This morning, it was reported that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), his party’s nominee for Senate, called on Biden to step aside. Schiff is a prominent Democrat, but also closely aligned with ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi, making his words carry even more weight.
Later in the day, Biden’s covid diagnosis was reported.
Here’s Dan Balz in today’s Washington Post: Biden has rebuffed all calls for him to step aside, has retreated to what is described as a shrinking inner circle of advisers and remains confident in his ability to win the election even if two-thirds of Democrats nationally say he should pass the torch, according to a new AP/NORC poll. The covid diagnosis adds to Biden’s string of bad luck, possibly drawing more attention to his age and physical strength. Since the debate, he has stepped up his schedule and his travels, holding rallies, doing interviews and conducting Zoom conversations with different groups from his party. At times, he has been vigorous and energetic. At other times, not so. Even at his best, he has not put to rest concerns about his capacity to win the election and serve another four years.
It’s only Wednesday, and it’s been a rough week for the Biden campaign.
How long will this go on? This is not sustainable.
So far: Nine House Democrats and one Democratic Senator have publicly called on President Biden to drop out of the presidential race; Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker emerita, said this morning ‘The President needs to decide what to do’ and avoided expressing explicit support for him; George Stephanopoulos (news anchor that interviewed Biden after the debate) appeared to say to a passer-by on a New York City street that he does not think Biden can serve four more years (per a video clip from TMZ);
Actor and filmmaker and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney calls for Biden to drop out, in a very direct and brutally honest op-ed for the New York Times.
Clooney writes in the op-ed: ‘But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate’.
This ‘Double-sided Big Head’ yard sign is from the Joe Biden campaign website ($25). Biden with the laser eyes is called Dark Biden. Biden’s team has embraced “Dark Brandon,” reappropriating a right-wing conspiracy meme* that depicted the president as a menacing force and used a nickname, “Brandon,” that become an in-joke among conservatives for insulting him.
*meme \MEEM\ noun. an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.
I watched the much-anticipated George Stephanopoulos interview with President Biden, and thought: no, that won’t do it. To the question “Did you ever watch the debate afterwards?” Biden’s answer was, “I don’t think I did, no.” About getting out of the race, Biden offered “If the Lord Almighty came down and said: ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race”. That does not do it for me, either.
Reporting from today’s The Washington Post. This piece ends with the following: The House returns to Washington on Monday, and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) is looking to rally fellow senators to call for a change. Multiple people publicly vouching for Biden, at the behest of the White House and campaign, privately say there’s no path. His family is still with him. The race is still single digits. And Biden remains hopeful. As he likes to say, America can do anything if its people work together — “There’s not a single thing we can’t do.” But in private, people around him have detected some shift. He admits the danger now, can sound more somber at times. One person who spoke to him over the Fourth of July holiday said, “I think he is focused on recovering, but I personally think he’s still in the denial phase of grief.”
‘Not to belabor the point, but this was a Biden campaign strategy, to have this debate’
– MSNC talk show host Alex Wagner to California governor Gavin Newsom, discussing President Biden’s poor— disastrous?— debate performance that was painful to watch.
Governor Newsom pointed out that the Biden administration delivered on many of the Democratic Party’s priorities and that voters should not write off the Democrats based on one debate’s performance by President Biden.
Reporting by the New York Times. ‘You have the morals of an alley cat’ says Pres. Biden to Trump, after listing all Trump’s sex scandals and his conviction.
The election result in South Africa is now official.
The ANC party claimed only 159 out of the 400 seats in parliament, down 71 seats from 2019.
Under the constitution, the newly elected parliament must convene within two weeks of the results being declared, and one of its first acts must be to choose the nation’s next president.
Coalition talks are underway behind closed doors.
Hopefully a deal can be struck between the ANC and the DA: a pivot to the center.
Few analysts expect an ANC-MK tie-up, given the bitter acrimony between them.
That would be President Cyril Ramaphosa in the middle, advised-admonished by ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula. The MK on the green phone stands for Mkhonto weSizwe, the corrupt ex-president Zuma’s new party. The DA on the blue phone stands for Democratic Alliance, the party governing Western Cape Province, that came in second in the elections. [Cartoon by Niel van Vuuren in South Africa’s Beeld newspaper]
Welp.
With 96% of the votes counted in South Africa’s national election of Wednesday, it is clear that the predictions (of the demise of the African National Congress majority) had become true, and then some.
The party that had once commanded 70% of the electorate’s support (in 2004), and still got 57% of the national vote in 2019, will now scrape in with barely 40% of the vote.
Yes, they still have the biggest share, but for the first time since South Africa became a full democracy in 1994, there will be a coalition government.
The African National Congress (ANC) still has widespread support, but not in the Western Cape province (DA 53%, ANC 21%), and not in KwaZulu-Natal province (M.K. 46%, ANC 18%). M.K. is uMkhonto weSizwe, ex-president’s Jacob Zuma’s political party. A coalition between the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) may be the best for the country, but will the ANC be willing to make concessions, such as letting the DA be in charge of key national departments such as National Treasury, Health and and Home Affairs? [Graphic from IEC dashboard at https://results.elections.org.za/dashboards/npe/]
A jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a crime that under New York State law carries a possible sentence that ranges from probation to four years in prison.
