F**king Mondays: Biden's Woes, New Hope For Britain, RFK Jr.'s New Friend, and Project 2025!

It's that time of the week again!

Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays”! In the round up today:

Biden’s woes grow

President Biden speaks to George Stephanopolous. Image via ABC News.

Biden’s showing on ABC with George Stephanopolous last Friday was better than his disastrous debate almost two weeks ago, but it did not stop the growing calls from major Democrats to step down. Biden’s voice was again notably weak, and he lost his train of thought on a number of occasions. None of this was particularly news worthy, particularly given his opponent regularly malfunctions constructing basic sentences. But it wasn’t a good interview, let alone a great one, and Biden’s reaction to several questions have given Democrats even more cause for concern.

“I’ve never seen a president with 36 percent approval get reelected,” Stephanopoulos said to Biden.

“I don’t believe that’s my approval rating,” said Biden. “That’s not what our polls show.”

Notably, Biden did not reveal what his polls show, or who is conducting them.

Most worrying though was how Biden said he’d feel next January if Trump won.

“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Biden said.

With all due respect to the president, that’s absolutely not what this is about. This election is about keeping a mentally deranged convicted criminal who plans to destroy American democracy out of office. Biden isn’t going to get a pat on the back for losing to Trump, he’s going to be reviled by Democrats for throwing away an election with profound consequences for the country. I genuinely hope that in private Biden has a more realistic understanding of what is going on, but his public denial of political reality is disturbing.

To get an understanding of how bad things are for Biden, consider this:

The debate was Biden’s big chance to turn things around. Unfortunately, it did the exact opposite.

I’ve been anguished about how to cover all of this, mostly because I genuinely like Biden and the team around him. I think he has been an excellent president, and I believe his team deserve a huge amount of credit for running one of the most decent, effective administrations in my lifetime. But I am not a politician and my job is not to promote or provide cover for a candidate I happen to admire. It is to give readers an honest assessment of reality, no matter how difficult that might be.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed Biden physically capable of running a campaign needed to beat Trump. But based on what I saw during the debate, the failure to assuage fears in the days after, and credible reports that Biden has declined quite drastically over the past few months, I do not. I cannot unsee the lost, listless, completely incoherent Biden I saw almost two weeks ago, and neither can voters. Old age is not something that can be reversed and Biden is not going to get better as time goes on.

I fear a deep veil of cognitive dissonance has beset Democrats, many of whom desperately want to believe Biden can keep going. Perhaps subconsciously most people understand that he cannot. On a human level, I do not want to see Biden subjected to this kind of appalling scrutiny; to have every interview, speech, and interaction amplified by the media hungry for more red meat; to be subjected to cruel memes, humiliating interviews, and another brutal debate with a man who should be in prison, not campaigning against him for the highest office of the land. Joe Biden deserves better than this.

I’ve received so many comments and emails from readers castigating my willingness to call for Biden to drop out that I have lost count. Some are respectful, some are not (that’s ok, I’m willing to take the heat), but the theme is the same: give Biden the benefit of the doubt, Trump is worse, and be a team player.

As I have said on several occasions, if Biden refuses to step down, Democrats absolutely must rally around him and do everything in their power to ensure a victory in November. The consequences of not doing so are unthinkable. However if Biden does not step aside in the next two or three weeks, he will be the nominee and Democrats must go into battle with a candidate whose ability to survive the next four months is completely unknown. The Biden campaign has lost a lot of credibility over this, and deservedly so. If they knew Biden had deteriorated this badly, they had a duty to make it public and set the stage for him to step aside. But they didn’t, and now we are only four months away from the most important election in US history.

Increasingly I think Kamala Harris is the best route out of this godawful mess. She is smart, decent, and experienced and would benefit from being the incumbent. I believe Democrats would rally around her to defeat Donald Trump, and she could inject some much needed energy into the race. There would be nothing more satisfying than watching Trump lose to a black woman, and finally see him consigned to the rubbish dump of history, where he has always belonged.

Britain’s new hope

Britain’s new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer

The Labour Party decimated the Conservatives in the general election on July 4th, ending 14 years of Tory rule that has destroyed Britain’s economy and turned it into one of the most unequal developed nations on earth. With soaring rates of child poverty, a crumbling health service, and appalling levels of violent crime, the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has inherited the mother of all messes.

Starmer is a highly pragmatic center leftist who ran on a bold agenda to revitalize Britain. Can he do it? Governing is always harder than being in opposition, but after over a decade of anti-EU, free market/austerity madness, it can’t get much worse.

A photo I took in Brixton, London last year.

Whenever I travel back to the UK, I am stunned by how bad things have gotten. More than anything, I’ve felt a real sense of hopelessness that the country is in terminal decline. Out of Europe the UK is a third rate superpower with a dwindling economy and a confused global role. Starmer has ruled out re-joining the EU, but as the reality of Britain’s finances settles in, my guess is Labour may have to think again.

I’m heading to the UK next month and will report on the general mood while I’m there.

Your moment of levity

And a quick reader poll:

Trump has never heard of Project 2025!

According to Donald Trump, he has never heard of the project crafted by right wing think tanks and many former staff members to incinerate the federal government and anoint him uncontested king of America.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said in a post on Truth/Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

In other words: I’m deeply involved with Project 2025 but now understand there is considerable public backlash so I’m pretending to know nothing about it.

Thankfully there is now considerable attention being paid to the radical right wing blueprint to turn America fascist. The public deserves to know about a plan to turn the DoJ into Trump’s personal legal department, dismantle the federal government, and fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA fanatics. If Trump has turned against it, you know it’s a big problem for his campaign.

See you next week!

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- Ben

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