The Outsider Perspective Issue 379 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Especially to Kansas City Taylor Swift fans. They did the thing and won back-to-back championships. It’s quite the feat. One of the more viral moments was Travis Kelce yelling at his coach, Andy Reid.

Given all the backlash on that, it was commendable that he and his brother talked about that incident on their podcast and how it was wrong.

This week, I’m writing a follow-up to what I’ve termed “Operation Remove Biden.” Whether or not this succeeds is a different question than the fact that it’s happening. We’re in the soft pressure campaign right now. That’s below, links to follow.

Quick Hits:

I wrote a column last week about how Ukraine is losing the war. This week, multiple outlets are reporting that Ukraine is on the verge of losing the critical frontline towns in the fight against Russia. We’ll likely see a pivot both from the White House and in the media that the loss is occurring because of the holdup in aid legislation in Congress. That won’t be true. This war was lost when Biden and his team believed Ukraine was militarily capable of defeating Russia. A stalemate was always the most likely outcome. Not negotiating when Ukraine/The West had maximum leverage has cost Ukraine dearly. I hope we see a miraculous turnaround somewhere here, but the outcome is growing very grim for Ukraine.
In December 2022, I wrote a column describing the news media entering a dark winter due to layoffs and sinking profits. Later, in April 2023, I updated that to a deep Siberian winter. It’s only getting worse. A day after hosting the record-breaking Super Bowl, Paramount fired 800 people, including CBS News journalists. A piece in The Hollywood Reporter compared this moment to 2008, and no one can fix it. The New Yorker was even more dire, calling this an “extinction level” event.” They’ve tried billionaires, group funds, and more. The news industry is dying. Paramount’s decision is even starker because they fired journalists before a Presidential election. Usually, these layoffs would happen after the elections, not before them.

Where you can find me this week

Please subscribe, rate, and review my podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play — the reviews help listeners, and readers like you find me in the algorithms. Make sure to sign up for the Conservative Institute’s daily newsletter.

Release The Biden Transcripts – Conservative Institute

Russian Space Weapons, Chinese Spy Balloons, And The Failure Of Biden Foreign Policy – Conservative Institute

Operation Remove Biden From The Ballot Has Begun – Conservative Institute

The First Stage Of Trying To Remove Biden: The Soft Pressure Campaign

One of the most incredible tweets ever goes to David Burge, who runs the @iowahawkblog account. A decade ago, he said, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

Last week, I wrote that the pressure campaign to get Joe Biden to step down started last Thursday. Nothing has dissuaded me from that fact. If anything, there are two factions on the left: 1) The White House side of things, which is desperately trying to make this go away, and 2) Everyone else.

I said to watch “The New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post” on this subject because they’d set the tone. Also, “Watch for the first round of polls to come out in the coming weeks. If Biden tanks hard, especially with Democrats, the effort to get Biden out will grow.”

That ended up being extremely accurate. The White House got nuked over the weekend by an abysmal ABC News/Ipsos poll.

According to the poll conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. … Ninety-one percent of independents believe Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.

Concerns about both candidates’ ages have increased since September when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 74% of Americans thought Biden — the oldest commander in chief in U.S. history — was too old to serve another term as president, and 49% said the same about Trump.

In 2020, Donald Trump never led Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics average. The closest national polling got was a five-point Biden lead. The race sometimes expanded to a double-digit Biden lead but finished at Biden +7.2.

Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by two points in the RealClearPolitics average right now. And except for two brief moments in the fall, Trump has consistently led Biden in the RCP average since last September. This is a six-month trend line that includes all the trials, drama, and usual Trump insanity.

If that polling held and the popular vote followed polling, Trump would end up being the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. These polls have taken a back seat because of the primaries and Trump’s legal woes. But as everyone is examining the data now, Biden looks like one of the weakest incumbent nominees in history.

The polling was terrible before the Hur report. It’s getting worse. Maybe Democrats can pull a rabbit out of the hat like the 2022 midterms, but that’s looking less and less likely.

Returning to the factions in the press: Last week, I wondered if we’d get a “brave soul” to get into the waters and put Biden’s age squarely in front. We’ve gotten the pushback, and the first brave soul has arrived.

First, the pushback. Jonathan Martin at Politico published a piece in which he lambasted the idea of Biden stepping aside. It’s nothing more than a White House press release dressed up as a “serious political column.” But it didn’t stay there. Martin spent the week mocking anyone on Twitter who thought Biden should or would stand aside. It’s all a Republican conspiracy for him.

Martin was so bombastic that the Wall Street Journal called him “Politico’s hall monitor for conventional wisdom” and said he was leading the “Biden protection campaign.” Martin was giddy over this characterization. But the WSJ is right on this one, and Martin is putting on a very loud show.

For starters, Martin’s column includes one of the most vociferous, throat-clearing cover-your-butt paragraphs you’ll find in political writing:

First, two neon-lit caveats. In journo’ese, this is called the “to be sure” paragraph. You may know it by three other words: cover your ass. There are two obvious ways in which Biden does not seek reelection: He changes his mind about running or suffers a health crisis. Only a higher power can speak to the latter, but Biden, his family and his inner circle have been clear about the president’s plans to run.