-Reported by William K. Rashbaum for the New York Times, May 30, 2024
Artist John Cuneo’s “A Man of Conviction”, artwork that will appear on the cover of an upcoming The New Yorker magazine.
So Trump is now a convicted felon.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jul. 11, four days before the start of the Republican convention.
(Will the Republican Party nominate a convict for President?)
Even if Trump is given jail time (possible* but not likely), his lawyers will keep him out of jail by starting a lengthy appeals process, and posting bail money.
*His Secret Service detail will go to jail with him, basically. They are required by law to protect him 24/7.
Graphic by the Washington Post showing the dates and types of business records that Trump used to defraud the American people in the 2016 election. As for calling it a ‘hush money trial’ : it was actually an ‘election fraud conspiracy trial’, which is why the falsification of these business records were charged as felonies.
It was election day in South Africa, and the vote counting is under way. Out of a population of 62 million, a record 27.8 million voters have been registered.
The main party leaders are (from bbc.com/news): African National Congress/ANC: Cyril Ramaphosa – union leader, mine boss, president; Democratic Alliance/ DA: John Steenhuisen – the man vowing to ‘rescue’ South Africa; Economic Freedom Front/ EFF: Julius Malema – the radical agenda-setter; uMkhonto weSizwe/ MK: Jacob Zuma – ex-president, spent time in jail, the political wildcard.
Citizens vote for political parties, though— and then the national assembly of 400 representatives, based on the outcome of the national election, will vote for a president. A simple majority of 201 suffices.
The Big Question for 2024: will national support for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC party fall below 50% for the first time since 1994?
We will soon know. (The final results should be available by Sunday, or earlier). If that is the case, the ANC will have to form a coalition with other parties to choose a president and form a governing majority. I cannot see that even in this scenario, anyone other than Ramaphosa will become president. But hopefully the ANC’s majority power (that they had abused ever after Mandela had left office in 1999), will be reined in.
Whoah. Every voter gets three ballots: National, Provincial and Regional. It is a minor accomplishment just to find your party on each of the ballots. South Africa’s election management body, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), had cleared 14,889 candidates, including 70 political parties and 11 independents, to contest 887 seats in the May 29 vote. [Picture posted by Rene Vollgraaff@vollgraaffR on X]
So Nikki Haley* will vote for Trump, she said on Wednesday. She had called him ‘bad’, ‘unqualified to be President’, ‘do not trust him’ blah blah blah.
She didn’t bother to wait for the outcome of Trump’s first criminal trial— 34 felony counts over allegations that he falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. (Closing arguments for Trump’s case are on Tue May 28 and then the case goes to the jury).
*Former governor of South Carolina, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, and the last remaining challenger to Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries until she dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday in March.
Cartoon by Michael Ramirez/Las Vegas Review-Journal for The Washington Post.
Happy Friday.
Joe Biden arrived in Seattle late in the afternoon.
I hope he raises lots of money for his campaign because he might (will?) need it.
I have had no internet all day, and it is still out. (There is an outage in my neighborhood).
Plan B is to use my mobile phone as a hotspot, which I did, until AT&T texted me late morning and said I had used 75% of my hotspot data for the month.
I guess I will go read a book now and go to bed early.
YouTube letting me know that I am offline. Yes, that’s how it feels.
The Federal Reserve has signalled that a series of disappointing inflation readings are likely to mean US borrowing costs remain higher for longer. The Federal Reserve bank held interest rates at 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent, a 23-year high that has been in place since the summer of 2023.
– Reporting from the Financial Times
So – six months to go to the 2024 general election here in the United States.
Will a convicted felon be on the ballot for President of the United States?
Will the Fed have started to cut interest rates by then?
Will the Israeli hostages be free— and the war in Gaza be over?
What about the war in Ukraine? (I don’t think so).
Will the highly pathogenic bird flu virus A(H5N1) have mutated and become a threat to humans?
[Picture: apnews.com]The long-awaited hearing about Trump’s claim to ‘presidential immunity’ was held before the Not-So-Supreme-Anymore US Supreme Court today.
(Trump’s lawyers are arguing— implausibly— that the federal charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election must be thrown out.
There is no mention of immunity in the US Constitution.
The country had been doing just fine for 248 years).
Here are excerpts of a report from Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer in the New York Times: Several justices seemed to want to define some level of official act as immune. The arguments signaled further delay and complications for a Trump trial. The hearing revolved around two very different ways of looking at the issue, one from the conservative justices (some immunity may be needed) and another from the liberal justices (no absolute immunity). What happens next?
There did not seem to be a lot of urgency among the justices — especially the conservative ones — to ensure that the immunity question was resolved quickly.
That left open the possibility that Mr. Trump could avoid being tried on charges of plotting to overturn the last election until well after voters went to the polls to decide whether to choose him as president in this election.
And if he is elected, any trial could be put off while he is in office, or he could order the charges against him dropped.
