characterize it and undermining my own joke by explaining it.

2. Gore and Barack Obama.