After that, he proceeds to mock the idea that Biden won’t be the nominee in 2024. But I’ll be blunt: if you need to put the possibility of an act of God coming down and striking Biden dead as a distinct possibility, I shouldn’t take the surety of your proposition that seriously.

Trump could drop dead, too. But no one expects that. They are afraid of Biden entering eternity. And they fear that because of his age and the perceptions around that age. The Onion is running Biden dying headlines, not the Babylon Bee (Biden Recalls Speaking To Dead European Leaders Often As They Beckon Him Toward The Light). Further, the most likely scenario to get him out is a significant press offensive to convince Biden’s inner circle he needs to get out. Martin is carrying Joe Biden’s water to try and prevent that from happening.

Biden’s team hopes this story fades from view. They can’t change people’s minds, but hopefully, the news cycle will pick them up.

Here’s the problem: that isn’t happening. Special Counsel Robert Hur will testify publicly about his investigation before Congress on March 12, 2024. Hur will be under immense pressure from both sides to clarify everything. Good luck to him.

For Biden, it means we will have a month dedicated to the lead-up to that testimony. At no point will the White House trot out Biden to take a softball interview to blunt these criticisms. They can’t. What’s more, they’re fighting the release of the Hur transcripts. Anything that could exonerate Biden is a destructive path for the White House.

But we will likely get those transcripts before the election. This gives us two distinct renewals of this news cycle during the election, possibly before the conventions.

None of these issues factor in the possibility of Biden having another moment in front of a camera where everyone gets reminded of his feebleness. He’s already fallen multiple times, mistaken people in front of him for world leaders long dead, and much more. What’s preventing another similar moment?

I made a point in 2020 about Biden: his ability to stay out of the limelight allowed people to vote for him based on what they thought Joe Biden was. The idea of Biden was always better than the reality. Trump was real and in front of everyone’s minds 24/7. Trump isn’t front and center anymore, and Biden is a very real politician with a four-year track record now – and it’s awful.

That brings me to the next part: the brave soul to challenge the hall monitors like Jonathan Martin. You must exist in the media complex on the left to fit this bill. Conservatives / center-right journalists need not apply.

Dylan Byers, formerly of NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and more, tweeted his bombshell of an article at Puck. He wrote on X/Twitter:

The Age of Biden: Many in White House press corps have spent the last couple years noticeably avoiding the topic of the president’s agility and acuity because it felt indelicate or irrelevant. Now, the Hur report has stirred some soul-searching.

In the piece, you learn everyone knows Biden is weak. They’re just scared to say it out loud:

This week, I surveyed members of the White House press corps-reporters, on-air correspondents, photographers, etcetera-and they all emphasized that the symptoms of Biden’s age had become more noticeable in recent months and a frequent discussion topic at the desks behind the Brady briefing room. “Anyone who covers this White House knows he’s showing the signs of his age — he whispers, he shuffles, he misremembers,” one White House reporter told me. “Anyone with an elderly parent knows what this is.”

Since the beginning of Biden’s term, many White House journalists have reported on, or alluded to, concerns surrounding Biden’s age in often gentle or euphemistic ways. Nevertheless, several of the journalists I spoke with said the true significance and importance of that issue, as they observed it, was not reflected in the coverage often due to the sense that it was sensitive or unseemly, or because there was no obvious evidence that it had affected his performance as president beyond optics.

Or, left unsaid, perhaps because they didn’t want to ruin their relationship with the White House by being the lone wolf to speak up. “It was something that felt indelicate to talk about,” one member of the White House press corps told me. In retrospect, some journalists felt like it probably warranted more coverage: “The amount of time we spent talking about it versus the time we spent reporting on it was not the same,” one of the reporters said. “There should have been tougher, more scrutinizing coverage of his age earlier.”

Byers is getting a ton of grief on his social media because he just ripped the mask off the press. Martin’s bravado in Politico gives way to the reality that Biden’s feebleness is real, and no one in Washington DC doubts a word of the Hur reports.

Dylan Byers has declared the emporer is naked, and everyone in press circles reads his reporting. They all know the obvious: they all see the same thing, think the same thing, and question why they’re covering for the White House. There are better Democratic options who might not lose to Donald Trump like Biden looks like he’s about to do.

That’s why Martin is so bombastic – he’s trying to threaten people away from this central truth. The White House must whip the press into a frenzy against these kinds of stories. They’re trying to head off a press-induced pressure campaign to kick Biden off the ticket.

Even if such a pressure campaign fails to remove Biden, it will irrevocably weaken him heading into the general election.

What’s even more interesting is that before Martin’s piece, both Politico and NBC News explored the possibility of removing Biden. The NBC News piece, written by their top political reporters, is the nuts and bolts piece I’d expect from Politico. It just covers the procedural aspects I wrote about last week.