The jury is seated, in the first-ever criminal trial for a US president (or former president).
Headlines from The Washington Post. Someone pointed out that the media loves to call it the ‘Hush Money Case’ but it’s really about so much more than that— the payments were made to enable Trump to salvage enough of his tattered reputation in order to win the 2016 election. So it is really an ‘Election Fraud Case’: breaking federal election laws in the state of New York. (And only the first of FOUR criminal cases against Trump). This 77-year old man, the Republican party’s candidate for US president— that should have been barred from being a candidate— is finally in court, and facing very serious and very credible accusations of campaign contribution crimes. It is already 6 years after Trump’s right-hand man Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty in August 2018 to the two relevant campaign finance charges. In 2016, Cohen orchestrated a payment from American Media Inc. to Playboy model Karen McDougal, and made an excessive ‘campaign contribution’ for a $140k payment to Stormy Daniels.
South African Constitution (1996) Art. 47.1.e.
1. Every citizen who is qualified to vote for the National Assembly is eligible to be a member of the Assembly, except ..
e. anyone who, after this section took effect, is convicted of an offence and sentenced to more than 12 months imprisonment without the option of a fine, either in the Republic, or outside the Republic if the conduct constituting the offence would have been an offence in the Republic, but no one may be regarded as having been sentenced until an appeal against the conviction or sentence has been determined, or until the time for an appeal has expired. A disqualification under this paragraph ends five years after the sentence has been completed.
This year, general elections will be held in South Africa on 29 May to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each province.
It’s been 30 years since Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s first democratic president. The African National Congress has in been in power all this time.
Let’s just say that after Mandela left office in 1999, the ANC has not exactly covered themselves in glory.
Jacob Zuma (elected in 2009) and his ANC cronies in particular, engaged in racketeering, money laundering, and fraud on a grand scale.
Zuma spent time in jail 2021, but only two months of his full sentence of 15 months. This was due to a ‘remission’ program approved by the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa (the equivalent of a ‘pardon’ in the US).
Now 82 years old, Zuma is back in politics. He wants to become president again.
South Africa’s election court ruled that he cannot be disqualified by the 12 month rule in Art. 47.1.e. of the South African constitution.
Cartoon of an imagined phone call between candidates for presidential elections in America and in South Africa. Zuma broke from the ANC and is the de facto leader of a brand-new political party called uMkhonto weSizwe (abbr. MKP, and meaning ‘Spear of the Nation’). Here’s Antony Sguazzin reporting for bloomberg.com: Support for South Africa’s ruling African National Congress is plunging and a party backed by former President Jacob Zuma may become the country’s third-biggest after next month’s election, a new opinion poll shows. The ANC, which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid, may garner just 37% of the vote on May 29, while Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party, or MKP, may get 13%, the Social Research Foundation said in comments sent to Bloomberg on Wednesday, citing a poll it carried out this month. [Cartoon by Niel van Vuuren for Beeld newspaper]
DSCC stands for Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. They should write it out to make the message appear less cryptic, no? I wonder where they got my phone number. And why is the link for a Yes or a No reply the same? That looks suspicious. Maybe they are phishing for me to confirm my phone number, even if I text back STOP? No. I’m not responding.
I think the Biden-Harris Administration should do much more to stop Israel from killing and starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
But whoever the Democratic candidate for President in the 2024 General Election will be (Joe Biden most likely, of course) already has my vote.
But here came a text Tuesday and again today, wanting me to say if I ‘approve’ of Joe Biden.
The problem is that I assume that texts from strange phone numbers out of the blue are spam. Even after checking online and on Twitter, I’m not 100% sure this one is not.
Cartoon by Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey. That’s Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Mike Johnson behind President Joe Biden, of course.
Millions of Americans in 15 states and one territory went to the polls today for primary contests that will set the stage for November’s elections. We call it Super Tuesday because it’s the busiest voting day before November, and typically it plays a central role in the presidential nomination process.
This year, however, is different. President Biden faces no major challengers, making him a lock to win every Democratic primary. Donald Trump is competing only against the dwindling campaign of Nikki Haley, whom he is expected to defeat in most or all of today’s contests.
– Matthew Cullen writing for the New York Times
So: no surprises out of Super Tuesday, really. (Haley eked out a win in Vermont, but that was it).
The 2024 presidential election that nobody had wanted (a Biden-Trump rematch) is still on track for November.
Happy Friday.
Time marches on for 2024, and my vote for the Washington State Presidential Primary election is in the mail.
I voted for Biden.
For me as a 2024 Democrat, it is unthinkable to vote for an independent or a Republican candidate.
That said, the primary election ballot has an ‘Uncommitted’ option on the Democratic side, and some Democrats tick this box to protest against Biden for not opposing the Israel response to the Hamas terrorist attacks more fiercely.
This political cartoon by Thomas Nast, taken from a 1879 edition of Harper’s Weekly, was an early use of the elephant and the donkey to symbolize the Republican and Democratic parties. [Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images]My voters’ pamphlet has pictures and profiles of all the Democratic and Republican candidates. Most of the candidates have dropped out already, even though we only have primary election results for 6 states.
