No spinning this

Hell hath no fury like a media duped. His backers may try to spin President Biden's troubles away, but journalists' ramped-up scrutiny of his mental sharpness will play a role in his bowing out.

“I belong to no organized party. I’m a Democrat.”
~Will Rogers in 1924

A century after the famed American humorist’s quip, what’s in store for the next Democratic National Convention that commences in six weeks? How organized of an affair will that be?

As I wrote last week [see link below], I don’t believe it should be Joe Biden who stands as the party’s nominee. While that would mean a certain level of upheaval, let’s face it: Biden’s candidacy is already in upheaval, no matter how much his backers try to spin it or wish it away.

Time to go, Joe

A week ago, I was hardly an outlier in my assessment that Biden needs to end his bid for another term. And judging by momentum that's been growing over the past week, I am confident Biden will get the message, sooner or later, that he must bow out.

As would be expected, since his June 27 face-off with Donald Trump, the President and his team have done their best to stagecraft away the memory of his 90-minute debate stumble. His interview yesterday with ABC’s George Stephanopolous will do little to allay concerns that have mounted about his mental sharpness and ability to wage a competent campaign.

And aside from a teleprompter-aided, earlier-in-the-day vigorous speech in North Carolina, Biden has spoken only in brief spurts, and almost exclusively with teleprompters, as the Washington Post reported.

In a story headlined `Biden’s omnipresent accessory, even in your living room: A teleprompter,’ I found one insight from a longtime supporter most revealing:

In the days since the debate, Biden and his team have sought to reassure Democrats his performance last week was an aberration. But his appearances at a slew of fundraisers in the days since have done little to reassure them.

“The thing that pissed people off, they waited for three hours, and he spoke for [eight] minutes,” said a donor who attended a fundraiser in East Hampton, N.Y., on Saturday. “It was a teleprompter. No questions. He was out of there. They were disappointed with the brevity of his remarks, the lack of his interaction with the crowd, that he didn’t take any questions.”

The donor said they had probably attended 10 or 15 fundraisers with Biden in the past, and the “problem in the past is you couldn’t get him to stop taking questions. He’d stay forever. He’d never leave. He’d work the line and shake every hand, he’d want to take more questions than the audience even had.”

More than anything I’ve encountered the past week on this issue, that description drives home the crux of the matter: These worries about the President’s fitness are not only about his current state, but the huge gap between his present form and how he’s been able to perform in the not-so-distant past.

What happened?

Carefully managed unavailability: Over the course of his term, Biden has been largely sequestered from media inspection. Along the way, he's been in decline. Being President is a grueling task for anyone; there's no reason why would Biden be an exception.

It all brings to mind the seemingly missed opportunity from February, when the President declined a live interview during the Super Bowl broadcast—the most-watched event in the galaxy. It was the second straight time he’d said “no,” after he had accepted two prior Super Bowl interviews. His spokesman was quoted as saying, “We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game.”

That remark hasn't aged well. It strikes me as an evasion.

Whether or not Biden remains as the nominee, this situation is a mess for Democrats. But questions and concerns about his ability to robustly serve another four-year term will only intensify, from all across the political and media spectrum.

With so many media outlets now reckoning with whether they have given Biden too much of a pass, the pendulum has emphatically swung the other way. And don’t count on that pendulum swinging back any time soon.

Drawing from my own career as a journalist, I can attest that hell hath no fury like members of the media who feel they’ve been duped—or, at minimum, have been exposed as giving too much of a pass for Biden’s declining sharpness.

To be clear, none of this relates to whether Biden’s been a good President. That’s not nearly as relevant as his electability.

Maybe the Democrats could eke out a win with him, though I strongly doubt it. But if he were to step aside and throw his support beyond whomever emerges as the Democratic nominee?

To paraphrase what Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times last weekend, Biden would be transformed from Stubborn Old Man to Gallant Statesman.

Flashing Back to 1924

Only a few months before the’24 Presidential election, the Democratic Party struggles to see eye-to-eye on who should be their leader.

At their Convention, amid squabbling, strife and even violence, a record number of ballots are conducted as delegates try, in vain, to select a nominee.

Finally, they settle on a compromise candidate who goes on to lose in November.

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After Biden’s alarmingly weak June 27 debate performance and all the fallout since, this scenario may seem like a cynical prediction.

But no, it’s a flashback to 1924, when a drawn-out battle between former Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo and New York Governor Al Smith led to an excruciating 16-day, 103-ballot slog…and the nomination of John W. Davis.

John W. Who?

As a pretty diligent student of American Presidential history, I’m somewhat surprised that until a few days ago I’d never heard of the fellow. He was a West Virginian whose stellar work as an attorney led to a political career that included serving as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Solicitor General.

The other night, I stumbled upon Mr. Davis after typing “July 4, 1924” into my Newspapers.com time-travel machine.

What I found was headline upon headline about the Democratic National Convention being held—and effectively holding people hostage—in New York.

A foreshadowing in this July 3 edition: Davis appears in a sub-headline, as he “pulls up with aid from casual votes.”

The Corsicana (Texas) Sun is no longer a daily - but it does publish twice a week!

The Baltimore Sun’s July 4, 1924 front page, recapping more fruitless ballots. In the end, it took 103 ballots to land on John W. Davis.

A rather bland headline, but it fits. And oh baby: as noted by the New York Daily News, these two newborns were named after politicians who had dominated the news for weeks.

Below, can you sense the Chicago Daily Tribune headline writer’s relief, even exasperation? Check out that exclamation point!

Also commanding headlines was the somber news of funeral services for Calvin Coolidge Jr.’s death, at 16, of blood poisoning.

Of course, incumbent Calvin Coolidge trounced Davis in the election, hence why Davis is news to me (and likely you too) a century later. A recent Smithsonian magazine story fleshes out the tensions at the time, including the question of whether to condemn the Ku Klux Klan by name.

Though the Democrats lost big 100 years ago when their convention turned into a free-for-all before landing on Davis as the nominee, the circumstances at play then were much different from those occurring now.

For one thing, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to get its ducks in a row ahead of the convention in Chicago. Seems logical and fitting that Vice President Kamala Harris should be the one they rally around. (What do you think? Take the poll above!)

Also, unlike 1924, it’s not a Republican who’s currently occupying the Oval Office, as Coolidge was after succeeding Warren Harding mid-term a year earlier.

And for another thing, any comparison to the past is shaky. Up against Donald Trump, Democrats face a polarizing former President who has laid waste to countless precedents over the past eight years. Comparing 2024 with four years ago, let alone 100 years ago, is a fool’s errand.

In my estimation, the key question isn’t if but when Biden acquiesces to the inevitable and passes on the torch.