The Politico piece is far more interesting because it tries to paint a scenario where Biden “leaves with dignity.” Politico wrote a piece with an audience of one: the White House. They write:

But there is a path that enables him to leave with dignity and on his terms. It begins with letting the Democratic primary campaign run its course, ending June 4, the date the last group of states holds its primaries. Biden would finish as the undisputed victor, with far more than the 1,968 pledged delegate votes necessary to claim the nomination.

And then Biden would announce he would not accept the nomination and release his delegates to back a different nominee. He could insist he’s still fit to serve out another term but that he accepts the public’s concerns with a president who would be 86 at the end of a second term. He could remind voters that he has always said he was a bridge to a future generation of Democratic leaders. The economy is on track, he could note, and argue that he defeated Trump once and protected American democracy. He met his duty.

At that point, the scramble would begin among potential successors. Not long after Biden’s announcement, a spate of private polls testing various candidates in the general election would suddenly be floated to establish different figures’ Trump-slaying credentials. Between June 4 and August 19, when the party’s convention begins in Chicago, senior Democrats would jockey for position to replace Biden in the kind of battle not seen in decades in American politics.

Every person in the White House read this piece. It’s aimed at them and Democratic elites, trying to provide Biden an off-ramp. Martin’s entire thesis relies on Biden being stubborn. Politico’s editors/reporters are trying to give Biden a way to “leave on top.”

Will it work? Who knows. This is the “gentle” part of the pressure campaign. The knives aren’t out yet. But Dylan Byers dropping his piece means that journalists are starting to think about sharpening those knives. They’ll rationalize an eventual pivot like this: “Donald Trump is an existential threat, and if he beats a weakened Biden, it’ll be on our head. We have to convince Biden to step down to ensure Trump loses.”

Politico then goes into the next reality: there’s no going beyond Biden without Harris. They call her the “thorny” issue.

Heading into the convention, Biden would still remain a kingmaker. If the rest of the primaries went as South Carolina and Nevada have, the vast majority of delegates to the convention would be pledged to Biden. They aren’t legally required to support the president — or anyone he’d potentially endorse to replace him on the ticket — but these individuals would’ve been vetted by the Biden campaign, and many would likely follow his lead if he backed a candidate.

The thorniest issue will be Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden’s delegates do not automatically attach to her in his absence. Her poor approval ratings and her performance in the 2020 primaries have not inspired confidence. But the party will be acutely aware of the risks of alienating Black voters.

I don’t see a way for them to avoid her. It’s just a question of who she picks as her VP to lift the ticket.

Something else of note: long-time Biden ally Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina announced he was stepping down from House Democratic Leadership. Clyburn was the kingmaker for Biden. He endorsed Biden ahead of the South Carolina primaries, which helped rebuild Biden when he needed it, and ended that primary.

Clyburn is 83, and losing him will make it harder to keep a Biden-centric coalition together either in the House or at a convention. Clyburn has exercised a lot of power with Nancy Pelosi over the years. It’s a seismic shift in Democratic politics for him to step down.

We’re still six months from the Democratic convention. We’ve entered the gentle part of the pressure campaign. This news cycle will return when Hur testifies before Congress. Can Biden keep the press on his side for another month? Or is Byers the first crack in a large dam beginning to break?

It’s too early to say, but the White House feels the heat. They desperately need the press to smother this story with a pillow until it’s gone. What happens if the press turns on the White House and tries to smother Biden instead? Biden’s allies don’t realize that a fear of Donald Trump can cut in the opposite direction. Watch for a pivot.

Links of the week

If You Think World War III Is Unimaginable, Read This: Novelists and filmmakers have long developed alternative histories of major conflicts that should serve as warnings for complacent Americans. – Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg

U.S. conducted cyberattack on suspected Iranian spy ship: The covert operation was intended to inhibit the ship’s ability to share intelligence with Houthi rebels who have been attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. – NBC News

Conservatives Roast Tucker Carlson for ‘Recreating Actual Soviet Propaganda’ During Wide-Eyed Russia Tour: ‘Has He Never Been to Publix?’ – Mediaite

Why Is the American Right Pandering to Putin? The Russian strongman is a warden of the deepest of deep states. Tucker Carlson believes he’s worthy of admiration. – Peter Savodnik, The FP

UK tips into recession in blow to Rishi Sunak: GDP fell 0.3% in three months to December after collapse in retail sales in run-up to Christmas – The Guardian

Japan’s economy unexpectedly slips into recession, hurt by weak domestic demand – CNBC

‘Antisemitic writings’ found in search of Joel Osteen megachurch shooter’s items: The shooter was carrying an assault style-type rifle with the word “Palestine” written on it, according to two senior law enforcement officials. – NBC News

Kushner says he’s not looking to return to White House – Axios

The Political Class Ignored the Warnings, and We All Reap the Consequences – National Review

Trump endorses new RNC chair and Lara Trump as co-chair: The ex-president is backing Michael Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina GOP, to take over for Ronna McDaniel. – Politico

Fani Willis Tells All in Wild Testimony, Talks Cash Piles in Safe, Father’s Advice, Preferring Grey Goose Over Wine – Mediaite