Vincent Sheheen Wins Democratic Nomination For Governor In South Carolina; Gop Still Undecided

“President Biden’s team continues to believe that tens of millions Americans — perhaps as many as one in every five voters — will cast a ballot for him this year despite their current conviction that he is already too old or not mentally competent to do the job,” the Washington Post reports.

Molly Ball: “The fallout from last week’s presidential debate has thrust the Democratic Party into a spiraling crisis. Yet many in the party view the current reckoning as sadly inevitable—the product of years of defensive refusal by the president and his protective inner circle to acknowledge the decline in Biden’s public presentation that has long been obvious to voters.” “Now, insiders admit, the party is reaping the consequences of its long failure to confront an issue that was only ever fated to get worse.” Said one longtime Democratic operative: “This was all predictable, and it pisses me off that everyone is acting shocked now.

NBC News: “During a tense call with a group of about 40 of Biden’s top financial backers, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez laid out what could and could not be done with the campaign’s infrastructure if Biden were to step aside while emphasizing throughout the call that he had no intention of doing so.” “Most of the campaign’s significant war chest would fall to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chavez Rodriguez said, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Wall Street Journal: “The epic collapse in New York shows how a fear of dramatic change can give the status quo stubborn power over those trying to solve some of America’s most intractable challenges. That leaves policymakers nibbling at the edges of deeply rooted problems, even after investing huge sums of money and political capital.”

“President Biden’s campaign will begin airing a new 60-second television ad in key battleground states on Monday as the presumptive Democratic nominee seeks to recover from a stilted debate performance last week in Atlanta that has shaken his standing in the 2024 race,” the New York Times reports. “The ad, provided to The New York Times ahead of its first airing, doesn’t show footage of Mr.

Bill Maher: “As Joe Biden himself would say, ‘Here’s the deal’: What happened at the debate last week wasn’t a tragedy, it was a blessing in disguise. I called on Mr. Biden to step aside almost a year ago, warning that he would be forever known as ‘Ruth Bader Biden’ if he didn’t.